JFK's grandson just lost. Good riddance to Camelot | Opinion

Jack Schlossberg, the only grandson of President John F. Kennedy, lost New York City's congressional Democratic primary on June 23. His defeat may finally mark the end of Camelot. If so, it's long overdue.

The news coverage afterward had a wistful, end-of-an-era tone. As a New York Times headline put it: "Schlossberg's Defeat Dampens Dream of a Renewed Camelot."

I say good riddance. Camelot was a lie America had been telling itself for more than 60 years, and it's time we stopped.

Camelot was never just shorthand for admiring JFK. It was the claim that the Kennedys represented a uniquely noble, enlightened brand of American leadership, untouchable by the ordinary failures of politics.

The lie about the Kennedys we kept telling ourselves

The myth made Schlossberg ‒ son of Caroline Kennedy and Edwin Schlossberg ‒ an early front-runner on his roots alone, before voters got a good look at him. It's also the myth that survived evidence that would have ended almost any other political dynasty.

Schlossberg was a political novice with no coherent policy platform beyond a vague call to shake up politics. What he had, at 33, was star power, built almost entirely on his last name.

Even some Democrats saw through it. "He was seen as somebody who was very entertaining," longtime Democratic consultant Hank Sheinkopf told The Times, "but not necessarily serious."

Schlossberg insisted otherwise.

Supporters "don't just like me because I'm a Kennedy," he told The Associated Press. "They like me because of my experience, my ideas, and they trust me because they see what's going on with their very own eyes."

Democratic primary voters didn't buy it. Media outlets, though, nonetheless portrayed him as a "new hope" of the Democratic Party before he'd done anything to earn the title. That's how it has worked for this family for decades. All you had to do is be born a Kennedy, and an adoring media will fill in the rest.

A pattern of Kennedy impunity

Here's the part that should bother people: #MeToo should have ended the nostalgia for the Kennedys, but it never did. Everyone knows that JFK was a philanderer. But the full record is worse than most people realize. JFK conducted what historians describe as one of the most relentless affair operations of any modern president.

A former White House intern, Mimi Alford, has said that the president once directed her, while he watched, to perform oral sex on his own aide in the White House pool. She was 19. By her account, Kennedy later tried to pass her to his brother Ted at a Boston fundraiser ‒ "Why don't you take care of my baby brother" (though she refused that one).

In 1969, then-Sen. Ted Kennedy left Mary Jo Kopechne to drown at Chappaquiddick Island, Massachusetts, and waited 10 hours before reporting it.

In 1991, William Kennedy Smith stood trial on rape charges after a night that began with his Uncle Ted taking the family out drinking; Smith was acquitted only after the judge barred jurors from hearing that three other women had accused him of the same thing.

None of it seriously dented the family's standing.

Then there's Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who was cast out by his own family for his vaccine skepticism and for endorsing Donald Trump for president. Caroline Kennedy, Schlossberg's mother, even called her cousin a "predator" unfit to run the nation's health agency.

But the family's fury has always been about politics and policy, never about the alleged affair he carried on with the reporter covering his 2024 presidential campaign. She got fired when it surfaced. He got a Cabinet seat.

To be fair, Schlossberg himself isn't tarred by any of this. His worst offenses are a chaotic campaign operation and a knack for picking online fights, proof that the Kennedy myth survived on reputation, not on anything he actually did.

Journalists, historians, Hollywood and elite culture broadly will forgive almost anything if they like your politics. Consider former President Bill Clinton, whose record with women never cost him the affection of the same establishment that now claims to hold men accountable for exactly that kind of conduct.

The Kennedys got the same pass for the same reason. Three weeks before voters rejected Schlossberg, he stood alongside his mother at the JFK Library's Profile in Courage Award ceremony ‒ a black-tie ritual, run by a committee full of journalists and politicians from both parties, built entirely around honoring his grandfather's name.

To be sure, this isn't unique to one side. Trump's record with women hasn't cost him his coalition's loyalty, either. People protect their own.

The political mythology surrounding the Kennedys deserves the same scrutiny. JFK, assassinated in 1963, is routinely ranked among America's best presidents; historians still place him in the top 10. That reputation rests more on image and martyrdom than on results.

A myth bigger than morals

Take Cuba, an issue back in the headlines today.

Shortly after his presidential inauguration in 1961, Kennedy authorized roughly 1,400 CIA-trained Cuban exiles to storm the Bay of Pigs, then refused the air cover the operation needed. Within three days, more than 100 exiles were dead and nearly 1,200 were captured and held by Cuban dictator Fidel Castro for 20 months until the president's brother, Attorney General Robert Kennedy, negotiated their release for $53 million in food and medicine.

The fiasco convinced the Soviets that President Kennedy was weak, paving the way for the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962 , the closest the world has come to nuclear war. Imagine the coverage if Trump had botched it this badly.

We fought a revolution 250 years ago so no family would get power by birthright. Maybe it's time we finally meant it.

Daniel Allott, USA TODAY's conservative opinion editor, is author of the book "On the Road in Trump's America."

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: JFK's grandson just lost. Good riddance to Camelot | Opinion

Reporting by Daniel Allott, USA TODAY / USA TODAY

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This story was originally published June 26, 2026 at 5:07 AM.