Those Youthful Kennedys - NYTimes.com In this week's issue, Edith Zimmerman profiles Joseph P. Kennedy III, who is running for Barney Frank's House seat - and who, if he beats out his Republican opponent, Sean Bielat, will become the latest Kennedy to to hold an elected office. With $1.96 million in his campaign's coffers, Joseph has the financial upper hand on Bielat, who's running on roughly $63,000. At 31, Joseph has another advantage, too, one that the Kennedy clan has drawn on for generations: youth. Bielat is 37. "You have to start early in America to do anything these days, from playing tennis to getting into Harvard," says Laurence Leamer, the author of three books on the Kennedys, including "Sons of Camelot: The Fate of an American Dynasty." It's the same for everyone. Why not if you're a Kennedy? Leamer adds: "Joe's paid his dues. He's not just a young Kennedy in a suit. Entering politics at a young age is, no doubt, a time-honored Kennedy tradition, but it's one that has often led to mixed results. "The classic example is Patrick Kennedy," Leamer says. He was an unhappy kid. He didn't have any friends, so he said, 'I'll get into politics.' That was in 1988, when Patrick was elected to the Rhode Island House of Representatives at 21, becoming the youngest Kennedy ever to hold an elected office. After a somewhat successful, yet often controversial, political career (drug offenses and a rape accusation included). Patrick decided in 2010 not to run for office again and finished his eighth - and presumably final - term last year. Other prominent examples of young Kennedys going into politics: John F. Kennedy, who at 29 took over the House seat vacated by James Michael Curley in 1947; Bobby Kennedy, who at 27 was appointed by Senator Joe McCarthy as assistant counsel of the U.S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations in 1952; and Edward Kennedy, who at 30 won a seat in a U.S. Senate special election in Massachusetts in 1962. Even John F. Kennedy Jr., who died in a plane crash in 1999 at 38, was poised to enter the game. He "almost certainly would have gone into politics," Leamer says. And he would have been successful. For more proof of the Kennedy family's vigorous legacy - despite its strangely high mortality rate - you need look no further than Leamer's career as a best-selling author of books about just that. As he puts it: "I have made a good living writing about the Kennedys for some time. And still, it goes on! And it's still fascinating.