What could a candidate say to get our support in 2008? I just read a speech that did it for me. It was given by Robert F. Kennedy at the University of Kansas on March 18, 1968, less than three months before he was shot and killed in Los Angeles. To my surprise, I could not find the entire text posted anywhere on the Internet. So let me provide the service of transcribing it here, and allow it to speak for itself:
I have seen these other Americans. I have seen children in Mississippi starving, their bodies so crippled by hunger, and their minds have been so destroyed for their whole life that they will have no future. I have seen children in Mississippi - here in the United States, with a gross national product of eight hundred billion dollars - I have seen children in the Delta area of Mississippi with distended stomachs, whose faces are covered with sores from starvation, and we haven't developed a policy so that we can get enough food so they can live, so that their lives are not destroyed. I don't think that's acceptable in the United States of America, and I think we need a change.
I have seen Indians living on their bare and meager reservations, with no jobs, with an unemployment rate of 80 percent, and with so little hope for the future that for young men and women in their teens, the greatest cause of death is suicide. That they end their lives by killing themselves - I don't think that we have to accept that, for the first Americans, for the minority here in the United States. If young boys and girls are so filled with despair when they are going to high school, and they feel that their lives are so hopeless and that nobody's going to care for them, nobody's going to be involved with them, nobody's going to bother with them, that they either hang themselves, shoot themselves, or kill themselves - I don't think that's acceptable, and I think the United States of America - I think the American people know we can do much, much better. And I run for the presidency because of that. I run for the presidency because I've seen proud men in the hills of Appalachia, who wish only to work in dignity, but they cannot, for the mines have closed and their jobs are gone and no one - neither industry, labor, nor government - has cared enough to help.
I think we here in this country, with the unselfish state that exists in the United States of America, I think we can do better here also.
I have seen the people of the black ghetto, listening to ever-greater promises of equality and justice, as they sit in the same decaying schools and huddle in the same filthy rooms, without heat, warding off the cold and warding off the rats.
If we believe that we, as Americans, are bound together by a common concern for each other, then an urgent national priority is upon us. We must begin to end the disgrace of this other America.
And this is one of the great tasks of leadership for us, as individuals and citizens this year. But even if we act to erase material poverty, there is another great task. It is to confront the poverty of satisfaction - a lack of purpose and dignity - that inflicts us all. 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, 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 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 can tell us everything about America except why we are proud that we are Americans.
If this is true here at home, so it is true elsewhere in the world. From the beginning, our proudest boast was that we, here in this country, would be the best hope for all mankind. And now, as we look at the war in Vietnam, we wonder if we still hold a decent respect for the opinions of mankind, and whether they have maintained a decent respect for us, or whether like Athens of old, we will forfeit sympathy and support, and ultimately security, in a single-minded pursuit of our own goals and our own objectives.
A couple more examples. Six days later he said:
Our brave young men are dying in the swamps of Southeast Asia. Which of them might have written a poem? Which of them might have cured cancer? Which of them might have played in a World Series or given us the gift of laughter from the stage or helped build a bridge or a university? Which of them would have taught a child to read? It is our responsibility to let these men live.... It is indecent if they die because of the empty vanity of their country.
Upon the death of Martin Luther King, Jr., in an impromptu speech on April 4:
I have bad news for you, for all of our fellow citizens, and people who love peace all over the world, and that is that Martin Luther King was shot and killed tonight. Martin Luther King dedicated his life to love and to justice for his fellow human beings, and he died because of that effort. In this difficult day, in this difficult time for the United States, it is perhaps well to ask what kind of a nation we are and what direction we want to move in. For those of you who are black -- considering the evidence there evidently is that there were white people who were responsible -- you can be filled with bitterness, with hatred, and a desire for revenge. We can move in that direction as a country, in great polarization -- black people amongst black, white people amongst white, filled with hatred toward one another. Or we can make an effort, as Martin Luther King did, to understand and to comprehend, and to replace that violence, that stain of bloodshed that has spread across our land, with an effort to understand with compassion and love. For those of you who are black and are tempted to be filled with hatred and distrust at the injustice of such an act, against all white people, I can only say that I feel in my own heart the same kind of feeling. I had a member of my family killed, but he was killed by a white man. But we have to make an effort in the United States, we have to make an effort to understand, to go beyond these rather difficult times. My favorite poet was Aeschylus. He wrote: "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." What we need in the United States is not division; what we need in the United States is not hatred; what we need in the United States is not violence or lawlessness; but love and wisdom, and compassion toward one another, and a feeling of justice toward those who still suffer within our country, whether they be white or they be black. So I shall ask you tonight to return home, to say a prayer for the family of Martin Luther King, that's true, but more importantly to say a prayer for our own country, which all of us love -- a prayer for understanding and that compassion of which I spoke. We can do well in this country. We will have difficult times; we've had difficult times in the past; we will have difficult times in the future. It is not the end of violence; it is not the end of lawlessness; it is not the end of disorder. But the vast majority of white people and the vast majority of black people in this country want to live together, want to improve the quality of our life, and want justice for all human beings who abide in our land. Let us dedicate to ourselves to what the Greeks wrote so many years ago: to tame the savageness of man and make gentle the life of this world. Let us dedicate ourselves to that, and say a prayer for our country and for our people.
Now THAT'S a presidential candidate.
I was born in 1969, just after RFK was assassinated. I can make no attempt to eulogize RFK, because I was not around to experience firsthand what he said and did. But the more I read about him, the more in awe I am. This is a guy who embodied moral courage. This is a guy who CARED. Where is this today?
In front of me in homeroom in high school sat a black kid whose last name was just before mine in alphabetical order, and whom his parents named Kennedy. I had always thoughtlessly assumed it was for JFK, but this kid was born in 1968. It occurred to me today that his name was an attempt to keep alive the spirit of the man whose quotes you have just read. He was named for Robert F. Kennedy. And now I am beginning to understand why.