Who is Caroline Kennedy? - Democratic Underground

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Fri Feb-01-08 08:28 AM
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Who is Caroline Kennedy?

Edited on Fri Feb-01-08 09:18 AM by FLDem5

Caroline Kennedy is more than the little girl with JFK in the photo.

She is the woman whose father was assassinated for what we all believe in.

She is the woman whose Uncle was assassinated for what we all believe in.

She is a woman whose Uncle is still fighting for the wonderful, liberal values that we all cherish.

She has not exploited her name, her father’s legacy for political or financial gain. On her name alone, she could have a seat in the House or the Senate. With little effort, she could use her celebrity for immense personal gain. She has chosen not to.

Instead, she chose to protect the dream of Camelot that was her family’s gift to this country. She works to further her family's ideals, to encourage public service.

Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg
Champion of civility
By Romesh Ratnesar

July 26, 1999
In 1960, on the night John F. Kennedy returned from the Democratic National Convention as the party's nominee for President, his two-year-old daughter Caroline toddled out of the family's Hyannis Port home to greet her father. Immediately a fusillade of photographers' camera bulbs went off, and the frightened Caroline turned away. "Don't be afraid," J.F.K. told her. "They won't hurt you." In the 39 years since, Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg has rarely run willingly into the glare of public attention. Instead she has allowed her cousins to inherit the Kennedy legacy of political ambition and her younger brother to assume the role of family icon. Meanwhile, she has tended to her three children, walked anonymously through New York City's streets and granted few extended interviews, except during publicity rushes for her two books. "She is first and foremost a wife and mother," says Paul Kirk Jr., chairman of the John F. Kennedy Library Foundation and a family confidant. "That's a key priority for her. She saw how important it was to her as a child."

And yet if her life has been more guarded than her brother's was, it is far from cloistered. Her mother was more glamorous and socially adroit, but Caroline shares Jackie's cultivated charm and has steadily expanded her own profile as a patron of culture and the arts. And though not driven to politics as were J.F.K. and his brothers, she has nonetheless compiled a ledger of quiet but diligent service to the public, and to her father's legacy, that reflects a commitment to civic life and a belief in the value of rigorous, reflective debate. "She has a strong sense of personal responsibility," says historian David McCullough, who sits with Caroline on the panel that hands out the Kennedy Library's annual Profile in Courage Awards. "She knows she has serious work to do. And in that sense, I've always felt she is very much a Kennedy."

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She helped found, in 1989, the library's Profile in Courage Awards, an honor given to public officials for acts of political bravery. The 12-member panel meets every year for two days of vetting the nominees; in those sessions, Caroline is known for her intense preparation and affinity for discussion. She personally telephones winners and presents the awards at an annual ceremony at the library. This year's event, which honored Senators Russ Feingold and John McCain, was Caroline and John Jr.'s last public appearance together. Alan Simpson, the former Wyoming Senator who is director of the Kennedy School's Institute of Politics at Harvard, was reminded of Caroline's forebears. "When I saw her step forward to make those awards, I saw the same poise and warmth and desire to participate in politics and carry on the Kennedy name."

Few think Caroline has designs on elected office, but she has become more aggressive lately about promoting public service. In May she touted the Profile in Courage Award on the Today show "as a way of showing how important it is for people to continue to celebrate and expect political courage." In politics, Caroline picks her moments. She turned down an invitation to serve as chairwoman of the Democratic National Convention in 1992, but she stumped for Teddy and her cousin Patrick, a Rhode Island Congressman, late in the 1994 campaign. In 1998 she lent her name to the campaign against an anti-affirmative-action initiative in Washington State and gave a speech at a U.N. ceremony in which she implored the U.S. Senate to ratify an international treaty on children's rights.

She took over as president of the of the Kennedy Library Foundation in Boston after her mother’s death. She sits on the committee of the Profiles in Courage awards, which is the ultimate tribute to what her family stands for.

The Profile in Courage Award seeks to make Americans aware of the conscientious and courageous acts of their public servants, and to encourage elected officials to choose principles over partisanship – to do what is right, rather than what is expedient.

Could there be anything that embodies what we loved about JFK more?

Caroline also co-authored The Right to Privacy in 1997, which highlights much that we are fighting so hard for this week:

"As we write in the book," Kennedy says, "there is a federal law preventing a video store from giving out a list of the videos you have rented without your permission. But there's no federal law protecting your medical records. Those records are on computers. They can easily be transferred. And in some states, you can't even get access to those records even though other people can. That's your most personal, sensitive information. Who gets to look at the information? Your boss, your insurer, your pharmacy. It's a long list. And it will only increase as the move to HMOs and managed care picks up."
What should we do?

Yet neither in the book nor during the interview do Kennedy and Alderman advocate some umbrella legislation-a constitutional amendment, for example-to bolster the right to privacy. Given the complexity of the issues involved and the real benefit to society of a free flow of information, Kennedy points out, "it would be very hard to draft a law that would adequately cover all these situations." Both Alderman and Kennedy seem to think that businesses and organizations can do more to safeguard the personal information they gather, and, in conversation, they hope consumers will bring market pressures to bear. They also agree that some protections of privacy will have to be accomplished through legislation.

Caroline also co-authored In Our Defense: The Bill of Rights in Action which breaks down each Right in the Bill, and how it applies to real life and how the Supreme Court decides. It has also been described as “taking the Bill of Rights and making it breathe”.

From Publishers Weekly:

Does a citizenry's revulsion at hate-mongering outweigh the Ku Klux Klan's claimed right to broadcast racist messages? In what circumstances do national security considerations give government the wherewithal to clamp restrictions on a free press? If a mother suspected of child abuse refuses to tell authorities where the youngster is for fear that the state will take him from her, is she acting within the Fifth Amendment right protecting against self-incrimination? These cases and many other thorny issues addressed in this compelling casebook had legal outcomes that hinged on the courts' interpretation of the Bill of Rights. For each of the 10 amendments, one or more pertinent cases are presented in clear, impartial, jargon-free discussions encompassing the rights to privacy, gun control, FBI surveillance of political activists, minimum wage, flag burning and other issues. Columbia Law School graduates Alderman, a Manhattan attorney, and Kennedy (daughter of JFK) have produced a valuable primer for Supreme Court watchers. BOMC alternate. (Feb.)

She has come forward and endorsed a candidate who is not in her family for the first time in her life, because he inspires her and her children, and the disengaged youth of this country.

OVER the years, I’ve been deeply moved by the people who’ve told me they wished they could feel inspired and hopeful about America the way people did when my father was president. This sense is even more profound today. That is why I am supporting a presidential candidate in the Democratic primaries, Barack Obama.

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I have spent the past five years working in the New York City public schools and have three teenage children of my own. There is a generation coming of age that is hopeful, hard-working, innovative and imaginative. But too many of them are also hopeless, defeated and disengaged. As parents, we have a responsibility to help our children to believe in themselves and in their power to shape their future. Senator Obama is inspiring my children, my parents’ grandchildren, with that sense of possibility.

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Sometimes it takes a while to recognize that someone has a special ability to get us to believe in ourselves, to tie that belief to our highest ideals and imagine that together we can do great things. In those rare moments, when such a person comes along, we need to put aside our plans and reach for what we know is possible.

I have never had a president who inspired me the way people tell me that my father inspired them. But for the first time, I believe I have found the man who could be that president — not just for me, but for a new generation of Americans.

In whatever arena of life one may meet the challenge of courage, whatever may be the sacrifices he faces if he follows his conscience – the loss of his friends, his fortune, his contentment, even the esteem of his fellow men – each man must decide for himself the course he will follow. The stories of past courage can define that ingredient – they can teach, they can offer hope, they can provide inspiration. But they cannot supply courage itself. For this each man must look into his own soul.
John F. Kennedy, Profiles in Courage