Why Biden’s RFK problem is so strange

In the Oval Office, President Biden displays a bust of the father of one of his opponents.

Although the opponent in question, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., does not poll high enough to represent a direct threat, he very much could act as a spoiler in the 2024 general election. And to add another odd wrinkle to this, Robert F. Kennedy Sr. — whom Biden has called his “one true hero” — played a small role in the defeat of Biden’s first presidential campaign.

Standing onstage at the 1987 California State Democratic Convention, Biden decried “Ronald Reagan’s America,” which he claimed focused on economic gain as its only standard. However, Biden said, “That bottom line can tell us everything about our lives, except that which makes life worthwhile. And it can tell us everything about America, except that which makes us proud to be Americans.”

The speech met with applause, much as it had almost two decades earlier when Robert F. Kennedy Sr. had delivered a nearly identical version of it to college students at the University of Kansas. After this and other potential acts of plagiarism were uncovered, Biden bowed out of the race. 

But in many ways, the specter of RFK always followed Biden. How could it not? The two men claim the same small space carved out of the American political environment. Our country seldom allows its leaders to project anything but strength. But occasionally, it makes an exception.

Shock and grief gripped the nation in 1963 after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. His younger brother and attorney general, Robert F. Kennedy, was overheard questioning God and appeared on the precipice of a personal collapse. The confidence — even aggressiveness — of RFK’s early years in politics had been shattered. 

When he reentered the public eye, RFK projected not strength but pained vulnerability. And the nation, which recognized his grief, listened to what he had to say. On stage at the Democratic National Convention one year after his brother’s death, RFK read a passage from Shakespeare where Juliet speaks of the loss of her dear Romeo. The convention crowd roared with applause. 

As he dropped his guard, his eyes opened to the suffering of others, from farmlands in California to coal towns in Appalachia to the poverty-stricken Mississippi Delta. This empathetic approach culminated in the most memorable moment of his 1968 presidential campaign.

Standing on the bed of a pickup truck at a campaign stop in Indianapolis, Kennedy had the grim task of announcing the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. before a crowd of mostly Black supporters. Speaking off the cuff, Kennedy talked about the hatred and distrust he felt after the assassination of his brother. But he challenged all Americans to move forward together from that moment. Quoting the Greek poet Aeschylus, RFK said, “In our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart until, in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God.” 

Though an assassin’s bullet cut RFK’s final campaign short, it left a lasting imprint on the nation. And for Joe Biden, it left an example. 

In 1972, Biden lost his daughter and first wife to a horrific car accident. One of his sons, Beau Biden, also died from brain cancer in 2015. Transformed by his pain, Biden’s empathetic approach became central to his political identity. In his memoir, “Promise Me, Dad,” he wrote, “My presence almost always brought some solace to people who have suffered sudden and unexpected loss. Not because I am possessed of any special power, but because my story proceeds me… They know I have a sense of the depth of their pain.” Like Kennedy, Biden often draws on his and others’ pain in order to make a case for his progressive agenda.

This November, we could get a rather surreal closing chapter to the story of Biden and his hero. It is unclear whether RFK Jr. attracts more voters from the left or right, given his weighty name and views on the environment and vaccines. If he attracts mostly Trump voters, the son of Biden’s “one true hero” could inadvertently deliver Biden four more years in office. If RFK Jr. pulls more voters from the left, Biden’s first and last presidential campaigns would fail in part because of a man named Robert Kennedy. 

Either way, Biden may never have been in this position if it weren’t for the Kennedys. Earlier this year, as Biden stood, surrounded by other members of the Kennedy family who had split with RFK Jr. to offer their endorsement, he said that he often looks out from his desk at the bust and thinks about what RFK Sr. would do in difficult situations. 

Biden said that he had run for office, “in large part because I thought that’s something your dad would have done.”

Greer Brigham is an inclusive growth consultant and a writer whose work crosses the boundaries between politics, economics, history and religion. He is based in New York City.