The 45th Anniversary of Robert Kennedy's Assassination

Yesterday was D-Day. It was also the 45th anniversary of the assassination of Senator Robert F. Kennedy...Bobby as we remember him. Robert Kennedy scored a major victory in winning the California presidential primary in1968. It pushed his presidential candidacy into high gear, making him the man to beat. He addressed his supporters shortly after midnight on June 5, 1968, in a ballroom at The Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, California. Leaving the ballroom, he went through the hotel kitchen after being told it was a shortcut, despite being advised to avoid the kitchen by his bodyguard, FBI agent Bill Barry. In a crowded kitchen passageway Sirhan Sirhan, a 24-year-old Palestinian, opened fire with a .22-caliber revolver. Kennedy was hit three times and five other people also were wounded. George Plimpton, former decathlete Rafer Johnson, and George Plimpton, former decathlete Rafer Johnson, and former professional football player Rosey Grier are credited with wrestling Sirhan Sirhan to the ground after Sirhan shot the Senator. Following the shooting, Kennedy was first rushed to Los Angeles's Centra Receiving Hospital and then to the city's Good Samaritan Hospital where he died early the next morning. Sirhan said that he felt betrayed by Kennedy's support for Israel in the June 1967 Six-Day War, which had begun exactly one year before the assassination. His body was returned to New York City, where it lay in repose at Saint Patrick's Cathedral from 10 pm until 10 am on June 8. A high requiem mass attended by members of the extended Kennedy family, President Lyndon B. Johnson and his wife Lady Bird Johnson, and members of the Johnson Cabinet was held at St. Patrick's Cathedral at 10 am on June 8. Robert Kennedy was the last great icon of modern American liberalism. His older brother, President John F. Kennedy defined a liberal as follows : "...someone who looks ahead and not behind, someone who welcomes new deas without rigid reactions, someone who cares about the welfare of the people — their health, their housing, their schools, their jobs, their civil rights, and their civi iberties — someone who believes we can break through the stalemate and suspicions that grip us in our policies abroad, if that is what they mean by a 'Liberal', then I’m proud to say I’m a 'Liberal'." American liberalism has included Republicans who promote economic growth and high state and federal spending, while accepting high taxes and much liberal legislation, with the proviso they can administer it more efficiently. They welcome support from labor unions and big business alike. Religion and social issues are not high on their agenda. In foreign policy they are internationalists who encourage American leadership in the wider world. They are often called the "Eastern Establishment." ~~~~~ Dear readers, the political landscape in America has changed drastically since 1968. The Kennedy and Johnson Great Sociery is gone. The liberal wing of the Republican Party is non-existent except in the northeast, wiped away by the Goldwater inter-regnun and then Ronald Reagan's conservative GOP-Reagan Democrat coalition. One might argue that Jon Huntsman, who describes himself as a moderate conservative, has liberal views on social issues. Senator John McCain is probably a liberal but his expertize and focus on military affairs blurs his political viewpoint. New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, a liberal, left the GOP to become an Independent. I often wonder if New Jersey GOP Governor Chris Christie will not end up an Independent or a Democrat because his future in politics depends on the liberal vote he must cater to. But, how voters identify themselves has been fairly stable over the last two decades. As of August 2011, 19% of American voters identified themselves as liberals, 38% as moderates and 41% as conservatives. In 1992, 18% identified as liberal, 40% as moderate and 35% as conservative. Turnout to vote, however, fluctuates. Liberals comprised 20% of the voters in 2006, 22% in 2008, 20% in 2010, and 25% in 2012, which was the highest rate in decades. Despite this, the largest block of Americans are conservative, not liberal. In his eulogy at his brother's funeral, Ted Kennedy may have given the best explanation ever of Bobby Kennedy's special brand of liberalism : “My brother need not be idealized, or enlarged in death beyond what he was in life; to be remembered simply as a good and decent man, who saw wrong and tried to right it, saw suffering and tried to heal it, saw war and tried to stop it. Those of us who loved him and who take him to his rest today, pray that what he was to us and what he wished for others will some day come to pass for all the world. As he said many times, in many parts of this nation, to those he touched and who sought to touch him: 'Some men see things as they are and say why. I dream things that never were and say why not.' "