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The saddest thing about the 1968 assassination of Robert F. Kennedy was that he left 11 children fatherless, one of whom was 14-year-old Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Without question, the unimaginable, bloody trauma shattered this young man’s life. It is difficult not to feel deep empathy toward him or any child who loses their father, particularly in such a public, violent and cruel manner.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. turned to drugs, sexual craziness and lots of other behaviors that led him to where he is now. Some things he did were admirable, such as teaching and environmental work. Some things have led him to this pathetic campaign for president.
For some psychological reason, RFK Jr. has decided to inflict his trauma on the United States.
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None of his siblings support him publicly. Many of them have spoken out against this crazy candidacy, which can only serve to elect former President Donald Trump again and, in turn, make Trump’s dictatorial nightmare a daily reality for the rest of the American people, perhaps indefinitely.
RFK Jr.’s own New York state campaign director said the quiet part out loud last week in a leaked video: The ultimate goal was to ensure that President Joe Biden, a deeply decent man who accomplished a great deal for the country, would lose. The Kennedy campaign fired her, calling her a “consultant” who was coloring outside the lines.
Oh, I’d like to call BS on that, please. She said what they all think in the campaign: Biden is the enemy.
Kennedy has no chance of becoming president, ever. Between his total lack of preparation and his unsettling views on vaccines and, well, most everything, he will only be Trump’s errand boy.
In contrast, Kennedy’s father was deeply prepared for the presidency at the young age of 42.
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RFK had served as an enlisted seaman in the U.S. Navy during World War II, came home to graduate from Harvard and got a law degree at the University of Virginia. He was chief counsel on a Senate committee, ran his brother Jack’s senate and presidential campaigns and won, and then served as perhaps one of the most consequential U.S. attorneys general in history. In 1964, he was elected to the U.S. Senate from New York. By 1968, he ran a principled if last-minute campaign for president that affected a generation of Americans.
During that poignant last campaign, he said nothing crazy. He was right to call out the tragedy of Vietnam and the wealth and privilege of kids who didn’t go. In Indianapolis, he gave what many rhetoricians say is the most touching, reflective extemporaneous political speech ever after the assassination of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in April 1968.
On the 50th anniversary of RFK’s death, I hosted an event at the Sacramento Public Library. Hundreds of people showed up. RFK’s former Sacramento office staff, then in their 70s and 80s, came. One after another, people stepped up to the microphone, some emotional.
“I was 24. I was his driver in downtown San Francisco in a motorcade,” one man poignantly said, as Kennedy had no Secret Service protection, or really, any police protection. Another woman held up a battered plastic bag with an RFK-signed copy of “To Seek A Newer World,” a compendium of his speeches published before his death. And so it went with the many people who spoke. “We saw him in Modesto on the train,” things like that. It was moving.
A Paul Fusco photo from the series RFK Funeral Train was part of a 2017 exhibit, “The Train: RFK’s Last Journey,” at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.
Fifty years later, the raw emotions of Californians came out one more time in memory of Robert F. Kennedy.
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I wish Robert F. Kennedy Jr. had been there.
If he had, he might have seen that his father meant something more than a name to be traded on, like a valuable stock. Before RFK Jr.’s candidacy, the Kennedy family name still meant something, even through many public tribulations, gossip and tragedy.
Not only is RFK Jr. squandering his family’s name and birthright, which is one thing, but he could potentially take the rest of us down with him in this national psychodrama, many of whom loved and respected his father.
You probably shouldn’t wonder what his father thought about his candidacy. RFK’s father lived a short, brilliant life that moved a nation, seeking a newer world.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s newer world won’t be his vision. It will be far worse.
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It will be Donald Trump’s and his authoritarian enablers’.
Jack Ohman is a Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist and columnist.
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