Democratic Presidential candidate and 2004 Democratic Vice-Presidential nominee John Edwards recently made a campaign swing through Eastern Kentucky, where he made a number of stops in his efforts to publicize his “Two Americas” campaign. He describes it this way-the Two Americas is not about the rich and the poor. No, the Two Americas, according to him, is about the very rich and “everybody else”.
His campaign swing through Appalachia is supposed to echo the similar trip four decades ago by Democratic Presidential candidate and former Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy.
There is a big difference, however. Kennedy, had he not been assassinated about a year later, would have without a doubt been the Democratic nominee, and there is a pretty good chance he would have went on to be elected President in 1968.
Edwards has an outside chance at best of winning the nomination. He has to do really, really good in the early primaries. He also has to hope for an implosion from the Clinton and Obama campaigns. Where one such occurrence would be conceivable, two of them are highly unlikely.
Edwards main base of support-in fact his only significant support-is from trial lawyers whose fantasies revolve around unlimited access and influence from an Edwards Presidency, and the potential of all the multiple billions of dollars in class action lawsuits that might bring. He has an uphill climb to say the least. His is an example of his best friends being his worse enemies. Nobody as a rule likes trial lawyers as a group, and anybody with an ounce of intelligence knows what an Edwards Presidency would amount to.
A Palestinian refugee assassinated Robert Kennedy. Despite the controversy surrounding Muslims and Islamic terrorists in the present decade, this would be the least of Edwards worries. If, however, somehow Edwards fortunes improves to the point that he actually has a good chance of winning the Democratic nomination, and the polls were to show him to be the likely winner in a general election, he might well find himself in danger. His security detail might well look with a wary eye, not toward anyone with a vaguely Middle Eastern appearance, but instead toward anybody in a clown suit-especially one that looks suspiciously like Ronald MacDonald.
In the meantime, all of this waxing nostalgic about Kennedy’s past trip to Kentucky kind of overlooks one vital point. It was good of course, that he made the trip, as it pointed out the real problems of poverty in the area that existed then, and exists yet today. On the other hand, Kennedy was helping himself by the trip as much as calling attention to the very real problem.
Remember, Kennedy was at the time considering running for the nomination to the Presidency of the Democratic Party against Lyndon Baines Johnson, the incumbent President of his party. The major issue of the day was the Vietnam War, the thing that decimated Johnson’s legacy. In fact, if certain facts had become known during that time, Johnson might well have been in danger of impeachment. Nevertheless, it was bad enough as it was. Bad enough that Johnson might well have had to endure a bloody primary battle, which would have left him weakened in the coming general election against the Republican Nixon.
Kennedy of course did not know that Johnson would eventually wuss out of the primaries, after barely fending off a stiff challenge from Senator Eugene MacCarthy in the New Hampshire primary. He did not realize that Johnson would then declare that he would not seek the Democratic nomination in 1968. Kennedy assumed Johnson would fight the good fight, on through the end. He had to know that if Johnson did this, he as President would have the power of incumbency on his side. Though it would have been difficult, more than likely Johnson would have persevered and been re-nominated, though it would have split the Democratic Party straight down the middle.
Kennedy understood, to defeat Johnson in such a way as to insure Party solidity, he had to have more than just the Vietnam War to go on. Therefore, Kennedy involved himself in other issues. Race became a big factor in his up-and-coming Presidential bid. The streets were aflame during this, the height of the Civil Rights era, despite the fact Johnson was the most proactive supporter of civil rights of any President up until that time.
He had signed into law the Voting Rights Act of 1964, and the Civil Right Act of 1965, two landmark pieces of legislation originally proposed by President John F Kennedy, but which that President-Roberts brother-had been unable to push through Congress. Johnson did it, though it split the Party, and along with other reasons-some good, some bad- caused a massive exodus from the party that continued unabated on through the eighties and even into the early nineties, like a dull earache that just gets worse and worse.
In the meantime, those who were to be the chief beneficiaries of the two pieces of legislation in question-African Americans-seemed to constantly be taking to the streets in perpetual outrage over first one thing and another. Therefore, in his success, Johnson faced not one massive failure, but two. One from the people who felt betrayed by his efforts, the other from those he tried most to help.
Kennedy saw an opening here which he might exploit, and immediately set about doing so, by positioning himself as the heir apparent to his brothers so-called “Camelot” legacy, and therefore as the chief proponent and supporter of civil rights. The assassination of the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King provided the perfect opportunity for him. I sincerely believe the speech that Kennedy gave had been written beforehand, and well rehearsed. His intention was to give it at some point under another context, in support of some nebulous perceived future gathering of civil rights leaders in a march on Washington, or perhaps one he intended to give during the Democratic convention in accepting the nomination to the Presidency-or to the Vice-Presidency. Whatever the case, he ended up giving it in the context of the assassination of the nation’s then most controversial civil rights leader. King was by no means the universally loved and admired figure that he is today. Nevertheless, Kennedy made it clear exactly where he stood (which was by the way commendable).
Still, Kennedy knew he could not content himself even with this. Other aspects of the Johnson presidency presented opportunities for Kennedy to chip away at his record. The most obvious accomplishment Johnson might point to was his work in promoting “The Great Society”. This was a labyrinthine government group of programs supposedly designed to alleviate the problems of poverty. Many such programs, known as “welfare”, included financial assistance to poor families and the unemployed, Medicare, Medicaid, Head Start, and food stamps. There were other such programs deigned to provide educational opportunities in poor and dispossessed areas, as well as infrastructure projects such as roads, bridges, and dams. It was designed as a kind of continuation of FDR’s New Deal, and was pretty much inspired by that program.
Unfortunately, to a great extent it was run shabbily. It was a bureaucracy that created dependency on government, and was self-perpetuating. Not enough controls were instituted on it, and so it became a nightmarish farce, despite the good it undoubtedly did in many individual cases. To a significant degree, it was utilized largely as a vote-buying scheme, and it worked all too well in that respect. Unfortunately, what it did not do was eliminate poverty, nor did it even reduce it to any significant degree.
This was the reason for Kennedy’s trip then to Appalachia, and to other poor and dispossessed regions, which you will note included many sections of the Deep South, where Johnson made a good many enemies toward himself and the Democratic Party.
Kennedy’s purpose was then of multiple intent. One, he wished to portray himself as an anti-poverty crusader. Two, he wished to present a caring face toward the rural poor, including especially poor rural whites. Finally, and just as importantly, his purpose was to illustrate the ultimate failure of Johnson’s Great Society.
Unfortunately, for John Edwards, his hopes are predicated on many faulty assumptions. For one thing, Hillary Clinton may not be well loved outside of the Democratic base, or even by that base, but she does nevertheless bear more of a similarity to Kennedy than does Edwards, in one respect. Robert Kennedy ran as the brother and heir apparent of a well beloved Democratic President. Hillary Clinton is running as the wife of an equally well beloved Democratic President.
John Edwards is the candidate whom most people would see as most like Johnson. To most, he is just another hack politician who tries to buy votes by promising to eliminate poverty, and who would use intrusive government bureaucracies and higher taxes as a means to control as much of their lives as possible.
