The last of the Kennedys, for the moment

Rico says it'd be easy to make jokes about dead Kennedys, but not necessarily funny. Mark Leibovich has an article in The New York Times about the last one to leave a long family history of public service:

Representative Patrick J. Kennedy’s life has been a public testament to the blessing and burden of his family name. It afforded him a big head start in his political career and also caused his personal struggles— with mental illness, substance abuse, and the law— to play out in public view.
Mr. Kennedy, Democrat of Rhode Island, tried to wedge some distance from the public aspect of that legacy Friday when he announced that he would not seek re-election for the Congressional seat he has held since 1995. Barring the unforeseen entry of a family member into a Congressional or Senate race this November, it will mean that no Kennedy will be serving in national office for the first time since 1947, when John F. Kennedy became a congressman from Massachusetts.
“A lot of people say that they are getting out of politics to be closer to their families,” Mr. Kennedy said Friday in an interview in which he sounded variously excited and emotional. “In a sense, when I got into politics, I was getting closer to my family.” Mr. Kennedy, 42, is stepping away from elected office for the first time since he joined the Rhode Island House of Representatives at 21. He said he had been contemplating his decision for nearly a year, and discussed it with his father, Senator Edward M. Kennedy, before he died of brain cancer in August. They talked about the different ways a person could serve the public, the younger Mr. Kennedy said. They agreed that Eunice Kennedy Shriver, Senator Kennedy’s sister, had made the most lasting contribution of anyone in the family, when she founded the Special Olympics.
Mr. Kennedy said he intended to remain active in mental health issues, an area that has defined him, politically and personally. His mother, Joan Kennedy, has battled alcoholism for years, and his father was involved in a string of alcohol-related episodes earlier in his career. Mr. Kennedy himself was treated for cocaine addiction as a teenager, battled depression as a young adult, received a diagnosis of bipolar disorder after he came to Congress, and then became addicted to painkillers.
“I intend to look at any number of different ways that I can contribute,” Mr. Kennedy said of his life after Congress.
Historians and others said Mr. Kennedy’s departure from elected office will close, at least for now, the Kennedys’ bittersweet public narrative.
“It really is a major changing of the guard, and this is the end of the Kennedy dynasty,” Darrell M. West, a Brookings Institute scholar and author of Patrick Kennedy: The Rise to Power. “People have been speculating about its demise for the past few years. It’s over.”
The death of his father was a “monumental loss” to Mr. Kennedy, said former Representative Jim Ramstad, a Minnesota Republican who had served as Mr. Kennedy’s “sponsor” in a recovery program for substance abusers. “He has been dealing with his grief as well as can be expected,” Mr. Ramstad said. “But it’s been tough. It’s always tough.”
Friends said Mr. Kennedy was able to soldier on through the first few weeks after his father’s death. He delivered a eulogy at the funeral, spoke to former staff members in front of the Capitol, and visited people who had worked for years in his father’s various offices.
But, Mr. Ramstad said, Mr. Kennedy was “burned out on Congress” and, after the ceremonies surrounding his father’s death subsided, he endured some difficult weeks around the holidays. While that did not determine his decision, it might have hastened it, friends said. And seeing Scott Brown, a Republican, win election to his father’s longtime Senate seat in Massachusetts was bitterly disappointing, something Mr. Kennedy let slip last week when he called the election of Mr. Brown “a joke”.
People who had seen Mr. Kennedy recently around the Capitol said he had appeared weary. Friends said that attending President Obama’s State of the Union address was especially emotional for him, because it was an experience he had always shared with his father.
Like Ted Kennedy, Patrick Kennedy had grown close to the president, most recently sharing a ride on Air Force One as they traveled to Boston to campaign for Martha Coakley, the Massachusetts attorney general, who lost to Mr. Brown. Mr. Kennedy approached the President after the State of the Union speech and gave him a big hug. “I told him I was proud to be an American,” Mr. Kennedy said Friday, his voice choking up.
People close to the Kennedy family said it was not likely that any relatives would jump into a Congressional or Senate race this year. Senator Kennedy’s widow, Victoria Reggie Kennedy, resisted overtures to seek her husband’s seat. Former Representative Joseph P. Kennedy II, Democrat of Massachusetts, seriously considered a Senate run before deciding not to, a decision he recently hinted that he regretted. Edward M. Kennedy Jr., 48, who lives in Connecticut, has not ruled out a future campaign.
Nor has Patrick Kennedy, for that matter. He said that he intended to remain in his adopted home state of Rhode Island and that his only immediate plan was to complete his Congressional term. But for now, he described his decision to leave Congress as something that left him feeling “renewed” and “never better”.
“He has obviously been grief-stricken over his father’s passing,” said former Senator Max Cleland, a Georgia Democrat who became a close friend to Mr. Kennedy through their shared struggles with mental illness. “I imagine this is all part of a process by which one comes to terms with life and death and one’s place in it. We should see this as a passage for Patrick from what we know to what we don’t know.”
Mr. Kennedy told a few friends and colleagues in recent days that he would not seek re-election. He made his announcement in a video posted on YouTube, addressing his remarks to his constituents. He expressed his decision in terms appropriate to a career in which politics and family have been inexorably fused. “To those who treated me like a son or grandson, thank you for your unconditional support,” he said.