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"  CHARLOTTE, N.C. \u2014 We may never stop measuring our lives in Kennedys. The Jack guys are all gone, and the Bobby guys are fewer by the years. For better or worse, for Democrats and Republicans, they have been the dynastic metric of the second half of the 20th century and, most amazing of all, of a good chunk of the beginning of the current one. They redefined public service. They redefined political celebrity for a new media age, and they lived within that context, for good and for ill, for the unbearably tragic and, occasionally, unbearably unbearable. Theirs is a history of public service unrivaled by that of any other family save (perhaps) the Windsors, and they get formally dragooned into it from birth. Theirs is a family history of public scandal and public political murder unrivaled by that of any other family save the Borgias. The Kennedys are our sacrifices and our scapegoats, and they stubbornly insist on volunteering for both jobs generation after generation. Sooner or later, one thinks, at least one of them has to chuck it all and live as a beachcomber clipping coupons in Palm Beach. On Tuesday night, Joseph Kennedy III, grandson of a murdered senator and grand-nephew of a murdered president, introduced a video tribute to yet another of his grand-uncles, Senator Edward Kennedy, who passed away between the last Democratic convention and this one. He is impossibly young, red-haired, and he favors his mother, Sheila Rauch, a formidable woman who, when she was divorcing his father, former Congressman Joe Kennedy, took on the Archdiocese of Boston in a noisy battle over her ex-husband&amp;#039;s desire to annul their marriage, sinking the first real dent into the armor of the predator-enabling, conspirator to obstruct justice, Bernard Cardinal Law. It&amp;#039;s a pretty safe bet that, for all the &amp;quot;Kennedys Don&amp;#039;t Cry&amp;quot; family lore, there is a toughness to this Kennedy that he did not get from his father&amp;#039;s side of the family. He&amp;#039;s running for Congress now, seeking to replace the retiring Barney Frank. People who have worked with him both in the campaign, and in his day job as an assistant district attorney, talk about how humble and decent he is, the kind of guy who volunteers to take the real grunt work of a public prosecutor, weekend DUI busts and tangled cases of domestic violence. Under their breath, so as not to upset The Family, many of these people make the point that, &amp;quot;He&amp;#039;s a Rauch, He&amp;#039;s not a Kennedy.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s like recombinant DNA,&amp;quot; said Congressman Ed Markey. &amp;quot;You&amp;#039;ve got both those strands twining together.&amp;quot; (The video was a delightful combination of elegy and attack ad. A lot of it was taken up with clips from the debate between Edward Kennedy and Willard Romney during their 1994 Senate race in which Romney came off looking very badly. In fact, I&amp;#039;d forgotten how much of an obviously snippy lord of the manor type he was back in his younger days. This prompted some Twittery whinging from obvious anagram Reince Priebus, as though that pipsqueak was the true custodian of Edward Kennedy&amp;#039;s legacy, and as though Edward Kennedy himself wouldn&amp;#039;t have been twice as tough in person as he was on film.) He was a Kennedy on Tuesday night, because that was what the hall was looking for. &amp;quot;Make no mistake,&amp;quot; he said of his late grand-uncle, &amp;quot;he is here with us tonight. You can see it in the passion of our delegates and the character of our candidates. For my uncle Teddy, politics was all about people. he measured things by promotions won and jobs lost, new homes and broken hearts, baptisms and funerals, every precious moment in between.... It guides us in the tough campaign ahead as we fight for the middle class, an economy that&amp;#039;s built to last, defend a woman&amp;#039;s right to choose, protect our seniors&amp;#039;s retirement security, and ask every American to do their part to safeguard the promise of this country.&amp;quot; Three generations of delegates pretended to be young again. It was quick and it was modest and it was over very quickly. &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s still magic,&amp;quot; said Congressman Jim McGovern, who has been campaigning with Kennedy because some of McGovern&amp;#039;s old congressional district now belongs to the district Kennedy wants to represent. &amp;quot;He&amp;#039;s got the ideals of his great-uncle and his grandfather, but he&amp;#039;s also very thoughtful and level-headed, a normal guy.&amp;quot;  It has taken four generations for the Kennedy family to get back to normal again. Who knows what they&amp;#039;ll find there now that they have? CLICK HERE FOR THE POLITICS BLOG&amp;#039;S COMPLETE COVERAGE FROM CHARLOTTE, PLUS FOLLOW @ESQPOLITICS AND @TOMJUNOD FOR LIVE SPEECH ANALYSIS COMING LATER TONIGHT: Tom Junod on Michelle Obama and Charles P. Pierce on Julian Castro "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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