RateItAll: The Opinion Network

Unlike his brother, John, Bobby was a true American liberal. Having served as JFK's Attorney General, he was in shock after the assassination. When LBJ assumed the presidency, it was well known that Johnson hated Bobby intensely. He resigned in September, 1964 as AG, to run for the Senate in New York, against incumbent republican Kenneth Keating. He defeated the incumbent, serving his term as senator while running for president in the 1968 campaign, until he was assassinated in early June, 1968. Some interesting memories. When Martin Luther King's phones were tapped by the FBI, it was Bobby, an ardent crusader for equal rights for blacks and affirmative action, who approved the wiretaps. His anti-war stance during the 1968 campaign was ironic as he was John's Attorney General during the initial deployment of troops to Vietnam, and he knew that JFK intended a much more substantial US involvement in the region to stop the spread of communism. Aslo, for Bobby to endorse the anti-war movement, with his two brothers recognized as war heroes, was ironic, to be sure. While JFK could fairly be characterized as a moderate republican by today's standards, Bobby personified the liberal democrat, both then and now. He intended to take LBJ's rampant social programs, aggregated into the Great Society, and expand them substantially. Wtih all the wasteful government programs, begun in the late 1960,'s and still in existence today, it's hard to imagine the government largess envisioned and planned by Bobby Kennedy. In the four and a half years he lived after John's death, he never really got over his grief.