NOEMIE EMERY of the Daily Standard writes (excerpts)
The Roosevelts, Bushes, and Kennedys never knew what it was like to be one paycheck away from utter privation, but they were abundantly damaged by pain and bereavement and reminders that life is unfair. John Kennedy and the elder George Bush were chauffeured to private school in the depths of the Depression, but they also belonged to a war generation, joined the armed forces as soon as was possible, nearly drowned when their vehicles were sunk or shot down by the enemy, and saw friends, comrades, and relatives die. Franklin Roosevelt had polio, a famously terrible marriage, and long separations from the woman he loved. Theodore Roosevelt struggled with asthma, and at age 25 had been so shattered by the sudden and simultaneous deaths of his wife and his mother (the latter at 48 still a stunning young woman) that he fled to the West to hold on to his sanity. Franklin Roosevelt, John Kennedy, and the elder George Bush buried very young children; and Kennedy was part of his family’s struggle to raise his retarded sister as normal, a struggle it finally lost. George W. Bush was a failure until he was 40, and almost became one of a long line of dynastic children, starting with the sons of John and John Quincy Adams, who were destroyed by depression and alcohol. John Kennedy had gone through such stress in his earlier years—repeated hospital stays, back pain, and adrenal gland failure; war, PT-109, and the deaths of his brother, sister, and brother-in-law—that he was a basket case by the time he reached 30, and took several years to regain his élan.