Seventy-six years ago, in 1932, Joseph P. Kennedy Sr. gave a timely endorsement to -Franklin D. Roosevelt, and, as a reward, was appointed chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission (and later ambassador to the Court of St. James), from which perch he launched the political careers of his sons. In 2008, his granddaughter Caroline gave a timely endorsement to Barack Obama, and now that he's elevated his rival -Hillary Clinton from her Senate seat to his cabinet, Caroline is claiming that seat for herself in an effort to revive and extend her family's political presence, which in light of the age and illness of Uncle Ted seems to be fading away.

A prime difference is that Grand-father Kennedy was amply qualified for the SEC post and endorsed Roosevelt on his own behalf, while Caroline's sole qualification for being a senator is her being a Kennedy, and she endorsed Obama less in her own right than in her dead father's name. She seemed to endorse him in fact on behalf of her father, much as her father had once been endorsed by Franklin Roosevelt Jr., who campaigned in effect as his father's stand-in, giving the impression to voters in West Virginia and elsewhere that FDR had endorsed JFK from beyond the grave.

The problem is not only that she has nothing but the family legacy to stand on but that the "legacy" itself has been so diluted and changed. So many Kennedys have done and stood for so many things--with every admirable

From Joe Sr. on down to his sons and their children, the Kennedys have been many things to most men. Morally, they have been profiles in courage and cowardice: They fled Luftwaffe bombs in Blitz-ridden London, and in wartime sought out the most dangerous missions; they have saved shipmates from drowning in dangerous waters, and left a woman to drown in a scandalous accident; they have given the last full measure of devotion in war and its aftermath; and in peace and in new generations, they have sometimes asked for much more than their due. In politics, they have been far right, far left, and dead center; they have been male chauvinists and quivering slaves to the feminist movement; they have been isolationists, interventionists, and democratic crusaders; they have been Churchillian and Chamberlainesque. Joe was an isolationist and a right-winger; Ted an isolationist and a left-winger; Jack and Bobby were centrists and interventionists, though in contrasting ways. The rational Jack was a centrist on just about everything, while the visceral Bobby was a mélange of both left and right instincts; a friend in his time to César Chávez and Senator Joseph McCarthy; a man who attacked Lyndon B. Johnson and his Great Society from the left, right, and center, and in his last years sounded like Ronald Reagan and a student protester on alternating days.