56 years later, Sen. Robert Kennedy still calls out to us all...

First of two parts...

While I played in a melting Marquette, Michigan snowbank, Sen. Robert F. Kennedy announces for president on March 16, 1968. I came inside to watch it.

I know I’m a little late with this, and I apologize.

Last week was the 56th anniversary of the death of Sen. Robert F. Kennedy. Each year, as it is also on November 22, many of us take a moment to ponder the great what-might-have-beens of JFK and RFK.

No, this is not going to be a rant about his kooky son. I’ll do that with gusto multiple times very soon.

This is about his father.

RFK as Great Liberal Hero is not incorrect, but Bobby Kennedy wasn't exactly a progressive icon when he was working for Sen. Joe McCarthy as an assistant committee counsel, alongside the truly detestable lawyer/sleazepunk Roy Cohn. Cohn went on to be a mentor to former President Donald Trump, the 45th leader of the free world who meets with his own personal New York probation officer. I am sure he’s the greatest, most fantastic, bigly huge New York probation officer ever.

Or a tool of the Deep State and an Enemy of the People.

Bobby Kennedy came to his liberalism late. Yes, his family was Democratic, and yes, his father was an FDR appointee who served as the first chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, and, later the U.S. Ambassador to Great Britain. Tragically, his father didn’t quite see what his role was supposed to be in the then-shadow war against Hitler.

Joseph P. Kennedy gave a 1940 interview to the Boston Post where he opined that democracy was about to die in Europe, “finished” was his word, I believe. His namesake son, Joseph P. Kennedy Jr., the anointed one who was supposed to be the great politician and a possible future presidential candidate, opposed FDR’s bid for a third term. In fact, he was an isolationist and a delegate for Postmaster General Jim Farley at the 1940 Democratic Convention.

Young Joe wasn’t exactly showing great political acumen for a guy who was being groomed for the presidency. After his death and after Jack’s, some of his buddies weren’t convinced of his greatness, seeing Jack as the more supple intellect and charmer.

Later, Joe Jr. joined the Army Air Corps, became a pilot, and was horrifically killed when his bomber blew up on a secret mission over Europe. His remains were never recovered. Bobby was a teenager then, and joined the Navy as an enlisted sailor. He served on a destroyer named after his brother. He never saw action, but he did the right thing.

RFK finished up at Harvard, then went to the University of Virginia Law School, the Plan B University for the Harvard and Yale kids who couldn’t get into Harvard Law and Yale Law.

Truth hurts.

It’s a magnificent campus, though, and a top-notch program. How bad could it be if Jefferson started it?

UVA grads can write me at this address.

As campaign manager with a knack for organization and, conveniently, cracking heads, RFK then helped his brother Jack get elected to the U.S. Senate from Massachusetts in 1952.

After a stint as a counsel for several Senate committees, where, as Chief Counsel on the Senate Labor Committee, he made a name for himself for ripping Jimmy Hoffa a new one by suggesting that the Teamster president “giggled like a little girl”. By then, his brother Jack had been lining up to run for president after his narrow defeat for the Democratic vice presidential nomination in 1956. Fortuitously, JFK barely lost, allowing Gov. Adlai Stevenson and Sen. Estes Kefauver to get pile-driven into the ground by the immensely popular President Dwight Eisenhower.

By 1960, RFK again ran his brother’s successful campaign and won. His father demanded of the president-elect that Bobby be named Attorney General. Neither JFK or RFK wanted that, and even enlisted Democratic super lawyer/fixer Clark Clifford to talk to old Joe.

‘Thanks for calling, Clark. Bobby is going to be the Attorney General.” Click.

JFK said he wanted to name RFK at his Georgetown townhouse sidewalk at 3 AM, look up and down the street, and whisper, “It’s Bobby”.

RFK turned out to be one of the most effective Attorneys General ever. Bobby led with courage and contradictions: he moved heaven and earth to help school integration in the South, while ordering “limited” wiretaps on Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.

When his brother was brutally murdered in an open car—yes, by a suicide-by-cop desirous Oswald— a grieving, depressed Bobby awkwardly tried to force himself onto the 1964 Democratic ticket with a highly uninterested new President Lyndon B. Johnson. Perhaps his disinterest was fueled by RFK’s trying to pry him off the ticket as veep after JFK got cold feet. In JFK’s words, “I held it out and he grabbed it.”

The mistake turned into a masterstroke, led JFK to the White House, and tragically (the most overused word in describing this moment, but what other words are there?), led to LBJ’s ascension as the 36th president of the United States.

Kennedy then moved to New York after endless clashes with President Johnson, ran for the Senate and beat GOP Sen. Kenneth Keating, lagging well behind LBJ by a million votes.

In the Senate, RFK then became the golden liberal icon we now know, sincerely and completely. He became a leading critic of the Vietnam War, became major leader on poverty, and truly was an admirable person who, at 42, was looking to return the favor to LBJ in 1968. Maybe he was indeed opportunistic.

Take a number.

Some regarded Bobby as a showboat in the Senate—let’s keep it real here—and was parked there waiting to run for the presidency in 1972. Along with Sen. Eugene McCarthy, he did. Johnson dropped out a few weeks after Kennedy announced.

Oregon Sen. Mark Hatfield, a liberal Republican who should have been president, told me personally that RFK was a “tourist” in the upper body. A leading critic of the Vietnam calamity, Hatfield served with RFK for about a year and a half. In fact, Hatfield told me he secretly supported Sen. Eugene McCarthy, and that he wore a McCarthy button under his lapel to flash at Gene. And yes, I have a tape. Somewhere.

Hatfield adored RFK’s brother Ted and regarded him as a truly great, historic U.S. Senator.

I was playing in a rapidly melting snowbank in Marquette, Michigan on March 16, 1968 when my mother opened the door and called out, “Bobby’s running!”

Frankly, neither of my parents were Kennedy people, they were Like Ike Types, and here’s a family story that still baffles me to this day.

I was born in 1960. My parents were actually named John and Jackie. They named me Jack. And……

…they voted for Nixon in 1960.

I know I was actually named after Jack Weisling, a family friend, and another man they liked named Jack, whose name eludes me. But not the Jack. I am also deeply grateful I wasn’t named after Dad’s uncle, whose name I won’t reveal because I know several named “(THAT NAME HERE)” are readers here who would object. My mother was afraid he’d “kiss the Pope’s ring,” in Mom’s words. She later became a real McGovernhead, but she never liked Teddy.

In fact, the first time I ever went to the U.S. Capitol in 1967 (where we met our congressman, Phil Ruppe of Michigan—and he's still alive at 97!), I was in the Senate Gallery with my mom, and she said, “Look! It’s Teddy Kennedy!”

I saw a dark-haired man in a dark suit in what seemed to be a very dim room. I think I knew he was President Kennedy’s brother. He was the first famous person I had ever seen.

Mom’s excitement about RFK’s announcement was probably more historical than political. Days later, our family moved to Alexandria, Virginia.

WEDNESDAY: My moment with Bobby Kennedy