Fifty years ago today, Ted Kennedy delivered a eulogy for his brother Bobby considered by some to be the most profound speech of his career.  Katie Mettler at WaPo today offered an excellent writeup of that moment.  https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/retropolis/wp/2018/06/08/those-he-to...

A few highlights of Mettler's article for me:

...at the funeral, it seemed right that Ted Kennedy — the youngest Kennedy child and last living son — would deliver his brother’s eulogy...

In his own words, Ted Kennedy then spoke of America’s future.

“Our future may lie beyond our vision, but it is not completely beyond our control,” he said. “It is the shaping impulse of America that neither fate nor nature nor the irresistible tides of history, but the work of our own hands, matched to reason and principle, that will determine our destiny. There is pride in that, even arrogance, but there is also experience and truth. In any event, it is the only way we can live.”

Then, he added: “That is the way he lived. That is what he leaves us.”

At the end of the eulogy, Ted Kennedy’s voice quavered over the words with which he left the crowd.

“My brother need not be idealized, or enlarged in death beyond what he was in life; to be remembered simply as a good and decent man, who saw wrong and tried to right it, saw suffering and tried to heal it, saw war and tried to stop it,” he said. “Those of us who loved him and who take him to his rest today, pray that what he was to us and what he wished for others will some day come to pass for all the world. As he said many times, in many parts of this nation, to those he touched and who sought to touch him.”

He paused, regaining his composure to quote Bobby a final time: “Some men see things as they are and say why. I dream things that never were and say why not.”

Some who celebrate his life assert that he was likely to win the presidency, and that course of our history in the years following his death would have been dramatically different, and much for the better. 

He continued to face a difficult and uncertain struggle even to win the Democratic nomination. 

Had he been elected president, things would have been different, for sure.  The hard-headed rather than romantic view, and one which I suspect RFK himself would have held, was reflected in a comment offered by one of his admirers.  I am unable to locate it, unfortunately.  Paraphrasing from memory, it ran something like this: "Bobby would either have been the greatest president in our history or he would have been a disaster."

RFK died a martyr.  He was a complicated person, described as "mercurial" by one of his biographers, Evan Thomas.  He changed his mind at times, in the face of changing circumstances, events, and his own constantly evolving interpretations of their import. 

He had, to an unusual degree for a politician, an ability to attract not only support, but belief, from people who otherwise mistrusted and disagreed strongly with one another.  No doubt some of this was due to what at the time was "Kennedy mystique" influencing some.  Some surely was due to sympathy in the wake of his brother's death and perhaps other tragedies his family had suffered. 

But some was due to a recognition, sometimes grudging, that some of the things he managed to accomplish in public life were extremely difficult and commanded respect for his intelligence, competence, and ability to handle challenges which would have left most public officials floundering badly.  You might not have agreed with what he believed and did.  But he was formidable, adaptable, determined, and tough.  You always knew he would be able to explain what he was doing, and why, and in a way that anyone could understand.

The consequences which the continuation of his life might have had for our country are inherently unknowable.  What is not is that Robert F. Kennedy's life instilled, for many hard-headed, hard-bitten, skeptical people, grounds for hope that our country might, just might, be able to emerge from frightening times with a sense that our hands could yet create a better destiny if we could hold at bay our doubts and mistrust and work for it.