Remembering RFK 1925-1968

Last night I finally had the opportunity to view Bobby, a film based on the events of the horrible night of June 5, 1968, when Robert Francis Kennedy, candidate for the Democratic nomination and the man that common political sense dictated would be the next president of the United States was gunned down in the kitchen of the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, California. When I woke up early this morning I was struck by the sudden realization that tomorrow would have been his eighty-second birthday.
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The passage of nearly forty years does little to erase the feeling of loss and despair not only for the dreams of what might have been but - almost as importantly - of what might not have been. One need only look into the man's personal history to know that he no doubt would have been an able and conscientious (if imperfect) chief executive. Contemplating how history might have judged his term of office would be like, as someone once remarked, throwing darts into a fog. There is every possibility that he would have remained the figure of debate and controversy that he was from the moment he entered the public arena in the mid 1950s - much as Franklin D. Roosevelt is to this very day. "Ruthless" was the word his detractors liked to use in describing him. But he was also capable and willing to take unpopular stands for the greater public good and, unlike his timid and pathetic Democratic heirs, Bobby Kennedy was unafraid to take bold and courageous action. If the assassination of President Kennedy in November of 1963 had a stunning impact on progressive politics in America, the murder of his younger brother four and a half years later would ultimately prove to be the fatal blow. Nothing would ever be the same again. Nothing.
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He was so unlike the caricature of what we've come to expect from most politicians: his voice was soft and he spoke with a slight lisp. In spite of his much heralded "toughness" there always seemed to be an almost fragile vulnerability about him. When talking to an audience of farm laborers or inner city youth, he could quote George Bernard Shaw or the ancient greek playwrites Aeschylus and Sophocles without showing even the slightest hint of condescension. Said his most recent biographer, Evan Thomas:
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"He seemed so young when he died. He was young - only forty-two, a year younger than JFK had been upon his election as the second youngest president in the nation's history. But Robert Kennedy somehow seemed younger, more boyish. With his buck teeth and floppy hair and shy gawkiness, he sometimes came across like an awkward teenager. At other times, he was almost childlike in his wonder and curiosity."
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He also had the political courage to tell the American people the hard and bitter truths they would have preferred to ignore. During the ill-fated campaign of 1968, during a question and answer session after a speech, a smug member of a mostly college-age audience sarcastically asked the Senator just who he thought was going to pay for all of these of these proposed programs of his. Kennedy looked the guy dead in the eye and said, "You are."
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They just don't make Democrats like that anymore, do they?
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Like all great men, he was riddled with contradictions. This son of privilege - who while growing up had never had even casual contact with poor people or minority groups - would become their most passionate, vocal advocate in a Senate crammed to the rafters with rich, White men. A very serious and introspective man, he was also in possession of a riotous sense of humor. This champion of freedom would begin his political career as a legal advisor to Senator Joseph R. McCarthy. His role as Attorney General in John F. Kennedy's White House would alternate between being the president's attack dog/enforcer, to being the gentle voice of his conscience. Although "ruthless", there were still in his personality the faint remnants of the alter boy he had been as a child. Jack was Joe's son; Bobby was Rose's. The differences in personality between the two brothers may be summed up in their choice of friends: Jack's great buddy was Frank Sinatra; Bobby's was Andy Williams. That speaks volumes.
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November 22, 1963 would change him forever. His faith shaken, his friend Charles Spalding would remember hearing his sobbing voice from behind the closed door of a White House bedroom, mournfully imploring, "Why, God, why?" In the months to follow, he would seem to many like a ghost of what he had once been. It was at this time that he began to devour philosophical and theological texts, desperately trying to come to terms with and make sense of the tragedy that had befallen himself and the entire country. It was only in March of 1965, when he became the first human being to reach the top of the 13,900 foot mountain that the Canadian government had rechristened, Mount Kennedy, that he was able to accept the loss. In a moment filled with emotion and symbolism, after walking alone up the last fifty yards and reaching mountain's summit, the party of professional climbers who had accompanied him, saw him drop to his knees and make the sign of the cross. The burden had been lifted.
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Eight months later he would be elected as Senator from the State of New York. This was the beginning of his most visible and prolific period as spokesman of America's poor and dispossessed. He literally became the conscience of the nation, visiting the most poverty-ridden slums and farm worker dwellings - not only in New York but all over the country. He was trying to awaken his fellow countrymen and women to the fact that this situation just should not exist in the richest land in the world. Black people - millions of them - saw him as their last, best hope. Indeed, it has been remarked that Kennedy could talk to mostly Black audiences and mostly White audiences with equal credibility. Nobody even tries to do that anymore! Like the suffering endured by FDR while battling polio almost half a century earlier, his deep sorrow following Jack's murder had instilled in him a stronger empathy for the suffering of others. His desire to remake the United States into the country described by Thomas Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence, a nation where "all men are created equal" was as real as his unashamed love of America itself. And if he sometimes compromised for reasons of temporary political expediency, he was as incorruptible as the rising moon. He never pandered to fear or tried to appeal to the worst instincts palpable in so many Americans. When he spoke to people, he spoke up to them - as intelligent human beings - summoning the better angels of their nature. No one does that anymore either.
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It is hard if not impossible to accurately gauge what was lost on that long ago, dark and hideous night in Los Angeles. To think where we might have gone but for the bullet of one deranged and confused mad man. A second Kennedy administration (which would have ended on January 20, 1977) would definitely have prevented eight years of Nixon and Watergate and might very well have prevented the dawning of the insane right wing era that began exactly four years later with the inauguration of Ronald Reagan - and has continued for twenty-seven years - an era which has ruined a country that used to be a nice place in which to live. We are a better people because, for one brief shining moment, Bobby Kennedy walked among us. Think how much better off we'd be today had he been allowed to stick around.
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On the night of August 28, 1964, at the Democratic Convention in Atlantic City, Robert F. Kennedy was greeted by the delegates with a thundering ovation that lasted almost a half an hour. When the crowd finally calmed down, he paid tribute to his late, martyred brother, dead only nine months. Quoting Shakespeare in a passage from Romeo and Juliet, what he said that evening resonates across the decades. It might also be said for Bobby himself:
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When he shall die,
Take him and cut him out in little stars,
And he will make the face of Heaven so fine,
That all the world will be in love with night,
And pay no worship to the garish sun.
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Tom Degan
Goshen, NY
tomdegan@frontiernet.net
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SUGGESTED READING:
Robert Kennedy: His Life
by Evan Thomas

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