Gather round, kiddies, and I’ll tell you a story of a Bobby Kennedy of long ago, one who is apparently directly related, but only by blood, to the Bobby Kennedy you see before you today.
This first Robert F. Kennedy was of the Camelot variety, not to be confused with the later Robert F. Kennedy Jr., whose campaign puts him far closer to the Spamalot version of the story.
The first was the rare politician who — though he began his political career as the ruthless younger brother of the Kennedy who would be president — emerged as a symbol of hope, remembered as a rich man from a rich family who would come to be an icon for the poor and the dispossessed, who became a martyr to the causes of peace and justice.
That’s in part Kennedy mythology — which lives unto this day — and it’s in part American history as it actually happened.
The second Bobby Kennedy, born to the family with the magic name and would-be heir to the political dynasty, began a career as an environmental lawyer who emerged as an anti-vax crackpot and conspiracy theorist who, like his father, is running for president. But whose independent run — lowlighted by Kennedy Jr.’s recent comment that Joe Biden could be seen as a greater danger to democracy than Donald Trump — could well result in Trump’s return to the White House.
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It’s no wonder that nearly every Kennedy family member has denounced his candidacy, calling it “perilous for our country.”
And even though some polling indicates that Kennedy — who is consistently scoring in double digits in a three-way race — would take votes from both candidates, it’s no surprise that most of the big-money people supporting him are Trump allies, like the billionaire, Timothy Mellon. They certainly remember Ralph Nader’s role in the Bush-Gore election.
Let’s just say the first Bobby Kennedy was different. Those who knew him tell of how that Kennedy — the one who worked as a young man for Sen. Joe McCarthy; the one who was the attorney general who would order a wiretap on Martin Luther King Jr., after the March on Washington — became the Bobby Kennedy we remember in the years after his brother was assassinated.
We saw that version of Bobby Kennedy in Indianapolis on the April 4, 1968, night when King was shot and killed in Memphis.
Kennedy was running for president, like his brother before him. Clean Gene McCarthy had entered the race first against the Democratic incumbent, Lyndon Johnson, who decided not to run again after a strong McCarthy showing in New Hampshire. Kennedy then entered the race, splitting the antiwar vote, in what seemed to McCarthy supporters as opportunistic.
And then there was the night Kennedy came to Indianapolis, where he would hold a rally in the heavily Black section of town, against the advice of local authorities. Kennedy knew King had died, but most of those in attendance knew only that the civil rights leader, who had been in Memphis in support of a sanitation workers’ strike, had been shot.
Kennedy announced King’s death, and many in the crowd screamed in disbelief. In an extemporaneous speech, Kennedy told the crowd it was more than fair to wonder “what kind of nation we are.” But he also offered this:
“For those of you who are black and are tempted to be filled with hatred and distrust at the injustice of such an act, against all white people, I can only say that I feel in my own heart the same kind of feeling. I had a member of my family killed, but he was killed by a white man. But we have to make an effort in the United States, we have to make an effort to understand, to go beyond these rather difficult times.”
On a night when riots broke out in dozens of cities, Indianapolis stayed calm. In the park where Kennedy spoke from the back of a flatbed truck, there is a statue of the two slain leaders, reaching out to one another.
It was just two months after that speech that Bobby Kennedy would be shot and killed. If not for that tragedy, who knows what might have happened next? What we do know is that Richard Nixon was elected president.
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And what of RFK Jr.?
You may remember his Super Bowl ad, which was a remake of a famous JFK ad from 1960, with the same music and same format, but with Robert Kennedy’s Jr.’s face superimposed on his uncle’s. The copy was in equal parts stunning and appalling.
As Robert Shrum, a longtime Kennedy adviser put it, “RFK and Teddy went out of their way not to exploit JFK’s memory and loss. I almost fell out of my chair.”
Kennedy Jr. would apologize for the ad — you know, to anyone who might have been offended. And later, in case you took that apology seriously, you might note that Kennedy named Nicole Shanahan as his running mate. Shanahan, a former Democrat and still a very rich person, was a major funder behind the Super Bowl ad.
It’s pretty clear why Kennedy is drawing such attention. You can start with the name. You can move on to the notion, backed by many polls, that a significant number of Americans are unhappy with both Biden and Trump. You can add the anti-vaxxer sentiment, which has developed into a strong undercurrent in America, starting with the bogus vaccines-to-autism link and showing up today with the COVID-skeptic anti-vaxxers.
And he’s counting on the fact that many Americans will believe nearly anything — big lies, little lies, crazy lies. I picked up this NPR story that listed just a few of the conspiracy theories Kennedy has promulgated over the years: Wi-Fi causes cancer and “leaky brain.” Antidepressants are a major cause of school shootings. Something in the water might be responsible for children becoming transgender.
It goes on and on. And in the last few days, the Kennedy campaign sent out a fundraising pitch calling some of the January 6 rioters “activists … who have been stripped of their constitutional liberties.”
Kennedy had to walk back the quote, saying it did not represent his views. But in his explanation, he did say that he would seek an investigation into “whether prosecutorial discretion was abused for political ends.”
Earlier, Kennedy had told the Washington Post that he might be open to pardoning some nonviolent January 6 offenders. Of course, it doesn’t much matter what Kennedy says about pardoning because there is no chance he could become president.
But what could happen — what those in the Biden camp fear — is that Kennedy will qualify for the ballot in enough swing states to swing the election to Trump, who calls the January 6 insurrectionists “patriots” and “hostages” and would obviously pardon many of the more than 1,000 who have been convicted for their acts that day.
That’s not the worst thing Trump would do. But whatever that worst thing might turn out to be, it’s hard to imagine that it could be a Kennedy — a son of the original Bobby Kennedy — who helped make it possible.
Mike Littwin has been a columnist for too many years to count. He has covered Dr. J, four presidential inaugurations, six national conventions and countless brain-numbing speeches in the New Hampshire and Iowa snow. Sign up for Mike’s newsletter.
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