Joe Kennedy, grandson of Robert Kennedy and former Massachusetts congressman, will be appointed as the administration’s special envoy to Northern Ireland by President Joe Biden.
This makes Kennedy, age 42, the third member of America’s most prominent Irish-American political dynasty to receive a diplomatic position from Vice President Biden.
In the diplomatic corps, he joins his aunt and Ted Kennedy’s widow and attorney, Victoria, 68, who is ambassador to Austria, and his cousin, John F. Kennedy’s daughter, Caroline, 65, who is ambassador to Australia.
Multiple reports indicate that Joe Kennedy III will assume the role before the new year.
According to new guidelines, any diplomatic appointment made after January 3, 2023 must be authorized by the US Senate. This ratification may take several months.
On March 17, 2016, President Biden and former Massachusetts Congressman Joe Kennedy III were photographed together.
As a result of the unsolved Northern Ireland question, ties between the United States and the United Kingdom will remain icy when Kennedy assumes office.
The position of special envoy has been vacant since former White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney resigned on January 6, 2021, following the Capitol Riot.
A government source told the Wall Street Journal that Kennedy’s position will be less political and more focused on economic matters.
This insider stated to the WSJ, “He will be really focused on promoting US economic participation and people-to-people ties.”
According to the New York Times, Kennedy’s appointment has been in the works for months, and it is anticipated that the former congressman’s legacy will reinvigorate US-Irish relations.
Victoria Kennedy, the designated United States Ambassador to Austria, is the widow of Joe Kennedy III’s uncle, former Massachusetts Senator Ted Kennedy.
US Ambassador to Australia Caroline Kennedy, daughter of John F. Kennedy, shown in September 2022 in Boston with President Biden.
The protocol, which permits free trade across the Irish border, was initially developed in 2019 to preserve past peace agreements in the aftermath of Brexit. It has been a subject of disagreement between the European Union and the United Kingdom.
Since 1995, numerous administrations have dispatched special envoys to Northern Ireland. Joe Kennedy II, the father of Kennedy, was among those who helped to establish the role.
Former Maine senator George Mitchell served as the first envoy and helped organize the Good Friday Agreement in 1998.
Kennedy’s appointment was delayed due to Vice President Biden’s optimism that the United Kingdom and the European Union would reach a solid agreement addressing the Northern Irish border with the Republic of Ireland.
As part of the 25th anniversary commemoration of the Good Friday Agreement, Biden is slated to visit the conflict-torn nation this year.
Biden is the second Catholic president in United States history; John F. Kennedy was the first. During his time as a Delaware senator, Biden was known to be friendly with Ted Kennedy, who served as a senator for Massachusetts from 1962 to 2009.
Kennedy is the grandson of Robert F. Kennedy, who was assassinated in 1968 while campaigning for the Democratic presidential nomination by Muslim gunman Sirhan Sirhan.
Kennedy is the grandson of Robert F. Kennedy, who was assassinated in 1968 while campaigning for the Democratic presidential nomination by the Muslim gunman Sirhan Sirhan.
Kennedy represented Massachusetts from 2013 to 2021 before resigning to fight the state’s incumbent Democratic senator, Ed Markey, for the party nomination. Following this defeat, he has largely disappeared from public view, barring occasional appearances as a CNN analyst.
According to the group’s website, he has worked primarily behind the scenes for the Groundwork Project, an organization whose mission is to “create sustainable political infrastructure, engage and educate voters, and develop power for the underrepresented and disenfranchised.”
In his farewell address to Congress, John F. Kennedy ridiculed the “great myth of our day” that the government has the resources and the spirit to assist the needy. He stated that gluttony, not shortage, is the true problem.
Kennedy, D-Massachusetts, described his four terms in Congress as an honor and said he was ‘proud and optimistic’ about the future.
He regarded the United States as a “complex and chaotic nation.”
He stated that it “violated our fundamental vows before the ink was dry,” citing slavery and privileges that were first largely applicable to “wealthy, white, Protestant men.”
Without specifying any political parties or individuals, he referred to this development as “the antidote to the greatest deception of our time: that the American pie is finite.”
That your family must suffer for my family to survive.
That the world’s wealthiest nation is afflicted by shortage rather than avarice.
He said, “Our generation’s mission is to loosen this lie’s hold on our country.
“For those who feel invisible, unheard, and unrepresented. For individuals who have been informed by their government that there is no place, money, time, or will to provide them with support, protection, justice, and opportunities.
And this injustice is not the result of conscious decisions made by those in authority over who is deserving and who is not.