Forty years ago, today (June 5, 1968) Senator Robert Kennedy won the California Democratic primary. Forty years ago, today people across this country celebrated this victory. It was a victory of the people, by the people, and for the people. It was a victory shared across the divisions of society that had so long kept this country apart. It was a victory that promised hope for tomorrow and a change from politics of the status quo to politics of promise.

But forty years ago tomorrow, the country awoke in sadness and despair. Forty years ago tomorrow, the promise in the victory of the night before disappeared in a pool of blood and the hope for tomorrow became despair. Forty years ago tomorrow, it seemed that the status quo was victorious as another leader died from an assassin’s bullet.

The impact of Robert Kennedy’s death on my life was probably not as great as was the death of Martin Luther King. I lived in Memphis when Dr. King was killed and so it was closer to home. When Senator Kennedy was killed, I was living in Missouri, beginning the 3^rd quarter of my freshman year of college. I was also seventeen, so I could not vote, and politics was just something to watch. What I remember of that summer in Kirksville was the discussions that took place every night at dinner and sometimes at lunch.

There was a professor from William Woods College teaching at Truman that summer and he was living in the dorm rather than renting a house. So he ate with the students. Either because of the assassination or as a result of it, each dinner meal became a discussion of politics and issues. While not the beginning of my political awareness, it was the place where it began to grow.

What I remember then and now of Senator Kennedy’s campaign was his use of the quote by George Bernard Shaw, “Some men see things as they are and say why? I dream things that never were and ask, ‘Why not?’” That, to me, was the promise of Robert Kennedy.

He was a politician who challenged the people to act and not simply accept the status quo. He pushed people to get involved. He was angry at a society that would allow people to go hungry in the rural areas of this country and not protect the workers who harvested the food that the middle and upper classes of this country ate. He was angry at a society that would fight a war that appeared to have no end and would sacrifice a generation of children. But he did not simply voice his anger. He offered solutions that were solutions; he challenged people to act; he challenged people to do what was right, not what was necessarily the popular thing.

And people did not like it when he challenged them. While campaigning in Indiana that spring, Senator Kennedy spoke at the Indiana University Medical Center. During the question and answer period, one of the students asked him where he was going to get the money to pay for the programs that he was proposing. His reply was simply,

“From you. I look around this room and I don’t see many black faces who will become doctors. Part of a civilized society is to let people go to medical school who come from ghettos. I don’t see many people coming here from the slums, or off of Indian reservations. You are the privileged ones here. It’s easy for you to sit back and say it’s the fault of the Federal Government. But it’s our responsibility too. It’s our society too. . . It’s the poor who carry the major burden of the struggle in Viet Nam. You sit here as white medical students, while black people carry the burden of the fighting in Viet Nam.”

The students reacted by hissing and booing him. His advisors warned him that if he was perceived as an extremist he would never win the election. However, Senator Kennedy was no longer thinking as a politician trying to maximize his vote. Instead, he was determined to say what he believed. He told Jack Newfield, one of his advisors, that he would probably not win the nomination but “somebody has to speak for the Negroes, the Indians, the Mexicans, and poor whites. Despite his pessimism, Senator Kennedy won the Indiana primary (From http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAkennedyR.htm).

But those days are gone. The campaign of 1968 quickly became one in which the divisions of the people were widened, not narrowed and the fears of the people were enhanced rather than relieved. And each of the campaigns since that time has been more of the same.

No longer do politicians challenge us; they coddle us and say what we want to hear. No longer do political campaigns focus on the issues; rather they have focus groups tell the politicians what to say and what to do. The focus of the presidential campaign for 2008 will not be on the hope and promise for tomorrow but rather one of mud-slinging and invective, of hatred and division, of threats and counter-threats. And the people will cheer and rejoice because they are getting what they want.

Forty years ago, there was hope; forty years ago, there was a promise. But it died in a hallway, and it doesn’t seem like that it will ever come back.