Thurston Clarke’s book
is as much an homage to the particular courage and grace of Robert F. Kennedy as it is a very granular history of the period. Clarke does splendidly on both fronts. His attempts at balance are limited to reminding the reader that RFK had plenty of enemies, and that there have been many other books published which question everything from his real impact on history to his character. No matter. What emerges is book as heartbreaking and difficult to read as it is wonderful.
The book is hard to read because, of course, we know how it ends. While the “what if’s” of an RFK presidency are now part of American history’s procedural memory, this book takes us down those paths one more time. What if, for example RFK would have exited through the front of the hotel, as he usually inisted; what if we actually were out of Vietnam by 1970, Watergate had never happened, and the tone of American politics had headed off in an altogether different direction with Kennedy’s vacation of the Presidency in 1976? Forty years after the terrible fact, the skein of liberal grief unspools without a discernible end.
What’s new here in the difficult-to-read department is the candidate’s preternatural consciousness that there were “guns between him and the White House.” Every time he hears a car backfire or a balloon pop, he begins shaking uncontrollably. Everyone around him–his staff, his entourage, even the press corps–becomes obsessed with the incompatible ideas of Kennedy’s immediate safety and the likely course of events.
*****
Clarke summarizes much of what is good and noble about Kennedy’s 82-day campaign in the introduction:
“During his campaign for the Democratic nomination, Kennnedy told Americans that they were individually responsible for what their government had done in their name in Vitnam and for what it had failed to do at home for minorities and the poor. He said they could not acquit themselves of this responsibility simply by voting for a new president and new policies. Instead, they would have to participate in the healing process.
“…he understood that following a crude and divisive campagin with a high-minded presidency would be difficult, and healing a mortally wounded nation after running an immoral campaign would be impossible. Because he understood this, his campaign is a template for how a cadidate should run for the White House in a time of moral crisis.”
I’ve written a little already wrt the relevance of RFK’s 3-month campaign to our current political setup.
http://insomniactive.wordpress.com/2008/07/05/a-false-choice-on-obama-strategy/
The lump in my throat comes from Kennedy’s incessant insistence on sacrifice and accountability, not class-by-class, but for the body politic as a whole. Jeff Greenfield sums up the RFK vibe nicely:
….former Kennedy speechwriter Jeff Greefield summarized RFK’s plitical philosophy as “Take your foot off the other guy’s neck!” He recalled that whenever Kennedy told an audience the opposite of what it presumably wanted to hear, “you could almost hear people thinking and changing their minds. ” And when Greenfield said this, one could almost hear people in the conference room asking themselves what politician in his right mind would do that now.”
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This book inspired me greatly, but it educated me more. I had always thought about RFK’s 1968 campaign as an extension of his slain brother. In fact, his campaign focused on two issues-civil rights and poverty–which played almost no part in JFK’s 1960 campaign for President. RFK’s agenda is ironically more similar to the hated LBJ’s. But it’s no matter. Bobby Kennedy adopted “people with problems” on a grand and risky scale, with a fervor that LBJ could never match, and with a level of compassion that his brother would never have attempted.
Also recommended:
Ray Boomhower’s “Robert F. Kennedy and the 1968 Indiana Primary”
Not of Clarke’s quality in terms of writing, but makes up for it in focus and specificity.
August 3, 2008 at 5:37 am |
It’s amazing