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RFK Jr.’s Fight for Principle

If there’s anyone who doesn’t need the grief that surrounds running for president, it would be Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

As he has noted himself, Bob Kennedy has been around the chaos of these campaigns since childhood, having attended his first Democratic Convention at the ripe old age of 6.

As someone old enough to vividly remember his father and uncle, those of us of that certain age can recall vividly their campaigns for office and the two decidedly vivid tragedies that overtook his father — then-Sen. Robert F. Kennedy — as well as, five years earlier, his uncle President John F. Kennedy.

Not to date myself, but in 1968, I was a 17-year-old decidedly enthusiastic supporter of RFK Jr.’s dad. I had written to the Kennedy campaign for a bumper sticker, in response receiving both the blue and orange sticker and the official Kennedy campaign button. (Both today carefully framed and preserved long ago.)

When the shocking assassination of his father took place, my Nixon-loving Mom got on a bus with me for a ride to New York City (from our home in Pennsylvania) so that I could stand in line for a couple hours on a hot June day so I could get into St. Patrick’s Cathedral and touch the casket where my teenage hero was resting before being taken on to Washington for a final rest near his brother the president in Arlington National Cemetery.

Then there was this amusing side note.

Geeky kid that I was, sometime after RFK Sr.’s death, out came a couple long-playing record albums that were collections of RFK’s speeches. My teenage self quickly snapped them up and spent hours listening to them — memorizing them.

Now for the humorous part of the story. Nineteen years later, my young and professional self, thoroughly Reaganized, was serving in the Reagan White House as an associate White House political director. It was September 1987. In the news was the conclusion of the controversial hearings by the Senate Judiciary Committee of Reagan Supreme Court nominee Judge Robert Bork. The hearings were hot, and chaired by a senator from Delaware named Joe Biden. Biden was also a candidate for the Democratic nomination for president.

And in that campaign, Biden had been called out by rival Massachusetts Democrat Gov. Michael Dukakis for plagiarizing from then-British Labour Party leader Neil Kinnock. The Biden campaign denied it was deliberate.

And then…

Earlier that year, although I had said nothing about it at the time, I had watched Biden on C-SPAN delivering a speech in which, lo and behold, I realized he was plagiarizing from the late Sen. Robert Kennedy. Watching the telecast, I was astonished to realize I was getting to the end of his sentences before he was.

This time around, my hero being plagiarized, I had no hesitation that September in picking up the phone and calling a New York Times reporter to report what I knew. Astonished, the reporter asked if I could document it. I could.

After quick trip home to Pennsylvania over the weekend to retrieve my carefully preserved RFK records, it was back to Washington, where I hand-delivered them to the Times Washington Bureau. That was on a Monday. By Wednesday, the Times ran a front-page story about questions being raised about Biden’s speeches, citing the Kinnock and Kennedy speeches. Among others, it quoted me by name with my findings.

Within days, Biden dropped out of the race.

Message: Don’t plagiarize my teenage hero!

All of this I recalled as I watched RFK Jr. race around America doing something he decidedly didn’t need to do — run for president. While he picked up criticism from his Biden-supporting siblings, he, in a fashion that reminded of his father’s decided determination to stand up for principle in 1968, plowed on.

Now, with considerable boldness, he has endorsed former President Donald Trump.

With the 2024 campaign now mere weeks from ending, it is more than reasonable to believe that the former president can win. And like RFK Jr. — not to mention millions of Americans in the “Trump base” — that win would rest on the belief that things have gotten offtrack in “the Swamp.” That the mess needs to be cleaned up, and the system cleared from being a Swamp of special interests that is all about preserving itself instead of serving the American people.

And in the case of RFK Jr., it is more than reasonable to suspect that a Trump victory would bring a serious role for Bob Kennedy in the Trump administration to help with the major task of, as the saying goes, “draining the Swamp.”

So. We shall see.

But make no mistake. The presence of RFK Jr. in this race, and his alliance with the former president, is a signal that there is major support from the American grassroots for serious change in Washington.

And the message from Trump — and RFK Jr. — is that change is on the way.

Good for them.

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