Robert F. Kenned Jr.’s suspension of his third-party campaign for president and endorsement of Republican Donald J. Trump, was a development with historical resonance. RFK, Jr. has long been known as a fiercely independent and idiosyncratic lawyer and environmentalist with an eclectic collection of positions and ideas, including vaccine skepticism. But among his other actions and assertions, RFK, Jr.’s embrace of Trump and, by extension, the Republican party, stands out for its direct opposition to the Democrats, the party of his forefathers who did much to shape its values and lore, and inspire future generations of adherents. RFK, Jr. is now campaigning energetically for Trump, and given the still-potent draw of the legendary Kennedy name, his support could conceivably make the difference in a razor-tight race.
Larry Deblinger explains.
Booby Kennedy (left) with President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1966.
Upon hearing of RFK’s decision, five of his eight surviving siblings released a brief statement condemning it as a “betrayal” of their family’s values and “a sad ending to a sad story.” Previously, at least 15 Kennedy family members had shunned RFK Jr.’s candidacy and endorsed Joe Biden for president, before Biden dropped out. These relatives appear to view RFK, Jr. as a black sheep of the family, an aberration whose actions should be lamented and dismissed.
It might be tempting to view RFK, Jr’s “sad story” through the operatic lens that the Kennedy family saga has typically been chronicled, replete with tragic and untimely deaths, noble ideals, soaring oratory, and unrealized dreams. Indeed, RFK, Jr. hinted of his move to come on the basis of a high-minded principle, befitting a Kennedy. In April, RFK, Jr. asserted on CNN that President Joe Biden was a greater threat to American democracy than Trump, even though he called Trump’s attempts to subvert the 2020 election and other of his actions “appalling.” He argued that social media websites had blocked him from espousing his vaccine conspiracy theories under pressure and weaponization of government agencies by the Biden administration, thus violating his Constitutional right to freedom of speech, and threatening the most important pillar of democracy.
But it serves to note that RFK, Jr’s complaint was also of a direct and personal nature. And in this context, it must also be considered that among their traits of good looks and charisma, drive, wit, brilliance, eloquence, and idealism, prominent Kennedys have shown a capacity to act out of sheer spite: personal, petty, mean-spirited, and hateful vindictiveness. Both RFK, Jr.’s father, Robert F. “Bobby” Kennedy, and his uncle Edward M. “Ted” Kennedy, evinced this marked tendency in the political arena at key moments in American history. Through this lens, RFK, Jr.’s action appears not so much a “betrayal” of Kennedy family value as another familiar recurrence of a Kennedy failing, and his allegiance with Trump, little more than a personal and vindictive swipe against the Democratic party.
Youth
From his youth, Bobby Kennedy was a kind of family attack dog, keen to perceive and avenge any slights to himself or his family members. The “runt” of Rose and Joseph Kennedy’s storied litter, Bobby made up for his small size and limited talents (at least compared with his brothers) with tenacity and scrappiness in sports and academics, often spoiling for fights. It did not take much; as a student at Harvard, RFK once smashed a beer bottle over a young man’s head, sending him to the hospital for stitches, simply because he had the temerity to celebrate his birthday at the same Cambridge bar and same time as Bobby.1 And he held a grudge. “When Bobby hates you, you stay hated,” Joe Kennedy once said of the son who seemed most to take after him.2 As an adult, armed with a law degree from the University of Virginia, RFK became an assistant counsel to US Republican Senator Joseph V. McCarthy’s infamous investigative committee that during 1953-54 recklessly and often spuriously alleged Communist influence in the US government and media.
It was during this period that RFK first met then-Senate Majority Leader, Lyndon Johnson, a Democrat from Texas, and for Bobby, it was hatred at first sight. He had known of Johnson as a protégé of former President Franklin D. Roosevelt, the man who had recalled his father as US Ambassador to England in 1940 and fired him; Johnson was at FDR’s side during much of the humiliating process, and that, apparently, was enough for Bobby.3 FDR had clear and substantive reasons for his action, including Joe Kennedy’s early support for appeasement of Adolf Hitler in the late 1930s; publicly expressed pessimism over the survival of Great Britain and of democracy in Europe (and privately expressed antisemitism); suspicion of his being a Nazi sympathizer; and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill’s calls for Kennedy’s dismissal. Nonetheless, son Bobby saw the firing as a family offense not to be forgiven.
So, when Majority Leader Johnson entered the Senate cafeteria with two assistants one day in 1953 and passed a table where McCarthy was meeting with his staff, Bobby sat glowering in his seat while the rest of McCarthy’s team jumped up to shake the hand of the “Leader,” in keeping with Senate decorum. 3 Not to be deterred, the towering, almost 6 foot 4-inch tall, LBJ stood over RFK and stuck out his hand, waiting for a long, awkward moment before Bobby finally rose and shook it without looking at Johnson.
Feud
The epic LBJ-RFK feud was on. There were Johnson’s repeated attempts after the first to squeeze handshakes out of Bobby Kennedy just to torment him, and a few disparaging comments from Johnson about Joe Kennedy’s ambassadorship in England. There was the incident in 1959 on Johnson’s ranch, where RFK was sent by his brother John to sound out Johnson on his intentions of running for president, when LBJ insisted on some deer hunting and Bobby was thrown flat on his back by a rifle recoil. “Son, you’ve got to learn how to handle a gun like a man,” Johnson said as he helped him up.4
Beyond the insults, RFK despised Johnson as a man who in his opinion exhibited all the worst traits of the classic politician: an unprincipled and conniving lust for power, loose regard for the truth, rampant egoism, and selfish vanity. To RFK’s Northeastern elite sensibilities, Johnson’s rude and crude Southwestern-dirt-poor, working-class manners, physically overbearing political style, and segregationist past were repugnant and worthy of withering scorn, something Johnson fully recognized and resented.
But the true measure of RFK’s pettiness emerged with the ascendance of LBJ to Vice President in his brother John’s administration, and to the presidency after his brother’s death: an inability to respect the office however much he detested the man. Even though JFK had offered LBJ the VP post, considering him vital to his electoral prospects, and LBJ had accepted, during the Democratic convention, Bobby repeatedly visited Johnson in his hotel room to get him to decline the offer. RFK later insisted his attempts were at his brother’s behest, a contention that historians view with skepticism.5,6 It was during this episode that Johnson began calling RFK “that little shitass” and “worse” names, according to a close associate.7
The ill-will continued through JFK’s tragically shortened presidency, under which RFK served as Attorney General. JFK knew that the vice presidency was an extremely confining office for an accomplished power broker like Johnson, and he was determined that LBJ be treated with dignity, if only to assuage his massive ego. In general, JFK and Johnson enjoyed cordial, gentlemanly, and mutually respectful relations.8,9 Yet, RFK radiated disrespect towards Johnson, barging into his meetings without a word of apology and treating him like an underling9; indeed, for all practical purposes, Bobby was the number two in the JFK administration. The tight-knit Kennedy staffers called LBJ nicknames like “Uncle Cornpone” behind his back.10
Out of Office
It was even worse out of the office. Bobby and his wife Ethel held frequent parties for “Kennedy people” (Johnson called them “the Harvards”) at their home, Hickory Hill in Virginia, where the ridicule of LBJ turned kind of sick, according to historian Jeff Shesol in his 1997 book on the RFK-LBJ feud, Mutual Contempt:
Johnson jokes and Johnson stories were as inexhaustible as they were merciless. Those that percolated during the campaign had been humorous, but this new material betrayed a real bitterness, a mean-spiritedness that was hard to explain…Time (magazine)’s Hugh Sidey, a frequent visitor to Hickory Hill was appalled by the gang’s ridicule of LBJ, which he described as “just awful…inexcusable, really.” In October 1963, friends gave Bobby Kennedy an LBJ voodoo doll; “the merriment,” Sidey later reported, “was overwhelming.”11
The frivolity likely vanished after the assassination of JFK in Dallas, Texas, but not the feud between RFK and LBJ, exacerbated by the fact that the shooting occurred in Johnson’s home state. RFK, overwhelmed with grief, resolved to stay on as Attorney General, but without letting go of his animosity. “From the moment Air Force One (bearing JFK’s body) landed in Washington, and progressively in the days and weeks that followed, Bobby was ready to see slights to his brother, his brother’s widow, or himself in whatever Lyndon Johnson did or didn’t do,” wrote LBJ biographer Merle Miller.12
Although Johnson performed faithfully and admirably in honoring JFK’s legacy and advancing his policy agenda, according to contemporary journalists and historians, his personal attempts as President to show respect and sensitivity to the Kennedys were all rudely rebuffed. “Overtures from Johnson to the Kennedy family after the Kennedy assassination were rejected in a manner that was thoroughly offensive and insulting,” observed contemporary Clark Clifford, an eminent Washington DC attorney and veteran Democratic party insider.12
And the hostility did not stop at mere personal gestures. As historian Shesol explains of Johnson’s early days as president:
Johnson desperately needed affirmation, and in the hour of his greatest burden, it came from unlikely sources—from the Congress, which had spurned and mocked him for a thousand days; from the cabinet, appointed by his predecessor; from the American people, who cherished John Kennedy in death as they had not in life. All rallied to the new president. They gave him their patience and their trust.
Bobby Kennedy was not among them, and in Bobby’s absence Johnson felt the suspicion and rejection he feared from the rest.13
Ironically, a book that the Kennedy family members had commissioned expressly to control the narrative of the JFK assassination and aftermath, and protect their image, publicly exposed the intense antagonism towards LBJ, which shocked reviewers. Entitled “The Death of a President,” by William Manchester, who was given extensive and exclusive access to the Kennedys and their records, the book was, in the words of Time magazine, “seriously flawed by the fact that its partisan portrayal of Lyndon Johnson is so hostile that it almost demeans the office itself.” It is impossible to parse exactly what proportion of this hostility might have come independently from the author, rather than the Kennedys (although the author was handpicked and vetted by the family). At any rate, the Kennedys were unhappy with the book for various reasons and sued to stop general publication of it before changes were made. “Bobby worried that the book might make it appear that the Kennedys had not given Johnson a chance to succeed in the Presidency and that their opposition was nothing more than a personal vendetta,” wrote Michael W. Schuyler, an historian at Kearny State University, New Mexico.14
Bobby Kennedy
LBJ went on to win election in his own right in 1964, by one of the largest landslide victories in American history. He then successfully pushed through epochal Civil Rights legislation and social welfare programs like Medicare and Medicaid, anti-poverty initiatives and other legislation ranging from the arts to immigration, environmental protection, education, and gun control, compiling a domestic record that, on the whole, remains a landmark achievement of American progressivism. But his controversial and disastrous Vietnam war policies rapidly undermined his presidency, compelled him to decline to run for re-election, and ended his political career. Bobby Kennedy left the Johnson administration to run for US Senator from New York, which office he won in 1965. He was assassinated while campaigning for president on an anti-war platform in 1968.
It might be reassuring, in terms of the Kennedy legacy, to think that the LBJ-RFK feud was entirely a one-off, generated by the forced proximity and interaction of two dynamic personalities who were almost uniquely born to clash. But that is not the case. A mere 12 years after Bobby’s violent death, a relatively brief but all-too-familiar spectacle of petty and personal spite and resentment involving a Kennedy took center stage in American politics.
1980 convention
The setting was the Democratic party convention of 1980, a presidential election year. The intraparty combatants were the incumbent US president James Earl Carter, son of a peanut farmer from Georgia and Ted Kennedy, US Senator from Massachusetts, scion of the wealthy, celebrated, star-crossed political family, which some Americans viewed like royals in exile. Although Carter had won the party’s nomination handily after a bitter battle, he stood awkwardly at the podium, having completed his acceptance speech, waiting for Kennedy to arrive and, in effect, certify his candidacy as though he were a higher authority.
The contest itself was inherently anomalous, and humiliating for Carter. “Never before had a sitting President, an elected President, with command of both houses of Congress and the party machinery, been so challenged by his own people. What was even more remarkable was the nature of the challenge—a charge of incompetence,” wrote contemporary journalist and historian Teddy White.15
By 1980, Carter’s presidency was foundering, beset on all sides by crises foreign and domestic. The economy was struggling with the combination of persistent inflation, slow economic growth, and high unemployment, called “stagflation.” A revolution in Iran to replace the US-backed Shah with an Islamic theocracy in 1979 spooked Americans who remembered the Arab oil embargo of the early 1970s, and drove them to hoard gas. This resulted in long gas lines, dwindling gas supplies, and mounting hysteria, including killings and riots. The infamous Iran hostage crisis of 1979 erupted when Iranian militants captured over 50 Americans at the US embassy in Tehran and kept them for 444 days, prompted at least in part by Carter’s decision to allow the exiled Shah to enter the US for cancer treatment.
Ted Kennedy
Despite some landmark achievements such as his forging of the Camp David Peace Accords between Israel and Egypt, Carter failed to convince the American people that he had a sure grip on the helm of state. He had a curiously stiff personal style, despite his ever-present wide smile, and a technician’s approach to solving national problems that was uninspiring to the public and did not always work. Like Carter, his closest advisers were from Georgia, and the team, including the President, came to office with a regional chip on their shoulders, bristling with peevish hyperawareness, if not combative pride, in being outsiders to the Washington establishment. As Carter’s approval ratings began to plunge, sinking to 28% in June of 1979, a bit of that Southern defiance appeared to flare when Carter was asked at a gathering of Congressmen whether he planned to run for re-election (a question insulting in itself), particularly given the possibility that Ted Kennedy might challenge him for his party’s nomination.
“I’m going to whip his ass,” Carter replied, referring to Kennedy, and then repeated it, when asked (in disbelief) if that was what he meant.16 When confronted with the widely reported statement, Kennedy smoothly responded that the president must have been misquoted.
It was the first publicly overt expression of tension between Carter and Kennedy. Later in 1979, further signs of tension and rivalry were palpable at the opening of the John F. Kennedy Library, in Boston, where they both spoke. The event started out inauspiciously for Carter when he leaned in to kiss Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis on the cheek in greeting, “just as a matter of courtesy,” and “she flinched away ostentatiously,” as Carter remembered decades later.17In their speeches, ostensibly in honor of JFK., both Carter and Kennedy slyly inserted warnings, or shots across the bow, to each other.
Observing with growing disgust Carter’s faltering efforts to be the president the American people wanted and needed, Kennedy became convinced that he could fill the void of leadership, and announced his candidacy for the Democratic nomination.
Contest
But the matchup was a contest of weaknesses. While Carter had acquired the image of a bumbler, Kennedy was a deeply flawed and inept candidate. Grave doubts about his character relentlessly shadowed him over the 1969 incident in Chappaquiddick, Massachusetts, an island off Martha’s Vinyard, when he drove a car off a bridge and into a pond, causing the death of Mary Jo Kopechne, a young woman who was a passenger in the car. Although Kennedy swam to safety, he failed to call the police for 10 hours during which Kopechne’s life might have been saved. Kennedy further undermined himself with a one-on-one interview on prime-time, network television, in which he was unable to answer the direct question of why he wanted to be president, responding with an incoherent stream of hesitations and pointless phrases, i.e. an epic word salad. Mirroring this ambivalence, Kennedy campaigned with inconsistent energy and conviction, championing an old-line liberalism that many thought outdated.
By a month before the convention, Carter had won enough primaries and delegates to secure his renomination, with a commanding lead over Kennedy; as promised, Carter had “whipped” Kennedy. And yet, Kennedy refused to bow out, having adopted a “kamikaze-like state of mind,” according to Jon Ward in his 2019 book about the Carter-Kennedy rivalry, Camelot’s End. “Many in the Kennedy camp were disgusted by Carter,” wrote Ward. “They felt he was no better than (Republican presidential nominee Ronald) Reagan, and almost preferred to see Reagan win,”18
The Kennedy camp insisted on an “open convention,” meaning that delegates could be free to vote for whom they wished regardless of the choice of the rank-and-file primary voters they were supposedly pledged to represent. In the meantime, a poll showed Carter with a 77% national disapproval rating.19 The Democrats agreed to the open convention format.
When the open vote was over, Carter had finally won the nomination with almost two-thirds of the vote. Kennedy conceded but he was not done fighting. His camp insisted on a party platform vote, including liberal planks far to the left of Carter’s policies, which would defy and embarrass the President, and would take place right after Senator Kennedy was scheduled to speak, so as to set the most favorable atmosphere for their approval.
The Carter people knew exactly what was planned and were losing patience. “If you have any wisdom and judgment at all, you know you don’t get carried away by personalities and pettiness in a political fight,” recounted Carter’s campaign manager, Bob Strauss, to The New Yorker. “Politics is tough enough…that you don’t cut each other’s throats.” Carter’s Press Secretary, Jody Powell, later wrote, “We neglected to take into account one of the most obvious facets of Kennedy’s character, an almost child-like self-centeredness,” in his memoir of the election.
Kennedy’s speech
In the event, Kennedy’s convention staff did behave childishly, like a bunch of drunken frat-boys, on the day of his speech. Kennedy floor manager Harold Ickes invoked an obscure procedural rule to stop the afternoon convention activities, “in a gesture done purely out of spite,” wrote Ward in a 2024 Politico article. “We just said, ‘Fuck ‘em,’” explained Ickes in an interview. “I mean, we weren’t thinking about the country. We weren’t even thinking about the general election. It was, ‘Fuck ‘em.’ You know? To be blunt about it.”
Fistfights almost broke out the convention floor when outraged Carter staffers confronted Ickes, who responded with “Go fuck yourself, I’m shutting this convention down.” The fisticuffs were luckily averted by a phone call from Kennedy at his hotel room, curious to know what had stopped the proceedings he was watching on television. When told the convention would be stalled for two hours, Kennedy, after a long pause, told Ickes to allow it to go forward.
Perhaps relieved from the burden of pursuing a losing cause, Kennedy gave a thoughtful, eloquent, stem-winding speech later that night, which is still remembered as one of the best speeches in American political convention history. Kennedy invoked the Democratic party’s heritage of support for the common man, and the wisdom of 19th century poet Alfred Lord Tennyson, with pleas to re-unite the country and the party, lyrically concluding, in a paean to big-hearted, big-spending liberalism, "the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die."
And yet, the good vibes and elevated, Camelot-like aura were shattered by another Kennedy-driven spectacle before a prime-time national TV audience on the last, climactic night of the convention. Carter did not help his cause by starting off his acceptance and campaign kick-off speech with a shouted tribute to Democratic Senator and former VP, Hubert Horatio Humphrey, whom he misnamed as Hubert Horatio Hornblower (Horatio Hornblower was a fictional, Napoleonic-era, British naval officer in a popular 20th century series of stories and novels) before hastily correcting himself. When he had finished his speech, almost 20 minutes ticked by as various party luminaries (and some not so luminary) joined him on the stage for a desultory show of unity, waiting for the final moment, and leaving bored TV news commentators to mutter derisive comments to their audiences.
The Kennedy team had orchestrated that final moment by insisting that Kennedy would not watch the speech at the arena but in his hotel room, and would then make his way to the convention, thus having the dramatically delayed, final appearance of the show, like the top star of a rock concert, or a champion boxer.
Handshake
When Kennedy did appear, to a roar of excitement, it was obvious to almost everyone watching, or made clear to them by the TV journalists on the scene, that Carter was looking for one thing: the classic political handshake of the party’s top politicians, former rivals, standing together in full view of the spotlights and cameras, their interlocked hands thrust high in the air, in a thrilling and triumphant show of unity, strength, and expectation of victory, of party over personal interest, bitterness, and division. He never got it. Kennedy did shake Carter’s hand five times by Ward’s count, but each time in a crowd, with the brief and perfunctory manner a campaigner might take the hand of someone in a rope line. The TV commentators duly noted each, increasingly embarrassing, failure. As Carter followed him around, Kennedy began to “smirk” and “chuckle,” according to Ward; he finally patted Carter on the back before leaving the arena to cheers.
Two months later, a peripheral, nonofficial member of the Kennedy campaign staff, but with longstanding ties as a helper to the Kennedy family, named Paul Corbin, stole Carter’s briefing books for a general election debate with Reagan and gave them to the Reagan campaign, 20 according to information gathered in a Congressional investigation and a 2009 book by political consultant and author Craig Shirley.20
After the 1980 election
Carter went on to lose the election to Reagan, but thereafter has led one of the most active, productive, and distinguished post-presidential lives in American history. Ted Kennedy, who died in 2009, remained US Senator from Massachusetts for decades, compiling a highly distinguished legislative career, featuring his steadfast advocacy for a national health care system, which was finally realized in at least some form in 2010, under the Obama administration.
With regard to health care reform, however, Carter has charged in his presidential memoirs that his administration’s proposal for a national health plan, which was devised over a two-year period by an array of economic experts and government leaders, including Ted Kennedy, and had support from key Congressional leaders, was scuttled by Kennedy in 1979 when he opposed it “at the very end,” which ultimately resulted in a 30-year delay in national health care.21 Carter repeated the charge in 2010 in TV interviews with 60 Minutes and Larry King, alleging that Kennedy acted “out of personal spite,” and his ambition to run for president and enact his own health care plan. In his own writings, Kennedy had counter-charged that it was Carter who delayed the plan (https://www.cbsnews.com/news/time-has-not-cooled-jimmy-carter-ted-kennedy-feud/).
RFK, Jr.
And so, we arrive at RFK, Jr., son of Bobby and nephew of Ted, choosing to support Republican Donald J. Trump, a convicted felon facing dozens of additional criminal charges, in his campaign for re-election as president. RFK, Jr. appears to justify his stance at least partly as a defense of freedom of speech. But he has yet to explain how supporting a candidate whose relentless abuse and corruption of that very right, by knowingly spewing lies that have sown chaos, threatened the democratic system, and endangered public safety, could possibly serve to protect freedom of speech and democracy. Then again, RFK, Jr.’s stance might have little to do with anything so grand as ideas, principles, and the national interest. After all, he is a Kennedy.
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Print References
1. Caro, Robert A. (2012). The Years of Lyndon Johnson. The Passage of Power. Alfred A. Knopf; New York, NY: pg. 63.
2. Ibid, pg. 66.
3. Ibid, ppg. 61-3.
4. Shesol, Jeff. (1997). Mutual Contempt. Lyndon Johnson, Robert Kennedy, and the Feud that Defined a Decade. W.W Norton & Company; New York, NY: pg.10.
5. Caro, Robert A. (2012). The Years of Lyndon Johnson. The Passage of Power. Alfred A. Knopf; New York, NY: ppg. 122-40.
6. Shesol, Jeff. (1997). Mutual Contempt. Lyndon Johnson, Robert Kennedy, and the Feud that Defined a Decade. W.W Norton & Company; New York, NY: ppg.48-57.
7. Caro, Robert A. (2012). The Years of Lyndon Johnson. The Passage of Power. Alfred A. Knopf; New York, NY: pg. 139.
8. Ibid., pg. 177-195.
9. Shesol, Jeff. (1997). Mutual Contempt. Lyndon Johnson, Robert Kennedy, and the Feud that Defined a Decade. W.W Norton & Company; New York, NY: ppg.77-79.
10. Caro, Robert A. (2012). The Years of Lyndon Johnson. The Passage of Power. Alfred A. Knopf; New York, NY: pg. 198.
11. Shesol, Jeff. (1997). Mutual Contempt. Lyndon Johnson, Robert Kennedy, and the Feud that Defined a Decade. W.W Norton & Company; New York, NY: pg.104.
12. Ball, Moira Ann. The phantom of the oval office: The John F. Kennedy’s assassination’s symbolic impact on Lyndon B. Johnson, his key advisors, and the Vietnam decision-making process. Presidential Studies Quarterly. 1994;24(1):105-119.
13. Shesol, Jeff. (1997). Mutual Contempt. Lyndon Johnson, Robert Kennedy, and the Feud that Defined a Decade. W.W Norton & Company; New York, NY: pg.119.
14. Schuyler M.W. Ghosts in the White House: LBJ, RFK, and the assassination of JFK. Presidential Studies Quarterly. 1987; 17(3):503-518.
15. Ward J. (2019). Camelot’s End. Kennedy vs. Carter and the Fight that Broke the Democratic Party. Hachette Book Group; New York, NY: pg. 146.
16. Ibid., pg. 126.
17. Ibid., pg. 152.
18. Ibid., pg.230.
19. Ibid., pg.251.
20. Ibid., pg.284-5.
21. Carter J. (2010). White House Diary. Farrar, Strous and Giroux. New York, NY: pg. 325.
