Kennedy continues to make appearances for Obama. And now she is serving as a member of his vice presidential search committee. The committee chairman, Jim Johnson, resigned last Wednesday. He faced questions about receiving favorable rates on three home mortgages totaling $1.7 million from the chief executive officer of Countrywide Financial Corp., which is under federal investigation as part of the subprime mortgage crisis.
The third member of the committee, former Justice Department official Eric Holder, has been in the spotlight for his role vetting President Bill Clinton’s pardon of financier Marc Rich just before leaving office in 2001.
While Republicans have pelted both Johnson and Holder since their appointments, there has been no similar fuss over Kennedy, treated almost like a family member by a public that knows her only through the media.
Kennedy’s mother, Jacqueline, moved her and her brother, the late John F. Kennedy Jr., to New York following their father’s assassination, allowing them to gain privacy by blending into the city’s masses. Following college, Caroline Kennedy interned for her uncle in his Senate office before working at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
It was there that she met her husband, Edwin Schlossberg, an exhibit designer. They were married in 1986 on Cape Cod, with Edward Kennedy walking his niece down the aisle and journalist and future California first lady Maria Shriver serving as her cousin’s maid of honor. They have three children between the ages of 15 and 19.
Caroline Kennedy received a law degree from Columbia University and has used her legal training to write two books on civil liberties. She also has edited a volume of poetry and an updated version of her father’s Pulitzer Prize-winning book, “Profiles in Courage.”
Today she presents annual Profiles in Courage awards and preserves her father’s legacy with her work at his presidential library and at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government.
(Associated Press)
