‘Camelot and conspiracy’: Could a Kennedy return to the White House?

60 years ago this month, on the streets of downtown Dallas, three bullets were fired that shook the United States to its core.

Two of those bullets hit President John F. Kennedy, who is being remembered this month as one of America’s most popular presidents.

“What happened on November 22nd, 1963, moved the name of Kennedy from that of history into myth and legend,” Brooks D. Simpson, a political historian at Arizona State University, told 1News.

“The name still carries a certain sort of magic, a certain nostalgia, a certain sense of of hope and opportunity that is not always present in American politics today.”

And now, another Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy Jr, JFK’s nephew, is running for the White House as an independent – and, surprising many in America, gaining traction.

“This country is ready for a history making change,” said Kennedy at his campaign launch.

A recent poll found that in a hypothetical three-person race between Joe Biden (the Democrat frontrunner), Donald Trump (the Republican frontrunner), Kennedy had almost a quarter of voter support at 22 percent.

“He’s polling quite highly in part because he’s a Kennedy,” said Simpson.

“And a lot of this is dissatisfaction on the part of many Americans with one or other, the other of the major party candidates. There aren’t that many impassioned Joe Biden supporters, and there are a lot of people really afraid of what would happen if Donald J. Trump returned to the White House as the 47th president – there’s a fear factor in here.”

He’s running a campaign on, among other things, building the economy, increasing government transparency, and reducing US military involvement overseas.

But he’s also a controversial candidate, in part due to his peddling of vaccine disinformation.

During the 2019 measles crisis in Samoa, which proved to be particularly deadly to children and was fuelled by vaccine hesitancy, 1News Pacific correspondent Barbara Dreaver revealed that Kennedy had recently travelled to Samoa and attended a high-level anti-vaccine meeting.

He continued to express his views on vaccinations during the Covid-19 pandemic and became a popular figure among anti-vaccine groups.

“His controversial views used to appease people on the left. He was an environmentalist. He worked for the rights of indigenous people,” said Simpson.

“More recently, however, his comments about public health about conspiracies behind vaccines, his attitude towards the Covid pandemic have fed those who like to think in terms of conspiracies – they tend to be on the right side of American politics.”

His views have earned him the ire of members of his own family, some of whom have spoken out publicly against him.

“He’s trading in on Camelot, conspiracy theories and conflict for personal gain and fame,” said Jack Schlossberg, JFK’s grandson – and Robert F. Kennedy Jr’s cousin.

“I have no idea why anyone he should be president – what I do know is his candidacy is an embarrassment.”

So, what are Kennedy’s election prospects?

“I don’t think he has any chance of being back in the White House except as a guest,” said Simpson.

“But I do think in certain cases he might and closely contested states, he might throw the election one way or the other, where people who would normally vote for one of the two major candidates would decide ‘I don’t like [Trump or Biden]. I’m going to vote for Kennedy as a protest vote’.”