Tag Archives: RFK

national news, political news

Getting ready for a pile of negativity

Clinton-and-Trump

I am steeling myself for what I know is coming.

The election of the next president of the United States is going to be an ugly, nasty affair.

It’s a function, I suppose, of anger among the electorate. I am having difficulty processing the reasons why folks are so angry.

My larger sense, though, is that the negativity will be fueled by quality of the two major-party nominees.

Republican Donald J. Trump will be nominated first. This coming week in Cleveland, delegates will gather to send this fellow off to do battle with the Democratic nominee.

Hillary Rodham Clinton will receive the Democrats’ nomination.

Both of these individuals will pack a large load of negative baggage onto the campaign trail. Trump’s unfavorable rating is the 70 percent range; Clinton’s is in the high 50s, low 60s.

So, with little to commend these folks’ positive attributes, they and their campaigns are likely to resort to extreme negativity to tell us all why the other candidate is so repugnant.

I came of age in the late 1960s. I remember a time when the nation was torn to shreds by political unrest. The Vietnam War was going badly. My first political hero, Robert F. Kennedy, was gunned down while he campaigned for the presidency … two months after an assassin killed Martin Luther King Jr. The year was 1968 and it will go down as the most tumultuous year of the final half of the 20th century.

RFK used to consider politics to be a “noble profession” and I bought into it. My belief in its nobility, though, has taken plenty of hits over the years. Money has corrupted the system. We keep seeing the same faces and hearing the same voices every four years.

And that brings us to this campaign.

Are the major-party candidates driven by their grand vision? Will they offer us chapter-and-verse dissertations on why they represent the very best of Americans?

I am not holding my breath.

If my fears prove to be true — that Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton will drive voters to stay home rather than having their voices heard at the ballot box — then we can lay a good chunk of the blame at the negativity we will have heard.

Let’s all get ready for what we know is coming.

national news

RFK’s wisdom worth hearing once again

A friend of mine put this video out on social media this afternoon.

He asked those in his network to be quiet for a few minutes and listen to it.

I heard Sen. Robert Kennedy make these remarks in real time, when it happened in April 1968. Indeed, Sen. Kennedy was the rare politician who could speak the kind of blunt truth that we all needed to hear — even if in times when we might not want to hear it.

I want to share my friend’s video here.

I also want to echo his admonition. Take a few minutes and listen quietly to what this politician had to say during an earlier time of national grief.

 

national news, political news

Bernie’s out … but not entirely

SandersSecurity0011466195770.wdp

Bernie Sanders’ campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination is over.

He won’t be nominated at the party convention in Philadelphia. Hillary Rodham Clinton will get the nod and will march off to campaign against Republican nominee, who at this moment appears to be Donald J. Trump.

But …

Why does Sen. Sanders still have all those Secret Service agents shadowing him as he returns to work in the U.S. Senate?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/an-expensive-reminder-that-sanders-still-hasnt-dropped-out-his-secret-service-detail/2016/06/19/a3f717c6-3555-11e6-8ff7-7b6c1998b7a0_story.html

I get that the Secret Service protection won’t break the federal bank. It does seem a bit “lavish,” though, for him to continue to have the protection.

Sure, he’s entitled to it. President Lyndon Johnson issued an executive order back in 1968 that provides this protection for presidential candidates. He acted in the wake of Sen. Robert F. Kennedy’s murder in Los Angeles on the night he won the California Democratic primary.

Sanders has sought to portray himself as a common man, someone who eschews big-money speaking fees.

But the presence of the Secret Service and all the bells and whistles the protection brings tells a bit of a different story.

According to the Washington Post: “There’s no denying that some of the accoutrements that come with campaigns can be intoxicating,” said Jim Manley, a longtime Democratic operative who is supporting Clinton.

Sanders won’t “suspend” his campaign because he still wants to have a say at the party convention this summer. I understand the reason for his staying in … even though his candidacy has been reduced to symbolism.

Does he still need the Secret Service protection? Really?

I think not.

It’s over, Sen. Sanders.

business news, national news, political news

Trump’s wealth becomes issue of interest

donald

Does it really matter how much wealth Donald J. Trump has acquired?

Should voters really care? Should we concern ourselves with all of this?

Under normal circumstances, probably not. But here’s the thing: The presumptive Republican Party presidential nominee has been making his wealth an issue all along the primary campaign trail.

He brags about his “world-class business.” He boasts about how he built his company from scratch … although that’s not true. He shows off his opulent mansions.

http://www.politico.com/story/2016/05/how-much-is-trump-worth-223329

We’re hearing now that Trump’s net worth is around $10 billion. No one has ever believed he has that kind of dough laying around. Trump filed a 104-page financial disclosure form — and he even bragged about that, calling it the largest such disclosure form in history.

As Politico reports: “Many of his assets and liabilities are simply too large — reaching far above the top disclosure threshold on the filing — for their value to be captured in the report. Trump, for instance, reported at least $315 million in liabilities on the form, many of which are loans and mortgages on his properties. The forms cover Trump’s last 17 months of financial activity.”

Where is all this going? I am not entirely clear, but ultimately it’s going to end up with discussion and debate about Trump’s tax returns, which he still has yet to release.

You see, this is what happens when the candidate makes a big deal of his material holdings. It mushrooms into realms that under normal circumstances wouldn’t necessarily be of voters’ concerns.

Voters knew that the Kennedy family was wealthy. The Kennedy men who ran for the nation’s highest public office — John Kennedy, Robert Kennedy and Ted Kennedy — didn’t make it an issue. Nelson Rockefeller’s family had acquired immense wealth as well. Rocky didn’t dwell on it, either.

Trump, though, makes his wealth an issue all … the … time.

I’m more interested in debating Trump’s views on the whole array of issues that should be front and center.

 

national news, political news

GOP walks tightrope with Trump at top of ballot

Republican hopeful Kelly Ayotte, former Attorney General of the State of New Hampshire, of Nashua, at a debate at Franklin Pierce University in Rindge, N.H., Tuesday, Aug. 31, 2010. The Republican hopefuls are running for the United States Senate seat being vacated by Sen. Judd Gregg, R-N.H. (AP Photo/Cheryl Senter)

You’ve heard the phrase, no doubt, of “a distinction without a difference.”

How does a politician “support” another politician without “endorsing” that individual?

This is one of the myriad dilemmas facing Republican pols across the nation as the party gets ready to nominate a certifiable huckster as its next nominee for president of the United States.

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/05/08/us/politics/trump-endorsements-congress-republicans-gop.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=b-lede-package-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news

I refer to Donald J. Trump as the huckster.

Some leading Republican politicians, though, are seeking to hedge their bets in occasionally awkward manners.

Consider the statement of U.S. Sen. Kelly Ayotte, the GOP senator from New Hampshire, who said she can “support” Trump but cannot “endorse” him.

Ayotte is facing a potentially difficult re-election effort as Democrats likely will send Gov. Jean Shaheen against her. Ayotte can’t take the full plunge by endorsing Trump but, by golly, she’s going to support him.

A distinction without a difference?

It looks that way to me.

Other leading Republicans are walking away from Trump. Still others are offering tepid support. Sure, some have endorsed the hotel mogul and reality TV celebrity; former campaign foes New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, who once called Trump “unfit” for the presidency, and former Texas Gov. Rick Perry, who once called Trump a “cancer on conservatism” have endorsed him.

It’s the Ayotte caveat, though, that I find most intriguing.

I’ve been watching politics for nearly 40 years. I studied political science in college. I became engaged in the presidential election process starting around 1968, when I shook Sen. Robert Kennedy’s hand at a chance meeting one week before an assassin robbed us all of a chance to see if RFK could be elected president.

This truly is the first time I’ve witnessed such intraparty reticence to clutch the coattails of the presumed party presidential nominee.

But it’s there. It’s real.

Sure, Trump has appealed to millions of Americans who claim to be “angry” with politics as usual. This clown “tells it like it is,” supporters tell us, while they ignore — or laugh off — the abject crassness of his rhetoric and the tastelessness of his insults.

Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, another former primary campaign foe, said it well: “I just really believe that the Republican Party has been conned here, and this guy is not a reliable conservative Republican.”

Just today, on “Meet the Press,” Trump said he would consider raising taxes on wealthy Americans, which by my way of thinking runs utterly counter to standard Republican Party tax principles.

This is the problem facing Republicans across the country as they ponder their own political futures. How do they run with someone who says whatever pops into his head?

Or do they seek to split hairs as finely as they can by “supporting” him without “endorsing” him?

It is tough to be a Republican these days.

 

national news, political news

Not exactly a repeat of ’68 in this campaign

RFK

Those talking heads are comparing the anger we’re hearing at Donald J. Trump’s campaign rallies to what we heard 48 years ago when that year’s presidential campaign turned really ugly at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago.

I beg to differ.

Yes, the convention turned into a bloodbath. Anti-Vietnam War protesters stormed the streets outside the convention hall and battled with police. Reporters and delegates were beaten up on the convention floor.

But prior that tragic event, we heard at least one candidate seek to speak to our better angels, to try to quell the anger.

Robert Francis Kennedy was that man. He had entered the Democratic campaign relatively late. He launched a frenetic, mad dash for his party’s nomination. President Johnson bowed out. Sen. Eugene McCarthy’s young legions were rising up against the “establishment.” Vice President Hubert Humphrey was in the race, too.

Then, as columnist Mike Barnicle notes, tragedy struck in Memphis, Tenn. The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was shot to death.

Sen. Kennedy got word of it. He climbed aboard a truck bed in Indianapolis and told the largely African-American crowd what had just happened. They gasped.

He went on.

“What we need in the United States is not division; what we need in the United States is not hatred; what we need in the United States is not violence or lawlessness, but love and wisdom and compassion toward one another and a feeling of justice toward those who still suffer within our country, whether they be white or they be black.

“So I shall ask you tonight to return home, to say a prayer for the family of Martin Luther King, that’s true, but more importantly to say a prayer for our own country, which all of us love—a prayer for understanding and that compassion of which I spoke.”

Many cities erupted in violence that night. Indianapolis did not.

I watched that campaign unfold in the spring and early summer of 1968 before I was inducted into the Army, at which time my own life changed forever.

Not one time did I hear a candidate in either party exhort his supporters to punch protesters in the face. Nor did I hear any candidate offer to pay an assailant’s legal fees after being arrested for sucker-punching a demonstrator.

Sure, we were an angry nation back in 1968. We had reason to be worried. A bloody war in Asia was going badly and many Americans wanted an end to that conflict.

It came to a head at the Chicago convention that year.

One reason for the violence was that the man who sought to tell us the truth about our anger and sought to offer solutions to ending it himself was gunned down in that Los Angeles hotel kitchen.

Robert Kennedy’s death came nearly two months to the day after the night he stood on that truck bed and offered words of consolation and healing.

 

entertainment news, national news, political news

Times change, and so do political party dynamics

will rogers

Someone once asked the late, legendary humorist Will Rogers about his political affiliation.

“I don’t belong to an organized political party,” Rogers reportedly answered. “I’m a Democrat.”

Ba-da-boom!

My hunch is that the same answer today could be given as it regards the Republican Party.

The GOP is in a state of chaos. It doesn’t know how to handle the emergence of a reality TV star/real estate mogul as a serious candidate for the Republican Party’s presidential nomination.

Donald J. Trump delivered a serious wedgie to the Republican Party “establishment” Tuesday night with his win in the New Hampshire primary. As the story linked to this blog illustrates, the GOP brass is looking for answers to coping with this guy.

He’s insulted his way to the top of the heap. He has demonstrated — by my way of thinking — zero philosophical grounding. If you’re looking for anything resembling a sophisticated answer to the myriad issues facing the candidates for president, do not expect it to come from Trump. Instead, you can expect a sound bite. A laugh line. A stream-of-consciousness rant about this and/or that.

But hey, whatever works.

It’s working for Trump and the Republican Party is grasping for ways to derail this guy.

Forty-plus years ago, the Democrats were the party in chaos. It’s liberal wing was fighting with the establishment — I suppose much like it is today — but the establishment didn’t have an answer for the insurgencies led by the likes of Sens. Eugene McCarthy, Robert F. Kennedy and George McGovern. The issue then was the Vietnam War.

The issue today is much more complex than the cost of young American lives on a foreign battlefield.

There appears to be a lot of anger among voters, which honestly baffles me. Then again, it takes a lot to make me mad.

These things do run in cycles. I don’t know if the Republican Party high command will find the answers it seeks while trying to cope with Trump. Nor do I know if whatever it is that’s driving Trump will win the day and change the party forever.

All I know for certain is that the once-chaotic Democratic Party — which, yes, has its own conflict underway — is looking peaceful in comparison to what’s roiling the Republicans.

 

national news, political news

Sanders’ ‘revolution’ might be overstated

revolution

Sen. Bernie Sanders is now using the word “revolution” to describe the nature of his bid to become president of the United States.

He’s leading Hillary Clinton in every poll there is in New Hampshire, which I think is filling the Vermont senator’s head with visions of overinflated grandeur.

It’s not that his Democratic support is fake. It’s real. But let’s cool the “revolution” talk for a bit.

Three presidential campaigns of the late 20th century also were labeled “revolutions” in some quarters. How did they do?

1964: Sen. Barry Goldwater of Arizona took the Republican Party presidential nomination by storm, defeating “establishment” candidates, such as New York Gov. Nelson Rockefeller in a wild primary fight. He went on to lose the general election that year to President Lyndon Baines Johnson in a historic landslide. LBJ, of course, traded a good bit on the legacy of his slain predecessor, John Kennedy, and vowed to continue pursuing JFK’s unfinished agenda.

1968: Just four years later, the Vietnam War caused another revolution. LBJ’s popularity had gone south. Democrats looked for an alternative. They turned to one in Sen. Eugene McCarthy of Minnesota, who stunned LBJ with a stronger-than-expected showing in the New Hampshire primary. In came another anti-war candidate, Sen. Robert F. Kennedy of New York, brother of the murdered president and a political hero to many Americans — including yours truly. Vice President Hubert Humphrey, another “establishment” candidate, won the nomination, but then lost to Republican Richard Nixon by a narrow margin that fall.

1972: Let’s call this one the Anti-Vietnam War Revolution 2.0. The flag bearer this time would be U.S. Sen. George McGovern of South Dakota, who beat the party “establishment” led by Sen. Ed Muskie of Maine to win the nomination. McGovern drew big crowds to rallies, too, just like Sanders. Did they equate to votes that November? Ummm, no. President Nixon won 49 out of 50 states and buried McGovern’s “revolution” under the landslide.

Yes, some “revolutions” succeed. Ronald Reagan’s landslide victory in 1980 is one. Barack Obama’s election in 2008 could be considered another one. But they required extraordinary circumstances. The Iranian hostage crisis hurt President Carter grievously in voters’ minds in ’80 and the economic free-fall of 2008 helped lift Sen. Obama into the White House eight years ago.

Sanders might think he’s carrying the torch for another revolution. Then again, Republicans such as Donald Trump, Ted Cruz and perhaps even Marco Rubio might want to say the same thing . . . for entirely different reasons.

I just want to remind the revolutionaries out there that the political establishment doesn’t get to be so entrenched and powerful by being made up of pushovers or patsies.

 

 

national news, political news

Still a carpetbagger

CHEYENNE, WY - JULY 17: Wyoming Senate candidate Liz Cheney holds a news conference at the Little America Hotel and Resort in Cheyenne, Wyoming on July 17, 2013. Cheney, the daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney, will run against longtime incumbent Sen. Mike Enzi (R-WY). Cheney launched her campaign yesterday following Enzi's announcement that he will run for a fourth term. (Photo by Marc Piscotty/Getty Images)

Liz Cheney didn’t get it. She didn’t learn her lesson.

Cheney is the daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney. She once thought about running for the U.S. Senate from Wyoming, which her dad once represented while serving in the U.S. House of Representatives until he was named defense secretary during the administration of President George H.W. Bush.

She ran into this problem, though. Actual residents of Wyoming accused Liz Cheney of being a carpetbagger, someone who had not lived in the state since she was a little girl.

She has lived in Virginia her entire adult life.

Liz Cheney dropped out of the race for the Senate.

Now, though, she wants back in as a Wyoming politician. She has declared her intention to run for the state’s only House seat.

Cheney posted her announcement on her Facebook page.

Oops! She forgot to delete a reference on the Facebook post that revealed a tiny detail. It contained the place from where she issued the post: Alexandria, Va.

Check it out.

She still lives there. Cheney, though, did remove the reference to Alexandria.

Will this bring about more carpetbagger accusations? It might.

I know what you’re thinking. What’s the big deal? Other “carpetbaggers” have been elected to public office. Hillary Clinton moved to New York and then got elected to the Senate from that state in 2000. My favorite carpetbagger was the late Robert F. Kennedy, who also got elected to the Senate from New York in 1964; he, too, faced the same accusation.

Still, Liz Cheney needs to prepare to answer the questions about where she lives and whether she really knows much about the state she wants to represent on Capitol Hill.

 

 

national news, political news

RFK spoke of gun control … in Roseburg!

RFK's last speech

This story freaked me out when it became known.

The late U.S. Sen. Robert F. Kennedy — who had some intimate knowledge of gun violence — made some remarks on May 27, 1968. His topic? Gun control.

RFK was responding to a sign in the crowd about the right to “keep and bear arms.”

He said: “With all the violence and murder and killings we’ve had in the United States, I think you will agree that we must keep firearms from people who have no business with guns or rifles.”

Sen. Kennedy was not advocating disarming Americans. He wasn’t calling for the feds to take people’s firearms away. He was speaking as one whose own brother, President John F. Kennedy, was killed by a man with a rifle in Dallas less than five years earlier.

The place where he made the remarks is in the news again. He spoke in Roseburg, Ore., as he campaigned for the presidency of the United States. Today, Roseburg is reeling from the shock of the massacre at Umpqua Community College by a maniac who then killed himself.

Late the next day — it was nearly midnight, as I recall — RFK pulled into a Portland restaurant next door to where I was working. I ran across the parking lot, extended a piece of paper and a pen to the senator and asked him for his autograph.

He signed the paper, “RF Kennedy,” and then went inside.

The next day, Oregon primary voters delivered him a stunning defeat when they cast most of their Democratic Party votes for Sen. Gene McCarthy.

RFK trudged off to California, won that state’s primary the next week — and then was murdered by Sirhan B. Sirhan in the kitchen of the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles.