When you look at the third generation of Kennedy men, much of what remains of a once powerful dynasty is good teeth, good hair and the best public relations a trust fund can buy. Some of the boys grew from being spoiled and bratty–belittling the help, once chasing the cook up a tree at Hickory Hill–into full-blown debauchery, driving fast, drinking hard, club hopping like wild men. Most of this got spun by family retainers into the playful high jinks of a raucous clan. But the escapades got seamier over time and the spinning harder: a joyride with Joe Kennedy II left a young woman paralyzed after an accident on Nantucket. Bobby Jr. was arrested for possession of heroin. David died in a Florida hotel of a cocaine, Demerol and Mellaril overdose. William Kennedy Smith was accused and acquitted of rape, after a night out with Uncle Ted, who can never erase Chappaquiddick. Now Michael Kennedy, the sixth child of Robert Kennedy, who once seemed to have his father’s quiet passion without the Kennedy sense of entitlement, finds himself at the center of a new scandal–that he allegedly had a five-year affair with a girl who baby-sat his three children at the family home in Cohasset, Mass., beginning when she was 14. At the same time, Joe II, a six-term Congressman planning to run for Governor, is trying to weather a just published book, Shattered Faith, by ex-wife Sheila Rauch Kennedy that depicts him as a narcissistic bully and protests his efforts to have their 12-year marriage annulled. In Kennedyland, where everyone is his brother’s keeper, the blowback from Michael’s scandal and publicity surrounding Shattered Faith have sent Joe’s popularity sinking. In Boston Herald polls, 17% of voters said they are less likely to vote for Joe based on Michael’s problems alone, and 1 in 4 has a less favorable view of Joe as a result of the book. Suddenly, worthy but dull attorney general Scott Harshbarger looks like a strong Democratic candidate for Governor in 1998. And the heretofore impossible in Massachusetts seems plausible: an office a Kennedy wants could be kept from him. The baby-sitter story broke in the Boston Globe on April 25, just as Michael and Victoria Gifford Kennedy, the daughter of ABC sportscaster Frank Gifford, were officially separating. The paper reported that Victoria had discovered Michael in bed with the teenage baby sitter in January 1995, an incident Michael blamed on alcohol. He then enrolled in a rehab program. But apparently the two continued to be seen together around the wealthy seaside town and, according to a report in the Herald, even went on a whitewater rafting trip, organized by his closest friends, and shared a tent. Victoria seemed to ignore the swirling rumors about the continuation of the relationship, which is apparently a family tradition. In The Kennedy Women, Laurence Leamer writes that patriarch Joe stuck Gloria Swanson in Rose’s face “so close that she could see the pores on her skin,” yet Rose acted oblivious, for “as long as nothing was said…life could go on as before.”
