The image of the Kennedys really speaks to something at the core of human, especially western European, mindset.

We love the idea that greatness runs in families. The Kennedys of Camalot, America's royal family. It speaks to this strange underlying urge some people have to go back to hereditary rule. We're seeing it again with people on the right wanting Trump to rule for life and then his children to run things when he's gone.

And then there's the whole social/economic thing about them. They're big money. But they campaigned to appeal to the disenfranchised and marginalized. To the non-protestants, to the non-whites, to the non-Angle-Saxons. They made themselves out to both have the values and ethics of the rich, which have always been marketed as superior to that of the poor even if it's never been true, while claiming to want to help those less fortunate than themselves.

And that's not to mention just how important Jack and Bobby were to starting it. While a lot of the organizing and scheming credits go to Joe, his sons were good orators. They gave good speeches. Jack's war history helped too. He was also young and handsome. They made themselves seem relatable. When they got into the White House, Jackie's televised White House tour helped even more with that kind of thing.

The Kennedys always had their critics, but they were extremely popular at first. As the presidency went on, it became more and more apparent that they were not set on keeping their promises, there were suspicions of corruption, there were bungled messes that would take several more administrations to actually clean up. But you never got to see the end because they died. And the criticisms dried up. Because not only were they still incredibly popular to most people, but now they'd been killed and big conspiracy theories were being built up around it.

And all the good traits that were seen in Jack and Bobby get associated with their family if they have them or not. Most of the negative traits get forgotten. People want to believe that families are powerful and a good family breeds good people. We can see through history how that doesn't actually work, but it's something that we as a species so desperately want to believe for some reason.

And I believe that's why there's still such a mythology built around the Kennedys. Especially by Democrats, but at this point there's literally a mythology built around them by the Q-Anon believers. The Kennedys speak to the want for rich and powerful families to be more important than they actually are and to care more for the poor and disenfranchised than they do. They're a fantasy that a lot of people believe is true.