As
you'd expect Bobby Kennedy makes quite a few appearances in White's book on 1960.
And its clear that while White might express admiration for Jack Kennedy,
he considers Bobby in a far less flattering light.
Robert
F. Kennedy is mentioned over two dozen times in Making of the President:
1960 and White is very clear about how important Robert was in the echelon
of making his brother President. But he comes across mostly in snapshots during
the primary campaign and even the convention, with little detail as to his
personality or strategy. This is understandable because White is more
interesting in the candidates and not the men (which is who was in
power) at the time.
It
is not until the fall campaign begins in earnest that White discusses Bobby in
detail. (He notes in a footnote that Bobby Kennedy is now attorney general.) He
makes it clear that Bobby was present observing during Stevenson's failed
campaign for the Presidency in 1960. (He may not be aware that Bobby eventually
became convinced of Stevenson's inability to lead and didn't vote for him as
President that year.)
Thus
in 1960 at Hyannisport…he was in no sense a neophyte in national politics.
(Bobby was 34.) Young as he was, he knew as a privileged witness not only the
inner personality of his brother Jack (…whom he reveres) but also the mechanics
of American electioneering.
To
this knowledge he brought, moreover, the force of his singular personality –
one that has baffled all political analysts who seek hidden sensuosities of
theory or belief. For Robert F. Kennedy was, and is, above all, a moralist
whose deepest-held beliefs might find expression in either party – or in the
Y.M.C.A For him all the vulgarities and weaknesses of the American manner – the
crude violence on TV, the physical weakness and seeming softness of American
youth – are personally offensive. It is as a Boston puritan, albeit of the
Catholic faith, that Robert Kennedy should be seen.
The
question that future readers must ask, given the prurient nature of his older
brother was how Bobby managed to square that discrepancy as a character flaw –
or whether he, like so many millions afterward, chose to not consider it.
As
a Puritan, Robert F. Kennedy believes that men should work hard, go to bed
early, rise early strive to the extent of their ability and be penalized
ruthlessly when they fail in their relationships. It is his opinion that men
play to win – whether in touch football or politics – with no quarter given
friend or foe…His relentless drive was to make him many enemies and expose him
to much sophisticated analysis by politicians and press alike. But essentially,
he is a simple man moved by great emotions…"
Reading
this it's impossible not to look at Bobby's determination to win at all cost
and not see the model that would be followed by so many conservative political
agents, whether it be Nixon himself or Lee Atwater or Karl Rove decades later.
That
is by far the clearest portrait of Robert F. Kennedy we get during the 1960
campaign. White seems willing to allow it because he managed to get his brother
the White House but as with his brother he withholds further opinion on him at
the end of the book.
This
brings us to 1964. As you'd expect White opens the book with a thirty page
bravura sequence in which he describes the moment he learned of President
Kennedy's death, the horror it struck over the nation and the memorial sequence
that followed. (The chapter is titled 'Of Death and Unreason') Then he
discusses very briefly the Kennedy Presidency and what effect it had.
And
then he does something that his readers and so many generations have never been
able to do, though it is by necessity something he must as he is about to cover
the 1964 election. He leaves the Kennedy administration, all it accomplished
and all it might have to the vanguard of history and turns to everything that
followed in the year that passed, starting with LBJ's ascension to power and
then the Republican civil war that was unfolding between Rockefeller and
Goldwater. (This will be dealt with in future articles.) And even though he's still part of the
administration and already part of the national psyche Bobby Kennedy basically
disappears from the narrative for the next two hundred pages.
It's
only until he gets to the Democratic Convention that he mentions the Kennedys
at all and that's in transition between Kennedy and Johnson's administration.
He speaks about the Kennedy White House as almost a fourth branch of government
when he talks about their court, making it seem as if everyone of those
associated, whether they were Sorensen or O'Brien or Salinger, were speaking
for the White House and that they were being open about it. White is aware of
how they went to woo them and he makes it clear:
To
some on the outside, there was something almost too precious about the court of
the Kennedys – too gay, too glamorous, too elegant. Outsiders sneered at the
seminars of the Hickory Hill group, where several earnest Cabinet members
gathered to discuss great thoughts and heard great thinkers. Outsiders
denounced as Babylonian the parties and swimming pool gaieties that the press
reported. (He then lists in a footnote Robert F. Kennedy's swimming pool party
described as an orgy in which drunken members of the American government one by
one tossed themselves fully clad into a swimming pool.)
White
then acknowledges his presence. It's in this section that his worship of the Kennedys becomes the clearest
and one wonders if he ever realized just how much the Kennedys were doing
everything in their power to woo the press and make them their friends so that
no one would question what is now the clearly seedy underbelly of that
administration. He clearly remembers
this as a delightful time and never questions whether it affected his
objectivity.
It's
true he has issues with Johnson's White House in comparison to JFK's and he
does have a look at LBJ's frequently sulky manner. But he remains objective and
he's clearly impressed as to how Johnson handled the transition with grace and
how he managed those months, coming up with the idea of the Great Society. And
its only on page 271 that he gets to the issue that no doubt most readers
wanted to know about: "the attitude of Lyndon Johnson to the Kennedy
family as represented by its leader, the Attorney General, Robert F.
Kennedy."
White
exercises as much discretion as humanly possible to try and mitigate the feud
that was as much to define 1960s politics as anything else that happened during
that decade. And its when he gets to Bobby that we hear it:
"For
(Robert Kenendy) Lundon Johnson was all the yesterdays; for him Lyndon Johnson
was his father's generation. And when Lyndon Johnson became President, all the
yesterdays were restored.
'There
are millions of people all across this country who feel as Robert F. Kennedy
does; for them the name of Kennedy is magic, as was the name Stuart under the
Hanover reign of the Georges; and whenever old or young devotants of the
Kennedy loyalty gather, the Bonny Prince Charlie of the faith is Robert F.
Kennedy. Like the Jacobites, they await the Restoration."
He
mentions the Kennedy for Vice President boom and the New Hampshire primary
trying to write him in and its clear that White considers it unseemly. He
acknowledges that the Kennedy loyalists are 'a permanent force or element in
the politics of America. Robert F. Kennedy would not mobilize them – nor
would he repudiate them."
White
admits in a footnote LBJ never took him into his confidence during his year in
the press corps to that point but he's dead on in his assessment:
It
was not comfortable to be considered a usurper. A President must be President
in his own right… To attach a Kennedy name to his own name would mean forever
sharing the title of the Presidency with a ghost of the past….Furthermore, the
press unendingly murmured with nostalgic comparisons of Johnson's
administration and the Kennedy administration. If Johnson were to prove himself
in a campaign for the Presidency, he must prove it alone."
All
but the most devoted pro-Kennedy supporters – who must be legion even now –
would find it very difficult to argue with this logic. In the decision to try
and keep Bobby from being part of the ticket LBJ goes to lengths that might be
considered petty – keeping Bobby out of a film paying tribute to Kennedy – but
could not be dismissed as a reality. Bobby Kennedy might not want to be Lyndon
Johnson's Vice President but he could have said so in public at any time, by
disparaging a draft. That he refused to make any public statements on that fact
saying a flat no had to be as clear to Johnson as the fact he wasn't actively
campaigning.
White
clearly thinks LBJ's final approach – to eliminate from consideration any
member of his cabinet as Vice President – was incredibly heavy handed. But as
has been proven in politics time and again, some times you have to hit people
over the head to get a message across. I have no doubt the version Johnson and
Kennedy tell about the White House meeting in this book is almost entirely fitted
for public consumption and that in private each told a version to make
themselves the hero. And I certainly
don't believe Bobby said: " I could have helped you, Mr. President,"
with any humor at all the way White reports it.
I
quoted George W. Bush's statement about Obama: "I want him to
succeed." In my wildest imagination I don't truly think Bobby Kennedy
wanted LBJ to succeed. He had been opposed to him being on the ticket in the
first place; the fact that he had been as close to assistant President during
his brother's term meant he had done everything to keep Johnson as far away
from the decision making process as possible. (There was discussion that Bobby
was trying to get his brother to remove Johnson from the ticket in 1964 as much
as anything.) And as we know all too well the only people that the Kennedys
ever thought would make good Presidents were Kennedys themselves.
White
never weighs in on the idea during 1964 whether he believes Robert F. Kennedy
should be President in the future; speculation was never part of his writing. He
does mention how problematic the idea was to many when he discusses the
Republicans rumbling in the months before JFK was killed.
With
the clash between Rockefeller and Goldwater looming as the civil war it would
become many Republicans in the so-called Eastern Establishment turned to their
hero, former President Eisenhower, hoping for a candidate they could throw
their weight behind. One of his choices is his own brother Milton and in
October of 1963 White says colleagues were discreetly exploring support. But to
the New York group was out and there is one big reason:
"It
would have destroyed the brother issue," said one. "How could we
hammer Jack and Bobby Kennedy if Ike was running his brother for the
Presidency?"
This
is as close as White comes to saying that Bobby might have been a liability to
his brother's run for reelection had he lived. And future events have shown
this play out in 21st century politics at the highest level (though
more for spouses and children then siblings).
White
leaves Bobby Kennedy as he is at the end of 1964: Senator Elect of New York.
Under normal circumstances White would not have dealt with him until 1972 at
the earliest when Johnson would have been gone from the White House one way or
the other. Given the nature of his landslide victory it would have been a
natural response.
History
– led by Johnson's actions aided by members of Kennedy's own cabinet – had other plans.
The
1968 volume has the greatest evidence of White's bias towards the Kennedy
family. The book opens with a dedication to both JFK and the recently
assassinated Robert, followed with a
Bible passage. The chapter devoted to Bobby's entire campaign is bears
the subtitle 'requiescat in pacem', or rest in peace and Latin. And he compares
the two assassinated leader to the two assassinated Roman emperors who were
also brothers 'the Gracchi', which he says with accuracy 'identified them with
a cause that outlived their time in the forum.'
It
is a tribute to the horrible tragedy and relationship he had with Robert
Kennedy that this chapter is not a love letter to the doomed cause the way that
Jules Witcover's 85 Days is (White footnotes it as a superb history of
the campaign in 1968) White remains remarkably clear-eyed and objective
in the flaws of the man he is profiling, both when it comes to the errors his
campaign made, the uphill fight he faced for the Democratic nomination after
the California primary and refuses to say with certainty that if Bobby had been
the nominee he could have won the Presidency afterward. With a little more
distance (understandably hard to come by after that traumatic year) he might
have been able to make connections from his earlier books that for all Bobby's
behavior on the campaign trail, he really hadn't changed that much since they
first met in 1960.
He
is very aware of Bobby's flaws, the power drive which he admits was 'sinister'
to as many as it was the thing that 'drew their loyalty'. Indeed he spells it
out
"It
was not right, felt such millions, that any man should inherit the leadership
by patrimony, family wealth or descended prestige. Had he not been the son of
Joseph P. Kennedy, the brother of John F. Kennedy, what then would Robert F.
Kennedy have been?...Was a Kennedy dynasty, a single family, to claim by family
right the prize all other men in American history had been required to struggle
for?
That
is a question that White and his predecessors were never forced to answer due
to the actions of Sirhan Sirhan. Considering America's attitude towards
political dynasties now it's still one we haven't fully dealt with.
White
takes us through Bobby's thinking during 1966 and 1967 where as much as he
loathes Lyndon Johnson, he doesn't want to destroy the Democratic Party by
running in a primary. I find it telling that his thinking was complicated when
Eugene McCarthy entered the race. Kennedy says that McCarthy wouldn't make a
good President, and while that's no doubt true one can't help but be reminded
how much of this was due to the fact that McCarthy had never kissed the ring of
the Kennedy dynasty. Bobby had to
remember that McCarthy had given the speech at the 1960 convention to nominate
Adlai Stevenson, the most prominent attempt to disrupt the JFK's nomination.
Combined with his dislike for Stevenson as early as 1956 – and the fact that
McCarthy had been considered for the Vice Presidency in 1964 when Bobby had
been eliminated – it would have been understandable had there been personal
animosity.
The
most generous interpretation of Kennedy's decision to run after McCarthy's
surprise victory in New Hampshire – when he finally entered the race – is that
Bobby was afraid of four more years of turmoil.
There's another possibility that the ruthless politician that Bobby was
has to have contemplated. If LBJ left the race but someone else – McCarthy or
Humphrey – got the nomination and
somehow managed to win, then Bobby's political prospects would be dimmed
until at least 1976. If he did absolutely nothing, he would be the frontrunner
for the Democratic nomination in 1972. In that case it was in his interest for
LBJ to earn the nomination and whatever the results, he'd be the frontrunner
going forward. But if by some chance another Democrat claimed the prize, then
Bobby would have to wait until 1976. And by that point whatever luster still
held from his brother's legacy would be completely gone and his name would no
longer have the same power it once did.
For
Bobby Kennedy was ruthless, White doesn't back away from this at any point. And
while he might have the Kennedy name, being the junior senator from New York
didn't have any real power in Congress. For a man who had essentially been
assistant President for three years he had to have chafed during this period.
So
the fact that he chose to run knowing as White puts it "no course to power
that he could take would fail to divide the Party in bloody bitterness, leaving
it shattered when he came to face the Republicans in the general election' very
much speaks to a man who knows that his actions will do immense harm to his
party and who nevertheless makes the decision to do so anyway." And White
makes it clear that the long process to the announcement proceeded almost like
bedroom farce – and that the next ten days were a disaster because "No
preparations had been made for a national campaign'. He makes it clear the
events in March were horrible publicity with him on the campaign trail and his
bitterness towards Johnson – who in Los Angeles he calls 'a man calling upon
the darkest impulses of the American spirit', makes him look on TV 'hysterical,
high-pitched, almost demonic, frightening… the ruthless and vindictive Bobby
Kennedy.
He
acknowledges that Bobby doesn't find his theme until the Indiana primary where
he finally manages to become on the campaign trail the man that his followers
remember, mocking his own ruthless nature, joking about how the fact he has ten
kids who drink milk do much for the farmer, becoming an idol to those who see
him. This comes with the triumph in the Indiana primary.
And
its there that White makes it very clear "never did any Kennedy face a
more delicate, difficult or uphill battle'. First he had to campaign against
his rivals McCarthy and Humphrey so that he could beat them in the primaries
but still get their support in the general. Then there was the strategy of
earning delegates and White is very clear that even the most optimistic
campaign could see Bobby getting more then 800 of the 1312 delegates he needed
to earn the nomination. He had to manage a clean sweep of the primaries in
order to get bargaining power at the convention. But:
"…the
use of that bargaining power depended on another set of ifs: if the war
continued or grew in unpopularity; if Humphrey could not disassociate himself
from the war; if McCarthy's resentment could be mollified after his defeat, if
any substantial number of state leaders stayed uncommitted on the first ballot
– then if Humphrey could be stopped on the first ballot, the McCarthy votes
must crumble and go to Kennedy on the second ballot…
White
acknowledges everything had to go right. And he reckons without certain
factors. The first played out in real time; McCarthy's hatred of Bobby
continued after Kennedy was assassinated. And he refused to organize and try
and put up a front leading George McGovern to take up the Kennedy cause. After
the convention McCarthy (as Walter Mondale would report in his biography years
later) would refuse to endorse Humphrey even though he knew it was the right
thing to do. If McCarthy was that strident after Kennedy's assassination, there
is no reason to believe he would have done the same if Bobby had lived and
gotten the nomination.
The
bigger problem was one that the Kennedy campaign would acknowledge themselves:
by the time of the California primary Humphrey had already gotten enough
delegates to lock up the nomination. There would likely have been a fight in
Chicago but Kennedy would have been on the losing side. And that's before you
consider a possibility White acknowledges happened at the time: that at the
Chicago convention LBJ was publicly reconsidering his renunciation.
White
only refers to it a footnote but now we know that Johnson had been considering
it ever since the primaries ended. At some point he called Ralph Yarborough
(the Senator from Texas in charge of that state's delegation) and asked what
would happen if he were to announce his candidacy. Yarborough said that he
might get 1000 delegates right then. However when he called Richard Daley to
ask if he should make an appearance at the convention, the Mayor told him if he
did , his personal safety could not be guaranteed.
I
truly believe that if Bobby was ever in a position to get the nomination after
the primaries Lyndon would have willingly risked his life to make sure that
Kennedy, a man he despised just as much Bobby hated him, didn't get the
nomination for President. And we already know that when Humphrey did get the
nomination Johnson made very little effort to get him the Presidency and that's
before you consider he crippled any chance the Democratic Party had to have a
peace platform at the convention. It's already known he favored Nixon because
he was closer to a continuation in Vietnam than Humphrey, there's absolutely no
reason to assume he wouldn't have done the same even if Kennedy had gotten the
nomination.
Even
without knowing any of these details White still isn't willing to argue that
Kennedy might have been able to win the Presidency had he gotten the
nomination. His main logic, oddly enough, is looking at the Republican side. If
a Kennedy candidacy would have emerged from Chicago
"would not the Republicans have foreseen that
possibility – and in Miami, might they have chosen a Rockefeller or a Reagan
over Nixon? And 'if' Robert Kennedy had emerged triumphant from Chicago, could
he have beaten a Rockefeller, a Reagan or a Nixon?"
White
allows that he thinks Kennedy would have come away from Chicago the winner
which is speculative at best. But not even he is willing to engage in political
fanfiction. "He might have healed
his party," is the most he will say.
Might.
White's
own opinion on whether these kind of internecine battles are not clear in 1968.
But by the time of his final book he will have reached a different conclusion –
and that will involve the final Kennedy brother, who will be dealt with in the
last article in this part of my writing on White.
