Ed Kealty

Infobox President
name=Edward Kealty


order=48^th President of the United States
("Tom Clancy")
term_start=2001
birth_date= birth date and age|1948|10|27
birth_place=Massachusetts, US
spouse=unknown
vicepresident=
predecessor=
successor=incumbent
party=Democratic In the Jack Ryan series of novels by Tom Clancy, Edward "Ed" Kealty was Roger Durling's Vice President.

In the novel Debt of Honor, Kealty was serving as a Senator from Massachusetts, before being appointed Vice-President following the resignation of President J. Robert Fowler (at the end of the previous novel, The Sum of All Fears). He was investigated on suspicion of rape of a former staff member, and was forced to resign; subsequently, Jack Ryan was appointed as Vice-President. At the end of the novel, when a plane crashed into the Capitol killing Durling, Ryan became President.

In the next novel in the series, Executive Orders, Kealty challenged Ryan, claiming that his resignation had never been submitted to the Secretary of State according to the legal requirements, and therefore that he should have become president on the death of Durling. However, in a subsequent court case where he sued Ryan, the court described Ryan as "President of the United States", thereby implicitly overruling Kealty's claim to the presidency.

However, in the latest Tom Clancy novel The Teeth of the Tiger, Ed Kealty reappears as the US President, seemingly to have been elected after Robby Jackson's assassination, earning the nickname "The Comeback Kid". Because of Kealty's politically-expedient stance, the novel maintains that is why Former President Jack Ryan secretly created "The Campus" - a secret independently funded agency outside of Government control, that can take security operations into its own hands.

It is not clear if Kealty is intended to be based on a real-life politician, however Kealty does bear some resemblance to Ted Kennedy - both are from New England, both come from privileged backgrounds, and both have been involved in sex scandals. Kealty's last name is also similar to Kennedy's.