THE CURSE OF THE KENNEDYS

Some things never change - the Kennedys are in trouble again. There's Michael, who is accused of rape; his brother Joe, whose ex-wife calls him a hypocrite; and John Jr, who could save the day, if only he would enter politics

In1981, I attendedthe engagement party at Le Club, a Manhattan nightspot, for Victoria Gifford and Michael Kennedy, son of the assassinated New York Senator and presidential candidate Robert "Bobby" Kennedy.

Vicki and Michael were in their early twenties, and photographs of them were blown up larger than life around the room. I was a reporter, posing as a guest, who had been sneaked in by my newspaper to cover the event, despite the family's wishes that it be private. As I was from Boston - Kennedy country - my employers thought I could fake it, and talk about hockey and sailing. I did. But it was painful. I was taking notes in the bathroom, a traitor.

For my own part, I wanted to know if the Kennedys were the real family of the American dream that I has seen in so many photographs. Or was it all a sham?

To my delight, the myth had some matter to it. It hadn't all been a lie. There was connection and vitality all around me. Crowds of attractive cousins performed songs they had scripted with funny lyrics for the couple who had become engaged in a castle in Ireland; Ethel, Michael's mother, climbed onto a chair shouting orders. All was as it should have been, but there was something I hadn't anticipated: an air of menace in the room, uniquely masculine. The priest was present, with his comforting Irish accent. What was confusing was the way decadence and libidinous intent coexisted with the wholesome. John Jr, the son of JFK, spent a long time on the phone, and around midnight two women appeared, in matching Suzie Wong dresses slit up to the hip, to sit either side of him.

I talked to Joe, Michael's brother, who made me feel patronised no matter how pleasant he was. But I took an instant liking to their drug- addict brothers, the ones who were at the time bailing out of being Kennedys. Bobby, busted for heroin at 29, has since emerged at 41 as a persuasive environmental lawyer who throws his name behind saving whales, protecting New York's water supply, or talking Fidel Castro out of investing in nuclear power.

David, who had been at the hotel in Los Angeles when his father was killed, watching it on a television in another room, asked me to dance. He was incoherent and sweating. I'd never seen anyone on heroin before. He died of an overdose three years later at the age of 28.

IN THE SIXTIES Rose Kennedy, the matriarch of America's first family, used to appear on a morning TV show called Coffee With the Kennedys, where she would explain to enthralled viewers how she kept her children healthy and strong. Three decades of scandals would subsequently engulf her flock, but despite all the lurid stories of mysterious deaths and endless infidelities - and press instrusions - the Kennedys retained the loyalty of the electorate in Massachusetts, their power base.

But recent allegations that Michael, now 39, had a sexual relationship with his children's babysitter when she was only 14 have pushed the limits of tolerance.

Consequently, the Kennedys' infamous disregard for women, so amply documented over the last 25 years, has become a key issue in the Massachusetts governor's race. Joe, now Congressman Joseph P Kennedy II, 44, was poised for the big time but his lead in the polls has all but disappeared since the stories about his brother broke in the press. But then Joe's own bad publicity hasn't helped.

In 1993, two years after he had divorced his wife, Sheila Rauch Kennedy, Joe asked the Catholic church to annul their 12-year marriage, which had produced twin sons. He was about to remarry. Despite his wife's insistence before a church tribunal that the marriage had indeed existed, the Archdiocese of Boston said it had not in the eyes of God because Joe had exercised a "lack of due discretion" in marrying her in the first place. Unpopular at the time, the annulment resurfaced as a hot media story last month following the publication of Sheila Rauch's book, Shattered Faith. This indictment of the church's misuse of annulments, and the pain it inflicts on ex-wives and children, also lays bare her husband's hypocrisy.

Although the book avoids discussion of her relationship with Joe, it says just enough to damn him. He comes across as a narcissistic bully who sought the annulment to make his second marriage look good in the eyes of Massachusetts' Catholic electorate. Sheila Rauch also reveals that she was afraid of her husband's temper and that he told people she was a "nobody".

Off the island of Chappaquiddick in 1969, Senator Edward "Ted" Kennedy crashed his car into the water and left his drowned passenger, Mary Jo Kopechne, submerged in the wreck for eight hours before notifying the police. He got off with a citation for driving to endanger, and when he volunteered to leave the Senate, the public allowed him to stay.

Nowadays all a Kennedy has to do is call his wife a nobody and he faces losing an election in Kennedy country. Imagine Joe's confusion.

"Chappaquiddick was a very different time, emotionally. We'd just buried Bobby Kennedy and the President a few years before. The second generation of Kennedy men have no such claim on our emotions or our loyalty," says Boston Globe columnist, Eileen McNamara. "They are cooked. Joe Kennedy is not going to be the governor of Massachusetts in my opinion."

THE ELDEST SON of Bobby and Ethel Ken-nedy's 11 children, Joe got into politics when he walked the length of his father's funeral train in 1968, shaking the hand of every mourner. He was 15 years old.

In 1986, when he declared his desire to be a congressman for Massachusetts, he was elected as if by the divine right of kings. It seemed that the Eighth Congressional District, the heart of Boston that stretches from wealthy, liberal Cambridge to the ghettos of Roxbury, could only belong to him. It was where his late uncle, JFK, was launched into politics and the Kennedy hold on the Democratic party began, at the turn of the century, with Joe's great-grandfather John Fitz-gerald, "Honey Fitz". He was the first Irish-American mayor of Boston, who withdrew from seeking re-election when the competition got wind of his affair with Toodles, a cigarette girl.

The beat goes on.

Last month, fumbling on the steps of the Congress, Joe answered reporters' questions about his brother Michael's alleged behaviour with a minor, after the story had broken in the Boston Globe. "It is a big family. There are always going to be a few little problems along the way" - as if all large families accrued incidents of injury, death and alleged rape at the rate of the Kennedys. Realising he might have blundered, he then added: "And this one might not be such a little one for everybody, but you know, I'm proud of my family."

If the press blitz on Michael's private life continues, Joe may be forced to withdraw his gubernatorial candidacy altogether. No charge of statutory rape has been made as yet, but the district attorney has still to declare the case closed. Even if Michael, a father of three who runs a non-profit-making fuel company in Boston, was found innocent by a grand jury, the publicity surrounding any trial would probably be more than Joe's candidacy could withstand.

It used to be called the Kennedy Curse - an ill wind from the heavens that brought misfortune to these god-like creatures. Now the curse seems to be uniquely of their own making.

Ted may have got off lightly in the aftermath of Chappaquiddick, but the Kennedy spell was broken that day. From then on America's first family were seen as co- conspirators, not just the victims of conspiracy. The Camelot myth slowly unravelled with revelations of the compulsive extra-marital betrayal of the most loved women in America, JFK's wife Jackie and Joe Sr's long-suffering partner Rose. In 1975, the Judith Campbell Exner files, which had been gathered by the FBI, came to light and linked JFK to a mob plot to kill Castro, through the intermediary of JFK's mistress, Exner. (She also later revealed that she had aborted the President's child.) Bobby, the saintly one and a devoted father, had Marilyn Monroe fielded to him like a football by JFK shortly before she took her own life in mysterious circumstances.

The sexual shenanigans were true to their father Joe Sr's teachings. He had conducted affairs with the film star Gloria Swanson, and his secretary, in full view of his wife, who responded by going to mass every morning.

"The Kennedy boys were expected by their father to undertake a competitive discipline of lust," writes biographer Garry Willis in The Kennedy Imprisonment. "Passing women around, and boasting of it to other men and other women, was a Kennedy achievement."

By the Eighties, the counter-myth had spawned an entire entertainment industry of tell-all biographies and films, including Oliver Stone's epic movie JFK. The Last Will and Testament of Jackie Onassis was published as a book; her estate went for a staggering $34m (pounds 21m) at a Sotheby's garage sale organised by her children, where Jackie's son John Jr sold his highchair, and Arnold Schwarzenegger bought JFK's golf clubs for $800,000 (pounds 500,000).

Yet whatever they get up to in bed, the Kennedys are still regarded, in some quarters, as the last line of defence for poor and middle-class families in America. Against a fierce anti-liberal lobby in Washington, Ted, an anchor of the Democratic party and a key Clinton ally, has held fast. On health care, provision of family services, reproductive health, workplace productivity and - despite his own Catholic faith - the right to have an abortion, Ted has proudly spearheaded the Clinton agenda. When Gerry Adams was granted a visa so that he could visit the US, it was largely due to Ted's influence.

In 1994, Ted and four younger Kennedys including his son Patrick, ran for state office, in Maryland, Rhode Island and Massachusetts - all of them won. The political franchise is as identifiable as McDonald's golden arches. One knows the special ingredients: big teeth, jutting jaws and Catholic compassion.

UNLIKE THE Kennedy men, the women among the 28 grandchildren of Rose and Joe Sr, have developed their passion for public service without incident of arrest, addiction or scandal.

"Over time, you'll find, the Kennedy women, emerge as the more successful political pros-pects," says political analyst Lou di Natale of the University of Massachusett's McCormack Institute on public policy.

Kathleen Townsend Kennedy, Michael and Joe's big sister and a mother of four, is now lieutenant governor (second in command) of Maryland, and will probably be seeking higher office soon. Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg, JFK and Jackie's daughter, trustee of the Kennedy Library, mother of three and the author of two books on the constitution, passed her bar exam at the first try (though she had to watch her brother John Jr being feted by the press despite failing the same exam).

The women have also co-opted the Kennedy franchise - family itself - through a series of high-profile marriages. Bobby's daughter, Courtney Kennedy, married Paul Hill of the Guildford Four just as he was about to be celebrated in the film In the Name of the Father. Her sister Kerry Kennedy Cuomo (she runs the RFK Memorial Center for Human Rights which supports political activists around the world) married Andrew Cuomo, son of Mario, the former governor of New York and the only liberal leader more eloquent than her Uncle Ted. Their cousin Maria Shriver, a TV newscaster, could not have found better macho material than Arnold Schwarzenegger, whose fourth child she is now carrying.

From the start, Joe Sr and Rose were aware that self-made royals had to make a great show of their children. When they landed in London before the Second World War to assume their post at the US embassy, the press was charmed by their vigour and wrote about the Kennedys - and their nine kids - as if they were an American experiment in genetics.

In their role as specimens, however, the Kennedys had much which they hoped to hide. JFK's Addison disease, an adrenaline deficiency that nearly killed him on several occasions, and forced him to travel with an artillery of medication, and have regular disfiguring cortisone injections, was concealed as malaria which he had contracted during the war. He was also born with one leg shorter than the other.

Then there was the cover-up over Rosemary. A bit slower than her siblings, as she got older her erratic behaviour caused disquiet in the family and Joe Sr arranged for her to have a new kind of treatment - a lobotomy. It was carried out without her mother's consent or knowledge. Rosemary became, for years, the invisible saint who preferred to live without publicity as she cared for children with learning difficulties safely out of the press's sight.

The eldest brother, and the anointed prince of the family, Joe Jr, died in a secret bombing mission during the war. His sister, Kathleen, the young Marchioness of Hartington, was killed soon after in a plane crash with her married lover. Eventually, only four of Rose's nine offspring remained.

The public, however, has always been in love with the Kennedys because of their sorrows. Their pain has been ours, in the manner of a royal soap opera. But lately it's been less easy to identify with them. Joe's annulment has backfired, becoming evidence of superficiality rather than faith. He seemed to want to pacify the public, and that insults them.

And alleged sex with a 14-year-old babysitter is a far more serious matter. The girl was the daughter of close and very wealthy family friends, and had cared for Michael's children since she was 12. Two families could go down here.

WHEN YOU drive south along the coast from Boston, the terrain becomes postcard pretty. Cohasset is prettiest of all. A town of white-steepled churches and mansions by the sea, it has figured in the family's history before. Joe Sr, flush from manipulating the stock market in 1922, rented a summer house here for his family. In the Seventies, when Bobby's older boys were getting into heroin, Bobby Jr's pet falcon fled the family compound in Hyannis Port and landed in a tree top here, like a rook in a gothic novel trying to tell you something. The last time the press descended on this village was when The Witches of Eastwick was filmed here, a movie in which Jack Nicholson is haunted by the women in his life.

Neighbours of the Kennedys in Cohasset were aware of the situation months before the story broke. It was difficult not to notice; Michael and the babysitter were seen alone together all around town. When the Boston papers named the babysitter's parents, the tabloids also published the girl's picture. Shopkeepers here took the papers off the shelves.

In political circles, Michael had been regarded as the family's altar boy; he had a calling - a genuine political talent - and had inherited his father's priestly intensity. When his brothers headed for hard drugs after his father's murder, he kept his head down and remained dependable and task-driven amid all the chaos. "Confusion here," was how he took to answering the telephone at Hickory Hill, his parents' home in Virginia. In keeping with Joe Sr's vision that only a Kennedy can best help a Kennedy, he became, like his father him, the family campaign manager. First for his brother Joe, then for his Uncle Ted.

In the 1994 Senate race, it became apparent that years of debauchery and sexual misconduct were taking their toll on Ted's popularity. Tabloid photos of Ted having sex with a blonde on a boat had been so widely distributed that people in Washington began to refer to his "position on offshore drilling". It looked like he might lose for the first time since he was first elected in 1962, especially as voters under 30 had no memories of JFK or Bobby.

Ted's reputation had even caught up with his effectiveness as a legislator, the man who fought with great ire and eloquence for women's rights. When President Clinton's supreme-court nominee, Clarence Thomas, was being interrogated about his alleged sexual harassment of his colleague Professor Anita Hill, Ted was rendered mute at the hearings, caught in the twist of his own knickers.

Then came Dr Willie Smith, or "Will" as his lawyers made sure to call him when he was on the stand. The televised rape trial of this Kennedy cousin was a first, mesmerising for the way it showed the family. A battalion of aunts and his mother Jean Kennedy Smith, now ambassador to Ireland, tried to miss the graphic moments. Ted had to take the stand to explain how the carousing which had taken place at the family's Palm Beach estate on that Good Friday night had happened in the first place. He and his nephews were drinking to mourn dead relatives, he explained. Smith was acquitted. Allegations against Smith by three other women were kept out of court. Spy magazine came up with 19 women with similar stories.

With that kind of press coverage, Ted needed a resurrection. It hinged on Victoria Reggie, his new wife, an attractive attorney, and the medium of the message that he had indeed reformed and stopped drinking. He was a new man.

"Vicki is a major asset to this campaign and I want her to be as visible as possible," said Michael explaining his strategy. Her presence worked like a charm. But soon after Ted was re-elected, Michael's own Vicki, his wife Victoria Gifford Kennedy, is alleged to have found him in bed with the babysitter. The promise of that 1981 engagement party is now gone, and the couple are separating.

At the time Michael announced publicly that he had a drinking problem and gave up the chance for a congressional seat in 1995 to go into rehab. While there, he missed his grandmother Rose's funeral. Later he is said to havecontinued the relationship with the babysitter and pursued the girl even after she called it off.

Since the allegations of statutory rape made against Michael in the press, the District Attorney's office and the local police have been thwarted in their investigations. The girl, now a 19-year-old freshman at Boston University, and her family won't co-operate or press charges and want the whole thing to disappear. But it doesn't. Reports emerged recently that last November the girl's mother was taken by police off the roof of her Boston apartment block, where she was found monosyllabic in a nightdress in the rain, looking distinctly suicidal.

BEFORE JFK, greatness in office was characterised by leadership and the towering personality of someone like FDR. A first lady could look as matronly as Eleanor Roosevelt and get away with it. The Kennedys changed the rules of politics in the same way the media did: they exploited the subliminal power of envy. As they sailed on their yacht, and invited cameras to the breakfast table with the brood, the pretty pictures told their story and launched the lifestyle obsession of the media. Ever since, the "Ralph Lauren Factor" has won and lost elections.

John Jr is the most solicited person in Democratic party politics. As JFK's son, and looking as dashing as he does, he is considered the natural heir to the throne, if only he would take it. Fittingly, he has chosen to sit in the editor's chair of a magazine that turns politics into pop culture. George (as in Washington), his post-partisan entertainment glossy, has been accused of trivialising what remains of substance in politics. On its cover each month, a Hollywood star or a supermodel poses as a character from American political history. On the occasion of Clinton's birthday, George ran a picture of the actress Drew Barrymore, dressed up to look like Marilyn Monroe the night she sang Happy Birthday Mr President and was in the deep throes of her affair with JFK. "If I don't find it offensive, I don't see why anyone else should," he said at the time.

Evidently Kennedy family values are really about managing the myth without letting it get the better of you. Last year John married a princess of our times, Carolyn Bessette: the former publicist of Calvin Klein, the king of image control. John Jr can move into office any time he wants. !