Opinion: Breaking the Kennedy Bond

Amy Siskind, President of The New Agenda, writes in The Daily Beast:

Former U.S. Rep. Joe Kennedy II’s announcement that he won’t seek to succeed his uncle in the U.S. Senate is good news. Not because he wouldn’t make a good senator. But because he’s more of the same…

This would be a symbolic step into quicksand, as opposed to the step forward that our country needs to move on and put our mixed feelings about Teddy at ease.

There’s no questioning the need for progress. Women are shockingly underrepresented in American government—making up more than half the population, but holding only 17 percent of the seats in the U.S. House and Senate. In a recent study done by the Inter-Parliamentary Union, which measured percentage of women in national parliaments, the U.S. ranked an embarrassing 71st in the world.

Even seemingly progressive states like Massachusetts have been stymied by patriarchal bloodlines. That makes the land of the Kennedys a crucial place to start fixing the problem. Massachusetts should take the lead in starting a gender-equality movement in the name of Senator Ted Kennedy…

Martha Coakley, Massachusetts’ first female attorney general, was the first candidate to throw her hat in the ring. She’s the “real deal”—with more than two decades of public service and an impeccable list of accomplishments and honors to her name…

And with this one election, the legacy of Ted Kennedy could be put to rest and remembered, as with his brothers before him, as a turning point in our great country’s march of progress.