Hillary Clinton must long for the salad days of her Bosnian sniper-fire controversy now that she has been caught on tape invoking Robert F. Kennedy’s June 1968 assassination as a rationale for remaining in the Democratic presidential race. More than ever, Clinton justifiably faces demands that she roll up her campaign and simply go away.
In remarks Friday to the editorial board of the Argus Leader in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, the New York Democrat said: “My husband did not wrap up the nomination in 1992 until he won the California primary somewhere in the middle of June, right? We all remember Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in June in California. I don’t understand it.”
As outrage understandably greeted her comments, Clinton said this in Brandon, South Dakota:
"Earlier today, I was discussing the Democratic primary history and in the course of that discussion mentioned the campaigns that both my husband and Sen. Kennedy waged in California in June in 1992 and 1968, and I was referencing those to make the point that we have had nominating primary contests that go into June. That’s an historic fact.
The Kennedys have been much on my mind in the last days because of Sen. [Edward] Kennedy, and I regret that if my referencing that moment of trauma for our entire nation and particularly for the Kennedy family was in any way offensive. I certainly had no intention of that whatsoever."
Like so many of her statements, Clinton’s words grow less credible the longer one studies them.
First of all, this was no apology, just a mere “regret.” I regret that William F. Buckley, Jr. died in February, but I do not apologize for that. Clinton offered no apology to her sole Democratic rival, Senator Barack Obama (D-Ill.), nor to his family, his supporters, nor even her own voters who must be at least perplexed, if not disappointed, or even angered by her words.
Second, Clinton claims that she thought about RFK’s murder at the hands of Palestinian killer Sirhan Sirhan in the kitchen of the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles because his younger brother, Senator Edward Moore Kennedy (D-Mass.), recently was diagnosed with a brain tumor.
How, then, does Clinton explain that this was not the first time she dragged this bloody topic 40 years forward into the 2008 campaign?
Asked if she were risking Democratic chances in November by staying in the race, Clinton said this at a May 7 campaign stop in Shepherdstown, West Virginia that CNN carried live that afternoon:
"I guess I remember that in June of 1992, that’s when Bill really wrapped up the nomination, the middle of June after the California primary. You know, I remember very well what happened in the California primary in 1968 as, you know, Senator Kennedy won that primary."
That same day, as MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann noted, she said this at a Washington, D.C. fundraiser:
"Sometimes you gotta calm people down a little. But if you look at successful presidential campaigns, my husband did not get the nomination until June of 1992. I remember tragically when Senator Kennedy won California near the end of that nominating process."
Clinton also cited RFK’s killing in a March interview with Time magazine’s Rick Stengel:
"Primary contests used to last a lot longer. We all remember the great tragedy of Bobby Kennedy being assassinated in June in L.A. My husband didn’t wrap up the nomination in 1992 until June. Having a primary contest go through June is nothing particularly unusual."
Perhaps Clinton is psychic, knew Ted Kennedy suffered from brain cancer, and somehow wanted to comfort him and his stunned family by rekindling dreadful memories of the night a gunman blew away their long-lost loved one.
“She was simply referencing her husband in 1992 and Bobby Kennedy in 1968 of historical examples of the nominating process going well into the summer,” Clinton campaign spokesman Mo Elleithee pleaded in a statement that CNN quoted. “Any reading into it beyond that is inaccurate and outrageous.”
This does not fly, either.
If Elleithee is correct, and Clinton merely wished “to make the point that we have had nominating primary contests that go into June,” as the candidate herself said in Brandon, South Dakota, Clinton could have done so while still letting RFK R.I.P.
Clinton could have observed that Ronald Reagan nearly deprived President Gerald Ford of the 1976 GOP nomination in a wrestling match that was settled on the floor of the Republican national convention in Kansas City.
Wrong party?
Clinton could have mentioned Ted Kennedy’s bid for the 1980 Democratic nomination, which President Jimmy Carter finally secured at that year’s New York City convention. The ailing Kennedy probably would have appreciated the fact that Clinton remembered his effort, which culminated in a stirring convention address. As the Massachusetts lawmaker concluded at the time: “For all those whose cares have been our concern, the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die.”
Ancient history?
Four years fresher is the example of the 1984 convention, where - in the late, great Jeane Kirkpatrick’s immortal words - “the San Francisco Democrats” finally gave former vice president Walter Mondale their nomination, but only after serious challenges and a contested floor vote on which Mondale shared the ballot with then-Senator Gary Hart (D – Co.) and the Rev. Jesse Jackson.
Hillary Clinton has been active in American politics since at least her days as a Goldwater Girl in 1964. She has lived this history and likely knows other anecdotes that prove that presidential campaigns do not necessarily end in May. The fact that on four occasions she instead chose to remind people that Bobby Kennedy’s presidential aspirations ended in a pool of blood is staggering, beyond contempt, and nearly unbelievable.
Alas, Clinton is, at best, someone whose desperation has outpaced good taste and whose ambition extends far beyond any sense of decorum.
At worst, America once again has caught a glimpse of the same pitch-black soul that already has helped turn what should have been a post-ethnic, 21st Century presidential contest into one in which she, her husband, and their operatives have played the race card again and again and again against Senator Obama, as if they were casino dealers covering poker tables with clubs and spades.
If Hillary Rodham Clinton still possesses a corpuscle of decency, she will take this opportunity to depart this contest and preserve a shred or two of her self-trampled dignity. But that is a super-sized if.
