RFK, Jr.

The Kennedy name occupies a protected wing of the American psyche. It is immune to ordinary corrosion. Hope, glamour, tragedy, and a certain tragic nobility still cling to it—John’s promise, Robert’s moral urgency, even Ted’s bruised longevity. One imagines the family crest engraved somewhere deep in our civic memory.

And yet, remarkably, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has spent a single year testing whether even that inheritance can be exhausted.

This was not always preordained. Once, Kennedy appeared a plausible if unconventional political figure. But personal and physical challenges diverted his career onto an increasingly eccentric path. His foibles are not the standard vices of powerful men—though he sampled those as well—but a stranger catalogue altogether. Bears. Worms. Public workouts in denim. Each day seems to arrive bearing fresh evidence that gravity no longer applies.

At some point, Donald Trump concluded that this was precisely the man to place atop the Department of Health and Human Services.

Why? One suspects a bargain: Kennedy exits the race, Trump absorbs a tranche of anti-vaccine voters. But Trump is not famous for honoring bargains longer than the applause lasts. So what, precisely, does Kennedy provide?

Is there money in it? Maybe. One never discounts the possibility that public health can be monetized in ways not immediately apparent to the layperson. Is Trump ideologically aligned with Kennedy’s views? Unlikely. Trump believes in only one doctrine, and it bears his name. Which leaves the most plausible explanation: utility.

Kennedy is useful because he is noisy. Because he is disruptive. Because he turns attention away from other enterprises—coins, ballrooms, deportations, settlements, fishing boats, and whatever new bauble is currently being polished for presentation. While the nation debates measles outbreaks and vaccine reversals—phenomena we had largely relegated to history—other business proceeds uninterrupted.

And the damage is real. Altered guidance on hepatitis. Confusion around COVID vaccines. Measles returning like an artifact from a less enlightened century. This is not theatrical harm; it is cumulative, quiet, and entirely avoidable.

What of Trump’s own health care? Like abortion law, it does not apply to him or his circle. They will always find the best doctors, the quiet exemptions, the private corridors. Public policy is for other people.

So perhaps RFK Jr. is not a partner, nor a prophet, nor even a liability. Perhaps he is simply a diversion—an ever-renewing spectacle that occupies the public square while more consequential business is conducted elsewhere.

If so, he is performing his role flawlessly.

And the Kennedy name, for the first time, is not a source of inspiration—but of exhaustion.