As Prepared for Delivery:
Kathleen Kennedy Townsend
Opening Remarks
"To Seek a Newer World: The Life and Legacy of Robert F. Kennedy"
Newseum, Washington, DC May 27th, 2008

Great to be here. Thank you John Siegenthaler for hosting, for ideas and for making this happen.

I am delighted. I think it is a great tribute to my father that forty years after his presidential campaign candidates, so many are claiming to speak for my father, disputing what he would think or say today, and I am not just referring to our family.

Of course it is a serious question, who speaks for him? His wife, namesake, oldest child, youngest child. I would go for the eldest myself!

Our interest speaks to the vibrancy of his candidacy to the relevance of his message.

Today, here in the nation’s capital in the midst of this presidential campaign, I want to speak directly about his appreciation of politics. My father was not a natural politician. He was shy, reserved and at times very nervous as he spoke. When I very young, I would watch him practice his speeches over and over again in front of the mirror as he tried to take the tremor out of his voice. And, he was often frustrated in the Senate thinking it moved too slowly in addressing the urgent issues our time.

My father loved politics passionately. Politics was central to who he was. He often cited John Buchan’s claim that politics is the most honorable profession. The book of remembrances written our family and friends is entitled An Honorable Profession. He loved Pericles Funeral Oration praising those who give their lives, whose discussion leads to action, whose virtues are greatest; whose nobility serves the country.

Because he thought it honorable, he wanted to attract the best people to politics and to government service --to pursue justice, to create a newer world, to lighten and enrich the lives of our fellow human beings. Noble goals challenge us to dream bigger, take on difficult and tough tasks, and make our contribution to the life of our country.

Yet, I suspect that the reason that my father’s political nature is neglected has less to do with my father and more to do with the cynical temper of our times. To our 21st century ears “honorable” and “politics” seems an oxymoron incongruous. It is not just that the word “ Honorable” is virtue more associated with a patrician past, but that politics today is depicted as just the opposite as NOBLE. It is seen as dirty, debased, tainted, unworthy and perverse.

But my father loved the honorable profession of politics and he admired those whose courage shines brightly. One example stands with us today. In 1961…, the Freedom Riders, risked their lives in the Deep South to show that blacks and whites should be able to travel together peacefully. My father wanting to stop the violence, asked his assistant John Siegenthaler to go to Montgomery, to go to the bus station and to stand as a representative of the Attorney General of the United States so that the protestors could feel protected and the police closely watched.

The police “observed” passively as vicious white thugs beat the Freedom Riders senseless. While the police did nothing. John saw a woman being beaten, and rushed to help, and was hit on the back of his head by a lead pipe. Knocked unconscious, the assistant to the Attorney General awoke house later in the hospital. .

John Siegenthaler’s politics continues to match physical courage with moral passion---o investigate corruption, to defend the First Amendment, to nurture diversity in the news profession.

John is a living example of one who sees the nobility of politics. But, too often, so many do not.

I worked to make Maryland the first state in the country to require community service as a condition of high school graduation .I had seen the great good that comes from believing that one can make a difference and that everyone should try.

What I heard over and over again was while volunteerism is good, politics is dirty.

One high school teacher invited me to his school and his program of student service which was renowned as being one of the best in the state. The students took turns telling me of the good works they had done. They served in a soup kitchen, tutored younger students, participated in peer counseling. One young man described how he had served meals on wheels to an elderly woman but that at one point he stopped because she had a problem with social security. As I listened to the other students were doing, I kept wondering why he had not helped her with the social security. So, at the end of the presentations, I asked.

His response, “Well, that would be getting involved in politics” as if that was an obvious explanation as to why he must not get involved.

As you can imagine…I asked what kind of service are you doing if you refuse to actually help? If politics would actually help someone, then should not we be engaged in it?

I think I also said service is solipsistic if it avoids politics. To care only for one’s self, to be selfish is the opposite what they believed that they were doing.

The exchange provoked a vigorous discussion. A few months later, the teacher called me to tell me that the students were still talking with great animation about the difference between service and politics.

In retrospect, I may have been too harsh on that high school student. The degradation of politics is all around us. Politics is a synonym for unfairness, injustice, relying on connections not merit to get ahead.

Both young and old disdain politics or find it too difficult, too tough. You have to give up too much.

But my father knew that of course you had to risk everything. Life is dangerous, but we are not made for safe havens. And he also realized that the risk was worth it…because he and his brothers the President and Senator Ted Kennedy, were in the noblest of fights—against war, disease, poverty and hunger, fighting against communism, fighting for civil rights, preserving the environment, inspiring Americans to be better, and do better. The question is not, “are you better off, but are others better off and have you helped them to be better off?”

Politics is the way. Politics allows us to make government work. Government is not the problem, not the boogey man, not the whipping boy, not the enemy. For my father, “government was the place to make our most solemn common decisions, to care for our young and for our sick and for our elderly”.

My hope today is that America will awaken once again to the honor of politics. So that more people will vote, run for office and that talented Americans will work in government and help solve real problems. Let there be no more Katrina disasters, enough armor for our soldiers, health care for our citizens, and bridges that stay standing. We have big challenges and we need a vibrant politics to attract the very best to solve them.

The good news is that we are on the cusp of a great awakening of politics. More people have voted in this primary season than ever…and most encouragingly, many young people are voting, working on campaigns, emailing, IM—in their friends, classmates and co-workers and posting on blogs and YouTube, eager to be involved.

Given this renewed interest, I hope that a call to take up the honorable profession will for the first time in many years fall upon a receptive audience, raise hopes for our country and us.

My father’s interest in politics was nurtured by his family. One of his grandfathers—Patrick Kennedy—who tended bar and was a Boston ward healer His other grandfather Honey Fitz had been a congressman and then the first Irish Catholic native born Mayor of Boston. In Boston, politics was the way for the Irish to rise in the world. They may not have the money, connections and education of the Boston Brahmin …but they could talk, argue, organize and deliver the votes. And, so the Irish won the jobs for themselves, their families and friends. They secured funds for hospitals and orphanages, street lights, sewage, and a park or two.

And, because of our family experience in retail, ethnic politics my father instinctively grasped how politics was the lifeblood for other groups who had suffered discrimination in this their new country---the Italians, Poles, Greeks, Slovaks and Serbs, Jews who like the Irish came from foreign lands and created here in this new nation, a community of clubs, parishes, holidays, parade and heroes of their own.

In short, he knew that politics provided –for ethnic Americans—a way to break into a power structure in the days when it was still legal to discriminate in employment, housing and finance on the basis of race, creed and ethnicity. His own father moved his family to New York because he saw that the Boston Brahmin businessmen had no room for him.

His appreciation of political power meant that as Attorney General he strongly argued that the civil rights leaders should focus on gaining Voting Rights. He felt that once you had the vote…you had the power. And the power could not be taken from you. He thought that the power of the vote provided enormous strength to groups who had been discriminated against. And, the ascendancy of African Americans who soon became municipal officials, big city mayors, state delegates, state representatives and senators is testament to that strategy.

He sponsored Community Action Programs which were an early federal effort to engage minority communities when state and municipal officials still discriminated against minorities. He wanted “maximum feasible participation” because he saw government should not be seen as merely a hand out but the path for people to control their lives, to make decisions about their community. Government was not supposed to do things to people or for people but with people. And this can only happen if the people are actively involved and engaged in the process.

His appreciation of politics was not however merely the inevitable result of growing up Irish Catholic, in the Fitzgerald Kennedy family, managing his brother’s campaigns but also grew from his readings of poetry, of the Greek tragedians and of history. Human beings grasp for power, yearn for a life of purpose and meaning while often tempted by cowardice and deceit. He carried around a copy of Hannah Arendt’s groundbreaking book, “On Revolution”, where Arendt promotes the idea of “PUBLIC HAPPINESS”. She argues that when Thomas Jefferson enshrined the “right to the pursuit of happiness”, he proposed that we have the right to participate in politics, to have some control over our lives not to be subjects of the British Crown but to be citizens in our own country. My father would often point out that the root of the word Idiot is the Greek idios—meaning a private person, not involved in public life.

But my father saw politics not merely as the way for an aggrieved group to gain power but for citizens to create a just and compassionate country. Political participation of the many is the way to insure that the few will not control our country.

Listen to his words in 1967

We think we’re losing our individuality we can’t affect the future of government, you can’t affect what’s happening in business, and you can’t affect what’s going on in the course of events around the rest of the world, whether you approve or disapprove of Viet Nam.

And if everyone gives up and everyone decides they can’t have an affect, what are (we) going to do in the most powerful nation in the world, when it’s just left to a few, just left to those perhaps whose motivations won’t be the same?

So if everybody makes an effort and decides that they’re going to make an effort and make their views heard and all the rest of it, I think that’s worthwhile and I think, my judgment is that there is nothing else worthwhile.

“NOTHING ELSE WORTHWHILE” as getting involved, making your views heard, making sure that politics will not by for the few.

So while politics was a way for Euro ethnics and African Americans to asset their power, it was also a way for all Americans to pursue justice and seek that newer world. It was a moral proposition. It was a way to improve the life of the country.

This means that politics was a way both to gain power and to use it well. Today, too many focus on gaining and using power, without attending to the deep moral dimension.

The very word “morality” seems to have been reduced to cover three issues—abortion, stem cell research and gay marriage.

But my father’s view of morality was so much larger. He was morally outraged at an unjust war, at poverty in the land of plenty and the apathy and indifference of those who should know better and do more.

But what he did not do, is use his power to divide black and white, or to denigrate others. He was not interested in winning votes by exacerbating divisions, by using pollsters to slice and dice the population, by stirring up anger and grievances against others.

So at a time of an unjust war, when too many lived with the violence of guns, and institutions, he kept talking about really important questions.

I think that there are three themes the heart of his campaign that speak to us today.

First, as American we are all brothers and sisters together and we share goals, hopes and dreams. Therefore, we seek to emphasize those shared values—peaceful neighborhoods, strong education, beautiful parks. Water that is pure and air that is clean, work that supports our family by providing a good salary, benefits and health care.

He was able to bring together groups that today are said to the be the fault lines of the Democratic party---the intellectuals, the working class ethnics, and African-Americans, students, Latinos. He spoke with civility, found find common ground, and demonstrated our mutual interests

I think in his gut he believed in America and Americans. He believed that people could o understand one another, and put themselves in each others shoes. His leadership opened us up to how others live rather than comforting us in our own grievance and ignorance.

So to whites upset about black violence, he talked about the violence of institutions, the violence of the entertainment industry, the violence of a constricted life of desperation. .

To supporters of the welfare state, he explained that a handout does not give dignity, that a man without work is an invisible man, unnoticed, unimportant, unworthy, not just in the mind of his fellow citizens but most desperately in his own sense of self. The worst part of welfare is not the resentment of taxpayers who feel their own hard earned dollars are wasted on the lazy, the shiftless, the other. The worst was how permanently it wrecks the human spirit.

He trusted Americans to listen and he won the votes of black Americans and white working class Americans. In fact, after he died many of those white voters switched to George Wallace.

I think he was able to bring people together because though his words were eloquent, he knew that words need to lead to action. He wanted to solve problems. People heard him and knew that he was intent on getting things done, not just talking about them. He had a record that showed he was serious; he had prosecuted corruption, sent Greyhound buses to help the Freedom Riders, brought business and community leaders to help Bedford Stuyvesant, worked on the Alliance for Progress.

The Second theme at the heart of his campaign is that Americans are committed to a just economic system that promotes fairness for the many---which prevents thugs and mobs from violent assault and that prevents the few from garnering to themselves all the privileges of wealth so that the educated should not get out of serving our country, the fortunate should not get great health care while others suffer, so that education should be the right of all not just those with money and connections.

He talked to medical students at the University of Nebraska about the importance of health care for all. When one of the students asked the inevitable question, “Well who will pay for this?” he answered strongly "YOU WILL".

When he spoke to the students at the University of Kansas seeking their votes he did not flatter them but pointed out how unfair it was that they could enjoy the privilege of leisured study while their fellow countrymen were fighting and dying a half a world away.

And, each of you here know that he took time off from campaigning to break bread with Cesar Chavez---most of whose workers were not only unregistered but not even citizens. But he did it because his heart went out to those who had the courage to stand up for those who work in the hot sun, every day light hour, often in dangerous conditions so that they could earn a little something for their families some who like them lived in tin shacks here in the richest nation on earth, while others still live across the border in even
worse conditions.

As he explained, “I like Cesar”.

Today, we need to address the growing disparities of wealth, and challenge the few who live in gated communities, fly on private jets isolated from ordinary Americans.

The third theme, the heart of his campaign, my father believed that we should respect our opponents both at home and abroad. One of his greatest contributions to world peace was his resistance to those generals who wanted to bomb Cuba.

He asked how could America be a country that started a war?

He asked how many would die?

He asked what would be the consequences?

He insisted on talk at the highest levels of our government and then with the Soviet Union.

In the midst of the Viet Nam War, he suggested that we talk to our opponents to the North Vietnamese and to the Viet Cong.

When he visited nations where he was unpopular, he resisted pleas to avoid protesting students and instead waded among them. Brought them on stage with him. His love of politics gave him faith in the value of talk, of conversation and in the power of ideas to resolve conflicts without violence.

To those who held him responsible for the Viet Nam War, he took responsibility and then said that pride should never deter us from changing course.

He chose no life of ease for himself---for only God and Angels can be lookers on. And, he did not think America was great if it failed to dare, to strive to do the thing that is difficult.

These days we have really difficult challenges. In the economic realm to be sure…record housing foreclosures, millions without health care, an economic system that rewards the few with wealth unbounded while so many struggle, and where fear of the stranger makes us lose the fellow feeling that would welcome those who want only to work and do well for their family.

But I sense a great yearning in America ---a stirring of the soul to the honorable vocation of politics. What makes politics great is that it connects us to one another, the medical student with the migrant farmworker, enables us to make the sacrifices that improve the lives of those who need it and ennoble us all. Politics connects the privileged to those who struggle to make house payments, or put food on the table. Politics emphasizes our common bond as Americans.

Politics can be the engine of progress and the wellspring of justice. Politics is a deeper morality that demands that we end suffering where and when we can. Politics is not just a way, but the way to accomplish these deep moral imperatives. Not just a noble calling, in this light, but something approaching a religious vocation—the way we make God’s work on earth our own, to borrow a phrase.

I hope that on this 40th anniversary of my father’s presidential campaign…we ask our candidates and ourselves to see what we can do with courage and confidence address the serious challenges. Let us reserve our outrage for injustice and summon love and compassion for those who suffer.