Tag Archives: RFK assassination

Grandpa would have been proud

I watched Donald Trump’s State of the Union speech Tuesday night.

Then I listened to some of the analysis of it. A few minutes later, I listened with equal intensity to the Democratic Party’s designated respondent to the president’s speech. A young member of Congress, Joseph P. Kennedy III, D-Mass., offered the response.

I listened to Rep. Kennedy with more than just a touch of wistfulness. The young man is the grandson of my first political idol. You’ve heard of him, too: Robert F. Kennedy.

I wrote once about an astonishing Bobby Kennedy Moment that occurred in my life. Here is what I wrote in June 2015:

A bullet changed history 47 years ago today

I have shared with you over the years I’ve written this blog about the astonishing array of public figures whose paths crossed with mine.

My brief encounter with Robert Kennedy ranks at the very top of the long list of distinguished individuals I’ve had the honor of meeting.

Get this, though: My meeting with RFK occurred one year after my graduation from high school. It happened on the eve of a 1968 presidential primary election in my home state of Oregon.

I had no possible idea in that moment that my political idol would die one week later after he scored the biggest political victory of his life. RFK had won the California Democratic primary. He thanked his supporters and then said, “On to Chicago and let’s win there.”

He never got to his party’s nominating convention in Chicago. He walked through a kitchen pantry in Los Angeles and was gunned down by Sirhan B. Sirhan.

When I saw the young man deliver his party’s response to the president’s speech last night, I only could imagine how proud he would have made the grandfather he never knew.

At least Joe Kennedy knows of the impact his grandpa had on millions of Americans — such as yours truly — who came of political age in the most turbulent of times.

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.

Biden may be channeling RFK

RFK

While continuing to ponder the idea that Vice President Joe Biden might jump into the 2016 presidential race, my mind keeps turning to another prominent Democrat from a distant era.

About two generations ago, U.S. Sen. Robert F. Kennedy straddled the fence on whether he should seek the 1968 Democratic Party presidential nomination, just as the vice president is considering it today.

In 1968, an incumbent president, Lyndon Johnson, was going to seek re-election to a second full term. He already had a challenge from Sen. Eugene McCarthy.

RFK remained on the sidelines.

Today’s front runner, Hillary Rodham Clinton, also is facing a serious challenge, from Sen. Bernie Sanders. She also is facing a possible problem of her own making, those e-mails she sent out while serving as secretary of state.

LBJ had his own headache. It was the Vietnam War.

President Johnson then ran in the New Hampshire primary and finished first — but barely. McCarthy nearly beat him.

It was then that Sen. Kennedy joined the race. LBJ dropped out. Kennedy mounted a furious and frantic campaign against McCarthy and then-Vice President Hubert Humphrey.

He won the California primary on June 5, 1968, declared “on to Chicago and let’s win there.” Then he walked into the hotel kitchen, where the assassin was waiting.

It was over in burst of gunfire.

There’s a curious parallel between then and now.

I keep wondering if Biden is waiting for Clinton to make a politically critical misstep. What if something emerges from this e-mail probe that inflicts a mortal wound on the party’s front runner?

Would he then seek the party nomination to “rescue” it from someone who cannot win the election, just as RFK sought to rescue the party from McCarthy’s insurgency and HHH’s damage caused by his support for the Vietnam War?

The vice president seems be leaning toward running. If Hillary Clinton makes a mistake that dooms her candidacy, it had better occur quickly.

The difference between 1968 and 2016 shows itself in the preparation that’s now required to get one of these campaigns off the ground.

A bullet changed history 47 years ago today

RFK's last speech

Forty-seven years ago today, I had gone to bed. It was late on a Tuesday night.

I had just watched the news about the California Democratic Party presidential primary. Sen. Robert Kennedy had just been declared the winner. I turned in and was happy about the outcome.

Right after midnight, my mother knocked on my door. “You need to come down and see this,” she said. “Something terrible has just happened.”

I dragged myself out of the sack and went downstairs and saw for myself. Someone had shot Bobby Kennedy.

The shock was palpable. No. This isn’t happening. Oh, but it did.

I was about two months away from being inducted into the Army, although I didn’t yet know it that evening. My own life was about to change dramatically.

On that night, the nation’s life changed as well.

RFK died the next day at the age of 42. Would he have been nominated by his party? Would he have been elected president? The debate has raged for 47 years ever since that terrible event in Los Angeles, but I believe the answer is “yes” to both questions.

Maybe it’s my heart overriding my head in believing RFK would have become president. Still, I can make an analytical argument that even though then-Vice President Hubert Humphrey was ahead in convention delegates at the time of the assassination, that RFK could have peeled enough of them away by selling his own candidacy as the only one capable of defeating the Republican nominee, Richard M. Nixon.

I had a fair amount of political interest back then, even though I was just a year out of high school. It was heightened beyond its already high level the week before the shooting.

The previous week the Oregon primary took place. My home state had delivered the Kennedy its first-ever political defeat when Democrats chose Sen. Eugene McCarthy over RFK.

I was working at my job at McDonald’s the night of the Oregon primary. A motorcade pulled into the lot next door in front of a fashionable Chinese restaurant. I shot a look at the figure climbing out of an open convertible. The profile that was back-lit by a lamp belonged to Robert Kennedy. I grabbed a piece of paper and a pen and ran across the lot and walked right up to the senator and  his wife, Ethel; this was before Secret Service agents surrounded presidential candidates and, indeed, it was Kennedy’s death that prompted President Johnson to issue an executive order assigning such protection to future candidates.

I told Sen. Kennedy how much I wanted him to win the presidency and that I wanted to wish him well as his campaign proceeded.

RFK signed his name to the piece of paper and then he asked me one question: “Are you old enough to vote?” I said no. With that, he turned and walked away. He didn’t say another word.

I’ll be candid. I thought at the time it was a serious insult to a young man. Perhaps if I’d anticipated the question, I would have said “yes,” even though the voting age was still 21 and I was a couple of years younger than that. Hey, what would have done, asked for ID?

I didn’t have enough snap at that moment.

Now that I’m a whole lot older, I understand better that a politician in the middle of a fight — who needs every vote he can get at the last minute — doesn’t have time to waste on someone who couldn’t help him.

Well, it all ended the next week.

Mom was right. Something “terrible” did happen that night.

And I still miss Bobby Kennedy.

 

Obama lacks a Bobby Kennedy

Texas Monthly blogger/editor Paul Burka is a smart guy whose blog I read regularly.

He says in the post linked here that Barack Obama is “on the verge” of becoming a failed president.

http://www.texasmonthly.com/burka-blog/obamas-collapse

He talks about the still-new president developing a cult of personality, which has contributed, according to Burka, the failure of the Affordable Care Act rollout and the accompanying headaches.

I agree to a point. I’m not sure Obama is yet at the brink of a failed presidency.

What I think he lacks is someone in his inner circle who’ll tell him the truth. My favorite example of that kind of individual is worth noting this week in particular as the nation marks the 50th year since the shocking murder of President John F. Kennedy.

JFK had a truth-teller in his inner circle. His name was Robert Francis Kennedy, the president’s brother, the nation’s attorney general and someone who grew enormously into a powerful political presence in his own right — until his own death at the hand of an assassin in June 1968.

Bobby Kennedy could tell the president the truth. He could tell his brother when he messed up. He could give him unvarnished counsel, speak to him in blunt terms and help steer him toward a more prudent course.

Bobby had managed his brother’s winning 1960 presidential campaign. He could play rough and tough. RFK had his enemies, chief among them were Vice President Lyndon Johnson and FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover. LBJ hated RFK and the feeling was quite mutual. Hoover made a parlor game out of digging up dirt on powerful politicians and the Kennedys were not exempted from his prying eyes and ears.

Barack Obama has professed great admiration for the 35th president. He’ll do so again this week in ceremonies marking the half-century since his predecessor’s death in Dallas. One of the things that made Kennedy an effective president was his ability to listen to the harsh truth when he needed to hear it.

Robert Kennedy gave it to him. Barack Obama needs someone like that now.