Tag: 1968

Among those who opposed him politically but mourned him personally was one man who had recently crossed paths with him, Ronald Reagan. Reagan’s words to Ethel Kennedy were simple and heartfelt: “I know there is little anyone can say at such a time but if there is anything we can do to be of help in any way, please let us know. By that time, Reagan was governor of California and Kennedy was the U.S. senator from New York. He knew that Reagan had bested him. Reagan wrote that letter as Kennedy lay dying, he lost any zeal he had for making a presidential run that year. Fast-forward to another June 5, 13 years later in 1981. Ronald Reagan is president of the United States. Ronald Reagan reflecting on Bobby Kennedy: “I’ll tell you one thing. Goldwater asked Reagan if he thought Robert Kennedy could have been elected. He’d have made one helluva president.” And 23 years after that ceremony and conversation, President Reagan himself died at the age of 93 after a struggle with Alzheimer’s disease.

There was great shock at my house, because someone had shot Robert F. Kennedy. My father had put his career on hold to work as one of the New York senator’s presidential campaign aides, traveling to far-flung locales such as Nebraska and California for the primaries. By June 5, he was back home in the D.C. suburbs, watching the news from Los Angeles on our black-and-white television and, according to my memory, crying. RFK lingered about 24 hours before he died. I recall the sun was shining, incongruously, but I do not remember what we kids hoped to accomplish. It is likely but by no means certain RFK would have won the Democratic nomination against Johnson’s vice president, Hubert H. Humphrey, the favorite of a still-powerful party establishment. A President Robert F. Kennedy might have exited Vietnam sooner than Nixon did; or, as a liberal more vulnerable to criticism from the anti-communist right than Nixon, he might not. Even if RFK had lost the 1968 nomination, he probably would have run again; at the very least Bobby, not his younger brother Ted, would have led the forces of Kennedy-style liberalism through the 1970s, 1980s and beyond. To ponder the contingency of these events is to trace them all, perhaps, to the moment 70 years ago when Arab nations refused to accept the partition of Palestine, fighting erupted between the new state of Israel and its neighbors, and a Palestinian Christian family, the Sirhans, fled war-torn Jerusalem to Jordan. In 1956, the United States admitted them as refugees, sponsored by American church groups.