"A sad ending to a sad story"

     When I heard the news that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. had gone and done it, I of course felt bad — for him, at least for the decent human being he had once been, long ago. And for his family. I'd gotten to know his brother, Chris, a little, when he was head of the Merchandise Mart, and found him a smart man, energetic, devoted to family and dedicated to social justice. I knew how proud he was of his father's legacy, and how fiercely he tried to protect it from those who'd tear down his memory. 

     But he was powerless to protect that reputation from the rolling besmirchment that is RFK Jr. As terrible as it must have been to see his brother descend in vaccine nuttiness and paranoid conspiracy theorizing, to see him now outdo himself by kissing the ring of Trump is, as Chris and his family wrote in a letter released Friday, "a sad ending to a sad story ... Our brother Bobby's decision to endorse Trump today are a betrayal of the values that our father and our family hold most dear." Speaking of their father in the present tense underscores just how real he is to them, still, 56 years after his death. 

         Robert Vickrey (Smithsonian)

     And it is a sad story. RFK Jr. lost his father when he was 14. He struggled with heroin addiction for decades, became a respected environmental lawyer, but then changed. I remember reading a story about RFK Jr. thundering against the windmills he once boosted when they were going to be put within sight of the family compound at Hyannisport. Maybe the good-for-you-but-not-for-me hypocrisy somehow tore his mind apart.

     I haven't talked to Chris since his ill-considered, poorly-executed run for the governorship in 2018. I'd pissed him off by writing a column saying, in essence, if he really cared about what he says he believes in, he'd drop out and support Dan Biss, because otherwise they'll both lose to J.B. Pritzker (which is indeed what happened). No Nostradamus, I saw Pritzker as a scion of wealth and nothing more, failing to sense what a magnificent governor he would turn out to be.
      Rather than consider my advice, Kennedy was angry and felt betrayed. Loyalty is very big among those who resent being judged by their words and actions. We never spoke again. That's okay. I get by, though I did enjoy our conversations, and what, despite our widely divergent stations in life, at some moments felt like actual friendship. (Even though, now that I think about it, at the time I quoted to him Aristotle's line about how between master and slave there is no friendship). When the news broke Friday, I rooted around for Chris's phone number, thinking to send him a supportive note during what has to be a difficult moment — save grudges for junior high. But I actually know several Chris Kennedys at this point, and didn't want to bother the wrong one. Probably just as well. I can't imagine him caring one way or the other. I'm surprised I do, but then, I'm slow to give up on people.

    As for RFK Jr., this really isn't the "sad ending" his siblings envision. If only it were. Alas, again, they are putting the bright spin on an erring family member. RFK Jr.'s story is not at its end, unfortunately, but now continues, to a fresh hell, the humiliation of being a Trump acolyte. Take a glance at a piece I wrote in 2016, "Chris Christie in rags" about the "stunned, miserable stare" on Christie's face when he found himself standing in Trump's rogue's gallery of supporters, just another supernumerary to the Great Chee-toh God, hoping to huff a contact high of ego and power. The former governor of New Jersey later tried to reinvent himself as a person with a functional conscience, and speak out against Trump. Too little, too late. Or as I sometimes will write a reader: a person who thinks that Donald Trump is a good idea for this country can't really expect anyone to care what he thinks about anything else. It's the same reason you don't ask homeless people for stock tips. I wonder as RFK slides deeper into the Trumpian netherworld whether it will ever occur to him that he had done this to himself. 

     I haven't written much about Robert F. Kennedy Jr. because, honestly, I find him too repellent to contemplate. But I keep up with someone in the Kennedy circle, who met RFK Jr. a few times, and asked her what she thinks of him. "A shocking monster," she replied, without hesitation. And that was before he endorsed the greatest menace to American democracy since the Confederates fired on Fort Sumter.  

    Twenty years ago, I wrote a book about John F. Kennedy's style — his brother Ted generously granted me an interview and sent me a kind letter after it was published — and like many Americans, harbor still a small wellspring of respect for a family that gave so much to the country. But the source of that spring went dry years and years in the past, and the ground around it has become dry and cracked. Just a fading, tattered memory among a dwindling band of people, a ruined dream that even some who carry the revered name and cursed blood  stopped caring about a long time ago.