I was the youngest in my small family, the baby, and was always considered the quiet and sensitive one. But quiet doesn’t mean quiescent. Ruled over by my parents and older brother, I remained determined to have my own way. When I demanded the right to have a cat, there was resistance all around. The family loved pets. Dogs, mainly. We even had a pet llama, Pepe, at one point, who though caged, was devoured by coyotes one night. I loved all animals, and still do, but cats occupy a special place in my personal pantheon.
The rebellion broke out at the family estate of the Kennedys – yes, those Kennedys – at their large spread in McLean, Virginia known as Hickory Hill. The occasion was the Kennedys’ annual summer picnic, and my parents, who worked for Democratic bigwigs, my stepfather for the president, Lyndon Johnson, and my mother for his VP, Hubert Humphrey , were eager to attend – just to “make an appearance,” as people liked to say in polite company in those days
Making a perfunctory appearance was, and is, de rigeur, in social circles, especially so in Washington, D.C., where the timeworn practice of planting “air kisses” on the cheeks of one’s sworn enemies, accompanied by exaggerated exclamations affection, was practically invented.
I hid my tiny new friend in my small zipped bag, leaving just enough room for him to poke his nose out for air, and then sprung the surprise on the other family members.
The Kennedys, it was well known, were not on especially good terms with the Johnson White House. Well, that’s probably an understatement. In 1960, Robert F. Kennedy pitched a fit when his older brother gave him the bad news that LBJ would be named as his running mate. JFK and LBJ couldn’t have been more different. JFK, the young scion of the East Coast intellectual and monied establishment, politically inexperienced, but suave, articulate, handsome, charismatic, the King of what would become Camelot. LBJ, a crude and drawling Texan, and a veteran of the Southern “Dixiecrat” Senate which he had dominated for years as his party’s majority leader.
The two men needed each other, JFK, to win the presidential race against Richard Nixon, which turned out to be one of the closest in U.S. history, and LBJ, to fulfill his ambition to one day become president. But by all accounts, JFK and LBJ and their respective followers fiercely hated each other.
It wasn’t quite true – not among the rank and file of each camp. My parents had just as many friends among the Kennedy people. Many of these friends were younger and imbued with enthusiasm for RFK and later, his younger brother Teddy, who worked in my step-father’s law firm. So, attending the Kennedy picnic was hardly just a social concession.
A much bigger concession was allowing me to befriend a kitten at the picnic, and not objecting when I insisted on bringing my furry little friend home as the newest addition to our family. Amid the joy of the event, which included old-fashioned sack races and the like, while no one was watching me, I laid down $5 from my allowance to purchase a feisty gray kitten, whom I promptly named Aslan, after the much-beloved feline hero depicted in C.S. Lewis’ famous novel, “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.” My unannounced adoption of Aslan presented my family with a fait accompli. I hid my tiny new friend in my small zipped bag, leaving just enough room for him to poke his nose out for air, and then, expecting the worst, sprung the surprise on the other family members.
Predictably, my jealous older brother Robert was appalled – he always thought I was getting away with murder, and often beat me up just to show me who was boss. My stepfather, who was well accustomed to my eccentricities, but wary of berating me in front of my mother, just shook his head in disgust. What was I supposed to do, give the poor thing back, I protested, rather slyly.
This was over 50 years ago but the incident has come to mind of late during the fierce contest for the 2024 presidency. Washington, D.C. is experiencing a mild uproar because the two leading candidates that most of the country would prefer not to see running, Joe Biden and Donald Trump, are about to duke it out again, in a rematch of the 2020 race. Most people in this town, the vast majority, are Biden supporters, at least nominally. Only a very small percentage even dare speak Donald Trump’s name – he’s often referred to derisively as “Drumpf” or “The Orange Man” – let alone claim any allegiance to him, for fear, perhaps, of being stoned to death on the sidewalk in plain daylight. And only a very small sliver deign to suggest that the last political heir to the famed Kennedy dynasty, RFK’s son, RFK, Jr., might be worthy of support instead.
Naturally, I’ve thrown my lot in with RFK, Jr., which has made me, yet again, the black sheep of the family. My brother Robert is a big Biden supporter. So are my step-brother and two step-sisters, and their respective families. Supporting Biden is like supporting LBJ a half century ago. Biden’s not loved, even by Democrats but is widely seen as the country’s only hope of keeping teeming hordes of the right at bay. In LBJ’s day, Republican Barry Goldwater was the target of liberal contempt, a man who sheltered racists, wanted to bomb Vietnam back to the Stone Age, and threatened the nation’s bedrock values, it was said. He was, for many, quite simply, a “nut.” Liberals see Trump as the heir to this same lunatic fringe tradition (despite having won over half the country). He must be stopped – at all cost – even if it means throwing your lot in with a doddering octogenarian who stumbles his way on and off stage, mumbles incoherently, and can’t seem to keep the names of countries and their presidents straight.
I have a radically different view of the world, which some, including members of my family, find rather childlike, it seems. While I’m not a fan of the former president, I don’t despise him. Like much of the country, I think Biden and Trump are just too old to effectively serve the country. My family, like so many, is fearful that a vote for Kennedy is a wasted vote – he can’t win, no independent ever has, so why bother. Even worse, by siphoning off votes that might otherwise go to Biden, Kenndy could help Trump win, they fear. The polls, as well as the somber experience of the 2000 and 2016 elections, in which two Democrats lost in razor-thin presidential contests, with third party candidates competing, seem to support this view. But I object: whatever happened to the idea of voting your conscience? Must we always do what’s politically expedient – casting our ballot for the “lesser of two evils” – rather than boldly doing what’s right, come what may?
I tried to hash these issues out with my brother, who thinks I’m dangerously naive about politics – and about life – and simply being difficult, like always. Fortunately, he lives too far away these days to beat me up. Instead, he contents himself with berating me on the telephone and asking me when I’m ever going to grow up. I try to stifle a laugh and remind him how long we’ve been going at it like this. “Yes, Stewart,” he says. “That’s because you always just want your own way.”
He must be stopped – at all cost – even if it means throwing your lot in with a doddering octogenarian who stumbles his way on and off stage, mumbles incoherently, and can’t seem to keep the names of countries and their presidents straight.
He has a point. It could be that my stubborn fondness for Kennedy , which I like to think is a heartfelt desire for passion and authenticity in politics, and for a candidate that reminds me of the values I grew up with, isn’t really rational or logical at all. It could be that I am searching for something in the grubby and soulless world of today’s politics – and in the depressingly divisive and warring world at large – that may not even exist anymore. A nostalgic remembrance of bygone years, not only in the life of my country, but in my own increasingly fragile and finite life perhaps.
Aslan’s long gone, but I still miss him. He was my first great love, a love all my own. Hickory Hill still stands, but the old family estate is gone. I’ve had one feline pet since, Lea, who just so happened to come from the family of the late North Carolina Republican Senator, Jesse Helms, a hard-core conservative and one-time Barry Goldwater pal. That’s how it is here in the nation’s capital, there are just a few degrees of separation, from friends and enemies, and from one’s own cherished past
It’s the dead of winter, one of the coldest in recent decades. I’m shivering. Maybe it’s the weather, or maybe it’s the thought of what’s happening to my beloved country. Summer’s coming. I think I’ll get another kitten.
