Here a quick glance at some of Robert's children is instructive. One of them, David, died of a drug overdose in Palm Beach just a year after another, Robert Jr., was arrested for possession of heroin at the Rapid City, S.D., airport. Courtney's second husband was an Irish Republican Army militant named Paul Hill. Max, who had threatened to run for Congress in California, began campaigning for a House seat in Massachusetts but ceased his efforts when, in his first public appearance, "he scratched his head, giggled nervously, lost his place several times and misnamed at least one member of the U.S. Supreme Court," according to the Los Angeles Times. The fact that, as a student at Harvard, he had assaulted a campus policeman didn't help, either.

Michael was in the midst of accusations of having sexual intercourse with his children's teenaged babysitter when he was killed in a skiing accident. Joseph II, the great hope of the family after his father's murder, was elected to Congress from Massachusetts in 1986 and served six terms, but enjoyed a reputation for bumptiousness rather than statesmanship, and is probably best known for his penchant for befriending Caribbean tyrants (Jean-Paul Aristide of Haiti and, more recently, Hugo Chavez of Venezuela). His sister Kathleen arrived in Maryland in 1986, promptly ran for Congress, and was defeated. A decade later she served two terms as lieutenant governor on the ticket with Governor Parris Glendening, but lost her own 2002 campaign for governor--in a state with an overhwelming Democratic edge in registration...

Having washed out of Georgetown and retreated to Providence College, Patrick was elected to the Rhode Island legislature while pursuing his undergraduate career, then in due course was elevated to Congress. He was, at first, taken up by the minority leader, Richard Gephardt, as a Democratic fundraising device; but his own peculiar demons--vandalizing a rented yacht, abusing an airport employee, crashing his car into a police barrier in the dead of night while en route to an imaginary House vote--soon reduced him to laughingstock status in the nation's capital, and deprived him of Gephardt's patronage. Poor Patrick is now condemned to life tenure in the lower chamber, on behalf of Rhode Island, where his (now publicly acknowledged) manic depression has made him a pharmaceutical role model.

When John F. Kennedy Jr. crashed his private plane into Long Island Sound, killing himself, his wife, and his sister-in-law in 1999, it was said that John, publisher of the now-defunct George magazine, was considering politics and assessing his presidential prospects. No one says such things about Patrick.

As with the hapless Patrick, the most impressive aspect of Caroline Kennedy's brief campaign for appointment was its sheer presumption.