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Curb your enthusiasm for Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Hot take: He’s the next Donald J. Trump, but even less politically accomplished and I didn’t think that was possible.
The notion that RFK Jr. could competently serve as president of the United States is laughable. His TV star wife, actress Cheryl Hines, who plays Larry David’s long-suffering spouse in “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” seems superhuman in her tolerance for her real-life husband. Write in Larry, folks.
As a young man, RFK Jr. was widely regarded as the most politically marketable of all the Kennedy kids of that generation. Kennedy was his father’s image, but better, looking like the front man for the New Frontier — rock star long hair, big smile and hyperarticulate. He was said to be shopping for a U.S. House district in New York, en route to more.
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Then the tragedy of his father’s assassination overwhelmed him. The plane he was on over Rapid City, S.D., had to land because he had overdosed on heroin. What RFK’s children had gone through is unfathomable, and it is no wonder that he sought escape.
RFK Jr. quit drugs, got (thrice) married, had lots of photogenic children, and made a name for himself as a law professor at Pace University, where he led an effort to clean up the Hudson River. He also led a commendable initiative to hold the U.S. Navy accountable for poisoning the waters at Vieques, Puerto Rico. All good stuff.
Had Robert F. Kennedy Jr., taken a slightly more traditional route like his father and his uncle, JFK, this all might have been a different story: maybe a lap in the Navy, a few terms in the House, likely move up to the Senate, and line up to run for president sometime in his 40s, RFK Jr. might be sitting in his presidential library.
Several of his siblings and cousins, and even his nephew, served creditably in offices such as lieutenant governor of Maryland and the U.S. House of Representatives. But RFK Jr. didn’t want to expose himself to the tedium of actual public service, for, like Trump, he saw that the culture was moving in a darker direction.
Now, name ID is everything, the illusion of accomplishment is paramount, and the ability to run your mouth are the main qualifications. Flood the media zone, and you’re perceived as qualified. Trump saw this early and often.
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The audacity of Kennedy’s once Democratic, now “independent” candidacy, and maybe even as a Libertarian, has earned him rather significant polling numbers: some show him in the 20s or better.
Late last century, Kennedy spoke around the country, had a radio show on AirAmerica like former Sen. Al Franken but, unlike Franken, didn’t take the time to do the homework.
I spent some time with RFK Jr. in 2001. I helped arrange to have him speak at Portland State University alumni weekend. PSU paid him $11,500 and he was worth every penny. He was charming, low-key, carried around a battered briefcase and even laughed when I teased him about his too-narrow tie. “I got a guy at Nordstrom,” I told him. He told me he had his ties narrowed, an obvious homage to his late father.
While driving him to his hotel, I told him about attending his father’s burial at Arlington National Cemetery as a 7-year-old in 1968, and he seemed touched.
He said whenever he walked down the street in Boston, people would call out to him, “I knew your FATHAH!” I found myself liking him, and there was never a moment where he seemed, well, unstable. I also watched him dismantle former Vice President Dan Quayle in a Portland debate about climate, the only time I ever felt sorry for Dan Quayle.
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Now, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has turned into a crank, a delusional conspiracy nut about, well, most things: vaccines, the JFK assassination, his father's assassination, the origins of COVID-19, and an almost endless litany of other subjects. He hangs around intellectually flatulent Steve Bannon and wacky Putin buddy Gen. Michael Flynn, and his name was floated recently as a potential running mate for Trump.
Trump/Kennedy 2024? What a perfect pairing! Both are utterly unqualified, delusional, vain and would be a catastrophe for the country each in his own special way. Even his Kennedy sibs are supporting President Joe Biden, and JFK’s grandson mocked his second cousin on social. On Friday, the Democratic National Committee filed a federal election complaint against him for illegally working with a super PAC to get on the ballot in several states critical to President Biden.
Trump has already shown what he can do in four years. Elect Kennedy, and you’ll get something comparable: a parody of a presidency, a collection of fringe goofballs making Marianne Williamson look like Eleanor Roosevelt. Why does RFK Jr. play footsie with the Trump crowd? Because he’s inept.
Jack Ohman is a Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist and columnist.
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