Parallel Lives

"We all remember that Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in June in California."
Sen. Hillary Clinton, May 23, 2008

Her point was (apparently) that the current primary campaign will continue into June, just as the 1968 contest did. The comparison was less than felicitous for Democrats, since the fractious 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago led to the defeat of nominee Hubert Humphrey and eight years of Republican rule.

Yet the comparison is appropriate, since her career bears many uncanny parallels to that of the late Senator Robert F Kennedy . Here are 17 of them, with the references in parentheses pertaining first to Kennedy and then to Clinton :



1.Both were educated at Ivy League universities.
(Harvard College and Yale Law School)


2. Both wrote best selling books before becoming senators.
(The Enemy Within and
It Takes A Village: And Other Lessons that Children Teach Us)


3. Both worked as attorneys for investigative committees of the US Senate.
(Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations and the Select Committee to Investigate Campaign Practices, (The Watergate Ctee.)

4. Both fought to keep Richard Nixon from the White House.
(1960 presidential campaign and the Watergate investigation.)

5. Both played a key role in the election of a family member as President of the United States.

6. Both became close advisors to the President, and were given major responsibilities.
(Attorney General and manager of the Americare health plan.)

7. While the family member was President, both suffered the loss of a close friend to suicide.
(Marilyn Monroe and Vincent Foster)

8. Both were elected to the same seat in the US Senate from New York.
(The sequence of senators: Robert Kennedy, Charles Goodell, James Buckley, Daniel Moynihan and Hillary Clinton.)

9. Neither lived in New York state the year before running for senator.
(Legal residences: Massachusetts and Arkansas.
Actual homes: Virginia and District of Columbia)

10. While both were junior senators from New York, the senior senator was Jewish.
(Jacob Javits and Charles Schumer) (1)

11. Both senators championed determined groups of activists.
(Migrant farm-workers and feminists)

12. Both senators opposed a war they had originally supported.
(Vietnam and Iraq)

13. Both sought the Democratic presidential nomination in a year ending in "8".

14. Both faced tough primary battles with a midwestern senator who had previously been a professor.
(Eugene McCarthy of Minnesota at St Johns College and
Barack Obama of Illinois at University of Chicago Law School)

15. Both won primaries in California and Indiana, but lost Oregon.

16. Both enjoyed greater support among the working class than among the more affluent Democrats.

17. Senator Clinton was embraced by Palestinian First Lady Suha Arafat.
Senator Kennedy was killed by Palestinian Sirhan Bishara Sirhan.

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(1) Not much of a coincidence? Only one other Jew (Herbert H Lehman) was ever elected senator from New York.