A MAN FOR OUR TIMES

Link: Daily Kos: Robert Kennedy Anniversary

The post at Daily Kos, and the subsequent comments, are well worth reading during this week that would have marked the 80th birthday of Robert F. Kennedy. Including this quote that -- like so many of Kennedy's -- rings more true today than it did the year I was born, the year he died:

Too much and too long, we seem to have surrendered community excellence and community values in the mere accumulation of material things. Our gross national product ... 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 armored cars for police who fight riots in our streets. 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 tells us everything about America except why we are proud that we are Americans.

I continue to view the too-brief legacy of Bobby Kennedy with awe and sadness, even after discovering the man beneath the myth, the wise-ass, the tough guy, the thin-skinned boy. But it wasn't until I read Evan Thomas' biography, "Robert Kennedy: His Life," that I began to see Bobby Kennedy as one of the most sincerely transparent public figures in modern time:

He was brave because he was afraid. His monsters were too large and close at hand to simply flee. He had to turn and fight them.... He became a one-man underground, honeycombed with hidden passages, speaking in code, trusting no one completely, ready to face the firing squad--but also knowing when to slip away to fight again another day. Although he affected simplicity and directness, he became an extraordinarily complicated and subtle man. His shaking hands and reedy voice, his groping for words as well as meaning, his occasional resort to subterfuge, do not diminish his daring. Precisely because he was fearful and self-doubting, his story is an epic of courage.

The death of Robert Kennedy in 1968 arguably was the single, most significant political death of the 20th century. Woodrow Wilson was spent as a force when he died near the close of World War I; Franklin Roosevelt was at the end of his tranformative cycle in American politics; John Kennedy was a remarkable, charismatic man whose caution would have tempered his growth had he lived; the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. would have lived to see his coalition crumble, regardless of his political will and social courage.

Bobby Kennedy died an incomplete man, and left an incomplete nation in his wake.