A needed case of hero worship

Fifty years ago today, one of our personal heroes died. He never became president, as his brother had. We've listed below those who have served as president since the death of Robert Kennedy. The old saying "couldn't hold a candle" to him seems, to us, very fitting. Your mileage may vary.

• Richard Nixon (1969 - 1974)
• Gerald Ford (1974 - 1977)
• Jimmy Carter (1977 - 1981)
• Ronald Reagan (1981 - 1989)
• George H.W. Bush (1989 - 1993)
• Bill Clinton (1993 - 2001)
• George W. Bush (2001 - 2009)
• Barack Obama (2009 - 2017)
• Donald Trump (2017 - )

Massachusetts state house, Boston
(Brookline, Kennedy's birthplace, is a "streetcar suburb" of Boston)

Photo by J. Harrington

Allowing for some anomalies, we sense a distinctly downward trend in the qualities of those we have chosen as our leaders for the past two generations. Are these really our "best and brightest" or are we "better than that?" Humor us be reading a couple of quotations from a speech Bobby Kennedy gave (Remarks at the University of Kansas, March 18, 1968) and then think about which president listed above would have challenged us this way.

...For we as a people, 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....

...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."

For the next several months, we will be in the midst of political campaigns. We would respectfully suggest and request that we use the two paragraphs above as a standard against which we will measure the quality of those who as us for our votes. Some of us believe we, as a people and a country, have gone terribly wrong. More of the same will not solve our problems. We need to get back to the "US of A" and away from the "ME of A." Division diminishes US. Addition or multiplication doesn't. America is not now and never has been a zero sum game. To quote a truth brought to us by another Kennedyesque political hero, "We all do better when we all do better."

This has been a public service announcement. We return you now to our regular programming.

A Poem on the Assassination of Robert F. Kennedy

By Nikki Giovanni

Trees are never felled . . . in summer . . . Not when the fruit . . .   

is yet to be borne . . . Never before the promise . . . is fulfilled . . .   

Not when their cooling shade . . . has yet to comfort . . .

Yet there are those . . . unheeding of nature . . . indifferent to   

ecology . . . ignorant of need . . . who . . . with ax and sharpened   

saw . . . would . . . in boots . . . step forth damaging . . .

Not the tree . . . for it falls . . . But those who would . . . in

summer’s heat . . . or winter’s cold . . . contemplate . . . the   

beauty . . .

********************************************
Thanks for visiting. Come again when you can.
Please be kind to each other while you can.