Biden nominates Caroline Kennedy for US ambassador to Australia
The future US envoy, Caroline Kennedy, owns a famous name but more important is her close relationship with President Biden.
In the decades since then, the myth of the Kennedy White House – “Camelot” – has only grown as her mother Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, her brother John Kennedy Jr and her two uncles, Robert and Teddy, have died, leaving her the sole keeper of the Kennedy flame.
It’s a burden the 64-year-old mother of three has carried with dignity and poise, devoting herself to protecting her family’s legacy while also having to live her own life under a public glare that never fades.
At best, it gives her star power, a celebrity status that still cuts through at the highest levels of US politics. At worst, it masks her other achievements as a lawyer, an author of books ranging from law and civics to poetry, a diplomat, an educator and a turbocharged fundraiser for worthy causes.
But it is the Kennedy name and the status it gives her with President Joe Biden that will be the biggest benefit to Australia as she prepares to move to Canberra to take up the role as US ambassador.
“(I am) excited to get to know the Australian people, learn about their fascinating country and share with them what I love most about America,” Kennedy said in a statement when the news broke.
She called Australia “a country that is vital to our future security and prosperity”, adding: “I look forward to collaborating with the government of Australia to strengthen our alliance, improve global health and increase vaccine access during this terrible pandemic and to address the urgent climate crisis.”
Australia is not accustomed to celebrity ambassadors. Most US ambassadors posted here are relatively obscure mates of the president, party fundraisers, ex-military or career diplomats. Yet almost everyone in Australia knows of Caroline Kennedy. They have seen the pictures of her doing handstands in the Oval Office while JFK watched, or riding her pony Macaroni in the grounds of the White House. And, of course, they recall the heartbreaking images of her standing in her blue dress alongside her little brother John, then just a toddler, as he saluted his father’s casket as it passed their church in Washington.
This is Kennedy’s second diplomatic posting, as she was appointed by Barack Obama as US ambassador to Japan from 2013 to 2017. At that time the Japanese people made it very clear what they thought of a Kennedy being posted to their country.
In 2013 euphoric crowds lined the Tokyo streets, some singing Sweet Caroline, the song Neil Diamond dedicated to her in 1969, as they watched her ride in a horse-drawn carriage to the Imperial Palace to present her credentials to the emperor.
The citizens of Canberra may be a little more restrained outwardly, but in the corridors of power there will be cheers about this appointment because of Kennedy’s close relationship with Biden.
Although Kennedy flirted with a political career of her own for many years, she never ultimately pursued it, having preferred a quieter life of writing books and working for New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art.
In 1992 she turned down a chance to be chairwoman of the 1992 Democratic National Convention and in 2008 she campaigned for Hillary Clinton’s vacant Senate seat but ultimately withdrew her nomination citing unspecified “personal reasons”.
However, Kennedy is still a player among Democrats who all but worship her lineage to JFK and the Camelot era that the party mythologises.
In 2008 she emerged as a powerful voice in support of the presidential hopeful Obama, describing him as an inspirational figure who reminded her of her father. Obama subsequently sent her to Tokyo.
After Obama was nominated as the Democratic candidate in 2008, Kennedy played a key role in helping choose Biden as Obama’s running mate. Biden, then a veteran senator, was eternally grateful for this and his decision now to offer the Australia post to Kennedy is most likely linked to this.
Experts on the US-Australia alliance say the appointment of someone like Kennedy who has the ability to pick up the phone directly to the President reflects the importance of the relationship at a time of growing tension with China.
Kennedy’s appointment also coincides with the new three-country AUKUS pact where the US has pledged to help Australia acquire its first nuclear-powered submarine fleet. It comes as the Biden administration quietly seeks to encourage Canberra to adopt more ambitious carbon reduction targets.
The post has been vacant since Arthur Culvahouse, who was appointed by the Trump administration, left this year following the election of Biden.
West Australian Governor and former Australian ambassador to the US Kim Beazley says Kennedy will be “enormously effective” in Canberra. “She is a good diplomat and has had a great history in the political life of the US,” he says. “She is a woman who gets noticed and we want that in an American ambassador to Australia.”
Michael Thawley, who preceded Beazley in Washington, says Kennedy is “politically astute” and her appointment reflects the “esteem and affection which Australia enjoys in the US”. “As the daughter of one of the US’s most loved presidents and a member of one of the US’s most significant political dynasties, she is something of a symbol of the consequential place Australia occupies in the US’s world view,” he says.
But as ambassador to Japan, Kennedy got off to a bumpy start. A 2015 report by the Office of Inspector General found Kennedy was unfamiliar with “leading and managing an institution the size of the US Mission to Japan” and it criticised a lack of communication within the embassy. This led to claims that she was a celebrity first and diplomat second.
But these proved to be temporary growing pains and by the end of her posting in 2017 Kennedy was widely seen to have done an astute job in helping manage the relationship.
“She transformed herself from a celebrity into an influential public figure and statesman who became trusted, respected, liked and listened to,” says Daniel Russel, the then assistant secretary at the Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs in the State Department.
Japan’s current Prime Minister, Fumio Kishida, said at the time: “I think most people don’t know about this, but Ambassador Kennedy was an exceptionally tough negotiator. When I could persuade her, I could persuade Washington, DC, as well.”
After she finished her Japan post, Kennedy said: “I know that I was not a likely choice (as ambassador). My strongest qualifications were that I was close to the president and that I had a well-known name. But it turned out that those are the qualities that the Japanese most valued.”
Despite her family’s traumatic history when she was a girl, Kennedy grew up to be a steady, well-balanced and popular young woman, a fact she credits to her mother being “absolutely protective of us” after JFK’s assassination. Kennedy says she has only limited memories of her father but these include playing in the Oval Office, “making construction paper necklaces, eating candy, and running around his desk”.
In 2017 she said his loss still ate away at her and “I miss him every day of my life”.
After the assassination, Jackie Kennedy moved the children to New York, where she hoped they would have as normal a life as possible. But just five years later, in 1968, Caroline’s uncle and presidential aspirant Robert Kennedy also was gunned down while on the campaign trail.
When Robert was assassinated, Jackie Kennedy feared her children would be next.
“I hate this country. I despise America and I don’t want my children to live here any more. If they’re killing Kennedys, my kids are the No.1 targets,” she said.
But Caroline Kennedy stayed in New York, where she wanted to become a photojournalist before realising that her fame would make it impractical. She studied law and worked as a research assistant at the Met, where she met her husband, exhibition designer Edwin Schlossberg. They have three grown-up children, Rose, Tatiana and John.
In 1999 Kennedy suffered yet another family tragedy when her brother John, his wife Carolyn Bessette Kennedy and her sister Lauren Bessette died when the plane John was flying crashed in the waters off Martha’s Vineyard, where Caroline has a family estate.
As the sole survivor of JFK’s family, Kennedy has worked to preserve and manage her family’s legacy and is honorary president of JFK’s popular library and museum in Boston. She has served on the boards of organisations such as the Commission on Presidential Debates and on progressive bodies such as the NAACP Legal Defence and Educational Fund.
Kennedy also spoke out strongly in favour of Biden early last year as he sought the Democratic nomination to challenge Donald Trump. “Although 60 years have passed, people still tell me that they are inspired by the words from my father’s inaugural address: ‘Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country,’ ” she said. “Joe Biden embodies those words.”
Kennedy’s nomination for the Australian posting is expected to be approved by the US Senate, meaning she will take up her post early in the new year.
It will hardly be Camelot in Canberra, but it will put a very different hue on our strongest and most important alliance to have a Kennedy in Canberra.
Additional reporting: Adam Creighton
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Caroline Kennedy: A life of sadness and success
1957 Caroline Bouvier Kennedy is born on November 27 in New York to then Massachusetts senator John F. Kennedy and Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy.
1958 Baby Caroline appears with her parents on the cover of Life.
1960 Younger brother John Jr is born on November 25, two weeks after John F. Kennedy is elected president.
1961 Inauguration of president Kennedy
1963 A brother, Patrick Bouvier Kennedy, is born five weeks premature on August 7 and dies two days later.
1963 President Kennedy is assassinated during a motorcade in Dallas on November 22, aged 46.
1963 Caroline and John Jr accompany their mother to the state funeral in Washington.
1967 Caroline, aged nine, officially names aircraft carrier USS John F. Kennedy.
1968 Robert Kennedy, Caroline’s uncle and godfather, is assassinated in Los Angeles on June 5. Jacqueline Kennedy declares: “If they’re killing Kennedys, my kids are the No.1 targets.”
Jackie marries Greek shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis. When Caroline is asked about her new stepfather, she says: “I don’t like him.”
1975 An IRA bomb in London destroys a car owned by Caroline’s hosts, Conservative MP Hugh Fraser and his wife, author Antonia Fraser. A neighbour dies in the explosion.
1980 Graduates from Harvard and works at the Metropolitan Museum of Art as an assistant. Later graduates from Columbia Law School.
1986 Marries exhibition designer Edwin Schlossberg, with whom she has three children, Rose, Tatiana and Jack. In a 2015 interview Kennedy says she and Schlossberg live in separate houses.
1991 Publishes the first of two books with Ellen Alderman, In Our Defense: The Bill of Rights in Action.
1994 Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis is diagnosed with non-Hodgkins lymphoma and dies in New York on May 19, with Caroline and John Jr by her side.
1999 A plane piloted by John Jr crashes off Martha’s Vineyard, killing John Jr, his wife Carolyn and sister-in-law Lauren Bessette.
2002 Appointed to the New York City Department of Education, Caroline Kennedy helps raise more than $US65m for public schools.
2008 Kennedy endorses Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama, writing a piece for The New York Times under the headline A President Like My Father. She co-chairs the vice-presidential search committee that selects Joe Biden as Obama’s running mate.
2008 Shows interest in the New York Senate seat vacated by Hillary Clinton, saying: “We’re starting to see there are many ways into public life and public service.”
2013 Obama appoints Kennedy as US ambassador to Japan, a post she holds until 2017.
2017 Elected to the board of directors of Boeing, until her resignation this year.
2021 President Joe Biden nominates Kennedy as US ambassador to Australia.
Wherever she goes in the world, including far-flung Australia, Caroline Kennedy carries both the burden and the fame of her family’s tragic history. She has no choice, of course; just five days before her sixth birthday her father, John F. Kennedy, the 35th US president, was gunned down in Dallas, on November 22, 1963.