American values, Trump and the Kennedys

American politics, though not America, is in crisis. With former President Donald Trump indicted on charges of criminal conspiracy --- and do not forget that in his days in the White House he went through two impeachments --- the course politics will take in the United States remains uncertain. The uncertainty stems from the clear decline in values in the country.

Trump loyalists, rather than move away from him in light of the indictment in New York, are now determined to protect him from the law. Worse, they expect him to return to the presidency at the election in November next year.

Politics in America used to be different, for a different set of values was at work. Nelson Rockefeller, the liberal Republican whose chances of being President were doomed when he went for a second marriage with a woman named Happy, could only end up as Vice President under President Gerald Ford in the years 1974-1977.

Ford was an unelected President, in the aftermath of the Watergate scandal which destroyed Richard Nixon. When, as Vice President appointed by an embattled President Nixon, Ford succeeded to the presidency, he in his turn appointed Rockefeller to the vice presidency.

Speaking of values in US politics, Gary Hart, the Democrat who sought the presidency in 1988, saw his campaign implode when he was photographed in the not so edifying company of a woman named Donna Rice on a boat ironically named Monkey Business.

Hart till that point had been well positioned to take his party back to control of the White House. But the idea that values mattered, that he had not lived up to them, came in the way. Back in 1968, sensing trouble should he seek the Democratic Party nomination for a second term as President, Lyndon B. Johnson decided to opt out of contention. Values were at work.

So when did values in American politics go on a slide? The recent instance of two state politicians in Tennessee being ejected from their elected positions by their rivals, not the electorate, is yet one more sign of politics on a nosedive in the country.

It takes one back to the beginning of the slide in the year 2000 when the US Supreme Court stepped in to stop a critical vote count in Florida and arbitrarily declare George W. Bush the man to succeed Bill Clinton as President. The court would not stay its hand until the final votes had been tallied at a time when indications were there of Al Gore being the next President of the United States.

Politics slipped to new lows with the arrival of Donald Trump. During his campaign for the presidency in 2016, he insulted his Republican rivals and then went on to egg his mob of supporters into raising ugly slogans against the urbane Hillary Clinton.

As President, Trump felt no embarrassment in publicly denigrating John McCain's heroism in Vietnam. He and his followers speared values, to a point where his partisan mob did not flinch from breaking into the Capitol on 6 January 2021 to prevent Congress from certifying Joe Biden's victory at the November 2020 presidential election.

Values took a beating on the day. More than two years on, the beating continues, with Trump haranguing his followers into hate toward the New York District Attorney, the judge and the judge's wife and daughter. His fellow Republicans, even those who harbour ambitions of being the party nominee at next year's election, have rallied behind him.

The Republican Party had never before fallen to such depths. Next year, as the election campaign goes into full swing, Trump might be his party's standard bearer again and will be campaigning against Biden. Alongside the campaign, his trial will go on. It will be a strange case of a man charged with --- perhaps to be convicted of --- criminal activity wanting to be President again.

It will be darkness at noon for America.

Move away from Trump and the values question. On the Democratic side, Robert F. Kennedy Jr, the son of the late Senator Robert F. Kennedy, has made it known that he will challenge Joe Biden for the party's presidential nomination next year.

There is little chance that Kennedy will push Biden out of the race, but the interesting part of the story is one of the Kennedy dynasty trying to take centre stage again in US politics. The dynasty is no more what it used to be, with the generation of Kennedys coming of age in the 1970s and 1980s unable to light the spark which once ignited the Kennedy magic.

The Kennedys had their sunshine days in the early 1960s, with John Fitzgerald Kennedy beating Richard Nixon in the presidential race in November 1960. JFK, as he was popularly known, wasted little time appointing brother Robert the country's Attorney General. In 1962, the President's former Senate seat, which he had won by defeating the Republican Henry Cabot Lodge in 1952, went to thirty year-old Edward Moore Kennedy.

John and Robert would both fall to assassins' bullets, in 1963 and 1968. Edward Kennedy would go on to become a long-serving Senator, initiating significant legislative measures that would instil respect in others for him.

But Edward Kennedy's presidential ambitions in 1980, when he challenged an already beleaguered Jimmy Carter for the Democratic nomination, did not go down well with many Americans. It would have helped if Kennedy had stood by Carter through the Iran hostage crisis and in the campaign against Ronald Reagan, but that did not happen. Carter lost his bid for a second term to Reagan at the election in November.

Again, there has been the feeling that Kennedy's failure to best Carter had a good deal to do with the death of a young woman when the car he was driving, with Mary Jo Kopechne beside him, fell into the river in 1969. It dealt a blow to Kennedy and would till the end haunt him.

The Kennedys have had their share of ambition and tragedy. Robert Kennedy plunged into the presidential race in 1968 at a time when the peace candidate Eugene McCarthy was well on his way to making his case for the White House. Kennedy's entry put paid to McCarthy's dreams. In the end, it was Vice President Hubert Humphrey who went on to challenge the Republican Richard Nixon and lose.

The son of Robert Kennedy may never be President, but his sudden ambition speaks of the Kennedy dynasty yet not calling it a day in public service. President Kennedy's daughter Caroline, having served as US ambassador to Japan under Barack Obama, is today ambassador to Australia. Her aunt Victoria Reggie Kennedy, the widow of Edward Kennedy, is ambassador to Austria.

America remains an interesting country.

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