Robert Kennedy whistle stop tour
This day in history in 1968 (actually it was yesterday) Robert Kennedy made a whistle-stop tour across Nebraska in his bid for the nomination for Democratic candidate for president. One of the towns he stopped in was our hometown of Ogallala.
My younger sister was a first grader at the time. Her teacher was a young Dominican sister from Boston. Sister urged the kids to get their parents to take them down to the train station to see RFK when he came through, because "...it would be history in the making. You might get to see the next president of the United States!"
Kennedy's train was due in at 7:00 am on that Saturday morning. I was seventeen at the time, and could have volunteered to take my sister. But lazy teenager that I was, I didn't. Mom could have insisted, but she took Kirsten herself. Mom was always interested in politics, though I don't think she ever voted for a Democrat. Anyway, there was quite a crowd at the train station. Little kid that she was, Kirsten couldn't see over all the grown-ups. But a man lifted her up so she could see.
"Whether whistle-stopping across rural Nebraska or rallying Black voters in North Omaha, the charismatic brother of slain President John F. Kennedy attracted big crowds everywhere he went."
"A Kennedy speechwriter later said the tour was the most successful day of the senator’s 82-day campaign — cut short by his assassination in June after he won the California primary — because he began to believe he could win. "
It was a different way of campaigning that we don't see any more.
Sadly, it was only a few weeks later when Robert Kennedy was assassinated. We'll never know how history might have been different if that hadn't happened.
It was so shocking. An exciting event that became a sad piece of history for your mother and sister. In June 68 I had just moved to DC with a college friend. We slept on the floor of my sister’s studio apartment while we looked for jobs. My sister worked for a congressman from west LA. We stayed up very late to watch election returns from the west coast and immediately saw the news from the Ambassador hotel after it happened. It was a horrible shock, just as his brother’s assassination had been. My college friend and I were also shocked when a reporter brought a young man who was at the event to the mic for an interview because he was the fiancé of one of our other friends. Neither Kennedy had a real chance to show what they could do for the country. I was a Republican then. The congressman my sister worked for was a Republican. The Republicans today are nothing like the moderate Republicans who were like my sister’s boss. The Kennedys would be seen as centrists today. Both parties have moved toward their extremes.
ReplyDeleteI am reading that Robert Kennedy, Jr. is challenging Biden for the Democratic nomination. I am also reading that other members of the Kennedy family are not supporting him, because he seemingly has wandered off into the weeds with stuff like vaccine denialism which makes him sound like more of a MAGA than a Democrat.
DeleteRobert Kennedy, Jr, is running for prez, as announced in a two-hour (??!!) speech. Would be nice to see some viable alternatives to Biden, but RFK, Jr, is a nut case.
ReplyDeleteBack in 1986 I supported Eugene McCarthy, the Democratic Senator from Minnesota who had challenged Lyndon Johnson, coming in a close second in New Hampshire. The show down was the Wisconsin primary which occurred in March.
ReplyDeleteI and a bunch of students from the University of Missouri (where I was in graduate school) campaigned in Southeastern Wisconsin the last few days of the primary. On the evening before the election, we were all invited to the home of the retired director of Yerkes Observatory which was on its campus. We listened as Lyndon Johnson withdrew from the election, and then went up to the observatory and looked at the moon through the telescope, knowing that we had just defeated an incumber president of the United States.
Kenedy, of course, entered the race after Johnson withdrew, so we were not happy with him.
Eugene McCarthy was a former professor at my college, Saint John's University in Minnesota. I was kidding people around the psychology department that since the Harvard people staffed the Kennedy administration, maybe we "Johnnies" would have jobs in the McCarthy administration.
That brief episode in political campaigning did not start a life-long trend. However, when Obama picked up the young people's vote for his first campaign, I did join it, as well as Bernie Sander's when he picked up the young people's vote. A reliving of my youth.
Recently finished reading Hunter Thompson's "Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail" about the 1972 election. Lots of buzz that year about the "youth vote," esp the 18- to 20-year-old Boomers (of which I was one) who were supposed to catapult McGovern into the White House and launch the Age of Aquarius.
DeleteBut it didn't break that way at all. Only 52 percent of newly eligible young voters voted for McGovern, and only 48 percent of those 18-29 voted for him.
Even Thompson, the eternal cynic, honestly thought that McGovern had a chance. However, a straw poll in my college dorm showed Nixon winning by about pretty wide margin, so I wasn't wholly surprised.
But the Nixon landslide was a gut punch, not so much because Nixon won, but because it was clear that so many Boomers realized they needed to get good Republican white collar jobs to keep themselves in dope, Pink Floyd tickets, and late model Camaros.
The idealism that Kennedy had attracted four years earlier was gone.
A President McCarthy or a President McGovern might have initiated a shift from American Empire. However, even if elected, they would have been neutralized by Congress. The Democratic Party did not want them and instituted changes to insure their like would never be seen again. My first voting experience was voting for McGovern. But there is no room in the Democratic Party for real change. I disagree with Anne about both parties moving to "extremes". I think that the more progressive types are outliers and have been mostly neutralized in the Democratic Party. The evidence for this is the craven walkback they did on the letter demanding the administration be more open to negotiating with Russia over Ukraine. Instead, we have a lot of hoopla about abortion and transsexuals in bathrooms.
DeleteI think the vast majority of Americans have no idea they are in a declining empire. That will make it a really hard landing.
Stanley, you may be right. I suppose a Dem party of Sanders would be more of an extreme in peoples eyes. I once would have opposed it (I voted for Nixon) but our many trips to Europe over the years ( and Japan, and Australia) and now having European family members opened our eyes to the reality that Australians and most Europeans, enjoy a higher quality of life than most Americans. Japan has a very high material quality of life, and a very safe country, but it has aspects that don’t appeal. Women have rebelled there against marriage and kids for valid reasons. Europeans and Australians have more security and so they also have more freedom. But that’s not how the MAGA/Republicans and Libertarians represent it. Sadly most adult Americans have not traveled much overseas. When they do, it’s often on a bus tour that is little better than touring Europe or any country at an IMAX theater. Leaving the country isn’t necessary, but it’s a big help in opening peoples eyes to the fact that even though we’re rich and powerful, there are a whole lot of things that other countries do better. Nor do Americans read, they don’t educate themselves. Too caught up with Fox, the Housewives, and the Duck Family. So most Americans don’t realize that America is going downhill fast. It’s still the richest and most powerful country. It’s not an empire, at least not in the same sense that England was. Or Spain. We have not really colonized countries as they did. Having visited England 15 or more times over the years, getting to know a few Brits, spending some real time there, I eventually realized that they still see themselves as the most important country on earth. They still think that the sun never sets…..Hence the hubris of Brexit. America is doing the same - The hubris of MAGA. So they vote against their own best interests, and against the country’s best interests.
DeleteStanley, I think the problem with the Democratic and Republican parties is that they've abandoned key constituencies that kept them pragmatic. For Democrats it's blue-collar workers and for Republicans it's small business owners.
DeleteNeither of these constituencies cares much about identity politics or ideology. They care that they are earning a living wage and aren't taxed or regulated to death.
Most of these folks that I grew up with, from the dads in the UMWA local to the guys who ran the corner party store and neighborhood butcher shop, cancelled each other's votes in national elections. But they worked together on community and neighborhood projects.
When Dad lost his job in the late 1950s, it was the small business Republicans who gave him work in their stores and let him run a grocery tab. And it was the union guys who got him a good job in the plant.
Same people worked together when a family from West Virginia moved onto our block to be closer to the dad who was in prison for unarmed robbery. My mom knitted the kids mittens, Dad and some other guys took the boys down for haircuts, and the meat market guy gave them holiday turkeys.
It wasn't any kind of utopia, but parties that are accountable to people like this tend to make better decisions and focus on quality of life issues. As labor unions have dwindled and small business owners are squeezed out by national chains, politics has attracted more nuts.
At least that's my glib analysis on a Saturday morning.
Anne and Jean, I strongly agree with your comments on this. I must admit to my patriotism being at a low level. The concept of a country being great doesn't appeal to me anymore. It's more important to help the people in the country. Too many Americans love America and hate the people in it. Which, to me, is absurd.
DeleteLike Dr Johnson said, "Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel."
Delete[Tedious English major aside: Johnson was referring specifically to the Patriot Party, which he viewed as a lot of self-interested crooks who liked to wrap themselves in the flag.
A true patriot, he wrote: "is he whose publick conduct is regulated by one single motive, the love of his country; who, as an agent in parliament, has, for himself, neither hope nor fear, neither kindness nor resentment, but refers every thing to the common interest."]