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The Robert F. Kennedy presidential campaign began on March 16, 1968. Robert Francis Kennedy, a U.S. Senator from New York who won a Senate seat in 1964, faced what was widely considered an unrealistic race against an incumbent, President Lyndon B. Johnson. After Johnson's announcement on March 31 that he would not seek re-election, Kennedy still faced Johnson’s leading challenger, Eugene McCarthy, a U.S. Senator from Minnesota, and Vice President Hubert Humphrey, who entered the race following Johnson’s withdrawal, for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination. Kennedy and McCarthy remained the main challengers to Humphrey and the policies of the Johnson administration. Throughout the spring of 1968, Kennedy campaigned in presidential primary elections, especially those in Indiana, Nebraska, Oregon, South Dakota, California, and Washington, D.C. He had made progress in achieving Democratic support for the nomination until his assassination on June 5, 1968, in Los Angeles, California. ==Announcement== Kennedy was a late entry in the race for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination in 1968. By late 1967 Kennedy had not made a decision, even under pressure from his political advisors who feared time to announce a candidacy was running out. Kennedy and his advisors knew it would not be easy to beat the incumbent president Lyndon Johnson. However, Kennedy hadn’t ruled out entering the race. Following U.S. Senator Eugene McCarthy’s announcement on November 30, 1967, of his intention to run against Johnson for the Democratic nomination, Kennedy remarked to U.S. Senator George McGovern of South Dakota, “I’m worried about you and other people making early commitment to him because it may be hard for all of us later on.”〔 Excerpt from ''The Last Campaign: Robert F. Kennedy and the 82 Days that Inspired America'' (New York, Henry Holt, 2008) by Thurston Clark.〕 At a breakfast with reporters at the National Press Club on January 30, 1968, Kennedy still indicated that he had no plans to run, but a few weeks later he had changed his mind about entering the race.〔Thomas, p. 356.〕 After the Tet Offensive in Vietnam, in early February 1968, Kennedy received a letter from writer Pete Hamill (later acclaimed author of the novel ''Snow in August''). Hamill wrote an anguished letter to Kennedy noting that poor people in the Watts area of Los Angeles hung pictures of his brother, President John F. Kennedy, in their homes and that Robert Kennedy had the "obligation of staying true to whatever it was that put those pictures on those walls."〔Thomas, p. 357.〕 Other factors led Kennedy into the presidential race as well. On February 29, 1968, the Kerner Commission’s report on racial unrest in American cities during the previous summer blamed “white racism” for the violence, but its findings were largely dismissed by the Johnson administration.〔 Concerned about the president’s policies and actions, Kennedy remarked to his advisor, historian Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., “How can we possibly survive five more years of Lyndon Johnson?”〔 To complicate his decision, Kennedy’s friends, political advisors, and family members disagreed on whether he should run. While his wife Ethel supported the idea, Kennedy’s brother, Ted, initially opposed, but offered his support when the decision was finally made to enter the race.〔〔Thomas, p. 357–358.〕 By late February or early March, 1968, Kennedy had made the decision to enter the race for president.〔 On March 10, Kennedy traveled to California, to meet with civil rights activist César Chávez, who was ending a 25-day hunger strike. En route to California, Kennedy told his aide, Peter Edelman, that he had decided to run, “now I have to figure out how to get McCarthy out of it.”〔 The weekend before the New Hampshire primary, Kennedy announced to several aides that he would run if he could persuade little-known Senator Eugene McCarthy of Minnesota to withdraw from the presidential race. Kennedy agreed to McCarthy’s request to delay an announcement of his intentions until after the New Hampshire primary.〔 On March 12, after Johnson won an astonishingly narrow victory in the New Hampshire primary against McCarthy, who polled 42 percent of the vote, Kennedy knew it would be unlikely that the Minnesota senator would agree to withdraw and moved forward with his plans.〔Thomas, p. 359.〕 On March 16, Kennedy declared, "I am today announcing my candidacy for the presidency of the United States. I do not run for the presidency merely to oppose any man, but to propose new policies. I run because I am convinced that this country is on a perilous course and because I have such strong feelings about what must be done, and I feel that I'm obliged to do all I can."〔Kennedy, Robert F., ("Robert F. Kennedy’s Announcement of his candidacy for president" ) (speech, Washington, D. C., 1968-3-16). Retrieved 2012-5-17.〕 Kennedy made this announcement from the same spot in the Senate Caucus Room where John F. Kennedy announced his presidential candidacy in January 1960.〔Thomas, p. 360.〕〔On September 14, 2009, the U.S. Senate passed a resolution to rename the Senate Caucus Room in the Russell Senate Office Building (RSOB) to the Kennedy Senate Caucus Room in honor of the three Kennedy brothers who served in the Senate chamber. John F. Kennedy and Robert F. Kennedy announced their presidential campaigns in the room and their younger brother, the late Senator Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts, who died of cancer in August 2009, chaired hearings in the room on a health-care bill that bore his name. 〕 McCarthy supporters angrily denounced Kennedy as an opportunist.〔Schlesinger, p 898.〕 With Kennedy joining the race, liberal Democrats thought that the votes among supporters of the anti-war movement would now be split between McCarthy and Kennedy.〔 On March 31, during a televised speech where President Johnson announced a halt to the bombing of Vietnam and called for peace negotiations with the North Vietnamese, he stunned the nation by dropping out of the presidential race.〔Thomas, p. 365.〕 Vice President Hubert Humphrey, long a champion of labor unions and civil rights, entered the race on April 27 with the support of the party "establishment," including the Democratic members of Congress, mayors, governors, and labor unions.〔Schlesinger, p. 923.〕 Humphrey announced his candidacy too late to formally enter most of the primaries, although he was a write-in candidate in some of the contests, but he did have the support of the president and many Democratic insiders, which gave him a better chance at gaining convention delegates in the non-primary states.〔Solberg, p. 327–28.〕 In contrast, Kennedy, like his brother before him, planned to win the nomination through popular support in the primaries. Because Democratic party leaders would influence delegate selection and convention votes, Kennedy’s strategy was to influence the decision-makers with crucial wins in the primary elections as it did in 1960, when John F. Kennedy beat Hubert Humphrey in the West Virginia democratic primary.〔 Kennedy delivered his first campaign speech on March 18 at Kansas State University, where he had previously agreed to give a lecture honoring former Kansas governor and Republican Alfred Landon.〔 At Kansas State, Kennedy drew a "record-setting crowd of 14,500 students" for his Landon Lecture, who heard him apologize as he attacked President Johnson’s Vietnam policy. “I was involved in many of the early decisions on Vietnam, decisions which helped set us on our present path.”〔 He went on to acknowledge, “But past error is not excuse for its own perpetration.”〔 Later that day at the University of Kansas, where an audience of 19,000 was among the largest in the university’s history, Kennedy remarked, “I don’t think that we have to shoot each other, to beat each other, to curse each other and criticize each other, I think that we can do better in this country. And that is why I run for President of the United States.”〔〔Kennedy, Robert F., ("Remarks at the University of Kansas" ) (speech, Lawrence, KS, 1968-3-18), John F. Kennedy Library. Retrieved May 18, 2012.〕 From Kansas, Kennedy went on to campaign in the Democratic primaries in Indiana, Washington, D.C., Nebraska, Oregon, South Dakota, and California.〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Robert F. Kennedy presidential campaign, 1968」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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