Just a dumb thing that came into my head from the book I'm reading.
There is of course a light rain coming down in Arlington a Bobby Kennedy is being laid to rest. His Brother, the President of the United States has not been more tempted to drink at any point in the last 27 years then he is today. But Teddy knows that Bobby would be disappointed if he broke his pledge now. Instead he stands there feeling hollow. They did a lot of good the two of them since their talk in 1968 when Bobby had decided against challenging President Johnson. There had been hard years but achievements none the less. With President Nixon, the National Health Administration, and against him, a swift impeachment for his crimes in the Watergate scandal. With Stevenson, National full employment, the ERA and when that crank Fred Church died, Bobby had gone from UN Ambassador to seat-warming VP. They'd raised their massive broods, and Jack's kids as well. God he thinks to himself, Jackie hasn't even been gone three years. He thinks they all did a decent enough job, only Bobby Junior turned out to be a real asshole what wish his stupid-ass crusade to have Homeopathy included in the NHA. Jack-Jack had come close but there'd been enough rough, late night conversations at least to get him to focus on the Bar. And then after '92 well, he had to tell himself they'd done pretty damned well. Bobby as his Chief of Staff for the First term had been... stressful but wonderful. Working things with Gorbachev. Trying to patch things up with the Brits. Getting the Education Reform and Universal Dental Care and that cockamamie War on Hunger (Thank God Bobby had talked him into it though!) through the congress had been no easy matters. But that was all past now. He looks over and sees the torch at the other grave before looking back to the freshly dug grave where Bobby was buried, and then to the rest of his family. They could have done more. But, he tell himself, Bobby and him did more then enough. And maybe they'd made the world a bit of a better place. He thinks about raising a toast but knows he won't. Yeah, they hadn't done too bad a job. And they'd built a real legacy, not just for the country, not just a myth of Camelot. He smiles sadly, and then turns. The rain hides the tears, not that he cares to hide them. His second term isn't over yet and there's still more to do.
1969-1973: Richard M. Nixon / John G. Tower (Republican)
1968: Lyndon B. Johnson / Edmund S. Muskie (Democratic), George C. Wallace, Jr. / Curtis T. LeMay (American Independent)1972: Hubert H. Humphrey / J. Terry Sanford (Democratic)1973-1977: John G. Tower / Anne L. Armstrong (Republican)
1977-1983: Adlai E. Stevenson III / Frank F. Church III (Democratic)
1976: Ronald W. Reagan / Gerald R. Ford, Jr. (Republican)1980: Spiro T. Agnew / Jack F. Kemp (Republican), George H. W. Bush / Barbara Jordan (Independent)1983-1985: Adlai E. Stevenson III / Robert F. Kennedy (Democratic)
1985-1993: Howard H. Baker, Jr. / James A. Baker III (Republican)
1984: John H. Glenn / Gary W. Hart (Democratic) 1988: Jesse L. Jackson / Joseph R. Biden, Jr. (Democratic)1993-2001: Edward M. Kennedy / D. Ann W. Richards (Democratic)
1992: James A. Baker III / Freddie D. Thompson (Republican), Paul E. Tsongas / H. Ross Perot (Independent)1996: William J. Clinton / Lowell P. Weicker, Jr. (Reform), Patrick J. Buchanan, J. Danforth Quayle / J. Danforth Quayle, Christine T. Todd Whitman (Republican)
Bobby as a grey eminence is phresh as hell. Well done.