Despite what historians prefer to predict now, he was by no means assured of winning the Democratic presidential nomination, even after winning the California primary. Vice-President Hubert Humphrey controlled enough non-primary delegates to remain the frontrunner. But RFK hoped to use his California victory to convince Rhode Island to add a primary, and to pressure Humphrey to enter it. Going head to head with the Vice-President, Kennedy was certain he would win, and that win would convince the party bosses who still called most of the shots at the conventions to switch their allegiance to RFK.
That was the plan on the evening of June the 4th, 1968. Mere minutes into the early morning of June the 5th, Bobby Kennedy was sprawled across the floor of the kitchen of LA's Ambassador Hotel, mortally wounded.
The murder of his brother in 1963 was the crucible moment for him. As the Attorney General and protector of JFK's interests, Bobby was driven, devoted, moralistic and, yes, ruthless. But Jack's death put the younger Kennedy through a long night of the soul, and when he emerged, he was a different man: still driven, still devoted, but now feeling kinship with the downtrodden...the poor, the colored, the forgotten.
Elected to the Senate, he became a tribune of the people. He argued for the betterment of those suffering abject poverty in Appalachia, for help for Native Americans, for respect for all people of color. He went to apartheid South Africa and condemned their racist society. He went to Communist Poland and preached liberty, not as some abstract political concept, but as a basic human right.
He made enemies. Few Americans were as polarizing as Bobby. It would come as a shock to many today, I'm sure, that among his non-admirers were many leading liberals. Although RFK is credited as a liberal now, in the Sixties, the New Deal/Adlai Stevenson Liberal Establishment eyed Robert Kennedy with deep suspicion. They despised his arch-conservative father, Joseph P. Kennedy; they hated that Bobby had worked on the staff of Red-baiting Senator Joe McCarthy in the Fifties, and retained a personal affection for McCarthy long after the demagogue fell from grace; and they disliked RFK's opposition to many of Lyndon Johnson's welfare programs.
For his part, Bobby was dismissive of what he called the "sick liberals"...the cocktail party warriors who would rather complain about the issues than get their hands dirty trying to solve problems. And he thought that LBJ's welfare programs simply threw money at the ghettos without doing anything to address the root problems of poverty and racism, and did little more than to condemn whole generations of minorities to a lifetime in crumbling public housing, with sub-standard public schools for the children and few decent jobs for their parents.
And then there was Viet Nam, the matter that tormented him the most. In Jack's administration, Bobby had advocated a hard line in Southeast Asia. But as Johnson escalated the conflict...claiming all the while to be carrying on the policy of John Kennedy...Bobby grew more and more opposed to the war. Still, fearful of splitting the Democratic Party, he kept his reservations mostly private...an act that cost him a lot of support from the anti-war movement which yearned for RFK to lead them.
In early '68, Johnson appeared certain of winning the nomination, and in the interest of party unity, Bobby went so far as to publicly announce...through gritted teeth...that he fully expected to support LBJ's reelection. But then a funny thing happened on the way to Lyndon's re-nomination; Senator Gene McCarthy, challenging LBJ as an avowed peace candidate, came in a strong second in the New Hampshire primary. Suddenly Johnson looked vulnerable, and there was growing doubt that he could beat the likely Republican candidate, Richard Nixon.
Against the advice of most of his political allies and advisors...including his own brother, Teddy...RFK then announced that he was a candidate. Seeing the writing on the wall, Johnson didn't even put up a fight, and he announced that he would not seek re-nomination. But behind the scenes, the President intended to use every means at his disposal to deny Bobby the presidency, and to bestow it on LBJ's loyal VP, Humphrey.
Kennedy battled McCarthy in a series of primaries, while Humphrey avoided the primaries altogether and focused on cutting backroom deals with the bosses to line up delegates (in 1968 there were far fewer primaries, and they were not enough for a candidate to secure a majority of delegates before the convention, even if he had won all of the contests. But one of the party bosses privately urging Bobby on was Chicago Mayor Richard J. Daley, who kept intoning, "the primaries matter, the primaries matter!" Daley knew that if Kennedy could prove he could win votes there, 'Hizonor' could convince other party bosses to switch their loyalty from Hubert to Bobby).
And so it all came down to California. RFK had just suffered a primary loss in Oregon, and it was understood that if McCarthy could win the Golden State, he could eliminate Kennedy from the race. It was a hard-fought contest, culminating in Bobby's victory. Kennedy also won South Dakota that day, but McCarthy won New Jersey, and was making it clear that he intended to stay in the race all the way to the convention...largely, many felt, to act as a 'spoiler' to prevent RFK from getting the nomination. Gene McCarthy, for all of his towering intellectual and moralistic gifts, could be a small man at times.
Do I think that Bobby would have won the nomination in 1968? Yes, if a lot of things broke his way. I do believe that even if he didn't get the nod, his very presence in Chicago, and his close relationship with Daley, could have altered the city's reaction to the army of anti-war protestors camped out in Grant Park, avoiding the "police riot" that horrified Americans watching on TV and splitting the Democratic Party in half in its wake.
I think the biggest hurdle for Bobby would have been convincing the bosses and the delegates that he could unify the country and win the election in November. A lot of them were nervous as they watched Kennedy campaign; he drew huge crowds, but they weren't the typical political rallies, but more like fundamentalist religious revivals, in that the crowds seemed chaotic, screaming and shouting and laughing, their hands clutching at Bobby as he sat in an open convertible, his own hands scratched bloody from their grasping fingers, his cuff links long gone, even his shoes pulled from his feet. This wasn't politics, it was madness, and it scared the hell out of a lot of Americans who didn't like the long hair, loud music and sexual permissiveness of the young, and who were growing tired of being labeled as racists simply because they didn't have black or brown or red or yellow skin themselves. In that regard, RFK seemed to be the Pied Piper of the the damned.
But those with savvier political instincts looked closer, not at the rapturous acolytes surging around the candidate, but at the large crowds standing respectfully on the outskirts, waving American flags and cheering Robert Kennedy as well. They were the non-shouters, the non-protestors. They fought in World War II, many were blue collar union men, and although they were registered Democrats, they by no means would consider themselves liberals. They supported the war in Viet Nam, but were starting to have some nagging doubts about it. They didn't consider themselves bigots, and they wanted African-Americans to have their equal rights, but they were still jittery about having them move into their neighborhood. They were voters who would find appeal later that year in the candidacies of Nixon and the independent George Wallace, and who would later shift their allegiance to Ronald Reagan.
Many of them may not have even liked RFK very much...but they trusted him. They admired his courage and they respected his convictions, and an awful lot of them thought that he might just be the one man to save the country in that terrible year. In Indiana...a state where the KKK still held strong sway in many parts...these people voted for Bobby, right alongside the blacks of Gary. The conservative farmers of Nebraska had voted for RFK has well, as had small town and rural folk...the "non-black, non-protestor" people...of California. Unlike any other candidate in the race, Robert F. Kennedy could draw support from across the political spectrum. Of all of the presidential hopefuls, he had the best claim on being able to unite the United States again.
It would have been an uphill fight to get the nomination, and another struggle up the mountain to beat Nixon. I think he quite likely would have done it. We'll never know; three bullets tore into his body. He was too strong to die then and there, and he lingered for over a day with mortal injuries. His final rasped words, as he lay on the floor of the hotel, cradled by an Hispanic bus boy who placed a rosary in RFK's hands, were, "Is everybody okay?" Because even as he lay dying, his last thought was of others.
*****
It's tempting to say that he had to die because America didn't deserve him. He was fatalistic about his destiny, admitting to a friend not long before his death, "There are guns between me and the White House."
But I don't believe we are fated to such tragedies. They aren't beyond our control...we cause them, and we can prevent them. Bobby Kennedy would probably have survived the morning of June the 5th if he had Secret Service protection, or if the LAPD had set up a detailed security plan for the Ambassador Hotel, or if Bobby had followed his original instinct to walk through the crowd of supporters to exit the ballroom, instead of letting himself be led through the less-crowded kitchen area, where the emotionally troubled Sirhan Sirhan stood waiting. These days, serious candidates have a phalanx of bodyguards, and every step taken in public is plotted out to the smallest detail. That came in the aftermath of Bobby's assassination.
Robert Kennedy's assassination brought on two tragedies to the nation. First, of course, it took this remarkable man from us, just when he was most needed. But perhaps even worse, it seemed to rob our national spirit of something essential. His martyrdom didn't rally us as it should. With an occasional ballot box exception, we as a people grew sour about our responsibilities as citizens, preferring instead to complain about things, but not bother to make any real effort to change them. RFK believed to his soul that to those for whom much has been given, much is expected. We owe it to ourselves, to our neighbors, and to the world to take an active part in affairs, and to fulfill our obligations as citizens. He would have been appalled by our low voter turnouts, and by our collective acquiescence at not holding the feet of our public servants closer to the fire.
And so today, on the 50th anniversary of his murder, why don't we all look to our own responsibilities as American citizens and, as RFK himself said in perhaps his most powerful public address, "Let us dedicate ourselves to what the Greeks wrote so many years ago: to tame the savageness of man and make gentle the life of this world.
Let us dedicate ourselves to that, and say a prayer for our country and for our people."
Yes, let us.
