In these trying days for the United States, not every difficulty can be anticipated but there are issues that are a matter of the simplest common sense. One of those issues is that presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. should be given Secret Service protection.
There are several reasons Mr. Kennedy deserves a Secret Service detail, any one of them by themselves making a strong case for his increased security.
1. Mr. Kennedy is a viable candidate for the presidency. While his chances of winning are at the longest of odds and bordering on the impossible, there is little doubt that RFK Jr. could play the role of spoiler in the presidential election regarding either of the two major political parties. Mr. Kennedy is a strong environmentalist along with the rest of his leftist record. Yet, his stands on illegal immigration and the woke culture are certainly to the right of nearly all nationally known Democrat figures. There are individuals on the left and the right who find him attractive as a candidate, in some ways epitomizing the Radical Center.
2. Mr. Kennedy’s name unfortunately provokes too many whack jobs and glory hunters who, due to the previous assassinations of Kennedy’s father and uncle, seek out an individual such as he. America is an amazing, wonderful place that people risk life and limb to come to. However, the moral decline of our nation since the 1960s is undeniable and our civil discourse is at levels not seen since perhaps the American Civil War. Already, Mr. Kennedy has been the subject of several noticeable threats to his person.
Further, Kennedy has taken some positions which, to the political establishment, make him a threat to their status quo, much like President Trump, and it is no coincidence that these two candidates evoke the most visceral and inflamed reactions from the D.C. power structure.
3. There is precedent for such a decision to award Secret Service protection, even to long shot candidates or even non candidates. On May 15, 1972, Governor George Wallace was campaigning in Maryland for the primary that was soon to be held there as well as concurrently in Michigan. Wallace won both states but was shot and his campaign effectively came to an end. Though Wallace was never going to be the Democrats' nominee, he had been given Secret Service protection before his shooting.
Immediately upon the Wallace shooting, President Richard Nixon, though an avowed enemy of Senator Edward Kennedy, assigned Secret Service protection to the Massachusetts Senator and last surviving Kennedy brother. Senator Kennedy was not then a candidate for president but his political rival understood the need to protect a non-candidate for president. Edward Kennedy also received Secret Service protection during his unsuccessful campaign for the Democratic nomination in 1980 against incumbent President Jimmy Carter.
Both major political parties vying for the presidency believe that the United States is in the midst of major struggles, at home and throughout the world. Third party candidacies also believe this. Our nation simply cannot risk such national trauma as was recently remembered with the 60th anniversary of President Kennedy’s assassination on November 22, 1963, as well as the assassination of Senator Robert F. Kennedy Sr. on June 6, 1968.
Whether he could win the presidency or not, or play spoiler, the failure to Kennedy, Jr. the protection of the Secret Service is an unconscionable decision and should be reversed. Hopefully such protection is never needed, but the chances being taken on not giving it to him is far too great.
*Views expressed in this article are those of the author and not any government agency