by Tom Ontis

Created on: January 16, 2009

My introduction to the politics of this country was during the 82 day campaign that Senator Robert F. Kennedy ran for Presiddent in 1968, cut short only by his assasination in June of that year. He ran as the anti-Vietnam War candidate, as did Senator Eugene McCarthy of Minnesota. In a sense they competed for some of the same Democratic vote.

Robert Francis Kennedy was born into the wealthy Kennedy family. His father, Joseph P., had served as an ambassador to Great Britain in the 1930's. His older brother, JFK was President for just short of three years, when an assassin killed him in Dallas, Texas, on November 22, 1963. The mantle now fell to RFK.

RFK served as Attorney General in his brother's administration. With little legal background, his brother was accused of appointing him just because of their relationship. During his four years at the helm of the Justice Department, Kennedy focussed on civil rights and ending the grip that organized crime had on the labor unions. During the tumoltuous 1960's, at the height of the Civil Rights movement, Kennedy, with the President's approval, RFK had lcivil rights leader Martin Luther King, jr. jailed, he said for his own protection. When King was assassinated in April of 1968, Kennedy announced to the largely black crowd in Indianpolis of the murder. Not many white people could have done that without fear for their lives, but Robert Kennedy did, with but a few security personnel. He is credited with calming the crowd, while other cities around the nation broke into violence and riots.

RFK was ruthless. He rewrded his political colleagues and punished his enemies. He and his brother's vice pesident, Lyndon Johnson of Texas did not like one another. He was really running against Johnson in 1968. Speculation rose that he would run as Johnson's VP in 1964, but that was just a pipe dream, as Johnson chose longtime Democratic stalwart Senator Hubert Humphrey as his running mate. RFK left the cabinet.

in 1966 he ran and won the office of junior United States Senator from New York. (Ironically, in latter years, Hillary Rodham Clinton would occupy that post, unitl her nomination as Barack Obama's Secretary of State.)

In March of 1968, President Johnson announced that he would not be a candidate for re-election, or even to accept the nomination of the Democratic Party at the Chicago convention. Kennedy had announced his candidacy about two weeks before Johnson's. It may be what prompted him to make the final decision.

Kennedy campaigned

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