Bobby Kennedy

I started reading a new book called The Last Campaign: Robert F. Kennedy and 82 Days that Inspired America. You might wonder what in the world would lead me to pick up such a book, so I'll tell you. A couple of years ago, I read an excerpt from this book in an issue of Vanity Fair, the very first issue I had ever picked up. It was so powerfully written that I kept that issue of the magazine with Bobby Kennedy's photo on the cover, made a mental note to some day read the whole book, and began grabbing a copy of the most current Vanity Fair whenever I got the chance. After reading two books lately that were both about young thirty-somethings who needed to "find themselves" as their marriages were falling apart (no more memoirs for me for a while, thanks), I wanted to read something with some real substance. Then I remembered the book about Bobby Kennedy. I'm only about sixty pages in, but I there's a passage from one of his speeches that I just really wanted to share. For those of you who don't know anything about JFK's younger brother Bobby (I didn't either before reading this book), he decided to run for president in 1968 because he felt morally obligated to do whatever he could to oppose Lyndon B. Johnson and his involvement in Vietnam. JFK had been assassinated in 1963 and when Bobby decided to run, people (especially young people) loved him. But many of his colleagues and family members worried greatly that someone was going to shoot him. They were right. 82 days into his campaign, Bobby Kennedy was shot and killed. Martin Luther King, Jr. was also assassinated that year. And a lot of people still believe that had Bobby become president that year, America (and particularly it's political climate) would be very different today. So, here's a piece of Bobby's speech from the early days of the campaign: '"Too much and too long, we seem to have surrendered community excellence and community values in the mere accumulation of material things," he said. "Our gross national product, now, is over eight hundred billion dollars a year, but the GNP - if we should judge America by that - 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 those who break them. It counts the destruction of our redwoods and the loss of our natural wonder in chaotic sprawl. It counts napalm and the cost of a nuclear warhead...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...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."' Bobby Kennedy, 1968.