The RFK Assassination

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"Tragedy is a tool for the living to gain wisdom, not a guide by which to live."

Robert F. Kennedy

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Today is the 50th anniversary of the fatal shooting of Sen. Robert F. Kennedy in Los Angeles after he had declared victory in the California presidential primary.

He didn't die immediately. He lingered for about 24 hours.

I have written on this blog before about my memories of that event. What I am thinking about today is the aftermath — when his body was brought back to New York for the funeral, then carried by train to Washington where he was buried next to his brother in Arlington Cemetery.

I remember watching the funeral service on TV — and seeing Sen. Edward Kennedy's moving eulogy to his brother. I remember the stoic demeanor of Kennedy's widow, Ethel. In the context of what had occurred in the preceding days, it was heart–breaking.

But I suppose my dominant memory is of the train making its way from New York to Washington. It is a distance of only about 200 miles — ordinarily a four–hour trip by train, historian Theodore White observed, but more than doubled by the crowds that came out to pay their respects. It seemed as if nearly everyone who lived between those two cities came out and stood beside the railroad tracks until the train carrying Kennedy's body went by.

At first, the crowds were mostly small groups, but as the train proceeded, the crowds grew larger, standing three, four, five rows deep, sometimes more. Every segment of the American population was represented — young, old, black, white, affluent, poor. Sometimes they spilled onto the tracks, forcing the train to slow down even more. My memory is that a handful of people may have been killed after being struck by the train.

There have been museum exhibits recently that sought to capture that experience for those who have no memory of that time, but the sensation is incomplete without knowledge of the signs that were always present during Kennedy's life — and followed him to his grave.

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When Kennedy walked among us, those signs encouraged him to seek the presidency or demanded justice after he made his decision to run. After he was shot and his fate was still unknown but widely anticipated, the signs read "Pray for Bobby." Along the train route, they simply said, "Goodbye" or "So long."

White tried to describe the scene — but how do you describe the indescribable?

"There were the family groups: husband holding sobbing wife, arm around her shoulders, trying to comfort her," he wrote. "Five nuns in a yellow pickup truck, tiptoeing high to see. A very fat father with three fat boys, he with his hand over his heart, each of the boys giving a different variant of the Boy Scout or school salute. And the people: the men from the great factories that line the tracks, standing at ease as they were taught as infantrymen, their arms folded over chests. Women on the back porches of the slum neighborhoods that line the tracks, in their housedresses, with ever–present rollers in their hair, crying. People in buildings, leaning from office windows, on the flat roofs of industrial plants, on the bluffs of the rivers, on the embankments of the railway cuts, a crust on every ridge and height. Pleasure boats in the rivers lined up in flotillas; automobiles parked on all the viaducts that crossed the line of the train. Brass bands — police bands, school bands, Catholic bands. Flags: individual flags dropped in salute by middle–aged men as the train passed, flags at half–staff from every public building on the way, entire classes of schoolchildren holding the little eight–by–ten flags, in that peppermint–striped flutter that marks every campaign trip. He turned them on, black and white, rich and poor. And they cried."

No other politician in modern history could connect with as many disparate groups as Bobby Kennedy. It is something no one tries to do anymore because it is so difficult to achieve. And in the blink of an eye, he was gone.

Fifty Years Since the Death of Martin Luther King

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"Let us rise up tonight with a greater readiness. Let us stand with a greater determination. And let us move on in these powerful days, these days of challenge to make America what it ought to be. We have an opportunity to make America a better nation."

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
April 3, 1968

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Today is the 50th anniversary of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in Memphis, Tenn.

Many articles have been written recapping that event for those not old enough to remember. It is not my intention to add to them. If the reader wants to know what brought King to Memphis, there are many sources for that information.

Nor is it necessary for me to discuss the aftermath of the assassination. Dr. King was the face of the civil rights movement. When that face was taken away, it sparked predictable violence across America — sadly, that violence also led to widespread looting, prompting Roy Wilkins, the executive secretary of the NAACP, to lament that "Martin's memory is being desecrated." It was more than that, really. It was a violation of the concept of home and the security that word implies.

"For home in America is as much home to blacks as to whites," historian Theodore H. White wrote at the time, "and violence menaces them as much as it does Americans of any color."

The night before he died, Dr. King said something that could just as easily have been said yesterday: "Trouble is in the land. Confusion all around. That's a strange statement. But I know, somehow, that only when it is dark enough can you see the stars."

Trouble is in the land today. One need look no further than San Bruno, Calif., or Austin, Texas, to see that.

Sometimes there is a racial aspect to the violence, but to focus on that alone is to miss the point; the truth is that race relations have improved in half a century. Segregated schools still existed in 1968. If they exist today, it is in the form of private schools to which only affluent families have access. Laws protect Americans from racial (and sexual) discrimination in the workplace.

Are there areas where improvement is needed? Of course. Wholesale change does not happen overnight — or even over decades. America has always been a work in progress. But there can be no denying that the America of 2018 is better than the America of 1968.

So on this day I would say that Dr. King's dream is partially fulfilled. Much work has been done, and much remains to be done.

The work will not be finished until all Americans, regardless of their color — or gender or age, for that matter — enjoy the same rights and privileges of citizenship.

Then the dream will be fulfilled.

The Assassination of Anwar Sadat

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For most Americans, the war on terror began in 2001, when the World Trade Center was brought down by two hijacked airplanes. For a few, it may have begun eight years earlier when the first attack on the World Trade Center took place.

And, to be fair, that probably is when the war first came to America.

But it's been going on longer than that — in the sense that Islamic martyrs have been dying for the cause. Thirty–five years ago today, Lt. Khalid Islambouli, an Egyptian military officer and Islamic extremist, assassinated Egyptian President Anwar Sadat during the annual Victory Parade in Cairo commemorating the Egyptian army's crossing of the Suez Canal to reclaim part of the Sinai Peninsula from Israel in 1973.

It probably evaded most Americans' radars, but Sadat's final months had been rocky. There had been a military coup in June that failed, and there had been riots. There were those who said the riots were the outcome of domestic issues that plagued the country, but Sadat believed the Soviet Union was orchestrating an attempt to drive him from power.

That was also a particularly violent time in the history of the world — at least in terms of high–profile violence. President Ronald Reagan and Pope John Paul II had survived assassination attempts earlier in the year. Ex–Beatle John Lennon had been gunned down in front of his New York apartment building nearly a year before.

Egyptian Islamists had been angered when Sadat signed the Camp David Accords with President Carter and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin in September 1978 — for which Sadat and Begin shared the Nobel Prize.

There were several missed opportunities for authorities to take Islambouli into custody before the assassination, most notably in September 1981 when Sadat ordered a roundup of more than 1,500 people, among them many Jihad members, but somehow Islambouli's cell was missed.

Then, in spite of ammunition seizure rules that should have prevented the assassination, the cell managed to get into the parade and jump from the truck in which they were riding when it approached the reviewing stand, where Sadat was supposedly protected by four layers of security and eight bodyguards. Sadat stood, thinking it was part of the show. He was mortally wounded by a grenade and gunfire, along with 10 others in the reviewing stand. Vice President Hosni Mubarak, who had been sitting next to Sadat, was one of 28 who were wounded but survived.

Islambouli was identified as the man responsible for Sadat's wounds and executed the next year.

Nearly 30 years later, Islambouli's mother said she was proud that her son had killed Sadat.

What does this say about the mentality of the Islamic extremists that they are still waging this war nearly four decades later? It says the same thing that a second attack on the World Trade Center eight years after the first told us.

This is a foe that is patient. It picks its battles, and it learns from its mistakes.

Now, I know that a mother's love is a powerful thing. I covered murder trials as a young newspaper reporter, and I would not be surprised to hear the mother of a murderer say that she loved her son/daughter in spite of the crime(s) he/she committed. In fact, I have heard mothers say that. It is certainly not uncommon for Christians to say that they hate the sin but love the sinner.

But this mother says she is proud that her son committed the sin. That is a different matter, and it gives you great insight into a mindset.

This foe truly believes it is waging a holy war, and it is willing to give it as much time as it takes — generations, if necessary. The jihadists take inspiration wherever they can.

Since Sadat's assassination, Islambouli has been inspiring Islamist movements the world over. In Tehran a street was named for him after the assassination. A postage stamp was issued showing him shouting defiantly in his prison cell, and Ayatollah Khomeini declared him a martyr after he had been executed.

This is not a traditional foe, and it cannot be beaten in the traditional ways.

The Day William McKinley Was Shot

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"Father Abe freed me, and now I saved his successor from death, provided that bullet he got into the president don't kill him."

James Benjamin Parker

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Forty–three men have been president of the United States. Most Americans probably can name a handful — maybe — and most of the ones they can name were president during their lifetimes — as if history didn't exist prior to their births.

(That assumes that the people with whom you are speaking can tell you who is currently president — and, frankly, you would be surprised how many people cannot. I haven't decided whether that is a blessing or a curse.)

Many Americans, of course, can name a few presidents who served before they were born — a list that usually includes George Washington and Abraham Lincoln at the very least although people can surprise you with what they know and what they don't know. If they can name Washington and Lincoln, they may also name Thomas Jefferson and Teddy Roosevelt.

As some of you probably know (I wish I could say all, but I have to be realistic), those are the four faces chiseled into Mount Rushmore.

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Roosevelt became president when the incumbent president, William McKinley, was shot and killed 115 years ago. In fact, McKinley was shot inside the Temple of Music at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, N.Y., on this day in 1901. His assassin shot twice. The doctors who treated McKinley were only able to retrieve one of the bullets; the other lingered in his abdomen and killed him eight days later.

Roosevelt had only been vice president for about six months when McKinley was shot. McKinley's first vice president died on the eve of McKinley's campaign for re–election, and Roosevelt, then the governor of New York, was nominated by the convention to be McKinley's running mate in 1900 — the president felt it was the delegates' decision to make, not his. Roosevelt was known to have his eye on the White House, and the vice presidency seemed like a good stepping stone for Roosevelt's own run in 1904.

Roosevelt might have been elected in '04 — unless McKinley decided to seek a third term, which, at the time, was permissible. It was only after the presidency of Roosevelt's cousin, Franklin, about 50 years later that the 22nd Amendment limiting presidents to two four–year terms was ratified.

Had fate not intervened, McKinley might well have been a candidate for a third term. He was only 58 when he died — younger than many of his predecessors had been when they entered the presidency — and McKinley was already into his second term.

Polls that measure public approval of a president didn't exist at the turn of the century. They wouldn't exist, in fact, until Roosevelt's cousin was in the second term of his presidency. But if they had existed in 1900, they might well have reported solid public approval of McKinley's performance in office.

That might be a difficult conclusion to reach when one looks at the election returns from 1896, when McKinley was first elected to the presidency, and 1900, when he was re–elected. In 1896, McKinley received 51.02% of the popular vote. His share of the vote went up to 51.66% four years later. He received 60.6% of the electoral vote in 1896. That percentage went up to 65.3% in 1900.

Clearly, McKinley was popular enough to be re–elected — and by a wider margin than the one he received when he was elected. That is something Barack Obama cannot say. But on the surface it isn't as impressive as students of presidential politics might expect. See, even though America's last three presidents were re–elected by less than overwhelming popular margins — and the one before that wasn't re–elected at all — it has been commonplace historically for presidents to be re–elected by landslides.

Seen in that context, McKinley's electoral performance may not be especially eye–popping unless you keep a few things in mind. Most important, perhaps, is the fact that realigning elections as the 1896 election is frequently labeled (and which I plan to discuss in greater detail in November) are not always dramatic landslides. Sometimes they are virtually imperceptible unless you consider preceding voting patterns — and what happened in the elections that followed.

The opponent's relative strengths and weaknesses are important factors to consider, too. McKinley had to win both elections with William Jennings Bryan, one of the great orators in American history, as his foe. My guess is that McKinley was lucky to live in the pre–TV and pre–internet age. Far fewer people got to hear Bryan speak in 1896, and that almost certainly worked to his benefit.

He could have been appealing in our time. I have heard him described as open, cheery, optimistic, friendly. That generally plays well with the voters. He was not necessarily a gifted speaker, though, so it may have been a good thing for him that TV and radio played no roles in elections at the time.

When McKinley won re–election in 1900, he carried Bryan's home state of Nebraska, a traditionally Republican state that made an exception for an exceptional favorite son. Bryan was nominated by the Democrats for the presidency three times. The 1900 election was the only time he lost his home state (with the exception of an 1894 Senate race).

It is fair to assume, even though we have no polls to support this conclusion, that McKinley was a popular president on this day in 1901 when his assassin, a 28–year–old anarchist named Leon Czolgosz, fired two shots into the president's abdomen. Czolgosz was about to fire a third time when James Parker, who had been a slave as a child, reached for the gun and prevented the shot from being fired.

As it turned out the first shot struck a button and was deflected. Only the second shot struck McKinley, but it ultimately proved fatal, probably due to inadequate medical care. There was a surgeon in Buffalo who might well have saved the president, but he was performing delicate surgery in Niagara Falls. During the operation he was interrupted and told he was needed in Buffalo; he insisted he could not leave even if it was the president of the United States who needed him. It was at that point that he was told the identity of the patient.

A couple of weeks later, after McKinley had died, that surgeon saved the life of a woman who had suffered almost exactly the same wound as McKinley.

McKinley's death was quite a shock to the American public — who had been misled by unjustifiably optimistic prognoses into believing McKinley was recovering.

He was the third American president to be assassinated within 40 years — and the last to be assassinated before John F. Kennedy more than 60 years later.

Oh, and Roosevelt did win a full four–year term on his own in 1904 — but he did so as the incumbent.

The First Presidential Assassination

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In hindsight, some things seem to confirm the concept of predestination. The shooting of Abraham Lincoln in Washington's Ford's Theater 150 years ago today is such an event.

Predestination has always played an important role in the story of Lincoln's assassination. About two weeks before he was assassinated, Lincoln claimed to have had a dream in which he saw a deceased person in repose in the East Room. In his dream, Lincoln said he asked a soldier who was dead in the White House. The reply was that the president was dead. He had been killed by an assassin's bullet.

For anyone who grew up in the United States, was educated in its schools and studied its history (even half–heartedly), the story of Lincoln seems to be an integral part of the story of America — which, indeed, it is, as is the story of each president. We tend to remember periods in history, after all, by the chief executives who presided over them — i.e., "the Reagan years" or "the Roosevelt years."

Not all presidencies are created equal, though, so it doesn't always work that way, especially the farther back one must go to locate a particular president. I would venture to say that, if you mentioned "the Fillmore years" or "the Pierce years," you'd draw blank stares from 21st–century listeners. (Heck, you'd probably get blank stares from many if you spoke about the Ford years.)

In part, I suspect that reflects the changing nature of American government. The modern president has more power than many of his predecessors, especially those who lived in the 19th century. When Fillmore and Pierce (and others — they just happen to be the two I mentioned earlier) occupied the White House, there were giants in Congress like Daniel Webster, and they were the ones who held most of the authority.

In the early days of the republic, two–term presidencies were not uncommon. Five of the first seven presidents were two–term presidents — the exceptions being the Adamses, John and his son John Quincy — but none of the next eight presidents served more than a single four–year term. I guess that made the American president seem more like a transitory figure.

Lincoln was elected twice, the first president to be re–elected in nearly 30 years, and he presided over the North's triumph over the South in the Civil War.

Other than Washington, Jefferson and Lincoln, most of the early presidents are largely unknown to modern Americans. There is no special reason why they shouldn't be, I guess. It was the nature of the times — and the nature of the presidency is that it has been an evolving office, one that has grown more powerful as time goes by. Consequently, the men who have held that office have been more powerful as time has passed.

That's really a topic for another time, though. My point here is that Lincoln's administration had a lot to do with the evolution of the presidency. It was a consequence of the unique situation in which Americans found themselves at that time — at war with each other. There was no precedent for what Lincoln faced, no opportunity to reflect on what some previous president did right or wrong in a similar situation and learn from it. It was uncharted territory, and it required Lincoln to do things that the founding fathers couldn't have anticipated. It required him to act quickly in many cases. It made his a different kind of presidency than any the country had seen before.

But 150 years ago today, that war was over. It was Good Friday. Able to relax for the first time since entering the White House, Lincoln and his wife made plans to go to the theater on this night and see the British play, "Our American Cousin."

Of the evening at the theater, Carl Sandburg wrote, "The evening and the drama are much like many other evenings when the acting is pleasant enough, the play mediocre, the audience having no thrills of great performance but enjoying itself."

Actor John Wilkes Booth wasn't in the cast, but he knew the play. He knew which lines drew the biggest laughs and which actors were on stage at particular points in the performance.

And he had determined a good point in the play to shoot Lincoln. It was just after one of the biggest laugh–getting lines in the script, which he hoped would muffle the sound of the shot, and only one actor would be on stage. After shooting Lincoln, he planned to make his escape by leaping to the stage and running off in the confusion. He figured it would be just after 10 p.m. when the moment came so, in his last meeting with his co–conspirators, he instructed them to kill the vice president and the secretary of state at about the same time. The would–be assassin of the secretary of state only succeeded in wounding him, though, and the would–be assassin of the vice president lost his nerve; if things had gone off the way Booth envisioned, all three would be attacked and killed at roughly the same time.

After the assassination, at least one witness to what had happened in Lincoln's box came forward. He had been watching the box instead of the stage at the moment the shooting occurred, and he said Lincoln was laughing.

Booth began making his way to the presidential box around 10 o'clock. Presidential security in the mid–19th century was almost nonexistent by 21st–century standards; even if it hadn't been, Booth was well known. His presence in a theater would not have been questioned if anyone had confronted him — but no one did. Lincoln's friend and self–appointed bodyguard, Ward Hill Lamon, was not on hand; the president had sent him to Richmond, Virginia. Lamon's substitute left his post and was drinking at a nearby tavern, leaving the president unguarded.

Booth was able to stroll into the theater and make his way to Lincoln's box almost without being stopped — and then only for a cordial greeting and some brief small talk. Walking at a fairly leisurely pace, Booth reached Lincoln's box in time to barricade the first door that led to the box. Booth would go through the second one and shoot Lincoln in the back of the head, then leap to the stage, but the Lincolns' companion for the evening, Major Henry Rathbone, tried to stop Booth, and he tumbled out of the box instead, catching the spur of a boot in a flag, and landed awkwardly on the stage below. He suffered a fracture but still managed to get away in the confusion as planned.

As I observed the other day, Booth swore to kill Lincoln a few days before actually pulling the trigger, so we know he had thought about it before he did it, but there is plenty of reason to suspect that Booth did not decide to shoot Lincoln on Good Friday until that day, when he went to Ford's Theater to pick up his mail and learned that the Lincolns would be attending that night along with General and Mrs. Ulysses S. Grant.

As it turned out, the Grants did not attend, but upon hearing the president would be there, the idea of assassination began to percolate in Booth's mind. He walked around the theater, observing its layout for a much more substantial performance than any he had given there before. Bishop wrote that Booth made plans for his getaway before leaving the theater around noon.

After that, it was simply a matter of time.

How the Great War Began

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Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria and his wife Sophie, shortly before they were
assassinated in Sarajevo 100 years ago tomorrow, triggering World War I.

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Once when I was a boy, my family spent the summer in Austria, mostly in the city of Graz.

We were there for roughly six or seven weeks.

While we were there, we rented a vehicle and took a trip to Greece; to get there, we had to drive through Yugoslavia. As I recall, we stopped for the night along the way in Sarajevo, which is where Austria's archduke, Franz Ferdinand, and his wife Sophie were assassinated by a group called the Black Hand a century ago tomorrow. The Black Hand was a Serbian nationalist group.

That was the act that began the First World War.

I don't remember if we looked for the site of the assassinations when we were in Sarajevo. I also don't remember if we looked for Franz Ferdinand's birthplace. He was born in Graz.

My father was a religion professor when I was growing up. While we were in Austria, he made some day trips to sites of World War II concentration camps to take pictures and gather material for his lectures, but I don't think we ever spoke about World War I that summer, even though we drove through the city where it all began.

I guess it makes sense that we didn't focus on World War I. Religion was not an issue in World War I. Imperialism was.

That's about as direct as the story of the outbreak of World War I gets. Even after a century, it becomes increasingly complicated the deeper one digs into it. The Great War, as it was known until World War II, happened largely because of alliances that required certain countries to step in if other countries were attacked.

Franz Ferdinand was the nephew of Austria–Hungary's emperor, who declared war on Serbia. Russia got involved because of its treaty obligations — and that meant that Germany had to declare war on Russia because of Germany's treaty obligations. Then France declared war on Germany.

From the tangle of treaties, two factions emerged — the Allies and the Central Powers. Britain, France and Russia were Allies; Germany, the Ottoman Empire and Austria–Hungary were the Central Powers.

World War I was one of the bloodiest conflicts in history. All told, nearly 10 million people were killed. More than 21 million were wounded. Nearly 8 million were missing.

All because the emperor's nephew was killed 100 years ago tomorrow.

To a student of history, the odds that Franz Ferdinand would be the catalyst for a conflict the size of the Great War (a war that, Margaret MacMillan wrote in the Wall Street Journal, "changed everything") were slim and none, to put it mildly. Frankly, I have never been able to figure out to my own satisfaction why he was targeted.

"The assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand ... ensured his name has been enshrined in the annals of European history," writes Suzanne Lynch in the Irish Times. "But the archduke himself was not a particularly popular figure in the years preceding his death."

A German historian described him as "a man of uninspired energy, dark in appearance and emotion, who radiated an aura of strangeness and cast a shadow of violence and recklessness ... a true personality amidst the amiable inanity that characterized Austrian society at this time."

The anniversary has renewed a debate over the role of 19–year–old Gavrilo Princip. Princip was the man who shot Franz Ferdinand and Sophie 100 years ago today. Of that, there is no doubt. What is far less clear, writes The Guardian, is whether he was a hero or a villain for doing so. The Associated Press wonders the same thing.

The assassination itself reminds me of the scene in "The Pink Panther Strikes Again" in which the world's greatest assassins converge on Oktoberfest with the intention of killing Inspector Clouseau but end up killing each other instead.

There were six assassins posted along the motorcade route, most in case the assassin(s) ahead of them failed to kill the archduke.

The first two assassins, armed with guns and bombs, did fail to act. The third assassin had a bomb, which he threw at the motorcade, but it bounced off the convertible cover of the archduke's car into the street and went off under another car. Nearly two dozen people were injured, and the assassin attempted to commit suicide by taking cyanide and jumping into the river — but the suicide attempt also failed. The assassin vomited and did not drown because, thanks to recent hot and dry conditions, the water wasn't very deep. He was taken into custody.

The motorcade proceeded to its next stop, a town hall reception, where the archduke gave his prepared speech and added a few remarks about the attempt on his life.

Considering what had happened, I think I would have insisted on alternate arrangements for my departure from town hall. In fact, city officials and the archduke's aides did discuss that very thing. The most sensible solution, from what I have seen, called for the couple to remain at town hall until enough soldiers could be brought in to secure the route.

But the governor–general rejected that suggestion — because any soldiers who came straight from maneuvers would not be able to dress in proper formal uniforms.

Franz Ferdinand and Sophie agreed to a change in plans. They wanted to go to the hospital to visit the people who had been injured earlier in the bombing. A different route was agreed upon — but no one told the driver. The person who normally would advise him of such changes had been injured in the bombing. In his absence, Sarajevo's chief of police was charged with spreading the word of such a change to the drivers, but he failed to do so.

Anyway, the driver took the original route. The governor–general, who was riding with the archduke and his wife, called out to the driver to take a different route. The driver stopped the car — as fate would have it, near Princip, who fired two shots from a distance of about five feet. Franz Ferdinand and Sophie were killed.

When he was sentenced, Princip made an apology of sorts. He said he did not intend to shoot Sophie. His intended targets were the archduke — and the governor–general.

Photographs and Anxieties

I seldom hear much about Gabrielle Giffords these days.

That is how it should be, I guess.

After all, she was news on the day she was shot — and in the days that followed, when her dramatic fight for life was played out on the nation's TV screens in the form of medical briefings.

But, for most of the last five months, she has been just another patient and the details of her treatment have remained out of public view. She did survive a wound that was worse than many that hospital personnel usually see, but most of the milestones in her recovery have been observed in private.

Lately, though, Giffords has been back in the spotlight — sort of. She has remained in the shadows, but she was on hand when her husband's space shuttle mission began, and then she was in the news again after undergoing major surgery to repair her skull.

Her doctor says she is coming along splendidly and has taken to calling her "Gorgeous Gaby."

Giffords will probably recede from public view now and resume the arduous task of recovering from her injuries — which is fine with me ...

... except for the fact that her mere presence at the shuttle launch, the reports of her milestone surgery and now the posting of the first photos of Giffords since the shooting have revived thoughts that I couldn't avoid in January but nevertheless managed to tuck away for the last few months.

A lot of water has passed under the bridge since January, but try to recall the atmosphere if you can.

The immediate reaction of Democrats was that the shooting had been perpetrated by a right–wing extremist and that it was the inevitable outcome of the incendiary political environment.

A lot of the blame was directed at the so–called Tea Party and Sarah Palin — even though all evidence suggested that the gunman was not motivated by politics and had no links to either.

Democrats were reluctant to acknowledge that, which I believe reveals the true source for the Democrats' behavior. Fear of a — for the most part — faceless them.

It's political paranoia that is worthy of Richard Nixon.

I sensed a lot of fear among Democrats when Republicans captured both houses of Congress in 1994. Democrats had held at least one chamber of Congress every year for 40 years, and many were fearful that they had lost their grip on legislative power forever.

That hasn't happened, of course. President Clinton was re–elected in 1996, and a Democrat was elected president in 2008. In between, Democrats recaptured Congress and expanded their majorities before losing the House last year.

But that 1994 experience is fresh enough in their memories that many Democrats are fearful of losing whatever they have and will do whatever they believe must be done — including sacrifice some of their commitments — to keep it.

Some saw what they interpreted as unmistakable signs of erosion in their base when Republicans took control of the House in 2010's midterm elections, and they are fearful that the second shoe will drop in 2012 when Democrats could well become victims of their own success as they defend two–thirds of the Senate seats that will be on the ballot.

That is only one fear, though.

Another fear, I believe, was to be found in the response to the attack on Giffords.

Since the 1960s, Democrats have been conditioned to believe that someone or a group or a conspiracy of some sort has been resisting their leaders and their causes. They saw three of their prominent leaders assassinated in the 1960s, then they saw Democratic presidents smeared (one successfully, one unsuccessfully) in the 1970s and 1990s.

And they have been fearful that something like that could happen again.

With this president — the first black president — there was always an unspoken concern in every conversation in which I participated — even before he was elected — that, at some point, somebody would take a shot at him.

I believe that is, in large part, why Democrats have been so quick to accuse people who disagree with Obama of being racists. It's kind of a proactive measure, understandable in a way — but it is still offensive to millions of Americans who honestly disagree with the president on policy and could care less what color his skin happens to be.

Fortunately, no one has taken a shot at Obama yet — and, hopefully, no one will.

Presidential security has improved a lot since the last time someone shot a president, even more since someone was successful in killing a president. But it still could happen. It has happened four times in our history. If the methodology for protecting a president is better now than it was, so too is the technology that can be used to attack a president.

Most presidents have accepted the fact that they could easily be killed if someone is, as Lincoln put it, willing to trade his life for the president's. If someone is that determined, it seems unlikely that anything can stop him.

I don't know if the first black president will be assassinated — or re–elected. I was not born with the ability to see the future.

I do know that the only trait that all great leaders share is confidence. They practically exude confidence — in America, in themselves and in the people. Without that, others won't follow — or, at least, they won't follow for long.

When a president takes the oath of office, no one truly knows what the fate of his presidency will be. Fifty years ago, no one knew that John F. Kennedy would die in a Dallas motorcade before the voters could give his presidency a thumb's up or a thumb's down. One hundred and fifty years ago, no one knew that Abraham Lincoln would preside over a bloody civil war — and be killed a few days after its conclusion.

And 30 years ago, no one knew that the oldest man ever elected president would survive not one but two terms in office — as well as an assassination attempt.

History is full of contradictions, full of twists and turns. A president must be confident and steadfast, sure that the course he is following is correct; the people always seem to sense uncertainty and hesitance.

I'm glad Giffords is recovering so well.

And I would urge the president and those who are embarking on campaigns to replace him to avoid incendiary arguments.

The nation was not served by the introduction of unwarranted charges and counter–charges about patriotism in 2004, and it will not be served by the introduction of unwarranted charges and counter–charges about racial attitudes in 2012.

Let's talk about the issues and the nation's problems in 2012.

No matter what else happens.

A Short Presidency

I often wonder what James Garfield, America's 20th president, might have accomplished if he hadn't been shot about four months after taking office — and died of his wounds two months later.

Garfield, who died 129 years ago on this day, had a mere 200 days as president — only William Henry Harrison's one–month presidency was shorter — and nearly 40% of that time was spent in bed with the gunshot wound that ultimately killed him.

But he showed so much promise.

He wasn't a Rhodes scholar, the way Bill Clinton was. In fact, his academic career appears — to 21st century eyes, at least — a bit sparse. He attended Western Reserve Eclectic Institute (which later became Hiram College) and graduated with honors from Williams College — where he was regarded as an excellent student in everything (except chemistry).

Did you realize that, not only did he know both Latin and Greek, but he was a professor of both at Hiram College for a time? He also was ambidextrous — and he could use that particular talent to write both languages simultaneously. Well, that's the story, anyway.

Relatively few modern presidents have been able to speak a second language. And even fewer have been ambidextrous. Ronald Reagan, I have heard, was born left–handed but was forced by teachers to learn to write with his right hand when he was a child. And biographer David McCullough has suggested that something similar happened to Harry Truman when he was growing up.

Truman's and Reagan's experiences probably were typical for lefthanders of their generation, and I know from my own somewhat limited experience how challenging it is to try to learn to do things with your non–dominant hand.

When I was 13, I broke my right wrist and it had to be in a cast for about eight weeks. I am right–handed and, because of the nature of the break, virtually my entire arm, from my fingers to my upper arm, had to be encased in this cast and remain locked in one position while the break healed.

Because of the way my arm was positioned, it was impossible for me to write with my right hand so, for eight weeks, I had to turn in spelling tests and any other handwritten assignments with the messiest handwriting you ever saw from the pencil of a seventh–grader.

Anyway, I can respect what Truman and Reagan apparently were forced to do, but I would classify theirs as acquired ambidexterity. Garfield, as I understand it, was left–handed by nature, but I have heard nothing that says he was forced to do things with his right hand. His type of ambidexterity appears to have been natural.

Or perhaps it was the result of the subtle influence of a person in Garfield's life when he was growing up. As I say, I am right–handed, but there are certain things that I do — or did when I was a child — with my left hand, and I have always believed it was because my father, who is left–handed, must have shown me how to do them when I was small. And I just mimicked what I saw him do.

For example, I have always used a pool cue from the left. And, although I do not own a rifle, on the occasions when I have fired a rifle, I have done so from the left.

And, when I was a child and I played kickball or kicked a football with my friends, I kicked with my left foot. I never was able to kick with my right.

So it is possible that environment played a role in whatever ambidexterity Garfield acquired.

But it does seem to me that a distinction must be drawn between acquired ambidexterity — and natural ambidexterity, in which one can move effortlessly between the two, kind of like a natural switch hitter in baseball.

And Garfield's ambidexterity, as I say, appears to have been natural.

Of course, ambidexterity is not necessarily evidence of above average intelligence. But it seems to me that, to be able to apply one's ambidexterity to one's other pursuits does require a certain amount of creativity — which does, in my experience, require a certain level of intellectual depth.

Well, whatever his ambidexterity may have said about his intelligence, Garfield had about as varied a resume as anyone who ever took the presidential oath. He was the first former college president — and, as far as I know, the only former preacher — to be president.

From what I have learned of Garfield, he was quite well read, which certainly suggests a high level of intelligence.

He was a "policy wonk" a century before the Clinton candidacy and presidency popularized the phrase. He never appears to have been bored with the minutiae of policy making.

And he seems to have been a very outgoing man, the sort who enjoys the politician's life. He was muscular and handsome, and he enjoyed good health.

Now, none of these things tell us that Garfield was unusually gifted or special, although he has been described as one of the most talented orators of his day. He appears to have been somewhat Clintonesque, actually. He was "[e]xtremely tactile," wrote historian William DeGregorio. "[H]e liked to hug and stroke friends and characteristically slung an arm around the shoulders of whomever he was talking to."

But he was unique in at least one way. In more than 200 years, he remains the only sitting member of the House to be elected president.

I'm not sure, though, if much can be learned from Garfield's experience in the House. He was there for nearly 20 years, and during that time he appears to have earned a reputation as something of a waffler. He seems to have been far too concerned with making everyone happy — and, as a result, made relatively few people happy.

That, too, may seem somewhat Clintonesque, although, in an odd kind of way, Garfield seems to have managed to combine the qualities of both Clinton and the man he defeated in 1992, former President George H.W. Bush.

DeGregorio writes that (in true Clinton fashion) "he was most ambitious," but (like Bush) he was modest and disinclined to self–promotion.

"I so much despise a man who blows his own horn," Garfield reportedly said, "that I go to the extreme of not demanding what is justly my due."

But if his pre–presidential career suggested an indecisive presidency, that was not what came across after Garfield took office — certainly by modern standards.

One of the earliest tasks — and perhaps the most crucial — of a new president in the 19th century was that of making political appointments, and the federal system was fraught with corruption. By the time Garfield took office, there was a burgeoning movement for civil service reform in the land, and it was against that backdrop that Garfield made his stand against a power broker from his own party, Sen. Roscoe Conkling of New York.

Conkling felt it was his responsibility to appoint the chief collector for the Port of New York because he was the state's senior senator. And, traditionally, it was something that the state's senator handled, even though it seems brazenly corrupt today — especially the way Conkling doled out patronage.

To put this in a context that 21st century people might understand, it would be comparable to Virginia Sen. Jim Webb claiming that, because the Pentagon sits on the Virginia side of the Potomac River, he, as Virginia's senior senator, should appoint the secretary of Defense.

As I say, it seems brazenly corrupt today, but it was a pretty common procedure at that time. It was covered by the principle of "senatorial courtesy," which is still observed to a certain extent but not as widely as it was then, in no small part because of Garfield.

Garfield decided to challenge the practice of a spoils system by appointing one of Conkling's political rivals chief collector. Conkling and his senatorial colleague from New York both resigned in protest, only to discover that the state's Republican Party was not going to support them against the president, and Garfield had struck a blow for civil service reform.

It might be obvious, given his background as a college president and a preacher, that Garfield took an extremely unusual route to the presidency.

As a young man, Garfield fought for the North in the Civil War, achieving the rank of major general. He earned a certain amount of notoriety for that, but it hardly served as his launch pad into presidential politics. Instead, it launched him into 18 years of service in the House of Representatives.

Then, fate intervened in 1880, and Garfield became the Republicans' compromise choice when 35 ballots failed to produce a presidential nominee.

One of the candidates for the nomination that year was former President Ulysses S. Grant. In fact, Conkling had been the leader of the movement to nominate Grant (who had been president from 1869–1877) for an unprecedented third term. But Grant deadlocked with James G. Blaine and John Sherman, and the delegates turned to the dark horse Garfield.

In the general election, Garfield defeated another former Union commander, Winfield Hancock, becoming one of the youngest men (48 on Election Day) to win the presidency.

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The men who originally sought the nomination that became Garfield's did not have kind things to say about him, either while he was president ("Garfield ... is not possessed of the backbone of an angle–worm," said Grant) or more than a decade after his death ("His will power was not equal to his personal magnetism," wrote Sherman in 1895. "He easily changed his mind and honestly veered from one impulse to another").

In his inaugural address, Garfield spoke of civil service reform, and he can be said to have fired the first real shot of that revolt in his skirmish with Conkling. Actual reform, however, was ultimately achieved by his successor, Chester Arthur — although it was done, in large part, as a tribute to Garfield.

He might have been remembered in the history books as a crusader against corruption, but after only four months in office, Garfield was shot by a disgruntled and mentally unbalanced office seeker. And, instead of being recognized for the influence he could have had on American life, he is often regarded as a footnote, an oddity.

It has been suggested by some that Garfield could have survived his wound if it hadn't been for inadequate medical care.

"At least a dozen medical experts probed the president's wound, often with unsterilized metal instruments or bare hands, as was common at the time," wrote Amanda Schaffer of the New York Times in 2006. "Historians agree that massive infection, which resulted from unsterile practices, contributed to Garfield's death."

What might have been?

Back to the Future

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Today is the 42nd anniversary of the murder of Martin Luther King Jr.

When many people think of King, they think of his inspiring, uplifting messages — his "I Have a Dream" speech that he delivered in front of the Lincoln Memorial during the August 1963 March on Washington or the speech he gave 42 years ago last night, the night before his assassination, when he told his followers he had been to the mountaintop.

In the 1950s and 1960s, King was reviled by segregationists, but he had the support of many who held positions of power in Washington and many who held positions of influence in the media. Among those groups, his work for racial equality was perceived as being on the right side of history.

But I have long believed that it was a speech he gave exactly one year before his assassination, at Riverside Church in New York, that changed his relationship with many who had supported and protected him. On that occasion, he spoke against American policy in Vietnam.

His allies would not stand with him on the subject of Vietnam. The war had nothing to do with racial injustice, they argued. Not so, said King, who believed that peace and prosperity went hand in hand. And he believed that to remain silent was betrayal.

(Or, as Edmund Burke put it, "All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.")

Because so many rejected his message in 1967, the tragedy of Vietnam went on, and thousands more Americans died needless deaths. In recent years, I have felt that we were repeating that mistake in the Middle East.

Apparently, Bob Herbert agrees with me, although the focus of his attention is mostly on Afghanistan, not Iraq — of the two, I have believed for many years that Iraq was the unjustifiable war.

King's message in that speech at Riverside Church in 1967 wasn't a radical departure from what he had been saying throughout his public life. But, as Herbert observes in the New York Times, it was controversial because he questioned what the government was doing in Vietnam.

Even the NAACP thought he was making a mistake in shifting his focus from civil rights to foreign policy. But King felt (and said so, in words that were far more eloquent than mine) that economic opportunity and peace were compatible, and economic opportunity was the key to equal rights. The war in Vietnam ran counter to the ultimate objective of the civil rights movement.

In 1967, to question the government's policy in Vietnam was seen as nothing short of heresy — and those who spoke out were often seen as advocating communism. Even entertainers (i.e., the Smothers Brothers) were censored when their comedy was believed to be contrary to national policy abroad.

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King was not a communist, and, eventually, a majority of Americans came to share his view of Vietnam. But his speech drove a wedge between him and many who had supported him in the past.

And things, Herbert argues, haven't changed all that much in four–plus decades. True, America has a black president now — something that even Dr. King may not have dared to imagine — but Herbert sees that president making the same mistake that Lyndon Johnson made in the 1960s — sending more troops (this time to Afghanistan) "in support of governments which were singularly corrupt, inept and without popular support," to use King's own words.

"More than 4,000 Americans have died in Iraq and more than 1,000 in Afghanistan, where the Obama administration has chosen to escalate rather than to begin a careful withdrawal," writes Herbert. "Those two wars, as the Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz and his colleague Linda Bilmes have told us, will ultimately cost us more than $3 trillion.

"And yet the voices in search of peace, in search of an end to the 'madness,' in search of the nation–building so desperately needed here in the United States, are feeble indeed."

Until America learns from the mistakes of the past, it will continue to make them.

And the madness will go on.

During his life, King was an advocate of civil rights, as everyone knows, but he advocated civil rights for all, not just one group. That is why the words he spoke still speak to us today. He spoke of fairness, not unfair advantage. And he knew that economic opportunity was at the heart of the human struggle.

No doubt he agreed with Gandhi, who said, "Poverty is the worst kind of violence." He certainly made it clear what he thought of a government that would commit so much money and so many lives to waging war overseas instead of dedicating those resources to programs designed to improve things at home.

I wonder how he would feel about an administration that, faced with massive unemployment and under–employment and budget crises in nearly every state, chose to escalate a war?

Well, just as in Dr. King's day, the poor, the hungry, the unemployed will pay the price for it.

James Earl Ray and the King Assassination

March 10 was a pivotal day in the life of James Earl Ray, the man who spent nearly 30 years in prison for the 1968 assassination of Martin Luther King.

His life began on March 10, 1928, in the city of Alton, Ill. Forty-one years later, to the day, Ray confessed to the assassination of King and was given a 99-year prison sentence. He took the guilty plea on the advice of his attorney to avoid a trial conviction and the possibility of a death sentence.

Three days later, though, Ray recanted his confession. Until his death in prison on April 23, 1998, at the age of 70, Ray claimed that a man he met in Montreal (known to him only as "Raoul") and Ray's brother had been involved in the assassination — but he had not been involved.

He later amended his story, claiming that he didn't shoot King but said he may have been "partially responsible without knowing it," hinting at the possibility of a conspiracy. But, just as it was in the case of Jack Ruby, who shot alleged JFK assassin Lee Harvey Oswald on national television, the suggestion of a conspiracy never went any further than that.

Ray died in prison from complications related to kidney disease caused by hepatitis C after spending years trying to get the trial he never had. His attorney, William Pepper, represented him in a televised mock trial. Pepper also represented the King family in a wrongful death suit against a Memphis restaurant owner, Loyd Jowers, who was found legally liable.

The King family does not believe Ray was involved in the murder. Ray's father did not believe he was smart enough to pull off such a crime. And, in 1978, a special congressional committee investigating assassinations in the United States said there was a "likelihood" that Ray did not act alone.

What was the truth? It has been nearly 41 years since King was murdered. And, if Ray were still alive today, he would be 81 years old. But there was never a trial in the case while Ray lived, and the chance that there would ever be one died with him nearly 11 years ago.

It would be useful for future generations to know the truth, to know who really killed King and why. But it appears destined to remain one of history's coldest cases.

Does the Kennedy Assassination Still Matter?

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Mary Moorman's memorable photo of the Kennedy assassination.

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I've been searching the internet, but if anyone has published an article investigating any of the still unresolved issues in the Kennedy assassination lately, I've missed it.

Today, by the way, is the 45th anniversary of that assassination.

Here in Dallas, the only article I've seen about the assassination today, in the Dallas Morning News, laments the rate of attrition among the witnesses to it.

But everything I've read is a remembrance. Unlike anniversaries gone by, I've seen nothing that challenges the conventional conclusions, that asks questions about the things we've been told to accept as fact.

Personally, I remember very little directly — although, over the years, I think I've persuaded myself that I remember more than I actually do. Then, as now, I was only a few days from my birthday. In 1963, I wasn't even in elementary school yet. I was about to celebrate my fourth birthday.

In those days, my family didn't have a television set, but our neighbors did. And I vividly remember spending the next four days in our neighbors' small home, but I spent little of it with my parents in front of the TV. I was too busy playing with the neighbor boy, who always seemed to have the coolest new toys.

As young as I was — and as focused as I was on my friend's toy collection — I doubt that I saw Lyndon Johnson make his brief address to the nation upon returning to Washington. And I probably didn't see Kennedy's casket being removed from the plane and taken back to the White House.

I probably didn't see Jack Ruby shoot Lee Harvey Oswald a couple of days later, and I probably didn't see John-John salute his father's casket the day of the funeral.

I simply don't remember what I saw and what I didn't see in 1963. But I know I've seen footage of all those events many times in the years since.

Mostly, as I've gotten older, the belief that our nation has been lied to about what happened in Dallas has continued to grow. And nothing that I've heard has changed that feeling.

For myself and for those who died before getting the answers they sought, I wonder if those answers will ever be found.

I'm not one of those who believes, as has so often been said, that America "lost its innocence" on that day. The people of my parents' generation, who were in their early 30s when President Kennedy was killed, had been through far too much in their lives — the Depression, Pearl Harbor, Nazi Germany, segregation, the Cold War — to lose their innocence. It was mostly gone by that time.

My sense of that time was that the adults felt an opportunity had been lost — perhaps the kind of opportunity that comes along only once in a generation.

Today, on the 45th anniversary, the only TV station I've discovered that is showing anything related to the assassination is American Movie Classics, which is showing Oliver Stone's "JFK" tonight at 7 and 11 Central. It's a well done film and it raises some important questions — but the film was made 17 years ago and those issues still haven't been resolved.

I have written about the absence of anniversary observations in the media in my Birth of a Notion blog.

But the question I'd like to ask here is simply this: Is the JFK assassination still relevant?

Does November 22 belong — once and for all — in the archives with all the important dates in history, even with questions unanswered?

Or should we continue to search for those answers?

Bobby Kennedy's 'Moral Compass'

Spiritually, I suppose, Bobby Kennedy was father to a lot of people.

In reality, he had an exceptionally large family. He had 10 children during his lifetime and an 11th was born after he was assassinated in June 1968.

That's a bigger family than the one in which he grew up -- and Bobby Kennedy didn't exactly come from a small family. He was the seventh of nine children.

The other day, I reflected on my memories of Kennedy's assassination, using as one of my sources a New York Daily News article by Kennedy's oldest child, Kathleen, but mostly relying on my own (admittedly faulty) memory, remembering what that time was like for an 8-year-old who was witnessing what was one of the most remarkable years in American history unfold.

Today is the 40th anniversary of Kennedy's shooting. He lingered for more than 24 hours before he finally died, so tomorrow will be the actual anniversary of Kennedy's death.

And, to mark the occasion, Kennedy's oldest son, Joseph P. Kennedy II, recalls, in the New York Times, "how my father listened with rare empathy to everyone."

Kennedy truly had gifts that this year's presidential candidates have lacked.

"He lived by a moral compass that others, less certain of their direction, looked to for guidance," Joseph Kennedy writes. "Even if what he asked was hard to hear and heed, he gave others the strength to believe not just in his guidance but in themselves."

Evan Thomas says in Newsweek that Bobby Kennedy's role in the 1968 campaign represents "one of history's great 'what ifs.'"

Thomas makes what may be one of the great understatements when he observes, "It's safe to say that his presidency would have followed a different course from that of Richard Nixon.

"And it may just be," he continues, "that American politics would not be endlessly refighting the 1960s" if Kennedy had not been assassinated and had gone on to be elected president.

There are, to be sure, some problems with this guessing game.

To win the nomination, he would have had to overcome Hubert Humphrey and the support he had from the party bosses across the country. These bosses still controlled who their state's delegates voted for, and "Kennedy was regarded as too 'hot' and too radical by the big city and Big Labor chieftains," Thomas points out.

If one makes the assumption that Kennedy could have overcome the obstacles within his own party, Thomas says, he "would have faced a formidable foe in Richard Nixon in November.

"The New Nixon was an expert at divide and conquer, and he was building a Silent Majority of white middle-class Americans fearful of rioting blacks and hippie college radicals."

Again, if one makes the assumption Kennedy could have overcome both Nixon and George Wallace in the general election, he would have faced his own difficulties enacting his progressive agenda.

Perhaps he could have done it.

"He was at once passionate and detached," Thomas writes, "a rare combination but essential in a leader."

By the way ...

There's been talk in Massachusetts recently that Joe Kennedy might be a candidate for his Uncle Ted's Senate seat -- if Edward Kennedy has to step down because of his brain tumor.

The 40th Anniversary of a Political Turning Point

A recent article by Kathleen Kennedy Townsend in the New York Daily News recalls her memories of her last weekend with her father, Sen. Robert F. Kennedy.

Kathleen was the oldest of the 10 Kennedy children who were born during Kennedy's lifetime (his 11th child was born a few months after his assassination).

In February 1968, when Bobby Kennedy was on the verge of announcing his bid for the presidency, Townsend recalls a visit her parents made to her high school in Vermont. The senator had agreed to speak to the student body, so he and his wife took some additional time to spend with their daughter.

"During what turned out to be our last weekend together, we raced each other down ski trails in the brisk air, discussed my paper on Wordsworth by the fire and talked about his running for president," Townsend writes.

"I hope today's young people can learn, as I did, from my father's own sense of justice. I have never known another like it. It combined righteous anger with love and compassion."

When Kennedy was alive, the combination of those qualities was misinterpreted as "ruthlessness."

Kennedy's life tragically came to an end in June 1968.

And, for 40 years, I have believed Kennedy's death was a political turning point for this nation.

After Kennedy's death, the Democratic Party nominated Vice President Hubert Humphrey for the presidency. Humphrey never won a primary in 1968. He was nominated the old-fashioned way -- with the support of delegates that were hand-picked by a state's party leadership.

Outside that convention hall in Chicago, antiwar protesters and the city's police clashed in the streets.

But, four years later, changes in party rules allowed an insurgent named George McGovern to win the nomination through an expanded but still limited primary schedule -- although it was not yet typical for any candidate to enter every primary.

At that time, candidates chose which primaries to enter for a variety of reasons -- regional appeal, apparent strength (usually as demonstrated in current polls), a need for exposure -- whatever (it was hoped) would give them the most bang for their campaign bucks. They bypassed the primaries where they weren't well known or where it was believed they couldn't do well.

Quite a few delegates were still chosen the old-fashioned way, but not as many.

Jimmy Carter changed that in 1976. Two hundred years after the signing of the Declaration of Independence, Carter put his name on every primary ballot and won the nomination and the election.

Since that time, popular primaries have had an increasingly important role in nominating presidential candidates. There aren't even as many caucuses as there used to be.

Perhaps that political development was the legacy of the Kennedy assassination.

One tends to remember turning points with vivid clarity -- whether it's the 9-11 attacks, the JFK assassination or Pearl Harbor.

I remember exactly where I was and what I was doing 40 years ago next Thursday. For me, it was perhaps the most memorable event in a year filled with memorable events.

I was 8 years old. I had just finished the second grade, and school had shut down for the summer. My father was a college professor, and he had just completed his academic year as well, so our family had come to Dallas to visit my grandparents for a week or so.

We always stayed with my mother's parents, even though both sets of grandparents lived in Dallas. My mother's parents owned a house with a spare bedroom and they had a couple of rollaway beds as well, so they were much better equipped to house a family of four than my father's parents, who lived in a one-bedroom apartment.

And, even though my father's father had been deceased for more than a year by June 1968, there still wasn't enough room for five people in his mother's apartment.

So, while we visited my father's mother frequently on our visits to Dallas, we stayed with my mother's parents.

There was a certain routine that every member of the family had when we visited my grandparents.

My father was a morning person, often up before the crack of dawn and waiting with his father-in-law near the front window for the newspaper to be delivered.

My grandmother often got up when my grandfather did and went to the kitchen to make coffee and breakfast while he watched the local news on TV. In fact, my grandmother always seemed to be in the kitchen. In most of my childhood memories of my grandmother (with the noteworthy exceptions of holidays, like the Fourth of July and Christmas), she was in the kitchen or her backyard garden.

She's been gone for nearly 20 years, yet, to this day, I associate my grandmother with the smells of her kitchen, the colors of her garden, and the taste of ice-cold Dr Pepper on a hot summer day.

My mother was more of a night person, and she usually stayed in bed until breakfast was ready.

My routine? Well, I was 8 years old. When I visited Dallas, one of the things I loved to do was watch a children's morning TV show called "Peppermint Place," hosted by local TV personality Jerry Haynes, who dressed up in a red-and-white striped sport jacket, wore one of those turn-of-the-century flat-top hats that singers in barbershop quartets wear and went by the name of "Mr. Peppermint."

(Ironically, as I was to learn later, a quirk of fate had made Haynes the first local TV personality to report the assassination of John F. Kennedy from the scene of the shooting more than four years earlier.)

Cable was a phenomenon of the future, still many years away. Forty years ago, local network affiliates, the local public broadcasting affiliate and a few independent channels in the larger cities were all that TV viewers had for news and entertainment.

And network morning news shows weren't as abundant in those days. In fact, almost all of the morning news programming was local. The Today Show had that time period virtually to itself -- no national network competition.

I don't recall who competed in Mr. Peppermint's time slot in those days. I think that, for at least part of his program, Mr. Peppermint was in competition with network personality Captain Kangaroo.

I'm not even sure what the time slot was -- 7 a.m., I think -- but I guess it didn't matter to me. Apparently, I had concluded that Mr. Peppermint was the best choice.

To my 8-year-old mind, the show had everything I wanted. Mr. Peppermint's show had various recurring guest characters, and it aired a lot of cartoons. Most, if not all, of the cartoons featured "Felix the Cat."

We didn't see Felix the Cat cartoons in the Little Rock viewing area, so I always looked forward to trips to Dallas because that meant I would get to see them.

Not so on the morning of June 5, 1968.

When I got up that morning, I found my father and grandfather transfixed by the TV. A TV reporter was talking with an empty ballroom in the background. At the bottom of the screen was text that read "News Bulletin."

If you weren't around in those days, you have to understand something. The '60s were like that. TV programming was often interrupted by "news bulletins."

Especially in a volatile time like the '60s.

But I'm not talking about the "Breaking News" reports that we've had in recent years -- like Michael Jackson showing up for trial in his pajamas or Britney Spears being hospitalized after flipping out in her home.

The "news bulletins" of the '60s usually reported truly newsworthy events, like the launching of rockets into space or Soviet invasions of countries in eastern Europe -- or the shootings/deaths of leaders.

A TV "news bulletin" meant something serious had happened. In the 1960s, the soap opera lives of a Michael Jackson or a Britney Spears wouldn't make the first cut.

The reporter on the TV that morning was telling the audience that Robert Kennedy had been shot a few hours earlier, after delivering his California primary victory speech in Los Angeles. He had been taken to a hospital where he had undergone surgery, and his condition was critical.

I knew the name of Kennedy. I knew it was the name of a man who had been president just a few years earlier, and I knew his brother was running for president. I even had a vague idea what being president meant.

And, unfortunately, I also knew what "assassination" meant. Martin Luther King had been shot and killed only two months earlier.

I think my father had to explain to me what critical meant.

The bigger a story was, the more time the networks would give to the coverage of it. And, it seems to me, the coverage of Kennedy's condition went on all that day. I don't recall seeing TV coverage that extensive for anything -- except for the coverage of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

After lunch, my grandfather and I went into the alley behind his house and walked to the backyard gate belonging to one of his best friends. We went in through the gate and walked to the backdoor of the house.

My grandfather's friend was at home, so we all went to his backyard shed, where the men would sit, drink iced tea, smoke cigars -- and talk.

On that early June afternoon, it wasn't as hot as it would be in Dallas in another month, so we were comfortable with just the windows open in the shed. In a few weeks, we would need a box fan to keep the shed reasonably comfortable.

The conversation that afternoon was about Bobby Kennedy, nothing else. In football-crazy Dallas, anything that blocks the Cowboys from a male-dominated conversation in June, even in those early days of the franchise, is pretty significant.

"Do you think he'll live?" my grandfather's friend asked.

"No," my grandfather replied. "If he does, he'll be a vegetable."

I don't think I was sure what he meant by "vegetable," but I knew it didn't sound good.

We went inside the house and switched on the TV set. The "news bulletin" was continuing, with film clips from Kennedy's final speech, followed by clips of Kennedy laying on the pantry floor after the shooting, followed by camera shots of the hospital. A group of people had gathered outside the hospital, many holding placards that said, "Pray for Bobby."

I know there were prayer vigils for Kennedy all that day and into the night. But, by the early morning hours of June 6, the battle was over. Death had won.

A few years later, Don McLean recorded a song called "American Pie," which had the memorable line, "The day the music died."

If the song is about what is truly the "day the music died," as I've heard, about the 1959 plane crash that claimed the lives of Buddy Holly, Richie Valens and "The Big Bopper," it seems to me that June 6, 1968, should be remembered as "the day faith died."

Because that's what Bobby Kennedy represented to so many people. He represented the faith that we had it within our power to change things for the better -- to end a war, to eliminate poverty, to rid our society of racism and sexism.

Bobby Kennedy was the last politician I can remember in my lifetime who could truly bridge gaps. He could speak to blacks, he could speak to whites. He could speak to the rich, he could speak to the poor. He could speak to the young, he could speak to the old.

He was a young white male born to wealth and privilege, but he could make sense to each group.

Hardly anyone -- regardless of age, race, gender or economic status -- tries to do that anymore because it's so hard to accomplish.

For many people, faith was a casualty in a decade that already had witnessed President Kennedy's assassination, the escalation of the Vietnam War, the murder of Martin Luther King and riots in the streets of American cities.

At least, truth was a casualty -- so much so that, even today, there are still people who don't believe they were ever told the truth about the triumphant Apollo 11 moon landing the following year.

My mother, who supported the insurgent candidacy of Gene McCarthy in the spring of 1968, later confessed to me that, in her own words, she believed the "myths" she had heard about Kennedy in his lifetime -- that he was "ruthless," that he was "ambitious" and "opportunistic."

(She later told me that she had stopped believing those things about Kennedy in the years since his death.)

It seems to me that what the Democratic Party has been lacking in most of its presidential nominees in the four decades since Kennedy was killed is the tenacity that he had for doing the right thing -- morally.

That's a quality that was derided as ruthlessness during his lifetime, but that's a false label.

Kennedy had what the voting public wants. Or, perhaps more importantly, he had what the republic needs.

The American people want leaders who emulate Superman.

Those leaders don't have to "leap tall buildings in a single bound" or be "more powerful than a locomotive" or any of that other superhero stuff.

It's enough if they believe in the principles of "truth, justice and the American way" and devote their energies to promoting them.

I'm not talking about the "my way or the highway" approach of George W. Bush or the "extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice" attitude of Barry Goldwater.

I'm talking about the steely-eyed determination that was shown by Franklin D. Roosevelt in World War II or John F. Kennedy in staring down the Russians during the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962.

Bobby Kennedy's widow, Ethel, is still alive. Now 80, she lives at the family compound in Hyannisport, Mass. She has endorsed likely Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama, saying "Barack is so like Bobby. ... With courage, caring, and charisma, Senator Obama is leading us toward a kinder, gentler world."

If it is true that Kennedy's death was a political turning point -- and if it is also true, as some have said, that turning points come once in a generation -- then perhaps we are due for another one in 2008. A better one?

If he is to be the true agent of change, Obama should remember that eloquence has its place. FDR, JFK -- and Bobby Kennedy -- had that gift, too. So did lesser politicians who never reached the heights those men reached.

But FDR and the Kennedys also knew that actions can speak louder than words.

The Fallout From the RFK Analogy

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HILLARY CLINTON: I find it curious because it is unprecedented in history. I don't understand it. Between my opponent and his camp and some in the media there has been this urgency to end this. Historically, that makes no sense, so I find it a bit of a mystery.

BOARD: You don't buy the party unity argument?

CLINTON: I don't because, again, I've been around long enough. You know my husband did not wrap up the nomination in 1992 until he won the California primary somewhere in the middle of June, right? We all remember Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in June in California. You know, I just don't understand it and there's a lot of speculation about why it is . . .

Transcript of Sioux Falls (S.D.) Argus Leader interview with Hillary Clinton

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I sincerely hope the media will stop obsessing over minutiae and focus like a laser beam on real issues when the general election campaign begins.

But, for now, we have to continue to endure commentary on things that don't really matter.

This weekend, the discussion has been about Hillary Clinton mentioning the Bobby Kennedy assassination during her interview with the editorial board of the Sioux Falls (S.D.) Argus Leader on Friday.

• John Harris writes, in the Politico, that the furor is an example of the kind of story that "will cause the media machine to rev up its hype jets."
  
  And Harris claims to have become pretty good at anticipating which stories will have that kind of impact.
  
  "Her comment was news by any standard," writes Harris. "But it was only big news when wrested from context and set aflame by a news media more concerned with being interesting and provocative than with being relevant or serious."
  
  
• Her recent reference to the Kennedy assassination is further proof, as Michael Goodwin says in the New York Daily News, that Clinton is her own worst enemy.
  
  "Context, as in 'you've taken my words out of context,' is the last refuge of a politician caught with foot in mouth," writes Goodwin. "But with both feet in [Clinton's] mouth, she doesn't have a leg to stand on."
  
  But what else could the context possibly be?
  
  Goodwin observes that "[t]here is no question she was citing the RFK murder of 40 years ago in the spirit of 'anything can happen' ... Which means she was thinking of murder as a momentum changer. Not a pretty thought in any context."
  
  No, it isn't a pretty thought. Even though it's true. Anything can happen.
  
  Including losing a nomination everyone expected you to win.
  
  In this case, as in so many others, I think Clinton may be guilty of giving voice to thoughts others have been having privately.
  
  Or, perhaps, not so privately.
  
  I, for one, have mentioned the possibility of assassination -- and not just with Barack Obama in mind.
  
  Let us not forget that prominent women have also been the targets of assassins in other parts of the world. Indira Gandhi was assassinated in India in 1984, and Benazir Bhutto was murdered in Pakistan less than a year ago.
  
  Austria-Hungary's Archduchess Sophie was assassinated with her husband, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, in 1914, setting in motion the events that began World War I.
  
  American nun Dorothy Stang was murdered by logging interests in Brazil in 2005 for her outspoken efforts on behalf of the poor and environmentalism. María Cristina Gómez, a teacher and community activist, was murdered in El Salvador in 1989.
  
  
• Maureen Dowd of the New York Times didn't miss a chance to pile on.
  
  "In politics, there are many unpredictable and unsavory twists and turns," writes Dowd. "That’s why she’s hanging around, and that’s why she and Bill want to force Barack Obama to take her as his vice president, even if he doesn’t want her, even if Michelle can’t stand her, even if she has to stir the sexist pot, and even if she tarnishes his silvery change message."
  
  
• During that now-infamous interview, Clinton referred to her husband's campaign in 1992, observing that he hadn't secured all the delegates he needed until the California primary in June.
  
  Jake Tapper of ABC News takes her to task on that one.
  
  "Yes, [Bill Clinton] literally did not secure the nomination until June 1992," Tapper says, "but by then it was a foregone conclusion that he would be the nominee."
  
  What's really more to the point is Tapper's observation that the 2008 primary/caucus season actually held its first binding vote in Iowa on January 3 -- much earlier than any caucus or primary had ever been held before.
  
  Which makes the duration of the Democrats' 2008 pursuit of primary votes one for the books.
  
  
• Also to the point is Thomas Lifson's observation, in American Thinker, that "[o]nce again Obama and his partisans take deep personal offense when his name is not even mentioned. Obama is, to himself and his partisans, so significant that any mention of anything that might tangentially be directed at him amounts to a personal attack."
  
  Obama and his people will have to stop being so sensitive if they hope to be successful in the general election campaign. If this episode has taught them anything, it is that they should never become indifferent to security issues.
  
  Real security issues.
  
  Homeland security and candidate security.

You know, I don't dispute that Clinton has a right to take her campaign to the convention in Denver and give a prime-time address to her delegates.

It's not unprecedented.

Ted Kennedy did it in 1980, when he had clearly lost the nomination to President Carter. Gary Hart did it in 1984, when he had lost the nomination to Walter Mondale. Jesse Jackson spoke to the Democratic conventions in 1984 and 1988 -- even though he didn't finish second in either campaign.

But the odds against Clinton get longer with each passing day. It's probably past time for Clinton and her supporters to stop kidding themselves that they still have a chance to win this thing.

At this point, Obama is probably more heavily favored to win the nomination in late August than Big Brown is to wrap up thoroughbred racing's Triple Crown in a couple of weeks.