Bobby Kennedy Jr has written a book which castigates George Bush for alleged 'crimes against nature'. The charge sheet is a long one, he tells Sarah Paris
Robert Francis Kennedy Jr claims not to be a great public speaker. But during his hour-long, non-stop, voice-crackingly passionate tirade against the Bush administration's environmental policies, the audience at the Commonwealth Club in Palo Alto, California, was drinking in every word.
Kennedy shares the raw-boned looks of his late father, Senator Robert F Kennedy, who was assassinated after the California primary election in June 1968. Driven by the urgency of his mission, RFK Jr's face and hands are animated, his smile tense. Only once during the evening did he seem at ease: when he walked off stage to embrace an old family friend, Paul "Red" Fay, his uncle John F Kennedy's best navy buddy and undersecretary of the navy in the JFK administration.
During our subsequent interview, Kennedy recalls travelling all over Europe as a little boy with his uncle and father, seeing crowds of people "who loved our country. They named their streets after our presidents." Today, he says, "we're the most despised nation on Earth. Five billion people hate us." And for this, he blames Bush.
"He squandered our public lands, our treasury, and the goodwill America once had around the world." Robert F Kennedy Jr is a law professor, a prosecutor on behalf of several environmental organisations and arguably America's most prominent environmental attorney. He has just published an explosive book, Crimes Against Nature, that accuses Bush and his corporate allies of "plundering the country and hijacking our democracy".
The core message of Crimes Against Nature is that a few large corporations have succeeded in taking total control of the US government. As a result, Kennedy argues, the Bush administration has launched over 300 major rollbacks of US environmental laws.
"If the laws that are currently proposed by the administration are actually passed, we will effectively have no significant federal environmental law left in our country."
While his book and publicity tour are gaining momentum, the right-wing opposition has mounted a counter-attack. On the day of our interview, the National Center for Policy Analysis (NCPA) published a press release entitled "Kennedy Pollutes the Truth About Bush Environmental Record". The NCPA claims to be an "an internationally known non-profit, non-partisan research institute", but is funded by right-wing foundations and by energy companies such as Exxon.
The role of such anonymous organisations and think tanks as mouthpieces for the right wing is minutely documented in Kennedy's book. These groups and their manoeuvring, he alleges, have kept most Americans ignorant of what has really been going on for the last decades.
"The Republican Party has waged war on American farmers for 50 years. Yet, most farmers still vote Republican," he says with disgust. The anti-environmental campaigns led by corporate lobbyists are extremely sophisticated. Kennedy estimates that half the people in the US don't believe that global warming exists, thanks to the concerted efforts of industry and the right wing of the Republican party.
"You have to remember that most Americans still don't believe in evolution theory", he laments. Kennedy is able to recite whole passages of his book off the top of his head and is not easily interrupted.
"Listen," he insists, "Tom DeLay, who's the chief of Congress, says that he entered Congress in order to promote a Biblical world view. He believes that the pesticide DDT is 'safe as aspirin'. These are radical ideologues. And they have put our democracy in jeopardy."
Of George W Bush's challenger in November's presidential election, Kennedy believes John Kerry must change tactics to make an impact. "John Kerry is fighting by the Marquis of Queensberry rules. George Bush has no rules, he's a street fighter. Americans at this point have been so frightened by the terrorist threat that they actually want a street fighter." To win the election, he says, Kerry needs to be much more aggressive.
Kennedy praised Kerry's record as an environmentalist (see panel) in his speech at the Democratic Convention this year. Yet Kerry's promotion of so-called "clean coal" is controversial among environmentalists. In his book, Kennedy devotes a whole chapter to the air-polluting coal industry. What did he think of Kerry's courting of the coal industry with the promise of $10 billion in subsidies?
"We have more coal than any country on Earth, enough to supply all of our energy needs for the next two or three hundred years. If we are serious about weaning ourselves from mid-Eastern oil, we have to figure out ways to mine and to burn coal that will not destroy our other values as a country," he says.
He may be a progressive activist, but Kennedy is also a member of a family that understands the rough and tumble of electioneering. Doesn't Kerry also need those West Virginia coal-mining votes to win the election? "Of course," he admits dryly.
Politics is an ever-changing playing field. The Irish-American vote that his family could once count on "is divided", Kennedy says regretfully. "The Irish vote used to be solidly Democrat, but a lot of Irish have joined the ranks of the upper class, and many of those tend to vote Republican nowadays." He finds it incomprehensible that anybody would vote for George W Bush.
"If he was a CEO of a company, he would be fired. He's taken a $5 trillion surplus and turned it into a $5 trillion deficit, a $10 trillion shift in wealth. He has squandered the moral authority that America once wielded in the world. The arrogance of this president is unprecedented in our history. The catastrophe that he has caused in our nation really calls for his impeachment. And yet, there's a chance he may even be re-elected. It's incomprehensible," he repeats in a faltering voice.
His decision not to run for elected office has freed Kennedy to make statements and arguments that would ruin a democratic politician. He frequently compares the current political situation in the US to the rise of fascism in Europe in the 1930s. But is he comparing Bush to Hitler or Mussolini?
"No, I would never compare Bush to those diabolical leaders. But listen: Germany was a democratic country. It was the most educated country in the world. And it's arrogant for us to believe that it could happen there and it can't happen here."
A Catholic with six children, Kennedy believes that his faith and the support of his family are what keep him going. His hero is St Francis, the saint who leant him his middle name. Does he see himself more as a dragon-slaying St George, though; battling forces of evil?
"I have to be able to look at myself in the mirror every morning and say that I tried as hard as I could to leave a world for my children that gives them the same opportunities for dignity and enrichment and good health, as the world that my parents gave me."
What if Bush should prevail on election day, as polls suggest he might? "We don't have power over the results", he admits. "I think that you just have to have faith that God is going to do right over the long term." He pauses, then adds: "You have to be willing to die with your boots on."