A long ago speech offers guidance in current Presidential campaign

Robert F. Kennedy in 1968 offered a vision, and challenge, of what America should be

On March 18, 1968, Robert F. Kennedy addressed the students at the University of Kansas. It was not long after announcing his candidacy for the Presidency, a campaign that initially saw him challenging the Democratic incumbent Lyndon Johnson, with the issue of the War in Vietnam being a major one.

The senator from New York would, of course, be assassinated less than three months later in Los Angels, only moments after giving his victory speech having won the important primary in California. By then his chief rival for the nomination was Vice President Hubert Humphrey—the heir apparent to Johnson who had shocked the nation with his announcement that he would not seek another term in office.

‘What if’ is a rabbit hole that, when followed, takes us into a fanciful world of imagined possibilities. Would Kennedy have had a realistic chance to win the nomination? If successful, could he have beaten Richard Nixon? If elected, what kind of administration would he have had? Would he have been able to bridge the divisions then existing in American society? Could he have moved the nation forward in a more compassionate direction?

Who knows? Again, it’s conjecture. What we now have is the result of what took place since that long ago moment—good or ill depending on your viewpoint, but more accurately a combination of both.

As you know, we’re in the midst of another Presidential campaign. For the partisans on either side, there is much passion. The language for the most part has been less than uplifting, the politics of divisiveness are in full swing. As I’ve mentioned in an earlier commentary demonizing your opponent is a time-honored tactic. Why is that so? Well, I guess it’s our human nature to respond to perceived threats and possible dire consequences more so than to calls for harmony and common cause.

But, as we can see, such calls to embrace a higher purpose have been part of the political dialogue. As witnessed with these excerpts from Robert Kennedy’s speech to the Kansas students.

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“For we as a people, are strong enough, we are brave enough to be told the truth of where we stand.  This country needs honesty and candor in its political life and from the President of the United States.  But I don't want to run for the presidency - I don't want America to make the critical choice of direction and leadership this year without confronting that truth.  I don't want to win support of votes by hiding the American condition in false hopes or illusions.  I want us to find out the promise of the future, what we can accomplish here in the United States, what this country does stand for and what is expected of us in the years ahead.  And I also want us to know and examine where we've gone wrong.  And I want all of us, young and old, to have a chance to build a better country and change the direction of the United States of America.
     

“This morning I spoke about the war in Vietnam, and I will speak briefly about it in a few moments.  But there is much more to this critical election year than the war in Vietnam.
     

“It is, at a root, the root of all of it, the national soul of the United States.  The President calls it "restlessness."  Our cabinet officers and others tell us that America is deep in a malaise of spirit:  discouraging initiative, paralyzing will and action, and dividing Americans from one another, by their age, their views and by the color of their skin and I don't think we have to accept that here in the United States of America.
     

“Demonstrators shout down government officials and the government answers by drafting demonstrators.  Anarchists threaten to burn the country down and some have begun to try, while tanks have patrolled American streets and machine guns have fired at American children.  I don't think this a satisfying situation for the United States of America. 
    

“Our young people - the best educated, and the best comforted in our history, turn from the Peace Corps and public commitment of a few years ago - to lives of disengagement and despair - many of them turned on with drugs and turned off on America …
     

“All around us, all around us, - not just on the question of Vietnam, not just on the question of the cities, not just the question of poverty, not just on the problems of race relations - but all around us, and why you are so concerned and why you are so disturbed - the fact is, that men have lost confidence in themselves, in each other, it is confidence which has sustained us so much in the past - rather than answer the cries of deprivation and despair - cries which the President's Commission on Civil Disorders tells us could split our nation finally asunder - rather than answer these desperate cries, hundreds of communities and millions of citizens are looking for their answers, to force and repression and private gun stocks - so that we confront our fellow citizen across impossible barriers of hostility and mistrust and again, I don't believe that we have to accept that.  I don't believe that it's necessary in the United States of America.  I think that we can work together - I don't think that we have to shoot at each other, to beat each other, to curse each other and criticize each other, I think that we can do better in this country.  And that is why I run for President of the United States.
     

“And if we seem powerless to stop this growing division between Americans, who at least confront one another, there are millions more living in the hidden places, whose names and faces are completely unknown - but I have seen these other Americans - I have seen children in Mississippi starving, their bodies so crippled from hunger and their minds have been so destroyed for their whole life that they will have no future.  I have seen children in Mississippi - here in the United States - with a gross national product of $800 billion dollars - I have seen children in the Delta area of Mississippi with distended stomachs, whose faces are covered with sores from starvation, and we haven't developed a policy so we can get enough food so that they can live, so that their children, so that their lives are not destroyed, I don't think that's acceptable in the United States of America and I think we need a change.
     

“I have seen Indians living on their bare and meager reservations, with no jobs, with an unemployment rate of 80 percent, and with so little hope for the future, so little hope for the future that for young people, for young men and women in their teens, the greatest cause of death amongst them is suicide.
     

“That they end their lives by killing themselves - I don't think that we have to accept that - for the first American, for this minority here in the United States.  If young boys and girls are so filled with despair when they are going to high school and feel that their lives are so hopeless and that nobody's going to care for them, nobody's going to be involved with them, and nobody's going to bother with them, that they either hang themselves, shoot themselves or kill themselves - I don't think that's acceptable and I think the United States of America - I think the American people, I think we can do much, much better.  And I run for the presidency because of that, I run for the presidency because I have seen proud men in the hills of Appalachia, who wish only to work in dignity, but they cannot, for the mines are closed and their jobs are gone and no one - neither industry, nor labor, nor government - has cared enough to help.
     

“I think we here in this country, with the unselfish spirit that exists in the United States of America, I think we can do better here also. 
     

“I have seen the people of the black ghetto, listening to ever greater promises of equality and of justice, as they sit in the same decaying schools and huddled in the same filthy rooms - without heat - warding off the cold and warding off the rats.
     
If we believe that we, as Americans, are bound together by a common concern for each other, then an urgent national priority is upon us.  We must begin to end the disgrace of this other America.
     

“And this is one of the great tasks of leadership for us, as individuals and citizens this year.  But even if we act to erase material poverty, there is another greater task, it is to confront the poverty of satisfaction - purpose and dignity - that afflicts us all.  Too much and for too long, we seemed to have surrendered personal excellence and community values in the mere accumulation of material things.  Our Gross National Product, now, is over $800 billion dollars a year, but that Gross National Product - if we judge the United States of America by that - that Gross National Product counts air pollution and cigarette advertising, and ambulances to clear our highways of carnage.  It counts special locks for our doors and the jails for the people who break them.  It counts the destruction of the redwood and the loss of our natural wonder in chaotic sprawl.  It counts napalm and counts nuclear warheads and armored cars for the police to fight the riots in our cities.  It counts Whitman's rifle and Speck's knife, and the television programs which glorify violence in order to sell toys to our children. 

“Yet the gross national product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education or the joy of their play.  It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages, the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials.  It measures neither our wit nor our courage, neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country, it measures everything in short, except that which makes life worthwhile.  And it can tell us everything about America except why we are proud that we are Americans.”

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There was more to the speech, but this gives a flavor of Kennedy’s campaign message and the issues he sought to put forth for consideration. Given that it’s 56 years ago, some of those issues—like the War in Vietnam—are no longer front and center, although war certainly still is. Other concerns—like poverty, damage to the environment, despair and suicide, drug use, violence, and our relationships with each other—are still with us.

Steve Horton is a mid-Michigan journalist.