Kevin Phillips on Joe Kennedy

Former conservative (and current populist crank) Kevin Phillips tells the Washington Post why he likes Joe Kennedy:

"An old buccaneer and bootlegger like Joe Kennedy became an SEC head for Roosevelt and cracked down on his own class."

Wrong. Kennedy never had an epiphany after which he became a class traitor (for one thing, the Kennedys hadn't yet become respectable, let alone royalty). Kennedy used his position at the SEC to settle old scores from his days on Wall Street, put potential future competitors out of business, and advance the political prospects of friends and family. But, heck, isn't that what the revolving door is for?

In any event, it ill-becomes even an odd duck like Phillips to say anything nice about Joe Kennedy, who was a perfectly awful man:

He was a notorious adulterer who carried on with a long list of women, including actress Gloria Swanson and even his own Hyannis Port secretary, and cruelly flaunted his infidelity in front of his wife and children. (Swanson and Joe's wife and children would dine together.) Joe arranged for his daughter, Rosemary Kennedy, to be given a lobotomy in the fall of 1941 without even consulting his wife, the child's mother, Rose Kennedy. The then highly controversial and experimental treatment left Rosemary, who had been suffering from what is now regarded as a case of clinical depression, a woman with the emotional development of a two-year-old child, one who could not wash or dress herself, not even put on her own pair of shoes. Joe paid off politicians and newspapermen, especially to endorse his son Jack for president and also cover up family dirt, like Jack's notorious infidelity and Teddy's expulsion from Harvard College for cheating. Joe openly did business with gangsters and bootleggers during Prohibition, whether his ventures were legal or not isn't really the issue. Notorious gang boss and murderer Frank Costello considered Joe his friend and business partner. ...

Much of Joe's reputation today as an investor is sullied by the company he kept as a business leader and a politician. He did business with gangsters in the liquor business during Prohibition, sleazy stock market operators during the 1920s, and slimy yes-men in Hollywood. But probably what left most of his reputation in tatters was his endorsement of anti-Semitic and pro-Nazi views during the 1930s, especially after his appointment by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1938 as Ambassador to Great Britain. ...

Harry Hopkins, Roosevelt's most trusted aide, [learned] that Joe had sold Czech securities and made $500,000 in profits while U.S. Ambassador. He apparently traded on top secret intelligence information that the Germans were going to invade Czechoslovakia and when they did the Czech stock market collapsed and Joe covered his shorts.

Curiously, however, it is the Bush family rather than the Kennedys that draws Phillips ire.