Thurston, Welcome to the Lake.

Peter, Thank you for Hosting today’s Book Salon.

Peter,

Thank you for your thoughtful and generous introduction. I think that another problem that Obama faces is that the American people have become too thin-skinned to accept the kind of criticism that RFK sometimes leveled against them.

Thurston

This is Peter Edelman. I would like to welcome Thurston Clarke and everyone out there who is going to participate in this discussion. Since I have some direct knowledge of the subject of the book, you may want to direct some questions to me, although Mr. Clarke is our author-guest, and has written an excellent book. There is much to talk about, both about 1968 itself and about the comparisons to the current Presidential campaign that Robert Kennedy’s campaign invites. So welcome to all, and let’s open the floor. Thurston, if there are no questions or comments yet, you may want to make an opening statement.

Thurston, thank you for being here today. How long did it talk to research and write the book?

And to spark some comments, here’s what RFK told an audience in Stockton, California several days after announcing his candidacy. After saying that America had once been “a country that stood for decency and for justice, and for confidence and for hope,” he added, “But now sometimes it seems we have become something else.”
Thurston

It took about two and a half years but the publication schedule was a bit looser than normal because my publisher wanted to have the book come out during the 2008 primaries.
Thurston

Peter and Thurston thank you for being here this afternoon.

I was a couple of years too young to vote in ‘68 but remember everything going on quite well. I do think we would have been dealing with the second Kennedy presidency quite well.

But as a life long liberal, I wish we had some of RFK’s heat and passion in the world today. We knew (or at least felt we knew) where he stood on things and why. If nothing else, no Nixon would have meant no Carter and probably no Reagan, Bush I or Bush II.

Those would not have been bad things.

Thurston and Peter – welcome to the Lake.

It is hard to remember how very “hot” our political discourse was in the days of RFK compared to now. I’m looking forward to reading Thurston’s book and reminding myself that we can speak with more force and justice.

I agree about the heat and passion. Newsman Sander vanocer once said that Robert Kennedy seemed to be “in a permenant state of outrage.” RFK was not just upset or saddened by hunger and povery and inequality he was outraged by it. I think that if there was ever a time that called for outrage it’s right now.
Thurston

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Are we too thin-skinned or, as I said in my opening comment, too cynical about the possibility that government could really make a difference? Of course both could be true. Also, we actually don’t know how RFK’s criticism would have resonated with the general public. I said in my earlier remarks that I think RFK would have been elected if he had been nominated, but it’s at least fair to ask whether his unvarnished criticism would have offended people who were bystanders in the primary process but would have been voters in the general election.

Consider, too, that we have heard nothing in the candidates speeches about the torture of Iraqi prisoners by U.S. soldiers. Here is what RFK said during his campaign, “The front pages of our newspapers show photographs of American soldiers torturing prisoners.”
Thurston

Peter — thank you so much for hosting this book salon today. To see the RFK you knew through your introduction is really a gift, and it is very much appreciated. And Thurston, thank you for putting together such an inspirational book — one that I’ll be turning to over and over again.

At a time when this nation is far too often turning to fear and despair, it is truly wonderful to find so much hope and roll up your sleeves initiative and commitment. Here is hoping we all find our way back to that again — more together than apart.

Welcome to the Lake Mr. Clarke,
The death of RFK was a tragedy, and a great loss for America. I am looking forward to this discussion.

I agree that RFK might have had to temper his comments in a general election. Of course one of the big differences between him and Obama is that he never had a chance to win the nomination. I also think that Nixon would have used some of his comments in the primaries against him in the general election, so making these kinds of brave statements was not risk-free.
Thurston

So, again, we have to ask ourselves (speculating, of course) whether it is the times we live in or a difference between RFK and current candidates. Another way to ask the question: would RFK be the same candidate (same person, yes, but the question is, same candidate) that he was in 1968?

Thanks, Christy.

I said in my earlier remarks that I think RFK would have been elected if he had been nominated, but it’s at least fair to ask whether his unvarnished criticism would have offended people who were bystanders in the primary process but would have been voters in the general election.

My parents loved JFK. My father was no where nears as strong on RFK as my sister and I were but one of the few times I ever saw my father cry was after the Dem convention did a film on RFK at the ‘68 convention.

I think there were a whole lot of folks like my father who would have proudly voted for RFK.

How do you think he would have handled religion, Peter? Would he have appeared with Rick warren and talked about his relationship with Jesus Christ?
Thurston

I think so, too. Why? because RFK had courage–physical and moral courage–and courage is an attribute that can transcend political labels and appeal to people accross the political spectrum.
Thurston

One thing I can say about RFK is that while he was totally astute about politics, he was also existential — very much living in the moment in what must have been a knowledge, as you set out so persuasively in the book — so there was a spontaneity about many things he said that wasn’t calculated in terms of what might be thrown at him in the fall. He was a bundle of contradictions in a number of ways, many of which you point out so astutely in the book. I always say that he had one foot in the old politics — the RFK who helped elect his brother President — and the other in the new “cause” politics, where he was friendly with Tom Hayden and the important point was to communicate the unvarnished truth (as he saw it) to as many people as he could (again, a point that comes across clearly in your book).

I think that is a tough question to answer from this vantage point, also, Peter, given the added sheen of mistrust from the Nixon Administration and the heavy coating of that dishonesty and abuse of executive power and undercutting of the rule of law that the Bush/Cheney administration has added to the mix.

Even given the upheaval of the time in 1968, I’m not certain anyone could look back through that lens of history and divorce all of the presidential missteps since then from their evaluation. And, frankly, looking back through that lens, the “hot” candidate that RFK was looks pretty spot on from here. *g*

No Rick Warren etc then. Not an issue. BUT — RFK was very private about his religious observance. He was deeply religious but I never heard him say a word about how his religion intersected with his politics. Remember, of coursa, that it was leass than a decade after JFK had to reassure Americanss that his faith would have nothing to do with his politics. A very different time.

I agree. I love the Jeff Greenfield story: that the only time he heard RFK refer to God while he was campaigning was to say, “The only person who can solve our problems is God . . . and she isn’t running this year.”

Thurston

I think it would have been easier to support Kennedy than it was to support Humphrey. 68 was my first election. I got clean for Gene then Martin Luther King was killed. I switched to RFK, saw him ride up Notre Dame Avenue towards the Golden Dome, saw him murdered, and just basically gave up. It was one awful thing after another, just stomping hope in the dirt. Over and over.

Yes, I love that, too, and while we’re on Jeff Greenfield, I cried when I read your story (which I’d never know or perhaps had forgotten) of how he tucked Jeff Greenfield in when Greenfield had fallen asleep in the middle of writing a speech at 2:30 in the morning, and Jeff said, “You’re not ruthless after all,” and RFK said “Shhh, don’t tell anyone.” So sweet.

I was in Korea when MLK was killed and at Ft Lewis Washington when RFK died. We sat in in the barracks as 2 weeks before we left for Vietnam and watched the Chicago Convention on the tube. Maybe that is why I can’t get as worked up about the terrible mess we are in today. If you weren’t part of a time when our leaders and our personal friends seemed to be dying left and right it’s hard to understand how close we seemed to civil war.

And what about rhetoric? RFK, like JFK, sometimes inserted quotations from Greeks, Whitman, and other noted authors into his speeches. The most notable example being his speech in Indianapolis after the assassination of MLK when he quoted Aeschylus. I fear that if Obama did this now he would be slammed for being “elitst.” I can also sense Obama trying to be, if anything, less eloquent for fear that it will show him being “out of touch” with ordinary Americans.

Well, now it’s time to get involved again. As Peter has pointed out in his introduction we face many of the same problems that Americans faced in 1968. This is clearly another watershed election.

Yes, if you were against the war, it would have been hard to support Humphrey over RFK. I hoped then (and was generally confident) that McCarthy supporters would get over their early anger and come to support RFK, although no doubt some would have dropped out. I supported Humphrey after RFK was murdered. Of course it was not totally easy, but my goodness, he was running against Nixon, and I have always been sad that some people who cared so much about the issues didn’t nevertheless do their part to keep Nixon out of the White House.

I think you are very right about the thin skinned nature of the populous at this point. Probably there are a number of factors that have caused that, but certainly the rank jingoism, false front patriotism, and “American exceptionalism” peddled by conservatives and Republicans is one of them.

How can we gradually reframe the public discourse to a point to where the “hot topics”, the difficult subjects, can be openly and honestly debated. How would RFK get there from here if he were still among us?

Peter — I thought you might get a kick out of this. Someone has taken a prior Kennedy for President ad and converted it into a YouTube video, and it such a step into history to watch. It’s Jack, not Bobby — but it’s a speech given in West Virginia during the primary, and he’s asked a question regarding his religion and his run for office. His answer is thorough and straight-forward, and the crowd just eats it up.

Hell, it looks like these days that having a candidate that can string together three or four coherent sentences is considered “elitist.”

It seems so much of the Republican party wants folks to believe that lack of education and knowledge should be a prime attribute for a President.

Could you say some more about your feelings then and now? I guess you’re saying we were in a worse mess then — more divided and at greater risk of coming apart as a country. True, I think, but we’re in a pretty big mess now.

Yea, and you could “support” who ever you wanted but, if like me, you were 18 you couldn’t vote for them.

The Eastern World
It is explodin
Violence Flarin
Bullets Loadin

Mr. Clarke,
What would RFK have done after his presidency?

I think it would be difficult. It seems to me that after Reagan’s “Morning in America” prsidency no one running for office has dared to criticize the American people.

The phrase “speaking truth to power” could also apply to speaking the truth to the American electorate, After all, in an election year the voters have the power, but politicans seeem reluctant to speak the truth to their power.

This is such an important question. And of course it is one of the major things Obama is trying to do. I want him to be more passionate in his identification with all the pain people are experiencing around the country, but I will say that I think one reason he stays on the cool side is that he is trying to make the discourse more reasoned. Of course it’s totally unrequited. But when he’s elected, I think that will be one of the hallmarks of his presidency.

The exception was voters in GA and KY could vote at 18 then, even for the Presidency.

But they were the only states with 18 year old vote at that time.

Rather amazing to think of those two as being at all progressive isn’t it?

I think Peter is better qualified to answer this question. What do you say Peter? Would he have been a kind of Jimmy Cater, on steroids?

I don’t know what he would have done after he was President. I can barely see the hypothetical retrospective crystal ball throuogh 8 years of his being President. That said, yes, I think he would have worked as a citizen of the world on peace, world poverty, and nuclear disarmament, as well as continuing to work on poverty and racism at home.

Well, I was 18 and trying to figure stuff out. When I lost one of my best high school buddies on NOv 22, 68 that was it for me. I finished my tour and came home and tried to fight against the war by being involved with the VVAW and generally being anti-social. I’ve probably talked about it too much here at the lake but I just don’t seem to be able to drum up the level of anger I had then. I have told the story of my grandfather, 30 years in the So Illinois coal mines. He asked my about my world view in about 1972. After I raged on he very quietly spoke about having lived through 2 world wars, a depression and a father cut in half by a cable in the mines. He said that he could easily view the world as a bleak and unrelenting place, but that wasn’t how he saw it. Do we need to do the best we can to make changes? Sure we do, but I need to enjoy this short life too.

Thank you. I appreciate your frankness.

I do think, though,that the electorate seems to only want to hear the truth about the other guy, while having sunshine only blown their own way. We have becomes, in some large sense, a nation of people who do not take responsibility for allowing failure in our leaders. Their failures are their own fault, someone else’s problem to clean up, etc. Except that they aren’t, and never have been.

When watching the HBO miniseries recently on John Adams, I was struck anew by how small the world was at that time in terms of the reach of people in power, and how every hitch in governance and lawmaking along the way was so keenly felt by those making the laws. Because they had to go back home and tend to their farms or walk around with people in the streets of Washington and such. Today, we all live in our own insular bubbles — most of which of our own making — and that disconnect that all of us feel allows for the sort of exploitation we have seen from the likes of Dick Cheney, David Addington, et al. of pushing at the margins with no real accountability for doing so.

It isn’t something the nation’s law can survive long-term. And it is something for which all of us — every single person in this country — bears responsibility, because we elect those in Congress who then appoint those on the federal bench. And we are all falling down on the job, sad to say.

Well, Illinois gave us $150 when we came home and free tuition!

When Obama spoke at the event to commemorate what would have been RFK’s 80th birthday he delieverd some sentences that sounded like RFK. Some examples: “Somewhere another child goes hungry in a neighborhood just blocks from one where a family is too full to eat another another bite” and “if we are to shine as a beacon of hope to the rest of the world, we have to be respected not just for the might of our military, but for the reach of our ideals.”

I agree with Peter that, as President, we would hear more along these lines from Obama.

Thank you, it gets me in hot water here from time to time.

I think I would have enjoyed seeing him serve 8 years as President then pull a John Quincy Adams and go back into the Senate or maybe go to the SCOTUS.

Every time you talk about your family, I see mine, too. All the coal miners and the lumberjacks and every other hard-scrabble job you can think of…and whenever I start to get disgusted and give up, I think about how they never did. And I keep on going.

Because that’s just what you do, isn’t it? *g*

Well said, Christy. RFK was very big on personal responsibility, frequently remining Americans that they were responsible for what their government did in their name in Vietnam.

yup Redd, that’s what we do!

It seems to me the Senate would not have been out of the question for him, but not the Supreme Court. He was an activist. The cloistered world was not for him. Even the Senate might well have been too confining. You obviously don’t have to hold public office to do good things in the world, and I think that’s true exponentially for former Presidents.

I will spare everyone my feelings about JFK and the Nam. If you get a chance to read Halberstam’s “The Coldest Winter” it’s enlightening to read how JFK created the “greatest lying machine in history” to snow the American people about the real situation in Vietnam and how he joked about passing it on to the next president. Sound familiar?

I went to Fort Gordon in October of ‘68.

Thurston, as a WV resident, one of the things that has always intrigued me about RFK’s campaign was his poverty work. My family comes out of the coal mines and poverty-stricken hollows here, and my parents raised me with the understanding that education was the way forward for me, something they learned the hard way growing up. Far too often, though, even today, kids here do not get those opportunities. Some of those same levels of poverty still exist here and across Appalachia, even today — I’ve seen it in abuse and neglect case work that I’ve done as an attorney here.

I wondered if you could talk a bit about what you found surprising in any of that from RFK’s time — and if Peter could talk about that period as well. It still baffles me that we are battling the very same issues, over and over again, where this gets brought up but the underlying problems never truly get tackled in any meaningful way.

One of my buddies was a tracker, trained there but not till 70. I ended up in a signal unit in Nam but was such a reject I couldn’t get a confidential clearance, the crypto guys couldn’t even talk to me!

Oops, OT, I’m sorry.

Mr Clarke, thank you for this wonderful book. It wasn’t easy to read, or what I would call fun, but it is a very important book for anyone who wants to understand how politics used to give the American people hope, and how that hope was taken from us, violently. Additionally, for anyone who has seen any of the presidential campaigns up close this year, the undertaking you’ve documented is such a relic of a bygone era as to be from a different planet.

I don’t have a specific question, but I wanted to thank you for writing your book. It’s one I expect I’ll return to again and again, for it captures the unusual tenor of 1968 better than many others I have read. I recommend it to anyone who lived through that time, and especially to those who did not and wonder what all the hoopla is about.

It’s been interesting to see how RFK’s family has identified with Obama. Ethel Kennedy is head over heels in her enthusiasm for him, and I think she sees some of Bobby in him. It’s wonderful to see her enthusiasm.

At the end of my book I say that “candidates from either party could run today on the same issues and champion the same causes that Kennedy had in 1968 . . .” After I finished the book I discovered that that statistics for life expectency, youth poverty, and suicide in the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation were virtually the same as when RFK had visited the reservation in 1968 and become a champion in Indian rights. The fact is that no candidate since Kennedy (and no president since) has made poverty and hunger important campaign issues.

Thanks so much for your comments, Teddy. Publishers always talk about the importance of “word of mouth.” Authors are usually skeptical, but this book has indeed been helped enormously by word of mouth, and comments like yours.

But there should be a national wave of disbelief about the propaganda concerning the success of the so-called “surge” in Iraq. The country has turned against the war, but unless we elect Obama, there is no telling when we will be out of Iraq.

41 US troops have been killed in Iraq over the last 10 weeks.

I had to go search for the number because, absent that, I wouldn’t recall the last time I heard a report of another single soldier getting killed in Iraq amidst all the chest thumping over the surge.

.

Yet at the same time, weren’t RFK Jr and Kathleen Kennedy Townsend supporters of Senator Clinton?

Which means like all families, they have diverse opinions.

Thurston and Peter — if you could draw any one lesson from RFK’s campaign and translate it to the political climate of today, what would it be? There are so many parallels that get tossed about between Obama and the Kennedy legacy, but it was the RFK commitment to “the least of these, my brethren” that has always drawn me to his speeches and his policy prescriptions. I’m wondering what the two of you see as directly applicable to today — or desperately needed for today’s campaign?

RFK called the Vietnam war “indecent,” and then, speaking of the dead, he asked, “Which of them could have come home and written a great symphony? Which of them might have played int he World Series of given us the gift of laughter from the stage?” So, which of those 41 dead who have been, as Muzzy points out, largely forgotten, would have accomplished something?

Two points, Christy — tell me if I’m not answering the question you have in mind.

One, re RFK, it was in him. He started the planning for the war on poverty in his Attorney General office the day after President Kennedy bwas inaugurated. He always identified with those who were excluded. After JFK died he was on his own, and his entire Senate career, as to the domestic side, was dedicated to poverty and race issues in one way or another. He learned by going out to meet people and to listen to them and to see for himself how things were. And he just got more and more worked up about it — the culmination, perhaps, was when we saw the hungry children in Mississippi. And of course we went after that to Eastern Kentucky and discovered severe hunger there, too.

Two, since then. Well we have made some progress. The elderly are now less poor than the rest of the population because we indexed Social Security, enacted SSI, and passed Medicare. Hunger is far less serious because of food stamps. In general, apart from what was done to welfare in 1996, the safety net is somewhat better than it was in 1968. But the economy has been weak most of the time since 1973 and the growth we have had has gone entirely to the people at the top. The entire lower half of the population has done badly, and the gaps between top and bottom have widened hugely. Our politics since 1968 has been basically conservative, for a variety of reasons, so we haven’t had a lot of oomph for national policies to make the rich pay their fair share and to make sure everyone (not just the poor) has an income they can live on. There’s a huge pent-up agenda.

Did I aanswer your questions?

Yeah, i want to second Teddy’s commendation for capturing the energy, and in some regards, the entropy of passion busting out in so many directions from RFK. Identify a cause, make him understand it, and he would go fight to fix it. Today, and I find this fault in Obama very much as well, it seems that, although lip service is paid to a broad plethora of issues and disciplines, politicians seem to really focus on only a couple, at best, at a time. We have too many afflictions though; they all need to be fought.

Thurston and/or Peter,
Since we’ve been doing a bit of speculating here, do you have any SWAGS as to how the world might have played out with a two terms of an RFK presidency?

Would we have seen Iran fall as it did? The rise of Reagan and the right wing? The religious right wing? The fall of the Soviet Union and the rise of Al-Qaeda?

Yes. Kathleen worked for the Clinton Administration and both Kerry and Bobby, Jr. have NY political ties to Mrs. Clinton. Rory (the documentary film maker) and Max (a community activist in LA) were strongly for Obama. You’re right. There are differences in families. Absolutely.

Yes, thanks much. I’d forgotten about how much of the groundwork had been laid during that time in the Senate and even before then.

I think that Obama does have to aggressively counter the untruths being spread about him by the McCain campaign. But that being said, I think that RFK, perhaps because he had managed JFK’s 1960 campaign AND served in his administration instinctively understood (because JFK did not do it0 that it is difficult to follow a crude and divisive campaign with a high-minded presidency. You cannot heal a morally wounded nation after running an immoral campaign. I think this is one reason that Obama has been somewhat slow to respond to the attacks, and why he has generally been responding to them rather than initiating them.

I enjoyed the stories about how RFK chose how to spend his time during the campaign, whether on an Indian reservation consoling an orphan or with Cesar Chavez or speaking in Indianapolis the night King died. It struck me — because we hear so much disparagement this year about “personal self-discovery” directed at Barack Obama, and yet he ran a tight, disciplined primary campaign.

Do you think we’ll ever allow political figures the experience to grow, and perhaps even change, as they campaign for the presidency again? Or must our candidates nowadays be pre-masticated and fixed, as palatable and easily digestible products for our consumption?

Also, for all the discussion of slanted media today, there sure were some RFK press partisans on that plane!

Welcome Mr. Clark, and thank you Peter!

Raven, I can totally relate to your post here. I was (probably still am) younger than you when Robert Kennedy was assassinated and recall thinking something along the lines of “So, THIS is the way presidential elections go?, politics in general….” I didn’t know any better and no one I was raised around was into politics, so it was an attempt to figure things out on my own.

It was filed, for me at that time, as “the norm”. And I responded by “punching out”, didn’t watch nor care about politics much thereafter. I was disheartened and actually, disgusted.

Until Nixon, when I got totally involved, which was after high school and into college for me.

I think we need more emphasis on the issues of income and wealth inequality, the struggle of people way above the poverty level to make ends meet, and of course to the lowest-income people as well. These are all intertwined and all are things RFK would be talking about today. The income and wealth inequality is mich worse than it was then, and the number of people who don’t have an adequate income is larger. Plus, there is the continuing extreme poverty of Native Americans, rural people both white and minority, and the inner city.

First: had RFK won the nomination at Chicago it is unlikely that there would have been the street battles between protestors and the police (really a “police riot”) that would damage the Democratic party for decades. And of course had Nixon lost in 1968 his political career would probably have been ended. Hence no Watergate and none of the cynicsm and disillusionment that it fostered. I also think that RFK would have gotten us out of Vietnam much sooner and there would be far fewer names on the Vietnam memorial. Beyond that, things become more speculative.

Yes. Many of the reporters who were covering RFK started the campaign as skeptics but soon became become fierce partisans. The best example was Dick Harwood of the Washington Post who finally, on the day of the California primary, asked his editor to take him off the campaign, telling him, “I think I’m falling in love with the guy.”

I recently got a note from joe Mohbat of the AP who covered RFK that spring. he said that the truth was that after a few weeks “none of us should have covered that campaign.”

The further out one gets from when an RFK Presidency would have ended, the harder it is to project. The Shah of Iran would no doubt have been deposed anyway, and the question is how we would have responded, The time was after RFK would have been out of the White House, so who knows? Reagan — maybe not. Maybe the country would have not have been so sour on government as to fall for him. Maybe the economy would have been managed better when the first oil squeeze occurred — RFK would have been Pres then. Remember that a lot of the rise of the religious right is because of Roe v. Wade, so my guess is we would have had that anyway. Fall of the Soviet Union and the rise of Al Qaeda — too far in the future.

Yeah, unfortunately, if RFK had served two terms, he would have left office in ‘76 and there probably would have been someone like Reagan running and winning as an R then after 16 years of Dems in office.

The press covering RFK definitely fell in love with him, including some pretty hard-bitten people. But there were plenty of other journalists out there who couldn’t stand him. I really can’t answer the rest of your question. The 24 hour news cycle makes it hard. But forever is a long time. Obama is closer to being himself than most. Would we allow him to change and grow during a campaign, or would the changes be attacked as flip-flops? At the moment, you’re right that it’s not allowed for a candidate to be visible in his or her self-development while the campaign is unfolding.

I had forgotten how much the straight older generation resented Bobby’s long hair then! Thanks for that reminder of an earlier culture war.

I was 22 in 1968 and very politically involved. First a McCarthy supporter, and then for RFK when he entered the race. One of the things that I had forgotten when I started to research the book, and that shocked me, was how many people hated RFK, and how bitterly they hated him. The mafia, white segregationists in the south, business executives, J. Edgar Hoover, and so on. He had more enemies than JFK. His former press secretary Frank Mankiewicz thinks that part of the explanation is that people knew that RFK meant what he said, and planned to do exactly what he was promising if he was elected, and that this was a scary thought for people who didn’t want him to do these things.

I think that is a very astute observation on the fear of RFK following through on what he was saying. That fear of change — especially with the dynamics of power structures changing right along with these particular initiatives — likely scared the bejeebers out of a lot of those folks. And should have, given what they were doing at the time.

I seem to remember seeing a photograph of a billboard in one of the primary states that showed RFK with long hair and said, “Get a Haircut!” Or something like that. Long hair was seen as a political statement in 1968, and it was said that RFK’s got shorter during the campaign, and that Ted Kennedy was always urging him to cut it. But when I look at the photographs of him in Bill Eppride’s wonderful book his hair still looks pretty long. Beatle-length.

For sure in terms of the people who hated him. And it’s quite plausible that Frank is right in his theory as to why they were so vehement in their feelings. Perhaps our conversation doesn’t dwell sufficiently on how much reconciliation he could have achieved in the country. We think he would have ended the quickly, but of course he would have used political capital in doing so, and some people would have been implacable in their disapproval of that. The stress on poverty and race would have encountered resistance, too. So any speculation about how his Presidency would have proceeded needs to make some estimate of how much political capital he would have going in, and how quickly he would have used it up.

Bev, shall we wrap up? There seem to be fewer comments coming in now. This has been a great discussion and I’ve enjoyed taking part. And Thurston, congratulationws again. You brought back memories. Some make me cry, but some make me laugh, and it all means a lot to me.

Both the Senator and Mrs Kennedy seemed to understand, in a macabre way, that the reason for some of the early and constant press coverage of his campaign was to not miss an attempt on Bobby’s life. She even joked about it, although in another part of the book you write that no one was allowed to joke about it with them.

For Peter, then: was this one of those topics, in a family or any enterprise, that only certain people could talk about? Did you on the campaign staff talk about it amongst yourselves? The book had lots of foreshadowing — Walter Fauntroy’s among them. Was there ever the sense, while in the middle of it, that the campaign was, perhaps, doomed?

Well thank you so much Peter & Thurston,
and Bev.

What a wonderful Book Salon.

This has been a fabulous conversation, lending critical perspective to the ’situation’ we now find ourselves confronting.

By whatever fortune (good, bad, indifferent) we ‘muddled’ through an era of political assassination and the overwhelming assault upon the sensibilities of those of us who were young enough (and old enough) to understand however painfully what was actually going on – it was a heart-breaker in every sense.

Yet I cannot help but feel that what we face now is far more dangerous;
full-blown fascism is but inches away and the entire political class, with only several exceptions, appear to be preparing to continue their comfortable lives of wealth and complicity. No one of the political class shall truly suffer, they will leave that for others …

I think it not unreasonable to suggest that; as goes America in this election, so shall go the world.

Germany, France and Italy appear to be doing Bush-lite and if the deadly duo ‘win’, we may expect the world-wide rise of repression, violence and environmental destruction to accelerate. And we shall have to fight it as best we may.

If Obama wins, then we shall have to ‘make’ him do what is necessary.

Interesting times.

Thank you so much, gentlemen, for spending a Sunday evening with FDL contemplating “what if?” And thanks again for this wonderful book.

Thurston and Peter, thank you both for spending the afternoon with us on such a fascinating subject.

And once again thank you Bev for a great job in finding such great books and bringing them to our attention.

The reading list just keeps getting longer and longer.

Thurston, Thank you very much for stopping by the Lake to day and spending the afternoon with us discussing your book.

Peter, Thank you very much for Hosting this great Book Salon today.

Everyone, if you haven’t bought this outstanding book, there is a link above.

Thanks all.

Good point. That word, “reconciliation,” is key. It was sorely needed in 1968, and it’s sorely needed agin. I like to believe that RFK would have had the couraage to use a great deal of political capial to further a post-Vietnam reconciliation. If Obama wins and tries to do the same thing he is undoubtedly going to upset some of his progressive supporters.

We didn’t talk about it. I think we all didn’t see any point to saying something out loud. It was going to happen or it was not going to happen. He very much lived his life a day at a time even though he never said out loud that it was because (if it was because) he never know which day would be the least.

Thanks much to both Thurston and Peter; marvelous work and a wonderful discussion.

And thanks to Peter, and everyone who offered such probing and intelligent comments.
Thurston

Again, my thanks to everyone. Wonderful to be a part of this.

Thurston and Peter it has been a true pleasure to hear your lively and most informed thoughts. I thank you both for stopping by and sharing some time with us.

upstairs
Health Care Live Chat With Chairman of the Health Subcomittee

Pete Stark, the Congressman from California’s 13th district, will be here today to discuss health care in America and what can be done to fix it. Joining him will be Roger Hickey of Campaign for America’s Future, and Jim Gilliam, a cancer survivor who’s survival was imperiled by the current system.

Yeah, they are FIXING HEALTHCARE NOW

I posted this downstairs not knowing if I would make it in time for this chat, I’m really glad I made it

what people don’t want to address is the fact hat just as it’s an obligation for industry to maintain their equipment, it”s also an obligation they maintain the labor force

this is done by creating the policy as follows.

industry pays into health cared, not the laborer

they will obviously be able to pay their labor force less since the cost of living has therefor gone down

with that system, industry does not pay more they actually pay less for labor since their buying power lowers the cost of health car a laborer would have to pay individually

also, with this system their is .no burden from caring for the uninsured since everyone Will be insured

the laborer should be faced with a fee that insures the unemployed

in addition, anyone could purchase additional insurance if they feel that supplied by industry is not enough

this type of system would be decried by the “concervative” and the “libertarian” and the “republcian” as “socialism”

it is NOT

it is forcing industry into paying their own bills, it is not up to the rest of us to keep industy’s labor force healthy, that’s up to them

and “socialism” in it’s prejurative sense indicates a program an individual is forced into and cannot opt out

this is not true of single payer or employer payer systems

first of all, corporations are not entitled to any consideration, they are obligated by the rules of the host

second, an employee can opt out of the program simply by declaring in writing (and proving) that they have their own adequate health care

the employer would get a return from the government for employees that opt out of the program

then the employer can offer the employee more wage comenserate with the savings, however it is not likely the added wage would be more then the individual is going to pay for health care themselves and this would most likely only happen when a spouse is already covered