Monday, March 18, 1968
UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
3
A chance to win for Robert Kennedy?
(Editor's note: This article is part of a series dealing with the 1968 presidential race and the election process.)
By Joanna Wiebe Kansan Staff Reporter
Before last November it was expected that the Democratic National Convention, and the campaign leading to it, would be a mere formality to again name Lyndon Johnson as the presidential nominee.
Robert F. Kennedy's Saturday decision to run has made it a contest—with the University of Kansas having a ringside seat for the first round.
In November, Eugene McCarthy announced his candidacy, making the campaign a debate.
The New York junior senator had been scheduled to address audiences at KU and K-State three times within the past month. All three appearances were postponed due to Senate business. Now the two Kansas universities find them selves among the first stops in Kennedy's bid to wrest the presidential nomination from President Johnson.
Prior to Kennedy's announcement political pundits speculated that he may choose to enter the race in the belief he has a better chance to win than McCarthy.
Few people credited McCarthy with having any real chance to win, but his strong showing in the recent New Hampshire primary has changed many minds about that. Republicans have been convincing themselves for some time that Johnson can be beaten. New Hampshire has apparently given Democrats the same idea—only Kennedy seems to think he
has a better chance than McCarthy to do so.
In early January Kennedy said he would not oppose Johnson for the Democratic nomination "under any foreseeable circumstances."
The major unforseable circumstance is apparently the Vietnam war. This was the response early this month of 69 per cent of people questioned in a Roper poll commissioned by Time magazine.
This is not the first political turnabout for Kennedy. In June, 1964, while he was U.S. attorney general, he said he would not be a candidate for senator from New York. Two months later he announced his candidacy.
Kennedy also has changed his ideas about the Vietnam war during the past six years. A hawk in 1962, he said in his book, "Just Friends and Brave Enemies," that "we will win in Vietnam, and we shall remain . . . until we do."
The hawk soon became a dove. He recently declared, "It is immoral and intolerable for this country to continue as we have" in Vietnam.
"Total military victory is not within sight or around the corner," Kennedy said in February. He suggested that a political compromise, which would include negotiations with the Viet Cong, "is not just the best path to peace, but the only path."
In opposing Johnson's war policies and criticizing many of the administration's foreign and domestic programs, Kennedy is bidding for the support of the youth of America.
The "generation gap" between Kennedy and members of the Johnson administration creates Kennedy support among young
voters, said an April 1966 Saturday Review article.
A character in a political satire in the March issue of Eye magazine assured Kennedy that "the youth of America is dying to grow up and vote for you."
More recently the New York senator has made an apparent bid for labor union support. The AFL-CIO committee on political education noted that Kennedy had voted 100 per cent pro-union since he took his Senate seat in 1965.
In addition to union members and student groups, significant Kennedy support now comes from Democrats who are dissatisfied with Johnson and want to end the war in Vietnam.
On the other hand, before Kennedy announced, columnist Joseph Alsop said if Kennedy did decide to run. "He will destroy himself. He will destroy his party . . . an irreparable disaster."
Some people believe that if Kennedy had not entered this year's race, he would have had to struggle to keep his presidential chances alive for another four years.
It can be expected that even though Kennedy has entered the presidential campaign, he will continue his general support of the Great Society-understandable, as many of the Great Society programs are merely extensions of John Kennedy's New Frontier programs.
Kennedy has voted for or made speeches approving Great Society programs such as medicare, federal aid to schools and colleges, a national teacher corps, the anti-poverty program, a 1965 voting rights act, and a new immigration law.
Oppose draft, go to jail, Falk says
Young men opposed to the Vietnam war and the draft should be willing to go to prison for their beliefs, Jeff Falk, representative from Chicago Area Draft Resisters (CADRE), told thirty KU students at a meeting Friday.
Three thousand or more young men who are willing to go to prison can mess up the whole system, he said.
Falk, who returned his draft card to his local board last December, may face a resulting penalty of up to five years in jail.
"Accepting a number of years in prison can be a way of liberating yourself. A large number of people in jail can create havoc," Falk said.
Fleeing to Canada and renouncing American citizenship is usually not the answer, Falk said. The estimated 17,000 draft dodgers now in Canada don't have any voice in changing things in the U.S., he explained.
Falk has worked with CADRE for the past seven months. The organization attempts to build "massive and well-organized resistance to the war and to the draft system that serves it," an information sheet said.
Falk spent last summer on the streets of Chicago, talking to people about the draft and the Vietnam war.
Many of the people he met agreed with him that the war is unjust and the draft system is inequitable. Then we would just stand there, agreeing, but not knowing what to do about it," he said.
Twenty full-time workers and more than 100 part-time workers conduct draft - counseling programs, support demonstrations at induction centers, urge men re-classified as 1-A to resist the draft, distribute leaflets, and speak publicly about the draft resistance movement.
"Your opposition to the war and the draft has to mean something to your life," Falk said earnestly.
The achievements of the movement have made the act of draft-resistance "sort of acceptable," Falk said.
On April 3 this year, young men across the nation will challenge the government by sending back their draft cards. Public action at KU will be outlined in coming issues of the Screw, KU's underground newspaper and sponsor of the meeting, it was announced.
"I don't think we're being too optimistic in thinking we can change the system," Falk said. He said he must oppose what he believes to be wrong, whether or not the changes will come easily.
In 1965, Kennedy introduced changes to a bill designed to assist impoverished areas of Apalachia, so that the 23,000 people with incomes less than $2000 per year in neighboring New York counties would also receive aid.
The changes, which were included in the bill, were opposed by New York Gov. Nelson Rockefeller, who thought the inclusion of the New York counties would damage the image of the state as a thriving industrial center.
It has been said that Kennedy doesn't really feel at home in the Senate.
In a spirit of devotion to his country, and perhaps with an eye for good publicity, Kennedy has formed a "domestic peace corps" on his own. He has recruited dozens of young professional and business men, lawyers and college professors, who carry out his programs as unpaid "associates."
"He chafes in the essentially spectator role of a Senator. . . He wants to run something . . ." says a political biographer.
These aides have established slum school programs, have investigated the plight of mentally retarded children in state hospitals, and have searched for answers to the problems of American Indians and Negroes.
Therefore, it is not his voting record in the Senate or the speeches which he makes there that give Kennedy his broad political base. He derives much of his experience from his political jaunts through Europe, South
Africa, Latin America, and the United States.
It is programs such as these that give Kennedy the foundation for possible election to the U.S. Presidency.
And if the electorate does not favor him in 1968, there is always '72 or beyond. The Democratic senator from New York is a young man.
Next: Nelson Rockefeller.
Keepsake
REGISTERED DIAMOND RING
VERONA $300
ALSO TO $1650
Ray Christian
"THE COLLEGE JEWELER"
Special College Terms
809 Mass. VI 3-5432
LIMITED ENGAGEMENT!
EDWARD DMITRYK and BAM WELLER present William Shakespeare's Immortal Classic! Hamlet
BRILLIANTLY PERFORMED by Academy Award Winner MAXIMILIAN SCHELL
MONDAY, MARCH 18
1:30 and 8:00
TUESDAY, MARCH 19
1:30 - 4:00 - 8:00
- Adults $2.00 — H.S. and College $1.50
Dickinson Theatre - Topeka, Kan.
THE UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS THEATRE
presents
MACBETH
by William Shakespeare
starring CLAYTON CORBIN
MARCH 14,15,16,22,23----8:20 p.m.
MARCH 24—2:30 p.m.
Students Admitted Free With Current Certificate of Registration