Oct. 2, 1964 - Brisk trading in the boo market enlivened a noonday rally for Robert F. Kennedy on Wall Street today.
“Boo, Boo!” called a noisy group bearing Goldwater placards.
“Boo to you, too,” snapped the Democratic Senatorial candidate. His Irish up, Kennedy pointed irately at the young men clustered below him and added, “All you can do is boo.”
Speaking from the steps of the Federal Hall National Memorial, Kennedy was occasionally drowned out by a mixed chorus of “We Want Bobby” and “We Want Barry.”
Volume dipped before a clear trend was established, but at the end of the session it appeared that Kennedy’s blue-chip issue — Restraint in the Atomic Age — had turned the tide.
To needling questions about the Bay of Pigs, South Vietnam, and the Berlin Wall, Kennedy said that perhaps the Kennedy-Johnson Administration had not handled everything perfectly, but he recalled that the Soviet Union withdrew its missiles from Cuba when President Kennedy confronted Premier Khrushchev with the U.S. fleet.
“What does Barry Goldwater intend to do about Cuba, drop a bomb on it? Make it disappear?” he asked his hecklers.
From beneath a big black umbrella decked with Goldwater signs, a voice insisted: “What about Vietnam?”
“You with the umbrella, you’d get wet in Vietnam,” taunted Kennedy.
He told the crowd that intemperate use of power could lead to an atomic war that might cost the U.S. 100 million lives in 24 hours.
“Barry Goldwater talks about using ‘conventional’ atomic weapons,” he said. “Is he going to sign up Gen. Edwin Walker and send him over as commander in the field? Is he going to turn over atomic weapons to Gen. Walker? Do you want that?”
“No!” thundered the crowd. The Goldwaterites, muted temporarily, brandished placards that read “Down With Socialism,” “Soft on Reds,” and “We Are Not a Stepping Stone to the White House.”
Later, after a rally in Greenwich Village, Kennedy received the inevitable pizza. He promptly displayed a lack of familiarity with Italian food by announcing that he didn’t have a fork.
“You don’t need a fork,” someone called out helpfully.
Support this project at patreon.com/realtime1960s
Comments