When I first heard that Kennedy was running for president, I was hoping it was John Kennedy, that is, John Neely Kennedy, the sharp-tongued senator from Louisiana who has skewered the Left with his acid wit on the Senate floor more than once. But alas, JNK’s hat isn’t in the ring.
The new presidential candidate on the scene today is RFK, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the son of Senator Robert F. Kennedy and the nephew of President John F. Kennedy and Senator Ted Kennedy. RFK Jr.’s candidacy has a chance to be just as refreshing as if the senator from Louisiana were actually running, for the scion of the famous family is no doctrinaire Leftist. That’s not to say he is a conservative, either. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is his own man. That’s what makes him so intriguing.
RFK Jr. is, of course, a Democrat. He and Marianne Williamson are so far the only challengers Old Joe Biden is facing for the 2024 nomination. While RFK will get some attention on the basis of his name only, he faces an uphill battle against an incumbent that few people like but that no one has been able to figure out how to replace. Kennedy will be palatable to few Democrats because of his resolute stance against not just the COVID-19 vaccine, but vaccines in general.
“By inserting himself into the vaccine debate,” Town & Country wrote in a lengthy 2021 profile of the man, “Kennedy has lost friendships, business opportunities, and influence within the Democratic Party.” Even his own family has denounced him: his sister Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, who has served as chair of the Global Virus Network, his brother Joseph P. Kennedy II, and his niece Maeve Kennedy McKean wrote an article in Politico in May 2019 entitled: “RFK Jr. Is Our Brother and Uncle. He’s Tragically Wrong About Vaccines.”
Maybe he is. But 2019 is not 2023. The suspicions that RFK Jr. had at that time about the COVID vaccine have by now been abundantly borne out. Most people would have dismissed his warnings about other vaccines out of hand before the COVID hysteria, but now, after we have seen the perfidy and dishonesty of Big Pharma, RFK doesn’t look so nutty.
In his own defense, meanwhile, Kennedy invokes his own family history, recounting his famous father, who was the front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1968 before he was cut down by an assassin’s bullet:
My dad, when he came out against Vietnam, had everybody against him. The New York Times, all the labor unions—he ran against Johnson, he had every friend basically abandon him when he ran against the president in his own party. He was called a traitor. If you look at anybody who you admire, from a historical point of view, they all went through periods where—it’s hard to think of somebody who hasn’t, whether it’s Magellan or Winston Churchill or whatever—all of the people you admire in history are people who nobody believed at some point, you know? I don’t know, I think throughout history, every person you admire are people who had the world against them at some point.
Even if Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is all wrong about the dangers of vaccines and wrong that the CIA murdered his uncle, to hear a public figure speak about the importance of standing alone, firm in one’s convictions, is extraordinary in this age of lockstep conformism. As the Left grows ever more authoritarian and demands agreement with ever more insane and counterfactual propositions (you thought men becoming women was the outer limit? Watch for 2+2=5), it’s nothing short of glorious to hear RFK Jr. speak about the importance of standing against the tide and defending what is true and right, no matter what the cost.
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That in itself may be the primary value of his candidacy for president. If Kennedy can break through even just to a few Leftists and teach them the dangers of groupthink and the value of standing courageously on the truth no matter what the cost, he could end up doing nothing less than turning the tide and bringing about the retreat of the authoritarianism that is advancing on every front at this point.
That may be too much to expect. But even at this early stage, it’s clear that Robert F. Kennedy’s presidential candidacy is likely to give the nation far more of value than the dreary controlled opposition me-tooism that will be served up by Mike Pence, Nikki Haley, John Bolton, Asa Hutchinson, and no doubt a host of other establishment Republicans before all this is over. Here’s hoping he gives Old Joe Biden a run for his money.
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