Caroline Kennedy, the only surviving child of President John F Kennedy, is reportedly in line to be announced as the next US ambassador to Australia.
US-based news website Axios, citing “people familiar with the matter” reported: “Caroline Kennedy is in line to be US ambassador to Australia”, while the AP said the US president, Joe Biden, was “giving serious consideration” to nominating Kennedy to a high-profile ambassadorial role in Asia.
Kennedy was formerly the US ambassador to Japan during the Obama administration.
The White House declined to comment.
Kennedy, a scion of one of America’s most high-profile political families, threw her support behind Biden relatively early in the crowded 2020 Democratic primary process.
Along with her uncle, senator Ted Kennedy, she also offered a critical early endorsement to Obama in his 2008 run for the White House.
Caroline, born in 1957, is the only surviving child of the former president Kennedy and his wife Jacqueline. She was only five when her father was assassinated in Dallas in November 1963.
It was the first of a series of tragedies for the privileged but ill-fated US family. A brother, Patrick, died in infancy in 1963. Her uncle Robert Kennedy was assassinated in 1968, and another brother, John, died in a plane crash in 1999.
Axios has reported that Biden was considering another Kennedy, Ted Kennedy’s widow, Vicki, for an ambassadorial posting in western Europe.
Australia’s previous ambassador to Australia, Arthur Culvahouse Jr, finished his appointment with the end of the Trump presidency in January this year.
Before his appointment, the post was vacant for nearly two and a half years after Obama appointee John Berry departed.
The US mission to Australia is currently headed by chargé d’affaires Michael Goldman.
Biden is expected to soon announce his first major tranche of political ambassadorial nominations, according to White House officials.
The AP has previously reported he is expected to nominate former senior state department official Nicholas Burns to serve in China, Los Angeles mayor Eric Garcetti in India, former Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel in Japan, and former deputy secretary of state Tom Nides to Israel.
Ken Salazar, a former colleague of Biden’s in the Senate and Obama-era interior department secretary, is a candidate for the Mexico ambassadorship.
Cindy McCain, the widow of Republican senator John McCain and a longtime friend of the president and first lady, Jill Biden, is under consideration for an ambassadorial position, including leading the UN World Food Program.
With AP
