Why Jack Schlossberg, President John F. Kennedy’s Only Grandson, is Speaking at the 2020 DNC
The list of speakers for Tuesday night’s Democratic National Convention is stacked with familiar political faces for the theme “Leadership Matters.” There’s Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, former president Bill Clinton, and former secretary of state John Kerry. One speaker you likely don’t recognize, though, is John Bouvier Kennedy Schlossberg, who goes by Jack and is the only grandson of President John F. Kennedy. With little fanfare, Schlossberg announced his appearance on his Instagram Stories Monday evening before Night One of the convention began.
Schlossberg will be speaking with his mother, Caroline Kennedy, for a segment called “We Lead from the Oval Office,” the DNC confirmed Tuesday morning. Former president and First Lady Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter will speak after them, followed by Bill Clinton.
A Kennedy at a DNC is nothing new. Senator Ted Kennedy spoke at several conventions during his life. And Caroline Kennedy campaigned for then-senator Barack Obama before comparing him to her father at the 2008 DNC. But her 27-year-old son Jack has so far kept a fairly low profile. Though he’s been coy about his political ambitions, it’s hard not to read into his stepping onto the most-watched political stage tonight.
Here’s what to know about him.
He grew up in New York before going to Yale and Harvard.
Schlossberg is the third child of designer and author Edwin Schlossberg and Caroline Kennedy, the only surviving child of President Kennedy and Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis. Since President Kennedy’s assassination in 1963, many Kennedys have entered public service, including Caroline, who is the former ambassador to Japan.
Schlossberg was valedictorian at the prestigious Collegiate School on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. He went to Yale and then attended his grandfather’s alma mater Harvard to pursue a J.D. and an M.B.A. As of the spring, Schlossberg was still a student, according to a Today interview.
The Kennedy legacy is palpable in Cambridge, Massachusetts. When he started there, Schlossberg told Boston.com: “My favorite restaurants are on JFK Street, so I definitely notice it. It’s humbling, but overall it’s nice that it’s just out in the open. There’s no pretending that it’s not here when I’m at Harvard. The first few days it felt a little weird, but now I don’t think about it so much.”
Schlossberg, who has two older sisters, has been the sibling most often at his mom’s side for the initiatives that carry on President Kennedy’s legacy, like the New Frontier Awards, created by the John F. Kennedy Library Foundation and the Institute of Politics at Harvard, and the Profiles in Courage Awards. In 2017, Schlossberg made a confident live-TV debut on the Today show with his mother to discuss that year’s Profiles in Courage Awards.
The Kennedys have a history with Biden and tonight’s speakers.
Caroline Kennedy was on the committee that selected Joe Biden as President Obama’s vice president back in 2008. And Schlossberg was a Senate page and an intern for then-senator John Kerry, who is speaking tonight as well. Kerry said in Schlossberg’s commencement address: “A sense of humor is not genetic, but apparently in the Kennedy family it can be inherited. In President Kennedy’s grandson, Jack Schlossberg, this quality seems to abide.”
He’s already got some impressive bylines.
Schlossberg bears a striking resemblance to his late uncle, John F. Kennedy Jr., who married media and politics with his magazine, George, in the late ’90s. Like John, Schlossberg has dabbled in media and has had bylines in The Washington Post, The New York Times, Time, and New York magazine’s The Cut.
He hasn’t shied away from his family’s legacy, and in fact most of his writing deals with it. For Politico in 2016, Schlossberg responded to Senator Ted Cruz’s assertion that if President Kennedy were alive today, he would be a Republican.
“As Kennedy’s grandson, and as a student of his life, legacy and administration, I find this notion—and the suggestion that Ted Cruz is somehow taking up his mantle—absurd,” he wrote. “Were my grandfather alive today, he’d be excited about how far we have come as a nation since 1963, he would feel a sense of urgency about the challenges that lie ahead and he most certainly would not be a Republican.”
Politics aside, his Instagram is worth checking out.
Unlike generations of Kennedys before him, Schlossberg gives the public a peek into his personality with a truly quirky social-media presence. He mostly creates wordplay memes analyzing the difference between similar phrases like “waterproof” and “water resistant,” and in his Stories he often shoots close-up videos of himself singing pop songs.
We learn too from Instagram that he is a dedicated fan of the Rock, and that his favorite show is Blue Bloods, on which he had a guest appearance in 2018.
He could join the latest generation of Kennedys running for office.
Schlossberg’s DNC appearance comes as two of his cousins are in heated races of their own. Representative Joe Kennedy III, the son of Representative Joseph Kennedy II and the grandson of Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, is mounting a primary challenge to incumbent Massachusetts senator Ed Markey, who has used the Kennedy legacy against the 39-year-old. Markey released an ad this month set to the song “Rich Girl,” which is of course about relying on the “old man’s money,” an allusion to the Kennedy family’s wealth. And Markey has made sly references to the famed Kennedy Compound in an attempt to contrast his own working-class roots.
Kennedy responded this week in a speech, saying of Markey, “If he wants to talk about the Kennedys, I’ll talk about the Kennedys,” before detailing his family’s civil-rights legacy.
Meanwhile, Amy Kennedy, who is married to Patrick Kennedy, the youngest son of Senator Ted Kennedy, just won her congressional primary in New Jersey.
When asked about his political ambitions, Schlossberg has dodged the question, pointing to the fact that he was still a student and still figuring it all out. Fair enough. But if he’s learned anything from his mother, it could be a while before we get a straight answer.
After Caroline spoke at the 2008 DNC, she sat down with Katie Couric, who began winding up for the inevitable question of whether she would follow in the footsteps of her father and so many of her relatives, saying,“Do you ever feel any pressure, I know you’re very shy... ” Caroline interrupted: “Are you going to ask me if I’m going to run for office, by any chance? Is that where you’re going with this question?”
Caroline shot back sarcastically: “Well, you know, it’s incredible, you’re just so creative.”
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