Senator Robert F. Kennedy in Kansas
When Robert F. Kennedy announced for president, he had no campaign staff or organization in place. On March 17, 1968, one day after he announced his candidacy, Bobby and Ethel flew on a commercial flight to Kansas City, and then took a flight on the Kansas Governor’s personal plane to Topeka. Kennedy traveled to Kansas to deliver two speeches that were planned before he ran for president.
On March 18, Kennedy spoke to huge crowds at Kansas State University and the University of Kansas. He was warmly greeted by a crowd of 14,500 at the Ahern Field House in Manhattan, Kansas. The response of the crowd was so positive that a reporter yelled: “This Kansas, fucking Kansas! He’s going all the way. He’s going all the fucking way!”
While Kennedy was at Kansas State, one of his volunteers signed up 1,000 people to work for him in Nebraska. After his speech, Kennedy promised an Omaha World Herald reporter he would soon campaign in Nebraska.
Kennedy was subsequently greeted by a huge crowd of 17,000 people at the Phog Allen Field House in Lawrence. When he addressed the crowd, he made these immortal remarks:
“Too much and for too long, we seemed to have surrendered personal excellence and community values in the mere accumulation of material things. Our Gross National Product, now, is over $800 billion dollars a year, but that Gross National Product — if we judge the United States of America by that — that Gross National Product counts air pollution and cigarette advertising, and ambulances to clear our highways of carnage. It counts special locks for our doors and the jails for the people who break them. It counts the destruction of the redwood and the loss of our natural wonder in chaotic sprawl. It counts napalm and counts nuclear warheads and armored cars for the police to fight the riots in our cities. It counts Whitman’s rifle and Speck’s knife, and the television programs which glorify violence in order to sell toys to our children. Yet the gross national product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education or the joy of their play. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages, the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials. It measures neither our wit nor our courage, neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country, it measures everything in short, except that which makes life worthwhile. And it can tell us everything about America except why we are proud that we are Americans.”
Kennedy reprised these remarks in Lincoln on March 28 at a rally on the University of Nebraska campus.
Sources consulted:
Speech transcript for the University of Kansas speech:
Witcover, Jules. 85 Days: The Last Campaign of Robert F. Kennedy. New York: William Morrow, 1969, pp. 73–83.
You read about Robert F. Kennedy’s 1968 campaign in Nebraska:
https://dennispcrawford.medium.com/robert-f-kennedy-book-launch-6885753fa17f