At Realism and Policy, Michael F. Duggan gives praise to the convictions held by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. about foreign policy and the role of the state. He writes:
I’ll put it out there up front: some of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.’s statements in recent years have turned me off. That said, in last Wednesday’s live town hall meeting with a sometimes not-so-friendly audience (hosted by Elizabeth Vargas), he acquitted himself well. I watched it not wanting to like him or what I thought he was going to say, and came away more impressed than I have been with any American candidate in a long time.
He took on all comers with no topics being out of bounds and gave thorough, thoughtful answers. His goal is to bring the Democratic Party back to the values the New Deal, the New Frontier, and the Great Society—the party that was largely destroyed by the murders of his uncle and father (before the Democrats become the pro-war “Republican Lite” party of the Clintons, Obama, et al.). I am a believer in vaccines, and am agnostic on the positions he stated at this event, and will need to examine them more closely.
He seemed to frustrate Elizabeth Vargas, who prodded him for binary, culture wars-type replies. She seemed almost baffled that he wouldn’t take the bait by providing hostile, divisive answers against those with whom he disagrees. His thoughtful, non-divisive replies to her questions appeared to frustrate her as things outside of her frame of reference.
I have a theory of presidential leadership that I call the “noble executive” model. It holds that the greatest presidents of the 20th century—TR, FDR, and JFK—were all high-minded aristocrats who had experienced a humbling health experience that gave them a strong sense of empathy and undercut snobbery and allowed them to do great things for all Americans. I believe that RFK, Jr. could fit this mold. The fact that he is from a rich and famous family means that he does not need to tow the line on the orthodoxy and shibboleths of either party. He is his own man and appears to be telling the truth as he sees it. Most of his answers to tough questions on policy were much better than what I have heard from any political candidate in years. The forthrightness and intelligence of his replies reminded me of the strength and honesty of his father’s answers in a November 1967 edition of Meet the Press.
When I was young, the elder Robert Robert Kennedy (or rather his memory) of the 1963-68 period was one of my political touchstones. His assassination is my earliest political memory. What our country needs is not further divide, but unity, if it is still possible. RFK, Jr. reminds me of the lost potential of the 1960s. The death of his uncle, his father, and Martin Luther King, Jr. marked the death of a vigorous, tough-minded kind of progressivism in this country that it has never regained. Since then it has been characterized by watered-down mediocrity with a track record of ineffectiveness or else self-defeating politically correct stridency.
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