The Kennedy Commitment

...At present, if political predictions weren't so patently foolhardy in 1968, one would concede the nomination to Humphrey...

...Others, such as Chicago's Mayor Richard Daley, who weren't sure if the magic lingered on or not —and who were awaiting the evidence—will soon take their places in the Humphrey ranks...

...In fact, so many people here take Humphrey's nomination for granted that much of the political gossip in this town centers on his prospective running-mate, and specifically on Senator Edward Kennedy...

...If the voters believe that a negotiated settlement of the war is somehow, somewhere in sight, then McCarthy is through...

...A multitude of Americans saw him as some grotesque Robin Hood figure, preparing to take from the rich (or merely well-off) and give to the poor, and no doubt he had something like that in mind...

...Some Kennedy supporters will turn to McCarthy...

...The Dick Daleys of this world are not about to cast their lot with a man who writes poetry and wants to fire J. Edgar Hoover...

...Only two things can reverse the Humphrey tide, and that is the collapse of the negotiations in Paris and/or mounting U.S...

...Rather, it was because one thing had become clear in Kennedy's pursuit of power: If he acquired it, he would try to use it to affect radical change in America...

...The have-nots in America—Kennedy's special constituency—are outnumbered by about seven to one...

...corporation, normally a gentle man, remarked, "I don't know why, but I hate that little bastard...

...and although he had not yet fully articulated it, the very prospect haunted the captains of the status quo...

...It was always hard to buy the charge that Kennedy would do anything to gain the Presidency...

...for although McCarthy often spoke of Kennedy with an unbecoming petulance (one thinks especially of his remark that most of Kennedy's votes came from the poorly educated), RFK himself frequently noted his and McCarthy's common desire to change the directions of the country...

...Congress, of course, would have frustrated utterly the designs of a President Robert Kennedy for the same reason that he was unlikely to be elected: When the eulogies are forgotten, the fact will remain that this creeping turtle of a Congress is far more representative of the aspirations of the American electorate than Bob Kennedy ever was...

...Had he been elected President, he would have tried to do something swift and possibly abrupt to narrow that gulf because, first, he thought time was running out for his country, and, second, gradualism was not his bag...

...Today one wonders if the country is willing to risk the life of yet another Kennedy in the arena of Presidential politics (or if the Kennedy family itself is willing to run that risk...

...At least one observer has noted for the rest of our lives, when someone speaks of "the Kennedy assassination," we will have to ask, "which one...

...Robert Sandoz is a free-lance writer working out of Washington...

...Still one suspects it was the substance of his message that was so ominous to so many...

...In turn, they will be reminded that McCarthy lost primaries in Indiana, Nebraska, South Dakota and California...

...For he believed that a greater threat to the United States than fewer color tv sets and home electric hair-driers was the yawning gulf between the fat and the hungry, the self-satisfied and the oppressed...

...The waters have been stirred a lot in this country this year...

...The irony of Kennedy's death is that it probably will only serve to heighten resistance to the broad changes he believed were so necessary...

...Kennedy, on the other hand, appeared to have something more sweeping in mind...

...But this was not why he was headed for defeat in his quest for the Presidency...

...Combined with his personal drive, indicating he would work harder than most to eliminate the problems he saw, it was all more than his countrymen or even his party could accept...

...Certainly there were many who genuinely questioned his judgment, his maturity, and especially his motives...

...His major experiment with it—his delayed entry into the Presidential race—was a disaster...

...Although one never would guess it from the outpouring of grief which followed, Kennedy was probably the most feared and hated man in America at the moment the bullet crashed into his brain and stilled it forever...

...Americans can hardly be blamed if they long for calm—and for a captain who will not rock the boat...

...It would depend on whether a deterioration in the Vietnam situation made Americans mad at North Vietnam and the Vietcong (which probably would strengthen Johnson's hand, and certainly would strengthen Nixon's), or at the Administration (which could revive McCarthy...

...Thus, most of those who supported Kennedy because they believed in change will back McCarthy with whatever enthusiasm they can muster after such a devastating blow...

...For if the idealists outnumber the pros, the pros still control the convention, and they will move now to Humphrey in ever-increasing numbers...

...Today, of the remaining serious candidates for the White House, only McCarthy is known to have significant reservations about American policy in Southeast Asia...

...The manner of his dying, added to that of Martin Luther King's, urban riots, campus riots, and the perfectly terrifying idea of a few thousand poor people camped out near the Lincoln Memorial, will do much to prevent anything as jarring as the nomination of a Senator McCarthy...

...Maybe it was merely a failure of style—his hair, his dog, his frenetic campaign...

...His loss in Oregon, his narrow victory in California, and Hubert Humphrey's growing strength among delegates in non-primary states made it reasonably certain—if anything is reasonable or certain any longer—that the Democratic Presidential nomination would not belong to a Kennedy in 1968...

...In this endeavor he was failing, despite some limited success in the primaries...

...The challenge confronting Kennedy was not so much to win over these groups, which was easy considering his obvious commitment to them, but to persuade the rest of the country that it should share that commitment...

...Eugene McCarthy has been concerned with change, too, yet one sensed—as certainly many suburban whites who voted for him in the primaries did—that substantive change in a McCarthy administration would be confined pretty much to foreign policy...

...losses in Vietnam...

...There is little they can do, though, to win the nomination for McCarthy...

...As one friend said, if Bobby offered to help an old woman across the street, someone would want to know what his motives were...

...Perhaps this is understandable...

...McCarthy's people will try to sell their candidate on the basis of his grass-roots appeal...

...Those few who had sided with Kennedy did so because they thought the Kennedy magic was infallible in an election situation...

...In his moving remarks following the death of Robert Kennedy, Britain's Harold Macmillan said that many of its critics "do not understand at all the problems of America, nor even understand what kind of country it is...

...Vice President Humphrey seemed well on his way to winning the Democratic nomination before the Kennedy assassination...

...Today, that nomination is all but assured...

...It may well be that Edward Kennedy must now pause some years before continuing his own inevitable pursuit of the burden and the glory...

...As one considers the recent destiny of the United States—and of the Kennedys —one wonders whether we ourselves understand all of our problems, or what kind of country we are...

...Before Robert's assassination, Ted Kennedy was emerging as the ideal second man on a ticket headed by Humphrey...

...He would bring to the ticket all the Stardust of the Kennedy name without posing a threat to the status quo—a threat which Robert Kennedy embodied for so many...

...If between now and mid-August, however, people begin to view the war the way they viewed it prior to President Johnson's March 31 speech, McCarthy might have a small chance...

...Shortly before Kennedy's death, the head of a major U.S...

...The fate of the Kennedys has become so intertwined with the fate of the country in this decade that the idea of the nation burying one more Kennedy on the slopes of Arlington is not only unbearable?it is unacceptable...

...He won Indiana, for one, not by following his own best instincts, but by abandoning them...

...One does not go around winning national elections by making a campaign pitch that will appeal more to blacks, Indians, and to Mexican-Americans than to any other segment of the population...