Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Had you blindfolded me yesterday morning, led me to the front lawn of the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia, removed my blinder and asked me to guess where we were, I would have said, “A James Taylor benefit concert for NPR.” In the crowd on this sunny fall day was a heavy contingent of the boomer delegation, of various stripes and checks. There were even some traditional tweed, and, with blazers out in full force, on both men and women, paired mostly with denim — though late-season red chinos and season-rushing corduroys were on display, too — and invariably some statement eyewear, leather dress shoes, and baseball caps keeping flowy silver hair tamed and sun-spotted skin safe. It was plain from their collective style that this group was at least self-aware.

A week from today, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. plans to make an announcement in Philadelphia that will almost certainly entail running for president as a third-party candidate. The signs have been there for months that RFK’s politically unique appeal would be crushed by the Democratic Party’s process, which is heavily skewed toward renominating Joe Biden by acclamation. The possibility of Biden debating Kennedy was always out of the question — not because they don’t take his challenge seriously, but because for all their dismissiveness, Democratic leadership takes it very seriously indeed.

Presidential candidates don’t normally receive Secret Service protection until the summer before the election. But these are not normal times. They are dangerous ones — for candidates, elected officials and federal judges. When candidates face lethal threats, as Robert F. Kennedy Jr. did last week, it’s time to give them protection. The decision is up to President Biden. If he orders the Secret Service to protect Kennedy, it’s done. If not, not. And “not” is Biden’s current decision. It’s a dangerous, mean-spirited political calculation. Political? Yes, surrounding Kennedy with a Secret Service detail elevates his status as a serious candidate. That doesn’t help Biden’s own candidacy.

In the spring of 2021, I was barred from attending the remainder of my graduate school program at NYU for refusing to take the Covid shots, as hundreds of colleges across the country implemented novel vaccine mandates for students and faculty. I had spent the entire last year of lockdown Zoom school researching coronaviruses and mRNA biotechnology. By the time these drugs were rolled out at “warp speed” without long-term clinical data demonstrating their safety or efficacy, I could find zero compelling evidence that these experimental gene therapies would stop transmission and end Covid-19, the only morally compelling reason to mandate them.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is not an intimidating political opponent. Or at least not on the surface. Yes, he is a scion of Camelot named for his father, a patron saint of American liberalism. But beyond the Kennedy factor, everything about him screams amusing sideshow rather than serious contender. His main contribution to public life over the last few decades has been as the country’s most prominent antivaxxer — a fringe role almost by definition. Many of his policy positions are a long way from mainstream opinion in his party. And his speaking engagements in recent years are as likely to have been at MAGA-friendly conservative organizations as at the sorts of places a Democrat with presidential aspirations tends to want to be seen.

Did you know that the Biden’s State Department is run by neocons? Or that Biden’s foreign policy is “bellicose, pugnacious and aggressive”? Ask the people of Afghanistan suffering under the Taliban or the millions of Ukrainians trying to fend off an imperialist Russia. They would tell you that that is news to them. Those assessments come not from the soft-isolationist right, but rather from Democratic presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who joined Elon Musk, David Sacks, Tulsi Gabbard, Michael Shellenberger and others for a Twitter Spaces chat on Monday.

After Linda Como, a sixty-four-year-old administrative assistant from Quincy, Massachusetts, was fired from her hospital job for refusing to be vaccinated against Covid, she discovered Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s anti-vaccine activism, and it resonated with her. But that’s not the only reason Como came to the Boston Park Plaza hotel one morning in April to see Kennedy launch his long-shot 2024 presidential campaign. “I grew up in Boston, went to Boston public schools, so you know the Kennedy family,” Como told me. “They’re like the royal family. So I’ve always been a fan of the Kennedys.” Kennedy lore runs deep in Boston. This is where Robert Kennedy’s father Robert F. Kennedy and his uncles John F. Kennedy and Edward M.