Bobby, ye hardly knew we
IF BOBBY KENNEDY WAS ALIVE and 42 years old and running for president the same way he did in 1968, he'd be trailing Dennis Kucinich in this year's Democratic presidential primary race. Kennedy didn't even officially announce his candidacy until March 16, four days after the New Hampshire primary in 1968. By mid-March this year, the winners of the major party nominations for president will be so last month's Super Duper Tuesday ago.
Forty years later it's almost quaint to recall a time when a serious candidate could enter the race for president barely seven months before the general election. Of course in 1968 there was an unpopular war being waged that had dragged on for four years. Boys were being drafted and slaughtered. . By Iraq standards, the 1968 casualty numbers are staggering. That year 16,592 Americans in uniform were killed in action in Vietnam. People were really pissed off.
AS LATE AS June 4, when Bobby won the 1968 California Democratic primary, the outcome was unknown and unimaginable. "And now on to Chicago," Kennedy told ecstatic supporters that night at the victory celebration, his last public words. Minutes later he lay dying on a hotel kitchen floor from an assassin's bullet.
Chicago, of course, was the site of the 1968 Democratic National Convention, a televised disaster, featuring long-haired anti-war protesters being clubbed enthusiastically by helemeted cops at the urging of foul-mouthed political bosses. In the primaries Kennedy finished second (31 percent) behind Sen. Eugene McCarthy (39 percent), which mattered not to the delegates who awarded the Democratic nomination to vice president Hubert Humphrey (2 percent), who lost the general election to Richard Nixon, who resigned the presidency in disgrace.
And there is not a Democrat alive who does not wonder what America and the world would be like today if Bobby had turned left instead of right into that kitchen.
WHAT WE DO KNOW is that the embarrassment caused by the unscripted mayhem during the 1968 Democratic Convention is directly responsible for the ludicrous coronations currently masquerading as presidential nominating conventions. By degrees over decades reforms born to achieve fairness in the nominating process have devolved into this ridiculous presidential primary system -- fueled by an even more ridiculous news media -- that dismisses both voters and candidates by demanding a doppler-forcast outcome before 99 percent of the population has a chance to seriously consider the choices, let alone cast a ballot.
Imagine ESPN predicting a Superbowl front runner based on the pregame coin toss -- heads is Iowa, tails New Hampshire. Two sides of a population coin that don't even add up to one Chicago.
If Bobby was alive today, somebody would be spinning him in his grave.
