The 40th anniversary of the death of Sen. Robert F. Kennedy has come at a time many Americans see in the nomination of Sen. Barack Obama a revival of RFK?s charismatic call to service as a presidential candidate in 1968.
That similarity clearly was a factor in the decision of key members of the Kennedy family, led by Sen. Ted Kennedy, to endorse Obama well before his nomination was assured. The youngest Kennedy brother, now facing a personal health challenge himself, has never over those 40 years wavered as a torch-bearer for the work of his departed siblings, and has continued in a sense in his conspicuous support of Obama.
Ted Kennedy, as were his older brothers, is esteemed as a fiery political orator. But no words of his have been more memorable than those in his simple eulogy for Robert Kennedy at St. Patrick?s Cathedral on a clear June morning in 1968:
“My brother need not be idealized, or enlarged in death beyond what he was in life; to be remembered simply as a good and decent man, who saw wrong and tried to right it, who saw suffering and tried to heal it, saw war and tried to stop it.”
The references were to Robert Kennedy?s deep and demonstrated concern for the victims of poverty and injustice at home, and his outspoken efforts to end the American involvement in the Vietnam War. Ted Kennedy over the past 40 years has carried on the same sorts of missions, but hardly alone within the Kennedy family.
All of Robert Kennedy?s own children have also borne their father?s torch in the same regard, and none more than his oldest daughter, Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, a former lieutenant governor of Maryland. She has also been a strong advocate of women?s rights, who incidentally supported Sen. Hillary Clinton in the competition for the Democratic nomination just ended.
The 40th anniversary of the RFK assassination has been marked by quiet retrospectives at the John F. Kennedy Library outside of Boston and at the Newseum here in Washington. Both were filled with nostalgic reminiscences of the Kennedy who rose to prominence as his older brother?s presidential campaign manager, then served as arguably the nation?s most aggressive attorney general and finally ran for president himself.
I first encountered Robert Kennedy in the mid-1950s when he was a Senate committee lawyer at John F. Kennedy?s elbow in investigations of labor racketeering. My first recollections were of him as a tough, often abrasive prosecutor as well as a tenacious political protectorof his older brother?s interests and ambitions. During the West Virginia Democratic primary in 1960, I saw firsthand his driving and decisive management of the JFK presidential campaign, but mostly from a distance.
After John Kennedy?s assassination in 1963, Robert Kennedy was a shattered and withdrawn figure for a time, until he elected to pick up the torch, ran and won a Senate seat from New York. In the process, he became a politician in his own right, emerging more than his late brother with his heart on his sleeve, as he witnessed at closer quarters the inequities and injustices visited upon disadvantaged fellow Americans.
RFK?s campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1968 began amid public yearnings for a return to Camelot. But it soon moved out of the shadow of his revered brother, blossoming into a highly emotional crusade with a Pied Piper quality that beguiled millions of young and old voters alike.
As a reporter covering that 1968 campaign, I came to see the sharp edges of the younger Senate aide and JFK protector round off, making him a more visibly compassionate advocate who earned the sort of wildly enthusiastic following now identified with Obama.
Minutes after midnight on June 5 in the kitchen of the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, I was only a few feet away when the shots rang out that felled Robert Kennedy. It was a scene that has been seared in my mind ever since, along with memory of the rare emotions he aroused in an earlier troubled time, cut short by the tragedy of his death.
Jules Witcover, a Baltimore Examiner columnist, is syndicated by Tribune Media Services. He has covered national affairs from Washington, D.C., for more than 50 years and is the author of 11 books, and co-author of five others, on American politics and history.
