As I watched the interview of Ethel Kennedy by her daughter this evening, the gritty black and white television images from my own adolescence streaming before me, my cheek felt the same warm salted tears again, as the narrator described the string of assassinations. In the five years between my fifth year in elementary school and my second in high school, bullets took three leaders of the United States from among us.
John Kennedy was killed by two bullets from two directions on November 22, 1963, as he rode through Dealey Plaza in Dallas, Texas. I was ten years old. Martin Luther King Jr. was shot dead on April 4, 1968. I was fifteen. Robert Kennedy received his bullets just after midnight on June 5, that same year, following his primary victory speech in California during his campaign for the Democratic nomination for President. I was still fifteen.
In a little over a month, I’ll turn sixty. Watching the old footage and hearing from Robert Kennedy’s widow and children how they experienced those years, I see just how courageous were the loved ones whom the slain men left behind. And it was Robert Kennedy who showed them how to achieve that courage, first when his brother was murdered, and then again in Indianapolis when he was the one who informed a large crowd of black Americans of King’s assassination. In his four minute speech to that wailing crowd, he spoke of peace and the wisdom that can come from tragic, painful loss.
I remember seeing that speech on television, replayed nationally in order to prevent the rioting and interracial conflict that flared. Across the country, fires and rage burned together for weeks. But not in Indianapolis. In that city, blacks and whites walked silently and somberly together along the funeral route to honor a man who died for peace and equality.
Now, nearly a half century since John Kennedy’s murder, I look around at the leaders we have and the ones who hope to be such. I wonder who is courageous enough to actually speak truth to us. If you’ve seen the movie, “The Adjustment Bureau”, you probably remember when Matt Damon’s character, a candidate for the Senate, gives a concession speech as he loses his first race. He says that the newspapers and television reporters called him “authentic”, crediting that quality for his youthful and rapid rise to political notoriety. He goes on to list the many ways that he has since proven that adjective misplaced: fabricated stories from his childhood built into stump speeches to make him seem ordinary but plucky; carefully scuffed shoes to show his humble roots; ties selected from hundreds to give his skin tone a darker hue while campaigning in minority neighborhoods. The speech given brings him back to his former authenticity, and the public sighs in happy relief.
During the debates of late, I’ve felt edgy and unsettled. I could have indulged in cynicism, which is simply one’s moral compass getting tired of spinning as it looks for true North. Instead I felt irritated, even outright angry, that here on the national stage, funded by at least a billion dollars of campaign money, we waste our country’s precious, sorely needed wealth on the political equivalent of a cage fight.
Where is the earnest, unscripted, genuine articulation of passionate conviction? Whether or not you felt the Kennedys or King were representative of your beliefs, they spoke their minds, rather than regurgitating the lowest common denominator found in mindless focus groups.
At the final Presidential debate, my broken civilian heart could be healed if only our candidates could throw aside their handlers’ coaching, scrap the plan and refuse to stay “on message”. Tell us what you really think, and why. Tell us how it really is, not how you think we want it to be. Cut the crap. Speak from your heart, not your recipe, so I can hear my own again.