RFK JR. Campaign Concepts

June 14th, 2023

By February 2023, I was creating video samples and writing ad scripts for Bobby. He hadn’t yet announced his running but he asked me if I would create some visual concepts and written ideas to work with in the event he may run for President of the United States. Since I had just finished writing and directing the film adaptation for his book a few months earlier, a lot of his life and career were still very fresh in my mind so I had a lot of ideas ruminating to muse on. By the middle of February I delivered five videos and three scripts which highlighted a few key moments in Bobby Kennedy’s exceptional career and unique experiences throughout his life so far.

LETTER TO LIBERALS.

Of the eight variations that I made, one of them was a written ad script which drew on some facts from his book called, Letter to Liberals. He had written that book as a way to converse about some of the hot topics from the pandemic. This was important to Bobby because later, his whole presidential campaign would be based on bridging the divide between the two parties.

FREEDOM OF SPEECH.

As he noted in many of his campaign speeches across the country, when the founding fathers put Freedom of Speech as the First Amendment it was because all of the other rights depend on that right. The right to express and communicate ideas, the right to recall governments to their duties and to their obligations. The fact was that the pandemic gave the government a license to steal away our voices. It silenced its critics and so Bobby was seeking to rectify that.

BRIDGE THE DIVIDE.

One of the great things about Bobby Kennedy’s outspoken presence during the previous years of the pandemic was his stance on vaccine safety. No matter what their political party, all people can agree that there needs to be thorough testing and vigorous safety protocols. My thought was, in order to help bridge that divide between the parties was to emphasize another thing that was central to his career and character. Another idea that no matter what their political party, all people can agree on. This was Bobby’s decades-long environmental advocacy work.

ENVIRONMENTAL ADVOCACY.

I remember I had been walking along a beach in Florida at the time. I wanted to create a video that was different and could stand out among the usual types of campaign ads. I was listening to the waves on the water and feeling the breeze on my skin. That’s when I thought to create a soundscape, a sound design of the landscape in order to illustrate where he was coming from. I wanted it to be visually kind of poetic and quiet and by doing it this way it would stand out as something memorable to audiences. I suppose I took a risk in putting a sort of artistic twist into it but I think it was appropriate. It was easy enough to draw upon his many many speeches. His words paint a picture of purple mountains majesties and vast landscapes.

COMPARISONS TO HIS FATHER AND UNCLE.

Much like his uncle President John Kennedy and his father Robert Kennedy, Bobby is able to speak eloquently from the heart. So I also ran some rough cut comparison videos. Taking from old archival footage and juxtaposing them with Bobby’s speeches and interviews, there was an undeniable resemblance. I found one of the most powerful and heartfelt speeches given by his father when Martin Luther King Jr. died. I had never seen it before. The footage was dimly lit, bad audio, with a shaky hand-held camera, but I thought specifically again how authentic and poetic - not glossy and clean like most campaign ads. I was excited to see that they indeed did end up using this piece in Bobby’s final campaign video along with some other concepts I delivered.

STANDING IN SOLIDARITY.

I also thought of another angle a bit outside the box. It was to utilize an old campaign and make a sort of response to it. I remembered when Obama was running for President for the first time over a decade ago. There was something so magnetizing about his campaign. His ability to inspire and fill his audiences with hope for a future that could unify the people of this country. His slogan was ‘Yes We Can’. So my thought was to play off of that. I loved the idea of saying, ‘We Can Too’. Something along those lines. For me, Bobby was the best real glimmer of hope to bring together the people of this country today. He had been slandered and censored and silenced for almost two decades and it never stopped him from pursuing the truth and standing up against big corporations and institutions. So ‘We Can Too’ meant standing in solidarity with Bobby, that we can also stand up against these big corporations and institutions. This is something both republicans and democrats could get behind.

Bobby Kennedy himself has often gone by the beat of his own drummer, against the grain, and very grassroots in many ways. Just like in history, from Socrates to Galileo to Einstein, those who go against the official narrative are often mocked or vilified before they are exalted and accepted. And so today he is in a position where he can make a difference in the health sector, the most important position in government.

A writer-producer perspective.