We Miss You Bobby Kennedy
1968 began on a bad note. Things went from bad to worse.
The Tet Offensive kicked off the night of January 30 with over 100 simultaneous attacks against American targets throughout South Viet Nam. The offensive was intended to inspire an uprising against the Americans, who were in disarray at home. Eugene McCarthy had already launched a campaign against President Johnson on the single issue of bringing the troops home. General Westmoreland was predicting outright victory with light at the end of the tunnel, but he thought he needed another 200,000 troops in addition to the half million US troops already in country. The Tet attacks were strategically unsuccessful, mopped up in 24 hours, but the impact was more far reaching. An already skittish nation watched on the evening news as the US Embassy in Saigon came under enemy fire. A famous photo of the execution of a bound Viet Cong soldier at point blank range by the commander of the South Vietnamese police added fuel to the fire--a doubtful country sensed chaos, defeat, and wasted lives.
In Khe Sahn the Marines were taking a beating. The Doors and Jim Morrison played in the background. I had mono and a terrible sinus infection. I struggled day to day to stay awake in class, practice gymnastics, and compete on the weekends. I was reading Grapes of Wrath and Catcher in the Rye, A Farewell to Arms, and, most notably, James Joyce's, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.
Two months after Tet, a disheartened President Johnson announced he would not seek his party's nomination. Richard Nixon and Robert Kennedy declared for the Presidential race.
In early April, Martin Luther King was shot and killed in Memphis. On April 4, Robert Kennedy delivered one of his finest speeches in Indianapolis. He informed a mostly black crowd of King's assassination, then he urged his listeners to seek reconciliation as a way to avoid future losses. There were no riots in Indianapolis that night.
In the weeks that followed, Kennedy's run for the presidency took wings. Like many others, I was captured by his message and charisma. We could provide health care for everyone. We could provide assure than no one went to bed hungry. We could heal old wounds and disengage from Viet Nam. There was hope and optimism.
On the evening of June 5, I stayed up to watch the returns from California. I went to bed believing Bobby was likely to be the Democratic candidate that fall. I was still in bed the next morning when my mother came to my door and told me the news. Like so many others, I was in denial. I couldn't comprehend it.
After my mother left for work, I walked over to my friend, Kevin White's house. We spent the day in a fog, smoking cigarettes and alternately listening to Blonde on Blonde and what we gould glean from the news. The world seemed out of control. Bobby had been one voice of compassion and reason in the craziness. Now he was gone. And we sensed it, we knew it. Nothing would ever be the same.
It wasn't. The country burned in race riots that summer. The armies of the night convened in Chicago. Riveted before the TV set, we watched as the contenders inside the Democratic convention vied for power, yet were powerless to put an end to the brutality taking place not a stone throw's away on the streets. We sensed that this would not have come to pass, if Bobby had been alive.
Later that year, Richard Nixon was elected and the politics of fear and represssion and deception held sway.
Racial tension continued to build, economic disparity grew, more young men died in rice paddies for no discernible reason. The country was slowly being torn apart.
We knew, in our hearts, things would have been different if Bobby had remained among us.
I'm sure they would have been better.
I believe he could have defeated Richard Nixon. He could have ended the war with honor. He could guided the country to a new vision of racial and class equality. He could have saved us from FBI and CIA excesses and the seeds of failed policies abroad.
I believe that. I do.
Gary
2 Comments
Email Article to Friend
Reader Comments (2)
It also was the time of a gradual metamorphasis for me, both politically and socially. Until 1967, I was a hawk on the Vietnam War, actually visualizing myself as a fighter pilot. But as 1968 began, the futility and arrogance of the war became evident to me. Sen. Eugene McCarthy successfully showed that Lyndon Johnson was vulnerable on the war during the New Hampshire primary and I became a "McCarthy Kid". I still have that button around somewhere.
Ironically, I saw two of the events that define 1968 for many people, the assisinations, much differently than many people. My appreciation for Dr. King has developed since his death. At the time, I was much more upset about the death of Jim Clark, the legendary race driver, a couple of days later.
On June 5 I had worked the 2nd shift at FuMetCo, the company that employed hillbilly ex-cons to make aluminum skin for RV's and Mobile Homes. I don't think I even turned on the TV when I came home that night, just showered and went to bed.
It was the next morning, when my mother's clock radio came on that I was jolted with her waking my father with "Wake up Don, they shot Bobby Kennedy!" Of course we were glued to the television for the rest of the day. He lived through that day, although it became increasingly evident as the day went on that his death in the wee hours of the next day was inevitable.
I am an admitted fan of the Kennedys. Despite the irrespnsible behavior of some family members at times, in my mind, they will always be Americas "First Family".
But as a supporter of McCarthy, I had struggled that spring with what I saw as the "johhny-come-lately" entry into the campaign by Bobby. It seemed as if he had waited for McCarthy to test the waters before he committed to taking on Johnson. Having said that, I was coming to the realization that he represented the countries best chance to end the war. When he died, I felt that it had to assure the nomination to McCarthy... it just had to. Events that summer would prove otherwise.
I can still recall the images of the funeral train slowly (because of the unexpected crowds lining the tracks) making it's way to Washington D.C. for his burial. Commentators compared it with the Lincoln funeral train and I could imagine the similarites. They affected many people the same way.
Of course we all know what followed, the riots, the Chicago Convention, and the subsequent loss by Hubert Humphrey to Nixon in the fall election.
It's hard to imagine the world, had he lived. I'm not sure how he would have managed the exit from Vietnam, but we certainly would have left, and would not have invaded Cambodia in doing so. Many of the events that have shaped our lives would have never happened. It's fantasy to imagine a world without Kent State and Watergate just to name a couple.
We have seen and lived the world without Bobby. I'm like you, I would have liked to have tried it with him.
The Baltimore Sun just had a good article about Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, who was the Maryland Lieutenant Governor here for some years. She told how her father impressed the importance of public service on all of the children, in a most passionate way. His passion is what I remember. And compassion, for those who needed it most.
His assassination was, for me, a last straw at the time. I pretty much withdrew, waiting for the world to become a bit more sane. I still wait, come to think of it.
The Washington Post had a photo of the whole family, in 1966, taken on the grounds of Hickory Hill, their family home in McLean, VA, outside of Washington. Bobby, Ethel, and all but one of the children, lined up by age and size. I studied it and studied it. There was something very vital in the picture, and in how they all related to each other in the camera.
On a trip to San Diego, I visited the last place Kennedy had spoken before being in LA. The El Cortez, in downtown San Diego. Went to the ballroom, just to be there. I also wanted to go to the Ambassador in LA, but we ran out of time and energy.
We will never know how it would have turned out. I think it would have turned out better than it did, though. Humphrey was a turnoff, and Nixon was loathsome.
Which by some circuitous route brings us to 2008. I'll stop there, for the benefit of all...