RFK Jr.'s delicate political dance

Kennedy isn’t just trying to change the vaccine schedule. He’s trying to change the country.

Kennedy does his best Nixon. (Photo by Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc. via Getty Images)

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. wants to do more than survive in his current role as secretary of Health and Human Services; he wants to permanently change America’s health and science landscape and position himself to run for president in 2028 while doing it. But he is beholden to a host of competing interests, and with every effort he makes to further his agenda, he risks alienating various constituencies capable of derailing his entire project.

This metaphorical tightrope is why so much of what Kennedy does — from his Tylenol-autism announcement to his vaccine policy changes — seems haphazard and schizophrenic, and why his remarks are often blustery and disproportionate to his small-ball policy interventions.

The secretary got to where he is by building a sense of momentum around the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) movement and convincing both Donald Trump and the media that he has a loyal base of independent voters behind him — an assertion that may or may not be true. To get to the White House, Kennedy needs to pull off a sort of Wizard of Oz trick: Keep up the appearance that MAHA is a gathering storm without drenching everyone prematurely and risking collapse.

Many MAHA priorities are theoretically popular with the American people, but some, especially the anti-vaccine ideas, are not. To build political capital rather than just spend it, Kennedy has to make news, satisfy his base, and keep his boss happy, all without endangering his political future.

Thus far, he has done this by acting like a man on a single-minded mission to rid America of chronic disease, a zealot too focused, earnest, and weird to be confused with a regular politician. But Kennedy is a regular politician: ambitious, narcissistic, and canny. He has gotten where he is by playing the crusader, but he’s actually just a guy trying to catch the spotlight without letting its glare expose him too clearly.

For various reasons — the brain worm, the bear, the offhand remarks about kooky health theories — Kennedy does not scan to liberal elites as a serious political threat beyond his attacks on the nation’s public health apparatus. His every word gets fact-checked and debunked, and he’s accused of grifting and being anti-science. But despite the torrent of criticism, his broader ideas and the risk he poses are rarely engaged directly.

This is a mistake. Kennedy isn’t just trying to change the vaccine schedule; he’s trying to change the country.