It was painful for me to watch Robert F. Kennedy Jr. at his Senate confirmation hearing. Not simply because it was unsettling to watch his inability to answer basic questions about the workings of Medicare and Medicaid, or because of how he sought to explain away his denials of many publicly stated positions, or because his past “crusades” have endangered the safety of countless children even as he seeks to lead the nation’s health department.
For me, it was personal. It took me back to another Senate hearing more than half a century ago: on my first day at work in the office of his father, Sen. Robert F. Kennedy.
The New York Democrat had invited me to watch him at a hearing on how the still-new federal education law was working. For most liberals, the passage of that law was an achievement to be celebrated. Kennedy had a different focus. What, he asked of the top federal education official, was happening with the money? Why are the achievement statistics of Black kids between the third and sixth grade dropping? And why was it, he asked, that “when I go into the ghetto, one of the things people dislike most is the public education system?”
It was an introduction to an inquiring, skeptical mind that was the essence of who RFK was. He simply was not satisfied with the lazy answers to policy questions. He was something other than a traditional “liberal,” worried about the excessive size and scope of government, convinced that the public welfare system was disserving its recipients, skeptical that more money for schools would be useful without fundamental structural change. The contrast with his son’s embrace of baseless and debunked theories could not be more stark.
There was another aspect of Kennedy’s mindset that was painfully absent in the testimony of his son: his sincerity.
At his confirmation hearing Wednesday, again and again, the younger Kennedy simply would not accept the many on-the-record comments from his past: full endorsement of abortion rights (“Every abortion is a tragedy,” he repeatedly recited by rote), constant warnings about the deleterious impact of vaccines (“News reports have claimed that I’m anti-vaccine or anti-industry. I am neither.”), and even comparing the CDC to Nazi death camps (“I don’t believe that I ever compared the CDC to Nazi death camps. I support the CDC,” he said.).
The refusal to simply acknowledge his past views was the “highlight” of his appearance.
Bu contrast, when it came to the most contentious issue of the late 1960’s, the elder Kennedy was unflinching about his past. This is what he said when he broke with President Lyndon Johnson over the Vietnam War:
“I was involved in many of the early decisions on Vietnam, decisions that helped set us on our present path. … I am willing to bear my share of the responsibility, before history and before my fellow citizens. But past error is no excuse for its own perpetuation. ‘All men make mistakes,’ Sophocles said, but a good man yields when he knows his course is wrong, and repairs the evil. The only sin is pride.”
This acknowledgment may well have been impossible for RFK Jr.
The contrast between his full-throated previous support for abortion rights as solely a woman’s choice and the position of his potential boss, Donald Trump, is so stark that the only answer would have been for Kennedy to say something like: “I want to run the Department of Health and Human Services and turn my health care views into policy, so I will completely put aside my views on abortion and follow the views of the president.” That would have had the virtue of honesty, but it was apparently a bridge too far.
None of this is to paint the late Robert F. Kennedy as a saint. He was fully capable of playing hardball politics, hesitant about directly challenging Johnson on Vietnam, torn between appealing to traditional politics and a newer coalition.
But as I watched the younger Kennedy’s performance, I could not help but have one unhappy conclusion: Sometimes the apple does fall very, very far from the tree.
