Sons of Camelot by Laurence Leamer

Author:Laurence Leamer [Leamer, Laurence]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780062038067
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2004-04-05T04:00:00+00:00

John lived fully in New York too, but it was a different kind of life. At times John and Robby were like the wild and crazy Festrunk Brothers from Saturday Night Live who think that every night is party night. Robby could tote his share of drinks and more, but he had a stomach as strong as zinc. John rarely drank, though when he did he often tied one on. He was always game for a toke or two of weed, but no matter how late they stayed up, he was up in the morning ready to roll. They had great youthful times, but great youthful times never last very long. Robby was in love and soon would get married, and Jackie was beginning to look askance at her son’s partying ways. So in September 1986, John entered New York University Law School and got a place by himself in the West Nineties.

The legal profession is a natural choice for a young man contemplating one day entering politics. But a law degree is not easy to come by for a young man who has trouble reading and concentrating and spells poorly. (On the invitations to his twenty-fifth birthday party at the Nirvana Club, he handwrote that the event would be the “lessor of two evils.”) But he had a sound intelligence that he had managed to hide from many of his acquaintances, and it helped pull him through the tedium of classes, mock trials, books, and endless minutiae. It was doubly tedious because he knew he could have been acting in a play off-Broadway, doing something a lot more exciting than reading Houston East and West Texas Railway Company v. United States.

In July 1988, twenty-seven-year-old John went to the Democratic convention in Atlanta to introduce his Uncle Ted. He was not the only young Kennedy there that week; indeed, it seemed then that the future of the Democratic Party would be brightened by a whole legion of Kennedy family members. Joe, a freshman congressman and heir to Ted’s throne in Massachusetts, was there. Patrick had flown in from Rhode Island, where there was already talk about when he would move up from the state legislature to a seat in Congress. Teddy had not run for office yet, but it seemed only a matter of time before he would go for it. Kathleen had lost in Maryland in her first attempt at a seat in Congress; although she looked more like a dowdy, policy wonk than a public figure, she had her ambitions too.

John had shown no public interest in pursuing a political life, but he was the great Kennedy hope at the convention. As John stood on the podium at the Omni Center prepared to talk, the convention was awash with nostalgia. He moved to speak, but wave after wave of applause played over him. “Please, please, thank you, thank you,” he kept saying, “Please, please, thank you, thank you.”

When John got together with his friends on Martha’s Vineyard soon afterward, Billy was asked if he wanted dessert.

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