What is presidential? This week at the Tribeca Film Festival, a special screening featured part one of four of the Netflix series, Bobby Kennedy for President, marking the 50th anniversary of his 83-day presidential run. Filmmaker Dawn Porter deftly intercut archival footage with key interviews, with John Lewis, for example, William vanden Heuvel, and D. A. Pennebaker in this first segment, focusing particularly on Robert Kennedy’s history with racism, that pernicious American disease that simply does not go away. The film forces a reevaluation of this Kennedy brother, what might have been had he not been murdered and gone on to serve in our government’s highest position, and how the dignity of this man reflects upon the man in that office today.

That of course was the elephant, or should I say, donkey, in the room at the SVA Theater on Wednesday, where a post-screening panel including Bobby’s daughter Kerry Kennedy, William vanden Heuvel, Dawn Porter, and Juan Ramirez, who was a busboy at the Ambassador Hotel, running to Kennedy’s side when he was shot. Vanden Heuvel in particular recounted anecdotes about Kennedy as a force for racial integration and the slow progress toward where we are today.

Of course the trouble with what ifs is, they leave you happy in your fantasy, and then wistful, and sad.

Regina Weinreich

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