I Am Slowly Beginning My Obsession With the Life and Words of RFK

He was America's "could have been" presidential candidate and the most mysterious of the brothers; Robert F. Kennedy is completely fascinating. Not only is his life a strange journey, but his growth as an orator is unusual.

He gave some of the worst speeches in American history - ones that left him sleeplessly depressed - and some of the greatest. He never saw himself as a public speaker, but always played behind the limelight of his brother's rhetoric. "I'm no Jack," he said to one of his aides after a speech fell flat. And yet after his brother's death, RFK went on a historical run toward to White House that included some of the greatest remarks in American politics. On the campaign trail, he spoke at the University of Kansas on March 18th, 1968 about the state of an America at war and in racism and poverty. He brought high morals to political discourse and spoke these profound words just three months before he would be assassinated.

"Our Gross National Product, now, is over $800 billion dollars a year, but that Gross National Product - if we judge the United States of America by that - that Gross National Product counts air pollution and cigarette advertising, and ambulances to clear our highways of carnage. It counts special locks for our doors and the jails for the people who break them. It counts the destruction of the redwood and the loss of our natural wonder in chaotic sprawl. It counts napalm and counts nuclear warheads and armored cars for the police to fight the riots in our cities. It counts Whitman's rifle and Speck's knife, and the television programs which glorify violence in order to sell toys to our children. Yet the gross national product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education or the joy of their play. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages, the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials. It measures neither our wit nor our courage, neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country, it measures everything in short, except that which makes life worthwhile. And it can tell us everything about America except why we are proud that we are Americans."

He was a prophet in some ways, and he claimed that Americans had given themselves over to "the mere accumulation of things." He was too right.