Alan_H's Blog

"There are those who look at things the way they are, and ask why.  I dream of things that never were, and ask why not?"  

Robert F. Kennedy's words have greatly influenced my life.  That quote in particular, which Kennedy paraphrased from George Bernard Shaw, taught me how to think.

On June 5, 1968, I had just finished the fifth grade and was watching the California primary results on a black & white TV at our home in Wichita, Kansas (even at age 11, I was destined to be a geek).  

I remember thinking 'oh no, not again,' the same thought that hit most Americans when they heard the news.

Bobby was the dreamer.  Bobby was, and is, my hero.  Not only did he oppose the Vietnam War, he was intent on solving and defeating poverty within the world's richest nation.

"I believe that, as long as there is plenty, poverty is evil," he said.

I don't spend much time thinking about what an RFK presidency could have achieved.  It was not a certainty he would win his own party's nomination.  RFK had the momentum, but Vice-President Hubert Humphrey had the LBJ machine behind him.  Despite the convention outcome, we all thought he would be killed before ever reaching the White House.

He was a complicated man, yet when his brother Ted eulogized Bobby so simply:
"He saw wrong and tried to right it. He saw suffering and tried to heal it. He saw war and tried to stop it."

Author Thurston Clarke defined RFK's campaign style as "Jazz Politics."  RFK was so well entrenched in his ideas and ideals, he could talk extemporaneously about any subject for any length of time.  Name a politician today who could pull that off.

His 82 day campaign, as the title of Clarke's book so well describes, inspired America.  Ronald Reagan in 1980, Bill Clinton in 1992 and Barack Obama's current campaign are the closest we have seen to capturing the magic.  The Obama movement has their heart in the right place, but there's something missing.

For a nation in turmoil (race, war, poverty), June 5, 1968 was the day the music died.  The themes are still playing.  When will we get it right?  RFK taught us the idea of wanting to improve is a good first step, but, like anything of value, you have to work for it.

We still haven't figured out as a nation what RFK saw in us forty years ago.  We owe it to ourselves to keep on trying.