Death knell chimes for two US politicians' daughters

The lives of Kara Kennedy and Eleanor Mondale Poling ground to a halt this weekend. They were both 51

IN ONE of those strange and sad twists of fate which happen perhaps more often than we care to admit, the daughters of two major American politicians died last week within 24 hours of each other, and prematurely. At 51 they were exactly the same age, having been born five weeks apart.

Kara Kennedy, daughter of the late Ted Kennedy, died on Friday. Eleanor Mondale Poling, daughter of Walter Mondale, died early on Saturday morning. Eleanor had been suffering from brain cancer. Her father said that she had been extremely brave. "She had fought this stuff almost six years now, and never a whimper," Walter Mondale told the New York Times.

Both Kara Kennedy and Eleanor Mondale were the only daughters of major figures in the Democratic party. Both were sisters to two brothers. In each family, it was their brothers who went into politics, not the daughters. Yet the daughters were brought up on the stump, in houses where the air crackled with campaigning and the optimism of sophisticated people trying to do good. How sad that three of their parents have outlived them.

Kara Kennedy came from a house where the dreams of Irish America hit the excesses of the 1960s – and not in a good way. Eleanor Mondale Poling saw the low-key Protestant liberalism of her family in Minnesota crash into the feelgood Reagan right wing in the presidential race of 1984. Before that Walter Mondale had been vice-president to Jimmy Carter, between 1977 and 1981.

Ted Kennedy’s career was ruined at Chappaquiddick by his own recklessness, to use no stronger term. But in his old age he became a giant of the Democratic party, almost its soul. His endorsement of Barack Obama was crucial, and brave.

Kara Kennedy won’t have an old age. She died after a workout at a Washington health club. Her brother Patrick said her physical strength had been undermined by her lung cancer, which had been diagnosed in 2002.

Her mother, Joan, née Bennett, was the most beautiful and most turbulent of all the Kennedy wives. Joan Kennedy was the beauty queen who was swept into the Kennedy machine, photographed like a dream, and became an alcoholic. There were no Catholic divorces in those days. Joan and Teddy had been married by Cardinal Spelman himself. Born into the eye of this storm of glamour and hurt, their eldest child Kara became a quiet, retiring woman. By Kennedy standards, she was downright silent, identifying herself as a backroom person. But she was also a media person, working in television in New England. Even in middle age, she had her mother’s blond sheen. She married a sailor.

Eleanor Mondale Poling’s mother was also called Joan, née Adams, but this Joan, once her husband’s 1984 presidential campaign was over, became a promoter of the arts. Her second child and only daughter Eleanor does not seem to have been a retiring person. She became a television personality. She had her own chat show in Chicago at one time, and a programme on Minneapolis radio. More than that, as a young woman she went to Los Angeles to become a television actress, and spoke about how her father’s fame was both a blessing and a curse in this connection.

People of a certain age, if they do not recognise the name Eleanor Mondale will certainly recognise the name of some of her boyfriends. Eleanor went out with Arnold Schwarzenegger, Warren Zevon and Don Henley. Oh Lord. Although she bore a close resemblance to her father Walter, whose looks had never been listed as one of his electoral advantages, she was a beautiful-looking young woman, who of course campaigned for her father. She was married four times. Her final husband, Chan Poling, is a composer, and they lived together on the farm where she died on Saturday.

It is strange to think of these two Democratic families, so different from each other, now both in mourning for their only daughters. And it is strange also to think of these two women, Kara Kennedy and Eleanor Mondale Poling, both being born to women called Joan, in the winter of 1960.

Eleanor was born on January 19th, 1960, her parents’ second child. Kara Kennedy was born on February 27th, 1960. Three of her generation of Kennedys died in their youth. Her cousins John F Kennedy junior (flying accident, 1999), Michael L Kennedy (skiing accident, 1998) and David Kennedy (drug overdose, 1984). And of course her father was the only one of four brothers to make it to the age of 70.

Kara Kennedy, who had two children with her husband, received the diagnosis of lung cancer in 2002. Ted Kennedy later said that in fact the outlook for her was thought to be so bleak that the Kennedys had to seek out other doctors who were prepared to treat her aggressively.

In 2005, Eleanor Mondale Poling suffered two seizures while on a camping holiday. She was found to have brain cancer. She retired from her work at Minneapolis radio in 2009 when the tumour returned.

And now these unremarkable daughters of the Democratic party, who were almost twins, are dead at 51.

It is a mournful and somehow striking coincidence.