IntroductionWe may never know what actually happened to John F. Kennedy. Since his assassination there have been numerous conspiracy theories published, laying blame from the C.I.A. to organized crime. The majority of which have spent countless hours collecting data and researching, although none are more than speculation. Official Federal investigations have left more questions than answers. The Warren Commission has concluded that Lee Harvey Oswald was acting alone when he assassinated John F. Kennedy, however they have been criticized for deliberately attempting to suppress or dismiss many of the questionable circumstances surrounding the murder. This paper aims to discuss how Robert F. KennedyÃÂs personal and political ideologies might have contributed to his assassination. Then, the paper will determine the implications of an American leader being assassinated from a psychological or sociological perspective.
Political PerspectiveRobert F. Kennedy was one of the Democratic Party's leading liberal politicians of the 1960s (Newfield, J.,
1969). Due to his personal and political ideologies, Kennedy was viewed with suspicion by many liberals when appointed U.S. Attorney General in 1961 by his brother, President John F. Kennedy (Hilty, J., 1997). By the time of his death in 1968 while running for president, Robert Kennedy may have been the last politician with the ability to forge a coalition among African Americans and other ethnic minorities, white working-class and middle-class Americans, and mainstream liberals (Schlesinger, A. M., 1978).
Robert Kennedy was born on November 20, 1925, in Boston. He enlisted in the U.S. Navy on his 18th birthday in 1943, but never saw action in World War II. After his discharge he graduated from Harvard University and then the University of Virginia Law School (Newfield, J., 1969).
He emerged in the public eye as an aide to Senator Joseph McCarthy's Government Operations committee in 1952. Kennedy did not assist...