Reply #105: Not entirely true. They were Kennedy's first. I am sure you

[saltpoint]

have heard the audio tapes of John and Robert Kennedy, the president and the attorney general, speaking on the phone with governors (Democratic) of Southern states regarding those states' resistance to clearing the path for black Americans to attend schools and to otherwise participate in their own citizenry.

It is by far the most telling record of the Kennedys' commitment to public service, although a case can be made that their legacy is not limited to that one issue. They did view it as overriding and spoke accordingly to recalcitrant old-South Democratic Governors south of the Mason-Dixon line. A good number -- maybe all -- of those governors were decidedly disinclined to listen to an assessment of American liberties from two New England liberals.

We were at least a generation away from Bill Clinton, who despite my not voting for him in the primary, was quite a bit more evolved as a Southern Democratic governor than the previous generation's predecessor governors. And Jimmy Carter all but single-handedly vanquished George Wallace, or rather, what was left of George Wallace. Sometimes the sound of a final nail in the coffin is a very sweet pounding.

We agree strongly on the fatefulness represented by Robert F. Kennedy, and I'd like to add that an entire generation of Americans was cheated of that fatefulness. He was a merciful man with some serious white in the knuckles. No wonder Nixon feared him.