A nation in distress as the knight-errant of Camelot pledges fealty to the dark side…
“A law was made a distant moon ago here…”
One of the less important outcomes of RFK, Jr’s assault on America’s health care policy is the mugging of his family legacy. The echoes of Camelot have been quieted as it is now more than a half-century since his father and uncle were murdered. They were leaders of a political movement built on hope, idealism, and youthful enthusiasm that captured a generation. Another uncle, Ted, the flawed prince of Camelot, survived the Chappaquiddick scandal to become a lion of the Senate. He served the people of Massachusetts for 50 years and authored more than 300 bills that became law. Robert F. Kennedy Jr., their heir and beneficiary of their legacy, has decided to become a source of its demise.
No need to recount Junior’s own scandal-ridden past, which has included substance abuse, animal abuse, and wacky conspiracy theories. Lately, he has become the purveyor of a peculiar ideology that promotes antisemitism and racism and that threatens the lives of children. He is a medicine man who practices without a conscience:
Kennedy proposed that Black people should follow a different vaccine schedule because their immune systems are stronger than white people’s, echoing racist medical tropes that suggest Black people are biologically different from others. Given the health care system’s long history of reinforcing racial stereotypes, Kennedy’s confirmation could lead to greater mistrust from the African American community…
- The Bookings Institute commentary. “RFK Jr.’s history of medical misinformation raises concerns over HHS nomination,” by Keesha Middlemass
RFK Jr.’s public behavior has been a steady renunciation of much of the work carried out by his father and uncles.
Co-opting the accomplishments of past Democratic administrations, including Camelot, has been a Republican cottage industry. Their continual attacks on the liberal policies of the FDR New Deal era are near complete with the election of Donald Trump, who has targeted civility and decency on his way to upending our democracy. The irony of now watching Bobby Kennedy’s son join in the destruction of a century-long liberal slog to aid the poor, workers, and middle class by supporting advances in health care, science, education, and civil rights is striking. This Kennedy has wandered off to the dark side.
Bobby Jr. has attempted to defend his unorthodox beliefs about national health by referencing JFK’s era to make the point that Americans were healthier then than they are now. Like most of his claims, Bobby only sees trees among the forests of facts:
The mid-20th century is the era that Kennedy and President Trump nod to with the “again” of the Make America Great (and Healthy) Again slogans.
“There is some basis to the fact that America was healthier then,” acknowledges Natalia Mehlman Petrzela, a history professor at the New School in New York. “Americans today have much more chronic illness than they did when he was a kid, and there’s much more processed food today; rates of obesity are very high.”
But, she says, “there’s also some countervailing evidence that really punctures the fantasy that this was an era of much more widespread health.”
To begin with, American life expectancy in 1960 was almost ten years shorter than it is today: 69.7 years. And the leading causes of death were, in fact, chronic diseases.
In 1963, for example, “two out of three deaths in the United States were caused by three chronic diseases: heart disease, cancer and stroke,” Woolf says. “So it’s hardly the case that chronic disease was a non-issue when he was a child.”
Reagan’s Bow to the Radical Right
Mid-20th-century American politics continued the domestic gains introduced by FDR, expanding rights for minorities, women, and workers. Despite the brief but ugly McCarthy era, Democratic policies remained popular through the end of the century. It took years after Dixiecrats left the party because of Civil Rights legislation for Republicans to regain the power we are seeing in full bloom today. The first step was an open appeal to the South and racist elements within the party. In 1980, Ronald Reagan launched his presidential campaign outside Philadelphia, Mississippi, near where three Civil Rights workers had been murdered by the Ku Klux Klan in 1964. Reagan’s speech that day used states’ rights as a cover to appeal to white supremacist supporters of George Wallace. It served as the dog-whistle signaling Reagan had bowed to the racist “Southern Strategy,” created for Richard Nixon by Kevin Phillips in 1968. It has become a Republican staple in national elections, helping to elect George W. Bush and now Donald Trump.
Reagan next targeted liberal policy advances beyond civil rights. Reaganomics was the vehicle for deregulation of industries like telecommunications and natural gas, much to the advantage of big business. Finally, Reagan’s early refusal to acknowledge the seriousness of the AIDS virus and slow response to fund research to contain its spread were precursors to the politicization of the national health policies under RFK Jr. today.
Aftermath of Camelot
Of the 32 Congress sessions from FDR’s first term to 1999, the Democratic Party held both houses 26 times. That record of achievement was in great part due to the success of the New Deal domestic policies and the trust voters placed in Democrats’ handling of the economy and world affairs. The Reagan Administration began attacking the policies that had won the allegiance of America’s middle class, “The Misdeals. “ The president blamed the government for ills created, in fact, by his own actions and those of his party, making liberal policies the butt of his humor. He famously advocated for smaller government in the face of his failing economic policies, quipping:
Government’s view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving; regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it.
By the century’s end, Republicans held power in both houses for the next six congressional sessions (1994–2007).
Fallen Prince
Bobby Jr. has always been a prisoner of his past. He has endured the assassinations of an uncle and a father he adored. His youth was punctuated by long periods of addiction; first cannabis, later heroin and cocaine, leading to the distrust of his family brought about by his behavior:
The portrait family members paint of Bobby is of a man of exceptional charm, wit, brains, and generosity who has championed important environmental causes, but whose worst traits-an unnerving ease with blending fact and fiction; a powerful ability to deny the collateral damage of his own destructive actions-have engulfed his better angels. The source of these pathologies, they observe, are found in his long and troubling biography, a life story marked by personal trauma and addiction to drugs, sex, and, perhaps most perniciously of all, public adulation.
Kennedy has chosen to use his family name for personal advantage. In the process, its legacy has suffered. It is a choice that has weighed heavily on other members. Perhaps most notable was the letter sent to the U.S. Senate by Caroline Kennedy-Schlossberg after Trump nominated Bobby for his cabinet Post at HHS:
“I have known Bobby my whole life,” Caroline Kennedy says in the video, in which she’s reading the letter aloud. “We grew up together. It’s no surprise that he keeps birds of prey as pets because he himself is a predator…He lacks any relevant government, financial, management or medical experience. His views on vaccines are dangerous and willfully misinformed. The facts alone should be disqualifying, but he has personal qualities related to this job, which, for me, pose even greater concern.”
His public war on medicine and science, and his scientifically debunked anti-vaccine theories that he now chooses to foist on the nation, reflect less on any remaining family legacy than on his character. There was a time when he was a highly regarded environmental activist and an advocate for those affected by big business and Big Pharma. That has all changed as his crackpot theories threaten national health care. Aligning with Trump, Bobby has tarnished the family’s political legacy by associating it with Trump’s MAGA brand. The hatred that Trump incites among his MAGA followers is not unlike the hate fomented by the radical right that caused the death of his father, uncle, and other liberal voices of their time.
“a most congenial spot for happily-ever-aftering…”
RFK Jr. has chosen sides in the war between the tradition his aunt Jaqueline had dubbed Camelot and an ideology that places damsels and their families in distress. For her and most of us, Camelot represented an America that was a beacon of hope, recognized by the world as a refuge of hope. That is the America RFK Sr.’s namesake has chosen to abandon in its most desperate hour.
In Lerner and Lowe’s mythical version of the Arthurian legend, Arthur’s fragile utopia is threatened by betrayals of those close to him. Bobby seems to have gotten lost on his way to the Round Table. Sadly, his betrayal in service to Donald Trump threatens to undermine our now fragile democracy.
Originally published at https://www.dailykos.com on August 31, 2025.
