Sept. 29, 1964 - Robert F. Kennedy said today that he refused to regard the Communist-dominated half of the world as an implacable enemy.
The Democratic Senatorial candidate disputed, in a major campaign speech in Rochester, what he was Senator Barry Goldwater’s view of a world irrevocably split into hostile halves. Similarly, he could not accept Goldwater’s apparent notion that the “free world” was “composed of beggars to be ignored, bullied, or castigated.”
Kennedy rose before dawn in Auburn to start an arduous day of campaigning in a heavily Republican area devoted to his Republican opponent, Senator Kenneth Keating. He seemed to have shed the depression that gripped him yesterday, caused by sorrowful memories evoked by the publication of the Warren Report. He was animated and forceful in delivering routine speeches to big crowds in Auburn, Seneca Falls, and Geneva.
For his first major speech on foreign policy as a Senatorial candidate, Kennedy chose as a backdrop the campus of the University of Rochester. In a fleeting reference to the race riot that shocked Rochester last summer, he said that Americans, while rightly concerned with civil rights and other domestic matters, must be even more concerned about keeping the peace.
“I see the foreign policy of the United States as an opportunity to turn adversaries into friends and ancient allies into modern partners,” he said.
“It is an opportunity to help two billion human beings escape from poverty and misery; and to show that the American concepts of technology and individual dignity and enterprise can work around the world.
“I see the foreign policy of the United States as the highest expression of our national purpose. The United States, throughout its history, has not been static but growing; not sedentary, but active.”
Later, Kennedy sought to answer suspicions that he regarded the Senate election merely as a stepping stone to the Presidency.
“Let’s assume that I want to be President of the United States,” he told students at the University of Rochester. “In the first place, truthfully now, I can’t go any place in 1968. We’ve got President Lyndon Johnson, and I think he’s going to be reelected in 1968.
“Now, we get to 1972. That’s eight years. Assume that I am still using it [the Senate seat] as a power base. I’m going to have to be reelected in six years.
“If I’m reelected — I have done such an outstanding job, and I really want to be President — I’m going to have to do a tremendous job for the State of New York, for the people of New York. Then, if I have done such an outstanding job in eight years that people just demand all over the country that I be a Presidential candidate, I don’t see how New York suffers.”
The route of Kennedy’s motorcade through Rochester was hurriedly changed after the police received a report that a man in a green pickup truck, carrying a rifle with a telescopic sight, had made inquiries as to the streets on which the candidate was to travel.
The man, a housepainter, was identified and questioned later in his home, satisfying the police that he was a deer hunter who had just picked up the weapon from a gunsmith’s where had had the sight repaired in anticipation of the opening of the season.
He said he had asked the question only to avoid possible traffic jams on his way home.
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