These Kennedy Whelps Just Keep Coming Back

B ack in November of last year, it gave me enormous pleasure to be the bearer of bad news: Another damn Kennedy was running for office, this one even weirder and more volatile than the feral stray Donald Trump found on the streets rooting through a bag of bacula.

“Who is Jack Schlossberg, you might ask?,” I wrote.

What is there particularly to dislike about this man, other than that he is rich, young, and a Kennedy heir with Kennedy hair?

That would actually have been sufficient for me. As the child of Caroline Kennedy-Schlossberg — a woman who is herself historically noteworthy only as the distant descendant of a racist bootlegger — it is safe to say that Jack Schlossberg is the son and heir of nothing in particular, only the family’s vices and not even the Kennedy name itself. But it’s probably also worth mentioning that he is wholly inexperienced in politics, has achieved nothing whatsoever so far in his life, and was mostly heretofore known for his social media meltdowns.

Schlossberg attended all the best schools — a Yale undergraduate degree, a Harvard Law and Harvard Business double degree — and last year finally parlayed his studies into his first honest working gig: as a political correspondent for Vogue magazine. I assume it must have been a terrible grind, since he tired of it within a year, as he tired of playing Twitter pundit. Last February, after a series of public meltdowns, he suddenly deleted all of his social media accounts.

And yet, half a year later, Schlossberg is running strong. It’s the best of all worlds: I don’t like New York, and absolutely nobody in NR’s readership has any reason to even pretend to like or respect Jack Schlossberg, who currently threatens to replace retiring Democratic stalwart Jerry Nadler in Manhattan’s ultra-rich twelfth congressional district. Let them choose their fate; what care I if Schlossberg wins and saddles one of the richest congressional districts in America with his absentee flakery? It would provide fantastic content.

And I’m glad there’s at least one great-grandson of Bootlegger Joe still out there, for that matter, because this fourth era of Kennedys is our greatest living illustration of the generational decline of wealth and power, one that proves the truth of every line in Faulkner or Mann, with the family eventually expending itself in dissolution, madness, and a seriocomically pathetic end. Pity simple Jack; with a reported $32 million trust fund to his name, he has either never tried or never been able to hold down a job for any period of time. (If you’ve ever seen him speak, or strut around feyly to AC/DC for that matter, you may understand why: I suspect that’s why he’s asking people to elect him to a fixed term in office.)

Now the establishment is desperately trying to sound the klaxons. Anti-Trump blood is up among rich Manhattan progressives. When they look around for a hero and see a Kennedy, why, they really can’t help themselves, can they? Up until now, Schlossberg has been narrowly edging out a ridiculously crowded Democratic field on the back of his pedigree and copious professional assistance — who wouldn’t want to advise a Kennedy? — with numbers in the low to mid-20s. So, with the New York primary set for June 23, the New York Times is out with a wonderfully blank-faced but thoroughly reported piece on what a coddled, petulant prat he actually is.

At a recent candidate forum, for example, the candidates were asked to name their top accomplishments in public service. Ms. Schwalbe said she had distributed 500 million Covid-19 vaccines; another candidate discussed helping launch a ferry service in the East River.

Mr. Schlossberg pointed to his current campaign, saying it had excited voters. When a moderator followed up to say that his answer might “raise flags” about his experience, Mr. Schlossberg grew visibly irritated.

He said he had volunteered on campaigns since 2008 and as an E.M.T. in college; cited his State Department stint and his role helping his family hand out an award each year; and added that he had passed the bar exam “in the top 1 percent.”

“While you may not think that content creation and building a following based on speaking out for what you believe in at a time when others were unwilling, taking on your family members, traveling the country to every single swing state, serving as a delegate at the D.N.C., is an experience, I do,” Mr. Schlossberg told the moderator.

Schlossberg is apparently every bit as offputtingly manic and erratic in real life as he is in his many self-posted video appearances: He cancels appointments at a moment’s notice, acts with fickle aggression against staffers and strangers alike, and transparently evinces zero respect for the traditional demeanor of an aspiring politician in Manhattan, a district whose money and taste essentially dictate the vagaries of elite culture. If there is any specific political angle he is intentionally plying, it is as a glamorously “above-it-all” youth rebel — he bears a remarkable resemblance to his deceased uncle JFK Jr., who might have held this seat had he not died in a plane crash.

The Times knows a tellingly choice quote when it’s given one and highlights a former (and disgruntled) campaign coordinator to describe the essential falsity of Schlossberg’s campaign: “The colors might be nice to look at for a few days. But since the flowers lack roots, they can’t last very long.” It’s a wonderfully delicate way to say “vote for Micah Lasher” without getting on the bad side of the entire Kennedy clan, if you understand subtext.

And I do. I understand what both the Times and sensible residents of Manhattan want, and I understand why they want it; the Times, for all its failings, has no time for a narcissistic show pony inattentively representing the financial engine of the free world. But — may heaven forgive me — I hope it doesn’t work. I’m sorry to pull a heel-turn on you here in the last paragraph, but I have a professional writing interest in this unstable freak becoming the representative for Manhattan. Imagine Representative Schlossberg sashaying his way through Capitol Hill while strung out on club drugs — all Manhattan has to do to restore true cringe comedy to D.C. is vote smart in June. And in any event, they’ll have done it to themselves.