John Kennedy

CONCORD, N.H. -- At the beginning of every presidential campaign, the press gives its heart to the candidate who runs his campaign the way the reporters would run a campaign: with candor, humor -- and utterly no chance of winning.Four years ago that candidate was Bruce Babbitt of Arizona. This year it is Paul Tsongas of Massachusetts.At first ignored by the press, then lionized by the press, Tsongas now is on the threshold of Phase Three: getting savaged by the press.The growing popular wisdom about Tsongas is that he cannot win a Democratic primary outside of New England.

Arthur Schlesinger Jr. patted himself and his father on the backs in the Wall Street Journal and the New Yorker last month on the grounds that "the 1992 election vindicates a hypothesis about the cyclical nature of American politics," as he put it in the Journal.Their theory is that every 30 years the American people decide that liberals are better at running the country than conservatives and replace the latter with the former in the White House. "[T]hus Theodore Roosevelt brought in the Progressive Era in 1901, Franklin Roosevelt the New Deal in 1933 and John Kennedy the New Frontier in 1961.

Letters, calls and the roar of the crowd:John O'Neill, Detroit: My pieces appear from time to time next to your column in the Detroit News. My note is prompted by your column regarding the assassination of John Kennedy.I agree with everything you wrote in the piece but take exception to one point: I know the date JFK was born and I do not have to look it up.Unfortunately, you are right, however. Most Americans probably don't know the date of Kennedy's birth. It was May 29, 1917.COMMENT: I sure didn't know it. What strikes me about it is that John Kennedy would be turning 77 this spring.

HAVRE DE GRACE -- The Kennedy family has treated Maryland as one of its minor colonies for years, which even Marylanders who haven't been brought up to recognize and respect royalty tend to find flattering.But as the recent soap-operatic announcement by Congressman Joseph Kennedy that he won't run for governor of Massachusetts after all makes clear, Maryland's been missing out on most of the imperial fun. And it's fun, rather than scandal or self-importance or rhetorical vapidity, which is the famous family's most important product.

WASHINGTON -- Imagine being in bed with John Kennedy and Marilyn Monroe.It's a frequent stop in Michael Korda's controversial new novel "The Immortals" -- a work the author calls "faction" that portrays relationships the global sex goddess had with JFK and later with his brother Robert."

In the early stages of her run for governor, Democrat Kathleen Kennedy Townsend seemed reluctant to remind voters of her family roots. Sure, campaign trail introductions frequently included mention of the Kennedy tradition, yet the candidate rarely -- if ever -- talked about her father, former Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, or her two uncles, President John F. Kennedy and Sen. Edward M. Kennedy. It's not that she was hiding anything, but the family's Massachusetts-based tradition of wealth and political power seemed to be played down as her Republican challenger sought to define himself as a man of Arbutus.

Burbank, Calif. - I was part of the Thomas-Hill Affair for a while last week, sitting in the NBC News studios here and doing some commentary between the slime and sanctimony oozing from my elected leaders.The whole thing made me sick to my stomach, though I was not sure why. After all, it was not the first time I had been exposed to the bile of Sen. Alan Simpson, the Republican Party's designated thug, or the self-righteous wanderings of Sen. Dennis DeConcini's vacuum-packed mind.The local newspaper, the Daily News, finally put it into perspective for me. Perhaps I should say a reader named Bobbie L. Jacobson of Panorama City made it clear to me what was so wrong about what I was seeing.

The first debate between President Barack Obama and former governor Mitt Romney is over, and there was a clear winner: Mitt Romney. Even President Obama's own team realized the obvious by suggesting veteran moderator Jim Lehrer did a poor job. (News flash — debate winners do not complain about the moderator.) Mr. Romney was clearly more engaged and engaging. He defended his policies and interacted with President Obama. President Obama's answers were often meandering and unfocused, and when Mr. Romney spoke, the president just looked down or seemingly ignored him. At one point, the president even asked the moderator if they could just move on to a new topic.

Boston. -- Massachusetts may be the Jurassic Park of American politics, where the dinosaur of liberalism lumbers on, oblivious to the fact that its era has long since passed. But the Tyrannosaurus Rex is endangered.For some while, whispers have been heard: This time, Ted Kennedy may actually have to break a sweat to get re-elected. Then last Sunday a poll by a respected Cambridge firm showed Senator Kennedy in a statistical dead heat with his likely Republican opponent, Mitt Romney.Mr. Romney, a 47-year-old venture capitalist, is approximately what Republicans would have asked central casting to send to them as the ideal contrast with Mr. Kennedy.

Even after 33 years, the grainy images replayed on an occasional television special are riveting. The open-top Lincoln, the roses, a kiss on the flag-draped casket, the heart-wrenching salute from a son just turned 3.Every year, the images come back around Nov. 22 to mark the passage of another year since the innocence of my baby boomer generation was assassinated along with John Kennedy in Dallas.We were teens entering adulthood, with the bullets in Dealey Plaza marking our passage.I've avoided rewatching the Zapruder film, so vivid in the instant splatter of red that Hollywood imitates it - and so powerful that it brought a touch of immortality to Abraham Zapruder, the amateur photographer who aimed his camera at so fateful a moment.