Robert Kennedy

How odd and somewhat ironic that I should find the man I admire and respect more than anyone else, a man I call my hero, was a devout Catholic, American Politician.

Funny how we stumble onto these things… late one night I turned on the TV, planning to watch a dvd and as I was searching for something to watch I noticed a documentary on, about JFK’s little brother.

At the time the extent of my knowledge of Robert Kennedy was the movie “Thirteen Days” about the Cuban Missile Crisis in the early 60’s, so I wasn’t overly impressed. I mean sure he did help avert nuclear war, but I’d never had much fascination for JFK or any American politician for that matter, so I moved on.

But as I watched this documentary, I listened and found myself watching the journey that Robert Kennedy took after his brother’s death. Some people say that Jack’s death changed him, I disagree. It wounded him certainly, but the Robert Kennedy who died in 1968, was the same man he’d always been, I’d say his older brother’s assassination was the catalyst for what became his crusade for African Americans, but Bobby was always changing and ironically for a Catholic, evolving his attitudes, afterall he was one of the main motivations for JFK’s risky decision to face the cival rights problems that plagued America at the time.

Like his older brother, Bobby was assassinated. He died while running for the Democratic Nomination for President of the United States.

I can’t help but wonder if Kennedy had survived, won the Democrats Presidential nomination, and beaten Richard Nixon, what sort of world would we be living in?

It’s one of the great “what if?” questions that plagues me. Here was a man that didn’t even have a chance to do some truly great things. It seems to me there are very few politicians left like Robert Kennedy, few who really could make a difference, and I can’t help but think they’d be gunned down too. Al Gore, I’m looking at you.

Robert Kennedy died fifteen years before I was born, yet to me his death feels like it only just happened, I feel like those people crying on the floor of the Ambassador Hotel Ballroom, shocked and feeling a great loss.

I can’t really explain in words just how I feel about this man… if you know who he is, you might understand, if you’ve never heard of him, this deviation will probably just seem like an odd cartoon of a long dead American politician.

"In our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart until, in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God."”
– Aeschylus