Dreaming of Things That Never Were.

One hundred years ago today, Robert Francis Kennedy was born.

Fifty-six years ago he was murdered in a hotel kitchen having just narrowly won the California presidential primary.

Of the many events that brought us down this dirty pot mark road to our Trumpian dystopia the murder of Robert Kennedy is one that casts backwards like glaring red warning light.

Do something about the avalanche of guns, America's firm belief that violence is always the answer to any problem,espcially foreign problems in underdeveloped countries. The absolute necessity of closing or at least narrowing the racial divide.

I think the bloody loss of Robert Kennedy made improving these problems far more challenging.

To be clear I don't think Kennedy would have been nominated or elected had he lived. As the great political strategist Don Draper once observed Humphrey had the delegates. Had RFK become the nominee he would have been the leader of party split into three factions.

The LBJ/Humphrey faction consisting of the in 1968 still relevant party bosses would never have united behind Kennedy,

The second faction was the group of antiwar activists and influential liberal intellectuals who supported Eugene McCarthy. Deeply and understandably angry at Kennedy for entering the presidential race only after McCarthy's stunning showing in the New Hampshire primary.

And then there was one Richard Milhous Nixon the man who took America on its one small step for hatred, one giant leap towards fascism. Could have Kennedy's charisma beat the giddy thrill of the middle and lower middle-class supporters of Nixon felt when given a vehicle to express their anger at a world in which it was never going to be the 1950s again.

So, if Robert Kennedy wasn't going to become President why was his loss such a grave one for his country?

I think the most important one was he was the rarest politicians. He learned even after he was in office and that learning allowed him to do an even rarer thing, change his mind.

Politicians change their minds all the time. After they have consulted with a horde of advisers, focus groups, interest groups, consultants, donors, and presumably a couple of astrologers.

This wasn't Kennedy's way.

The decision to publicly admit that his early support for the Vietnam war was a mistake (he and William Fulbright were the only two early supporters of the war to admit they were wrong, which certainly says something.) and then actually do something about, name a consultant who would have advised that.

Going up to a California Sheriff who was arresting migrant farm workers who were peacefully protesting inhumane conditions in the fields and telling him he should read the constitution.

Being so appalled at conditions in inner city New York that he organized an eclectic group of Black power and community activists, William F Buckley supporters, Wall Street Republicans and New Left thinkers to form a public corporation to try and bring jobs and housing into poor areas of Beford-Stuyvesant by using private investment. A move that angered old line New Dealers

This was what was lost by RFKs murder. Even if like I believe he never become, President, even if he had had lost his senate seat to James Buckley in 1970, given the political tides of 1970 a real possibility, his creative energy could have had a huge impact on the country.

America has arrived at this current moment of horror because of thousands of terrible acts and decisions. many an awful act is responsible for the opening of our hellmouth. Four standouts in my mind.

The first two were the actual murders of Martin Luther King, Robert Kennedy.

The other two were the media murders of Gary Hart and Kamla Harris.

The Four best American politicians of the last sixty years.

We have not recovered.