The

By R.Z. Sheppard

A good story bears retelling, and the one about the family Kennedy is among the best. It has the elements and sweep of 19th century literature: great expectations, war and peace and, in recent years, the whiff of a cherry orchard. In their 1984 book The Kennedys, Peter Collier and David Horowitz describe a Thanksgiving at Hyannis that had taken place two years before. After dinner, Rose, then 93, gathered her strength to address the remnants of her tribe. "I want you all to remember," said the frail matriarch, "that you are not just Kennedys, you are Fitzgeralds too."

Doris Kearns Goodwin needs no prodding. Her generational saga pays generous tribute to the near silent partners in Irish-American history's most important , merger. She offers little that is new and no shocks. If anything, Goodwin, author of Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream and the wife of former Kennedy Speechwriter Richard Goodwin, softens the impact of the familiar political and sexual scandals that litter the path from the old sod to the Oval Office. Her approach is to balance the requirements of scholarship (Goodwin was a professor of government at Harvard) with the demands of the literary marketplace.

The Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys is a lively compromise, although it is curious how Goodwin can discuss John F.'s political career without mentioning Theodore Sorensen, an early Kennedy ghostwriter who gave the rising star his literary twinkle. She writes best about the Fitzgeralds, their immigration to Boston and rise from poverty, first as grocers and saloonkeepers and then as politicians and power brokers. The most famous was John Francis Fitzgerald, the newspaperboy who went on to make headlines as "Honey Fitz," the roguish mayor of Boston.

The title of founding father, however, belongs to Honey Fitz's son-in-law Joseph Patrick Kennedy. Once he makes his entrance as Harvard man, Rose's suitor and shrewd young banker, he dominates the narrative. Joe and Rose begat Joseph Jr., John, Rosemary, Kathleen, Eunice, Patricia, Robert, Jean and Edward. There are some formidable characters here. Rose was defender of the faith and the stoic keeper of the hearth and appearances. Joe Jr., killed during World War II on a near suicidal bombing mission, was the pick of the litter. Vivacious Kathleen ("Kick") died in 1948 with her foolish lover when he insisted on flying through a thunderstorm. But they, and even the quick- witted future President, are overshadowed by the powerful father figure.

Although Joe Sr.'s millions paved the road to Camelot, money is the least interesting thing about him. His craving for power and status seems to have been whetted by resentment. It is the subtext of many American success stories: the smoldering desire to get even for class injuries in an officially classless society.

In the end, Joe Sr. not only beat the Brahmins, he joined them and established the Kennedy style: an irresistible fusion of the parvenu with a parody of the old-shoe aristocrat. As a movie-industry wheeler-dealer in the '20s, he introduced a bit of Harvard to Hollywood. But back East it was show business as usual, especially when he introduced his mistress Gloria Swanson to Rose. The high point of his social climb was undoubtedly the * ambassadorship to the Court of St. James's in 1938. "This is a helluva long way from East Boston," he told his wife during a weekend with the King and Queen at Windsor Castle.

The distance to the White House from the Hub was even greater. Biographer Goodwin navigates it swiftly. Like other historians, she finds the elder Kennedy's fingerprints all over the political controls. "It was like being drafted," J.F.K. later told Columnist Bob Considine. "My father wanted his eldest son in politics. 'Wanted' isn't the right word. He demanded it." He also molded the Kennedy image by promoting J.F.K.'s essentially ghostwritten Profiles in Courage and having his friend New York Times Columnist Arthur Krock lobby the Pulitzer board of advisers. The book won a Pulitzer Prize in 1957.

Goodwin registers maternal disapproval rather than disgust about the incident. She takes a similar tone when dealing with J.F.K. the philanderer. His compulsive womanizing, says Goodwin, was a symptom of his dread of intimacy and his fear of early death. He suffered from Addison's disease. But previous accounts of Kennedy hanky-panky portray an insensitive Regency buck claiming sexual entitlements.

The author overextends herself when she tries to occupy the high critical ground. She judges J.F.K. as deficient in the kind of courage celebrated in Profiles: "the willingness to risk position, power, career for the sake of some abiding conviction." But she also argues that Kennedy was a strong leader because he was "unobstructed by ideological preconception." She is on much firmer ground when sticking to her own preconception, an alluring vision of history as romance.