Where politics are concerned, it is time to let go of Camelot. [View all]

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/28/opinion/kennedy-jack-schlossberg-political-dynasty.html

He’s Entitled and Nepotistic. This Is Not What Democrats Need.
May 28, 2026
By Michelle Cottle

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America’s royal family has been on my mind lately, thanks to its latest entrant into the national political arena, John Bouvier Kennedy Schlossberg, the dashing young grandson of President John F. Kennedy. Mr. Schlossberg, who goes by Jack, is running to represent New York’s 12th Congressional District. So far, his candidacy has been a case study in chaos and entitlement, as detailed in a recent article in The Times. Especially in the crucial early days of the campaign, it said the newbie candidate “would regularly blow off weekly strategy meetings called for his benefit, and made a habit of disappearing for long stretches with little notice or explanation. (He did carve out time to swim or paddleboard in the Hudson most days.)”

Some might be inclined to scold Mr. Schlossberg for sullying his family’s storied political legacy. But that broader legacy — and the inclination, particularly in certain Democratic circles, to keep treating members of this overhyped clan as inherently serious players — is no longer serving the party, or the broader public, well.

Where politics are concerned, it is time to let go of Camelot.

Some children of fame and privilege grow up committed to working extra hard to prove themselves. Mr. Schlossberg does not seem to have chosen this path. He has “little traditional work experience,” as The Times put it, and now seems to be approaching this campaign as something of a cool side hustle. This kind of princeling energy doesn’t feel like what Americans are crying out for more of in Congress.

Nearly three decades on, we find ourselves saddled with arguably Bobby’s most dangerous offspring. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is a public-health nightmare, a cad — his sex diary alone should have disqualified him from any office — a grifter and a crank. But there he sits at the helm of the Department of Health and Human Services, steering us into a future of more measles, less cancer research and who knows what other horrors.

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