| Robert Kennedy for President 1968 | |
|---|---|
| Campaign | U.S. presidential election, 1968 |
| Candidate | Robert F. Kennedy U.S. Senator from New York 1965–1968 |
| Affiliation | Democratic Party |
| Status | Announced March 16, 1968, ended June 6, 1968. |
Robert Francis Kennedy was a U.S. Senator from New York, having won in 1964. In 1968, President Johnson began to run for reelection. In January 1968, faced with what was widely considered an unrealistic race against an incumbent President, Senator Kennedy stated he would not seek the presidency. However, with political circumstances over time working against Johnson, which would lead to his decision to drop his run for reelection, Kennedy decided to become a presidential candidate. He made progress in achieving Democratic support until his assassination in June 1968.
Contents |
After the Tet Offensive in Vietnam, in early February 1968, Kennedy received a letter from writer Pete Hamill (later acclaimed author of the novel Snow in August). Hamill wrote an anguished letter to Kennedy noting that poor people kept pictures of John F. Kennedy on their walls and that Robert Kennedy had an "obligation of staying true to whatever it was that put those pictures on those walls." Kennedy traveled to California, to meet with civil rights activist César Chávez who was on a hunger strike.
The weekend before the New Hampshire primary, Kennedy announced to several aides that he would attempt to persuade little-known Senator Eugene McCarthy of Minnesota to withdraw from the presidential race. Johnson won an astonishingly narrow victory in the New Hampshire primary on March 12, 1968, against McCarthy. Kennedy declared his candidacy on March 16, 1968, stating, "I am today announcing my candidacy for the presidency of the United States. I do not run for the Presidency merely to oppose any man, but to propose new policies. I run because I am convinced that this country is on a perilous course and because I have such strong feelings about what must be done, and I feel that I'm obliged to do all I can." Robert Kennedy made this announcement from the same spot where John F. Kennedy aonnounced his candidacy in January 1960. Ironically, that room in the Russell Senate Office Building (RSOB) is now the Kennedy Senate Caucus Room, named for their younger brother, the late Senator Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts, who died of cancer in August 2009.
McCarthy supporters angrily denounced Kennedy as an opportunist, and thus the anti-war movement was split between McCarthy and Kennedy. On March 31, 1968, Johnson stunned the nation by dropping out of the race. Vice President Hubert Humphrey, long a champion of labor unions and civil rights, entered the race with the support of the party "establishment," including most members of Congress, mayors, governors and labor unions. He entered the race too late to enter any primaries, but had the support of the president and many Democratic insiders. Robert Kennedy, like his brother before him, planned to win the nomination through popular support in the primaries.
Kennedy stood on a ticket of racial and economic justice, non-aggression in foreign policy, decentralization of power and social improvement. A crucial element to his campaign was an engagement with the young, whom he identified as being the future of a reinvigorated American society based on partnership and social equality.
Kennedy's policy objectives did not sit well with the business world, in which he was viewed as something of a fiscal liability, opposed to the tax increases necessary to fund Kennedy's proposed social programs. When verbally attacked at a speech he gave during his tour of the universities he was asked, "And who's going to pay for all this, senator?", to which Kennedy replied with typical candor, "You are." It was this intense and frank mode of dialogue with which Kennedy was to continue to engage those whom he viewed as not being traditional allies of Democrat ideals or initiatives.
Robert Kennedy expressed the Administration's commitment to civil rights during a 1961 speech at the University of Georgia Law School: "We will not stand by or be aloof. We will move. I happen to believe that the 1954 Supreme Court school desegregation decision was right. But my belief does not matter. It is the law. Some of you may believe the decision was wrong. That does not matter. It is the law."
In 1961, Attorney General Robert Kennedy authorized the FBI in a written directive to wiretap civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr under the auspice of concern that communists were involved in the Civil Rights Movement. The wire tapping continued through 1967. No evidence of Communist activity or influence was uncovered. Kennedy remained committed to civil rights enforcement to such a degree that he commented, in 1962, that it seemed to envelop almost every area of his public and private life—from prosecuting corrupt southern electoral officials to answering late night calls from Mrs. King concerning the imprisonment of her husband for demonstrations in Alabama. During his tenure as Attorney General he undertook the most energetic and persistent desegregation of the administration that Capitol Hill had ever experienced. He demanded that every area of government begin recruiting realistic levels of black and other ethnic workers, going so far as to criticize Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson for his failure to desegregate his own office staff.
In 1968, Kennedy expressed his strong willingness to support a bill then under consideration for the abolition of the death penalty.[1]
As his brother's confidant, Kennedy oversaw the Central Intelligence Agency's (CIA) anti-Castro activities after the unsuccessful Bay of Pigs invasion. He also helped develop the strategy to blockade Cuba during the Cuban Missile Crisis instead of initiating a military strike that might have led to nuclear war. Kennedy had initially been among the more hawkish elements of the administration on matters concerning Cuban insurrectionary aid. His initial strong support for covert actions in Cuba soon changed to a position of removal from further involvement once he became aware of the CIA's tendency to draw out initiatives and provide itself with almost unchecked authority in matters of foreign covert operations.
During the Cuban Missile Crisis Kennedy proved himself to be a gifted politician, with an ability to obtain compromises from key figures in the hawk camp concerning their position of aggression. The trust the President placed in him on matters of negotiation was such that Robert Kennedy's role in the Crisis is today seen as having been of vital importance in securing a blockade, which averted a full military engagement between the US and Soviet Russia. His clandestine meetings with members of the Soviet government continued to provide a key link to Nikita Khrushchev during even the darkest moments of the Crisis, in which the threat of nuclear strikes was considered a very present reality.[2]
On the last night of the Cuban Missile Crisis, President Kennedy was so grateful for his brother's work in averting nuclear war that he summed it up by saying, "Thank God for Bobby".[3]
Kennedy was successful in four primaries and McCarthy five; however, in primaries where they campaigned directly against one another, Kennedy won three primaries and McCarthy one (Oregon).
On March 27, 1968, Kennedy announced from Salt Lake City his desire to compete in the Indiana primary. Aides to Kennedy either advised against such action or told him that a race in Indiana would be an extremely tight race between Kennedy and his rival in the nominating contest, Senator Eugene McCarthy.[4]
On April 4, 1968, Kennedy made his first campaign stop in Indiana at the University of Notre Dame, followed by a speech at Ball State University. Leaving the stage from his address at Ball State, Kennedy was informed of the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr..
Indiana held its primary on May 7, 1968, and a battle ensued between Kennedy, McCarthy and Branigin. Kennedy won on primary night with 42% of the vote,[5] and claimed momentum going into the Nebraska primary which was to be held on May 14, 1968.
Claiming momentum and campaigning vigorously in Nebraska, Kennedy hoped for a big win to give him momentum going into the California primary, in which McCarthy held a strong presence. On primary night, Kennedy won the Nebraska primary with 52% of the vote, with McCarthy coming in a distant second place. After the results, Kennedy declared that as McCarthy and Kennedy, both anti-war, managed to earn over 80% of the vote, that Humphrey's and Johnson's Vietnam policy had been repudiated.
Coming from Indiana and Nebraska with new-found momentum, Kennedy hoped to take California and South Dakota which voted on June 4, 1968. Kennedy engaged McCarthy in a series of debates throughout California in hopes of denting McCarthy's strength in California to pull an upset victory in the state.
On June 4, Kennedy won the South Dakota primary with relative ease and managed to win California with 46% of the vote, defeating McCarthy 46% to 42%, and claiming the biggest prize in the nominating process as well as a crucial defeat to McCarthy's campaign.[6] Around midnight, he addressed supporters at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, confidently promising to heal the many divisions within the country.
While addressing his supporters during the early morning hours of June 5, 1968, in a ballroom at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, Kennedy left the ballroom through a service area to greet kitchen workers. In a crowded kitchen passageway, Sirhan Sirhan, a 24-year-old Palestinian, opened fire with a .22 caliber revolver and shot Kennedy in the head at close range. Following the shooting, Kennedy was rushed to The Good Samaritan Hospital where he died early the next morning.[7]
Kennedy's body was returned to New York City, where he lay in state at St. Patrick's Cathedral for several days before the funeral mass held there. His younger brother, Ted, eulogized him with the words: "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, saw suffering and tried to heal it, saw war and tried to stop it." Ted concluded his eulogy, paraphrasing George Bernard Shaw by saying of his brother by quoting: "Some men see things as they are and say 'Why?' I dream things that never were and say, 'Why not?'".
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||