Remarks As Prepared for Delivery:
Kathleen Kennedy Townsend
John F. Kennedy Library Forum: "Robert Kennedy and the 1968 Campaign"
Boston, MA March 16, 2008

Great to be here.

Thank Paul Kirk, John Shattuck, Amy McDonald and the staff of the JFK Library for all that you have done to keep alive the spirit of the Kennedy Administration and particularly for the great work you did today in pulling together this wonderful forum.

Thank my mother for all her work with the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial and her devotion to nurturing a warm and loving family

Phil Johnston—Chair of the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial and years ago visionary founder of the Robert Kennedy Action Corps---which helps the young people that my father cared so much about.

This is a wonderfully interesting year to remember my father. His name is in the news. Many people are referring to him, quoting him, claiming his legacy. Disputes are rampant. And I am not just talking about my family.

Of course there are questions. Who is best able to carry on Robert Kennedy's legacy?

Who speaks for him? His wife? His namesake? his youngest child…or his oldest? I would go for the oldest myself. There must be some advantage to years!

More seriously, the endorsements of different political candidates by members of my family, each of us recalling my father, brings me to the happy conclusion that his legacy lives. It matters. It is important.

I remember walking with my father one cool evening. It was just the two of us at twilight and the stars were starting to come out. The President had died a few months before. My father was telling me how he had tried to create the best administration ever, what an extraordinary group of people worked in that effort, how special that time had been.

He then quoted the Crispian Day Speech.

This story shall the good man teach his son;
And Crispin Crispian shall ne'er go by,
From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remembered-
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition;
And gentlemen in England now-a-bed
Shall think themselves accurs'd they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin's day.

Certainly I was impressed that he could recite Shakespeare but I was not surprised. My bedroom was next to his room where each morning he would listen to Shakespeare while he did his daily sit ups. The story of him besting Richard Burton in a Shakespeare reciting contest in front of Elizabeth Taylor was part of family lore.

I did not take note that he referred to the good man, the son, gentlemen and band of brothers—neglecting women, sisters and ladies. That awakening would come later.

That evening I was moved by the sadness of my father’s loss and touched by his deep desire, yearning really, that the feats and scars of those 1000 days would be long remembered, would be toasted and talked about for years to come.

He would take satisfaction that we are here today and that we glory in the deeds of giants such as John Siegenthaler, Bill Vandenheuvel, Gerard Dougherty, Rafer Johnson, Dolores Huerta, and Peter Edelman.

Still unlike Henry V, whose legacy is the glory of a single battle well fought, my father’s memory is more complicated. He engaged in multiple fights in different fields of endeavor.

Trying to define my father’s legacy reminds me of a passage from Andre Malraux seminal book, “Man’s Fate” where the general and the intellectual struggle to figure out what wisdom means. He suggests that every one defines WISDOM in a way that reflects their world view, their priorities and their own best view of themselves.

I think there is something to that in the way that each of us feels about Robert Kennedy. How we look at him says a great deal about how we define the challenges our country’s faces, what we want from our leaders and what we think of ourselves.

There are many aspects to my father---prosecutor, defender of civil rights, moralist, and athlete.

He prosecuted the mob because as he said, “Either they will own the country or we will.” He shamed J.Edgar Hoover into admitting that organized crime did in fact EXIST.

He stood up to the southern governors, once his allies, who wanted to perpetuate segregation, and helped enact two of the most significant pieces of legislation in American history--the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the1965 Voting Rights Act.

Like Churchill, he believed that, “moral courage was the most important virtue.” So he told college students at Creighton University that the draft deferement was unfair, medical students on Kansas that they had a responsibility to pay for the health care costs, and liberals that work was worthwhile.

He appreciated the role of faith in public life. On his visit to South Africa in 1966, he said, "It is not realistic or hardheaded to solve problems and take action unguided by ultimate moral aims and values. In my judgment it is thoughtless folly. For it ignores the realities of human faith and of passion and belief---forces ultimately more powerful than all of the calculations of our economists and of our generals." And, the God he prayed to was not made in his own image, but was a large God who cared about justice for all. When he returned from South Africa, he wrote, “Suppose God is Black”.

He challenged himself physically -a varsity letter with the Harvard Football team, climbing Mt.Kennedy, walking 50 miles in bad shoes on snow and ice, kayaking down the Colorado and telling me at our Saturday morning touch football practices, “if you can touch it, you can catch it. Kathleen.”

He had a great sense of humor. When a Southern Governor, upset about a Justice Department policy would complain, "This is the most outrageous thing that has ever happened and the Attorney General should be impeached." He would call up the Governor and say, "I was thinking of changing my job anyway."

The list goes on. Each of you would have your own special remembrance and insight.

But I would focus on three aspects of my father in his pursuit of justice that I believe are most relevant to today—Politics, Results and Compassion.

First, Politics.

During his Senate campaign, he was being interviewed on a TV talk show. I was watching alone in my room at the Carlyle Hotel. The host asked a question and then said something to the effect, "But you are not a real politician". He could have ducked, or demurred. Instead he disagreed and said, "yes I am, I am a politician.”

That was gutsy thing to say because it was popular then just as it is now to criticize politics and politicians, to run against Washington, to claim a special singular righteousness. I am not like those people. But my father used to quote---often, John Buchan, that “Politics is the most honorable profession” and in fact the book of remembrances by friends was entitled “An Honorable Profession”.

His appreciation of politics and engagement meant that he saw that the happiness that comes from participation, from knowing that you can affect change, from knowing that your voice counts not just on election day, but throughout the year in a variety of settings. So, he insisted that 51% of the Board of Community Health Centers be drawn from the community that they serve. He liked Community Action Programs, because they were supposed to achieve maximum participation. Government was not supposed to do things TO you, or FOR you, but with you.

Second—He focused on Results.

During the 1968 campaign, he said, the "government is the way to solve our most solemn common problems." I wish we had politicians, who could say that now. I wish that today's politicians would not knock what they are doing, pretend it is awful, but rather explain what they like and like my father, and his brother the President assert that politics can attract the best minds, best energies, best hopes and tackle big and difficult problems—the war, health care, education, the environment.

When he saw a problem, he wanted to solve it. He would ask, what do we do about that? Who can help? And, when can they get results. He was action oriented. He wanted to accomplish something…not just complain. He wanted to get people to focus on the problem and solve it. So, he did not want vague answers. He wanted the facts, the truth and then a way to make things happen. When he was in the Justice Department, he gave people deadlines, and they were expected to come back. There was a reporting system.

I think he was frustrated in the Senate because there was not the same sense of urgency, or of getting the job done. In fact he would complain that the liberals were often more interested in "being right" than getting the legislation passed.

In 1967, when the first Education Bill was enacted, he worked very hard to put in a measurement system to see if all that money actually improved education. He met with a lot of resistance…from the educational establishment. But he persisted.

Third, Compassion.

Finally, I think the memory of my father still lives because he touched people deepest desire to live a good life. Forty years ago my father ran for President and still hardly a day passes without someone telling me about an encounter, a shared moment, an act of kindness. He still touches people all around the world.

In February 1968, he had agreed to speak on Sunday evening at my high school in Vermont and so my parents spent that weekend in New England. During what turned out to be our last weekend together, we raced each other down ski trails in the brisk air, discussed my paper on Wordsworth by the fire and talked about his running for President. I loved that he wanted to hear about my life—school, friends, and he wanted to hear what my fellow students were thinking about…Viet Nam, race relations. He was so good at asking questions and listening.

That Sunday, he addressed the assembled students…and talked about the war, the violence in our cities, and the desperation on Indian reservations. He painted a picture of a world yearning for justice and he asked us…as the privileged and fortunate students that we were to get involved, to take our responsibilities seriously, to resist merely private pleasure and to use our gifts to lighten and enrich the world. That night, my friend Sophie and I decided to take up his challenge and work on an Indian reservation that summer. I did not imagine then that I would be living with the Navajos after his death.

In looking back, I see that he believed in me and he believed in the power and potential of youth and believed that we must make moral choices about our lives. His own sense of justice recognized a role for righteous anger and the value of love and compassion.

He often cited the graffiti on the walls of the pyramids, "and no one was angry enough to speak out". His anger at injustice impelled him to attack the corruption in the labor unions—and then provoked him to get congress to outlaw organized crime. He insisted that the Greyhound Bus company which resisted transporting the Freedom Riders to find a driver. He reminded the sheriffs who wanted to “preventively” arrest Farm Workers about the Bill of Rights. He suggested to American diplomats who would defend South American oligarchs and North American business interests, that those who make a peaceful revolution impossible make a violent revolution inevitable.

And yet, when the injustice attached to him most directly he did not react in anger.

When my uncle John Kennedy died, he wrote me a letter from the White House.

Dear Kathleen, You seem to understand that Jack died and was buried today. As the oldest of the grandchildren, you have a special responsibility. Be kind to others and work hard for our country.

Love, Daddy.

At that moment, he could have been bitter, he could have been angry, resentful, revengeful. And, yet by writing, he told me that he was thinking of me, caring about me, and wanting me to be responsible, kind and loving.

Most remarkably, that understanding heart embraced people all around the world…not ones who were easy to love but those who were difficult. He believed in treating enemies with respect rather than vilifying them. So he wrote "Just Friends and Brave Enemies: He said we should talk with the Viet-Cong.

He reached his hand to children living in unheated shacks in Appalachia, to students protesting US foreign policy in Japan and South America. He broke bread with Cesar Chavez after his month long fast. His love impelled him to drive into the inner city when Martin Luther King was killed and say, "my brother was also killed by a white man,” and asked that there that be peace not violence and revenge.

It is hard to dance between anger and love. In this world that is unfair and unjust, it is so much easier to fall victim to anger's righteousness. My father had reason to curse the fates. But he resisted that course. He chose a path that found wisdom in pain. And, in doing so demonstrated that empathy for those who hailed from different nations, social class, ethnicities or faiths.

I think his memory lives because we each yearn for examples of those who go forward in the face of tragedy, show empathy while pursuing justice. Politics, Results and Compassion and as has been said before the most important of these is compassion

At the City Club of Cleveland, the day after Martin Luther King was killed he said, Today,. He reminds us of a different way.

“We must recognize that this short life can neither be ennobled or enriched by hatred or revenge.

Our lives on this planet are too short and the work to be done too great to let this spirit flourish any longer in our land. Of course we cannot vanish it with a program, nor with a resolution.

But we can perhaps remember – even if only for a time – that those who live with us are our brothers, that they share with us the same short movement of life, that they seek – as we do – nothing but the chance to live out their lives in purpose and happiness, winning what satisfaction and fulfillment they can.

Surely this bond of common faith, this bond of common goal, can begin to teach us something. Surely we can learn, at least, to look at those around us as fellow men and surely we can begin to work a little harder to bind up the wounds among us and to become in our hearts brothers and countrymen once again.”