Not Superwoman

I don’t for a moment think that Hillary Clinton’s RFK reference meant that she hoped something bad would befall Senator Obama. I do think she meant that Robert F. Kennedy’s triumph in the California primary 40 years ago—and his awful assassination—showed that anything can happen. To be sure, her words were very poorly chosen.

But it’s not surprising that Robert F. Kennedy was at the forefront of her thoughts. We will never be rid of 1968 until the baby boomers pass from the scene. From Newsweek’s cover story last November:

the '60s are impossible to escape. They will define the 2008 presidential election, just as they have defined American politics, and American culture, for the past 40 years.

In 1968 the deaths of Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King, the riots in Chicago, and the war in Vietnam rent the culture. It seemed everyone was angry; whichever side one took, the other side didn’t listen, didn’t comprehend, and in fact was evil and hypocritical, using violence to further its ends. To those of us who were teenagers then, 1968 provoked some of the strongest emotions we have ever felt. Hillary Clinton isn’t the controlled super-woman that her supporters believe that she is, so after the requisite mea culpa she should be given a pass on this one.