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Tag: robert kennedy
The Night RFK Showed America What Leadership Means

The Night RFK Showed America What Leadership Means

History can be cruel. The assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., who was unquestionably America's most prominent prophet and practitioner of nonviolence, was followed by riots, arson and looting in 168 American cities and towns. The numbers are staggering: 2,600 fires were set; 21,700 people were injured; 2,600 were arrested; 39 were killed. One city that was spared all that in the days following King's murder was Indianapolis.

Credit for that must be given to the citizens of Indiana's capital city and to its leaders, both black and white, and also to a remarkable American political leader, who, on that April night in 1968, delivered the news of King's death to an Indianapolis rally of mostly African Americans.

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Is Beto O’Rourke The Next Kennedy Or Obama?

Is Beto O’Rourke The Next Kennedy Or Obama?

For decades, the Democratic Party has been haunted by a specter: the specter of John F. Kennedy and Robert F. Kennedy. Liberals have yearned for a young, handsome, eloquent and charismatic man to move them, enchant them and return them to Camelot.

They’ve never quite found him, though Gary Hart (1984) and John Kerry (2004) tried to fill the role. Even Ted Kennedy didn’t quite measure up. Bill Clinton — who was serendipitously photographed at 17 shaking JFK’s hand — managed a faint resemblance that he strove to heighten.

I thought Barack Obama had put that dream to rest. He had some of the same qualities as Jack and Bobby, and he had a successful two terms in the White House. But the Kennedy hunger apparently still lives on in the Democratic body politic, like a dormant virus that occasionally causes a spike of fever and delirium. How else can the Beto O’Rourke frenzy be explained?

He was a legitimate phenomenon last year, when he came close to winning a U.S. Senate race in a red state. Being a Texan whose skin crawls at the mention of Ted Cruz, I am a member of a group that numbers at least 4 million, judging from the vote O’Rourke got. But nearly upsetting Cruz in a Senate race is like winning your high school talent show. It doesn’t mean you’re ready for Broadway.

O’Rourke, however, has joined the presidential race, propelled by his mysterious sense of destiny. “I want to be in it,” he told a Vanity Fair scribe. “Man, I’m just born to be in it.” If an ego as big as the Ritz is mandatory in a presidential candidate, O’Rourke qualifies.

His main assets are his boyish good looks, complete with the RFK-like shock of hair falling over his forehead, and his flair for oratory, or what passes for oratory these days. Something is working: In the first 24 hours after announcing his candidacy for president, he raised a record $6.1 million.

Some of his admirers don’t see him as another JFK; they see him as another Obama. Former Obama strategist Dan Pfeiffer is one of them, scorning “political elites” who say of O’Rourke, “He hasn’t paid his dues” or “It’s not his time.”

Wrote Pfeiffer in November, “These are the exact arguments people made to me when I told them I was considering working for Barack Obama 10 years ago.” Of course, they are also the same arguments made about countless other unready candidates who have been forgotten because the “political elites” were right about them.

O’Rourke is a former member of the El Paso City Council and a three-term congressman who did nothing to distinguish himself from most of the other 434 House members. That’s no crime; making a mark in the House usually takes many terms. But his service there is hardly thorough preparation for a job that is normally one of the most challenging on earth. (For Donald Trump, it’s not a challenge because he doesn’t really do the job.)

Obama’s political resume was also thin — three terms as a state senator and four years as a U.S. senator. But besides his broad life experiences, he had shown intellectual heft, formidable discipline, gravity of purpose and genuine oratorical brilliance. Being African-American, Obama also brought a vital perspective that had never been present in the White House. O’Rourke doesn’t.

Obama was a highly exceptional figure, which makes him a poor model for lesser mortals. Just because Kevin Garnett went straight from high school to NBA stardom doesn’t mean other high school players — even stars — would be equipped to do the same.

Nor has O’Rourke offered a comprehensive program that sets him apart from other Democratic candidates who have compiled more substantial records. On the issues, he manages to be both completely conventional and annoyingly vague.

A measure of his low-content approach is that his campaign website provides no policy statements. It does, however, offer “Beto for America” T-shirts.

Another indicator is his claim, “I don’t ever prepare a speech.” In one appearance, O’Rourke recalled to Vanity Fair, it felt as though “every word was pulled out of me. Like, by some greater force.” He seems to see this campaign as an exercise in self-discovery.

The Democratic field features several candidates with weightier accomplishments and down-to-earth policy solutions. But flying high at the moment is one who is lighter than air.

Those Were The Days On Nantucket Sound

Those Were The Days On Nantucket Sound

The new memoir about the Kennedys, “The Nine of Us,” is a lyrical looking glass into a time that feels forever lost — when the richest class felt a deep obligation to give back to the people, to serve in the military and politics. The “to whom much is given, much us expected” motto was a mantra in the Kennedy summer compound in Hyannis Port on Cape Cod in Massachusetts. Excellence in all things was encouraged, from riding to sailing to writing thank you notes. On these pages, a clear-eyed sister tells the tale of their younger, vibrant selves.

The scene is set from the beginning, a sharp contrast from the gaudy gold and chrome Trump Tower:

“The white house looked over the sea … an overgrown Cape Cod cottage with white wooden shingles and black shutters. … The white house was full of activity, chatter and laughter. Full of books on shelves and sports gear in closets. And especially full of children.”

Oh, it brings back the old days, of New England zest and camaraderie, a ready wit and willingness to get skin in the game. Touch football, anyone?

Then there were debates over dinner — you had to be scrubbed and dressed for dinner — on the raging issues of the day. “What would you do if you were president,” their father drilled them. Jack, the lover of history and books, would be 99 years old today. The striking Joe, the oldest, was the one groomed for the job, but he volunteered for a dangerous mission in World War II and got blown from the sky. He was the first to shatter the Kennedy family idyll. Jack, in a way, got elected to run by his family first. The ironic, impossibly cool Jack almost had no choice, as the second oldest son.

The author Jean Kennedy Smith is the only living one of the nine Kennedys born between the teens, ’20s and ’30s. At 88, the former ambassador to Ireland remained as the key holder of certain stories and insights about their youth, all nine of them. She and the late Senator Edward M. Kennedy were the youngest, and her character portraits of her sisters, brothers and parents come from that vantage point.

Who knew that the intense Bobby had a pink and black spotted pig named Porky that went with him everywhere? He also tended to rabbits, all manner of animals and made friends easily. “You have a lot on the ball,” his father Joe wrote to his third-oldest son.

A charmed moment is a letter from President Franklin D. Roosevelt, a stamp collector, to young Bobby, a fellow philatelist: “Perhaps sometime when you are in Washington you will come in and let me show you my collection.” Indeed, the boy did.

Smith suggests that her brother Bobby was the secret favorite of her parents, Rose and Joe Kennedy, Irish-Catholic Boston stock. Rose’s father, Honey “Fitz” Fitzgerald was the beloved mayor of Boston — political royalty.

Singing “Sweet Adeline” and reciting the classic “Midnight Ride of Paul Revere” poem was the stuff of their childhood.

Joe’s dying young was followed by their sister “Kick,” a lively presence who married an Englishman destined to be a duke. She, too, died young in a plane crash. Eunice was “sporty” and such a force she might have been president if she wasn’t a girl. She founded the Special Olympics.

There are London days in Jean’s teens, as father Joe served as the ambassador to the Court of St. James (and gave Roosevelt bad advice about Germany and staying out of the war).

Nothing but the best might as well be written between the lines. Yet the Kennedys have a gift of being inclusive in their exuberant privilege, not running rampant with it simply for vainglory. You feel that you, too, are sailing on Nantucket Sound that summer day. Teddy, with the sweetest social nature, became a great sailor till nearly the end of his days, at age 77. He was the only brother to “comb gray hair,” as the elegiac Irish line goes. The artist Jamie Wyeth painted his friend Teddy sailing into the light.

Jack’s light touch comes through a letter to Jeannie: “I am most pleased to hear from you and am fully conscious of the honor.”

Call me nostalgic, because that’s exactly what I am this Thanksgiving.

To find out more about Jamie Stiehm and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit www.creators.com.

IMAGE: AFP Photo

Eric Holder’s Badge Of Honor

Eric Holder’s Badge Of Honor

If there is any single statement that ought to gratify Eric Holder as he stepped down today, it was the response of Ethel Kennedy. Referring to her late husband, who served as Attorney General during the civil rights era, Mrs. Kennedy said:

“Eric Holder has vigilantly defended an ideal Bobby strongly believed — that the Justice Department must deliver justice for all Americans. Especially our most vulnerable, who live in the very communities where justice can be hardest to find.”

That is the essential point of David Nather’s thoughtful retrospective in Politico – which notes Holder’s history of conflict with the Republican-led Congress, including a contempt citation that “will never be totally erased from his record.” But why should he care about that? Considering the authors, none of whom would be fit to carry his briefcase, it is nothing less than a badge of honor.

AFP Photo/Alex Wong