WP, pg1: Friends Say Kennedy Has Long Wanted Public Role; Private Figure Moves Toward Spotlight

Friends Say Kennedy Has Long Wanted Public Role
Private Figure Moves Toward Spotlight
By Anne E. Kornblut
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, December 17, 2008; A01

....Trying to explain the political ambitions of Kennedy, who was sheltered from the glare of publicity after her father's assassination in 1963 and has rarely emerged from it since, several people close to her said yesterday that she had long expressed a desire for a more active public life.

Joel I. Klein, chancellor of the New York City Department of Education and a Kennedy confidant, said he had a conversation with her eight years ago in which "it seemed to me she was now ready to start moving back into the public sector." The Obama campaign, he said, "was obviously a major turning point," adding that it "probably surprised" Kennedy how much she enjoyed the campaigning.

"Certainly this year she's played a very significant role in the presidential campaign, and I think that has very much crystallized her interest in serving," said John Shattuck, chief executive of the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library Foundation in Boston, who has worked with her since 2001. "But this is something that's been a long time coming."...

A lawyer and the author of several books, Kennedy is perhaps most acclaimed for raising tens of millions in private money for the New York City school system. She works with multiple foundations, playing an active role in the Kennedy library and the Institute of Politics at Harvard University. She has dipped in and out of the public eye over the years; she was sometimes referred to by her married name, Schlossberg, and at other times just as Kennedy, which, an aide said yesterday, is what she prefers.

Although she has been an important symbol in Democratic politics throughout her life, and participated in tributes to the Kennedy family in earlier party conventions, it was not until the 2008 primaries that she exerted her own influence in a forceful way. On the heels of Obama's major victory in the South Carolina Democratic primary in late January, Kennedy added to his momentum in a way that would be unstoppable, declaring on the opinion pages of the New York Times: "I have never had a president who inspired me the way people tell me that my father inspired them." It was the first time she had endorsed a presidential candidate in the primaries since her uncle Ted ran in 1980....

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/12/16/AR2008121602966_pf.html