America's Reluctant Prince

by Steven M. Gillon

  “I can too!” he replied.

  * * *

  —

  Mrs. Kennedy was resolute in her efforts to ensure that the children remembered their father, filling John’s bedroom with mementos of JFK. On one occasion, Jackie told Robert McNamara, the secretary of defense under both her husband and now President Johnson, that she believed the ratification of the 1963 Nuclear Test Ban Treaty between the United States, the Soviet Union, and the United Kingdom (and eventually more than 120 other countries) marked her husband’s greatest accomplishment. McNamara proceeded to give her one of the pens that JFK had used to sign the landmark treaty, which banned all atmospheric testing of nuclear weapons. She had the pen framed and, along with a photo of JFK signing the document, hung it proudly in John’s room.

  During summers in Hyannis Port, John spent considerable time with his uncle Teddy, who’d handily won reelection to the US Senate in 1964. At the time of his easy victory, the youngest Kennedy brother was still convalescing in a Boston hospital from injuries sustained in a near-fatal plane crash in June. The pilot and one of Ted’s aides were killed in the crash of the small plane while on the way from Washington to Massachusetts. He suffered a collapsed lung, two broken ribs, and three fractured vertebrae. He spent five months in the hospital.

  Teddy took John out to Nantucket Sound aboard Jack’s sailboat. A master storyteller, Teddy regaled John with tales, most of them true, about his father. Over time Teddy would become the one constant father figure in John’s life, and they would be bound by deep bonds of affection and respect. Teddy outlived all the others, including, tragically, John himself.

  In the immediate aftermath, however, Robert F. Kennedy filled the gap left by JFK’s death. With Joseph P. Kennedy crippled from the stroke and Jack dead, Bobby stepped comfortably into the role of family patriarch. On August 22, 1964, RFK resigned as US attorney general and the following month announced his candidacy for the US Senate seat from New York. His victory in November allowed him to spend more time in the city with Jackie and the kids. He tried to have dinner with them at least once a week. Whenever he showed up at the front door, John and Caroline would race to embrace him. “Bobby would toss John into the air and catch him, then get down on the floor to play,” McKeon observed. They both worshiped him. If they ever did something wrong, Mrs. Kennedy would threaten to tell Bobby, which, McKeon noted, was “like telling the kids Santa Claus was going to find out.”

  His brother’s assassination radically altered the trajectory of RFK’s life. He suffered for years and seemed, according to an aide, to be in constant emotional pain, “almost as if he was on the rack, or as if he had a toothache or . . . a heart attack.” Coming to terms with his own pain, however, made him more sympathetic to the suffering of others. Bobby developed a visceral connection to the poor, whether it be Chicano farm workers in California, Native Americans on reservations in Oklahoma, or urban blacks in Harlem, New York. The journalist Murray Kempton claimed boldly that RFK became “our first politician for the pariahs, our great national outsider, our lonely reproach, the natural standard held out to all rebels.”

  Like many Americans, he agonized over the ongoing Vietnam War. JFK had sent military advisors to support the corrupt and failing South Vietnamese government. In 1965 LBJ expanded the conflict by committing ground troops to prevent a Communist takeover. As the war dragged on and the death toll rose, Americans grew weary of the conflict. But Johnson continued to expand US involvement, sending more and more troops even as he spoke about peace. By the summer of 1967, wrote Time, “a profound malaise overcame the American public.” In August Johnson sent forty-five thousand more troops to Vietnam, bringing the number of troops up to five hundred thousand, and asked for higher taxes to finance the war. The horrors of this overseas debacle flashed into the homes of most Americans on evening newscasts, accompanied by disturbing images of racial violence in thirty of the nation’s cities. In one week alone in August, forty-five people were killed, thousands were injured, and property damage from fires and riots ran into billions of dollars. Then, in October, the antiwar movement staged a march on the Pentagon. One hundred thousand angry students converged on the Pentagon, aiming to shut down “the American military machine” in one act of civil disobedience. By October 1967, only 31 percent of the country approved of Johnson’s handling of the war.

  The war represented a complicated issue for RFK, as his brother’s administration had publicly supported the South Vietnamese and had sent advisors and military aides to prop up their government. By 1967, Senator Kennedy had become a fierce critic of the war, yet he offered no realistic plan for ending US involvement. Antiwar liberals pushed him to challenge LBJ for the Democratic nomination, but Kennedy resisted, believing he had a better chance of winning in 1972. RFK’s real passion lay in giving voice to those who had been left behind by American prosperity, and he feared that the millions of dollars spent on tanks and bombs could be spent more wisely at home providing poor children with better schools.

  Robert discussed these issues with John and Caroline, explaining to them the need to get involved in public life. He did not want them to grow up in a privileged bubble. As he tucked them into bed, he would share stories about the plight of poor people in America, reminding them that children their age were living in horrid conditions only a few miles away in the ghettos of New York.

  John once told me a story that revealed both RFK’s intensity and how he planned to instill in John an unwavering sense of public service. One Christmas John received an Easy-Bake Oven. Introduced in 1963, these toy ovens used the heat from two ordinary lightbulbs to bake actual mini desserts. One evening Robert came into his room and saw John playing with it. RFK sat down next to his nephew and asked, “John, what do you want to be when you grow up?”

  “A chef.” Apparently that was the wrong answer. John remembered his uncle grabbing him gently by the shoulders and lecturing him about his responsibilities to serve those who were less fortunate. “You’re a Kennedy,” Robert insisted sternly. “You can’t just be a chef. You have been given special privileges, and you have a responsibility to help other people.”

  As RFK became more outspoken in his criticism of Vietnam, his already fraught relationship with LBJ turned decidedly worse. The two men were a study in contrasts. The president, seventeen years older and six inches taller, seemed to be a natural politician: an expansive, back-slapping, practical deal maker, always willing to bend facts to serve a larger purpose. Meanwhile, RFK was an introvert who loved politics but disliked politicians. Johnson, he told friends, “lies all the time.” Kennedy viewed the Texan as embodying all the qualities of the old-school politics that his brother had come to Washington to abolish. Johnson, who resented RFK’s sense of privilege, dismissed him as a “snot-nosed little son of a bitch.”

  Jackie found herself caught between them. Although she distrusted Johnson and had become a bitter critic of the Vietnam War, she appreciated his kind gestures toward John and Caroline. LBJ never forgot their birthdays, and he and his wife, Lady Bird Johnson, sent cards every year. “Being four years old is a mighty important event in a young man’s life,” LBJ wrote in 1964. “All the Johnsons send you their love and their friendship.” Mrs. Kennedy always wrote back to thank the president for his consistent messages. “You are a marvelous child psychologist,” she responded in 1966, “saying just the right thing to a boy and a girl.” She told him that John could “quote his letter by heart.”

  Letters to John and Caroline, however, were not enough to keep Jackie loyal to the president, and she joined others in urging Robert to challenge Johnson in the upcoming 1968 Democratic primaries. But he resisted, even after January 31, when Communist North Vietnamese troops launched a dramatic offensive during the Lunar New Year, called Tet in Vietnamese. While RFK sat on the sidelines, Minnesota senator Eugene McCarthy jumped into the race as an explicitly antiwar candidate and scored a surprising victory in the March 12 New
Hampshire primary. Four days later, with Jackie’s strong encouragement, RFK announced his candidacy in the same Senate caucus room where JFK had made his announcement eight years earlier.

  While campaigning for president, RFK visited my working-class neighborhood in Darby. Word had spread that he would be driving down Main Street. There was so much excitement that you would have thought a famous Hollywood film star was coming to town. Many neighbors and family members waited alongside the road for his car to pass. Kennedy finally arrived in the backseat of a convertible, reaching out to the outstretched hands of his admirers. My aunt managed to touch him, and I remember her saying that she would never wash her hand again. Kennedy’s car ran over the foot of another neighbor, and while such a misfortune would usually result in a lawsuit, the woman was simply thrilled that his car had touched her.

  Millions of Americans viewed Robert as the natural heir to his brother’s legacy and the antidote to all the strife and violence that followed JFK’s death. It felt impossible to hide from all the turmoil in the late sixties, especially since it was broadcast every evening on the news.

  It’s unclear what John made of the confusing images he saw flashed on television and in the headlines: race riots, military body counts, student protests. The people who surrounded him also sent conflicting signals. He had always been told that his father was a great leader who had set the nation on a new course, but he was also learning that the nation’s social fabric was unraveling, perhaps because LBJ had not followed his father’s policies.

  He no doubt would have sensed his mother’s ambivalent feelings about RFK’s running for president. Although she believed strongly that he would make a great president, she harbored nagging worries about his safety. On April 3 Jackie had dinner at the home of a friend, where they were joined by Arthur Schlesinger. At one point during the evening, she pulled the historian aside and asked, “Do you know what I think will happen to Bobby if he is elected president?” Schlesinger, apparently surprised by the question, expressed confusion. “The same thing that happened to Jack. . . . There is so much hatred in this country, and more people hate Bobby than hated Jack,” she said intently. “That’s why I don’t want him to be president. . . . I’ve told Bobby this, but he is fatalistic, like me.”

  Those fears were surely magnified when the very next day, an assassin’s bullet took the life of civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in Memphis. In tapes of Jackie’s conversations with Schlesinger that were released in 2011, it became clear that she was no fan of King’s, describing him as “a phony” and a “tricky person” after learning that he had participated in orgies and mocked Cardinal Cushing at her husband’s funeral. But at Robert’s request, she agreed to attend his funeral services in Atlanta.

  King’s death sparked a wave of racial violence. Rioters burned twenty blocks in Chicago, where Mayor Richard Daley ordered police to “shoot to kill.” The worst violence occurred in Washington, DC, where seven hundred fires burned and nine people lost their lives. For the first time since the Civil War, armed soldiers guarded the steps to the Capitol. Nationally, the death toll reached forty-six.

  I have a striking memory of the riots that followed the King assassination. I was an eleven-year-old sixth grader attending a public school outside of Philadelphia. Although my grade school was located in a racially mixed, working-class neighborhood, it never occurred to me that I would be impacted by the violence in places like Washington, DC, all dominating the TV news. I went to school that day as if nothing had happened. Around midday, my teacher, Mr. Weaver, started conferring nervously with some of his colleagues who had gathered in the hallway. He popped in and out of the classroom, making a forced effort to appear nonchalant. Clearly, something was wrong.

  After the third or fourth trip into the hallway, he returned and said that he had an important announcement to make. “We have decided,” he said, “to give you the rest of the day off.” I remember being thrilled by the news but puzzled by the decision. He continued, “If you have not had any exercise, you should run home,” a statement that left me wondering why our teacher would suddenly be concerned about our fitness. He asked those who lived near the predominantly black section of the neighborhood to stay behind with him.

  We lined up and proceeded down the two flights of stairs, making our way to the entrance. For some reason, I was at the front of the line and pushed open the heavy wooden door leading to the small concrete schoolyard. What I witnessed next shocked me: dozens of heavily armed police, some carrying shotguns, which until then, I had seen only on television. This was one of those rare occasions when I followed my teacher’s instructions and ran home as fast as I could. It was then that I learned that a riot had broken out not far from the school, and we had been evacuated as a precaution.

  Everything seemed to change after that day. Honestly, I had never given the issue of race much thought. As kids, my brother and I walked back and forth through a poor black neighborhood every day on the way to school. We often stopped to buy popsicles and candy at a small store where an older African American couple always made a big fuss over us. Now we avoided black neighborhoods, and a chill descended between blacks and whites at school.

  The riots heightened the nation’s sense of crisis and served as the backdrop to RFK’s fight for the Democratic nomination. His campaign took a drastic turn on the last day of March, when a beleaguered and defeated LBJ revealed in a television address to the nation that he would not seek reelection. Four weeks later, Vice President Hubert Humphrey announced his candidacy. The ebullient veteran senator from Minnesota did not enter a single primary, but he quickly secured the endorsements of the party’s power brokers who would decide on the nominee, whereas RFK hoped to rack up primary victories to prove that he would be the strongest candidate in November. Although Kennedy beat McCarthy decisively in the Indiana Democratic primary, McCarthy turned the tables in Oregon, setting up the following week’s California primary, on June 4, as critical to RFK’s campaign strategy.

  Jackie made a few campaign appearances in New York for Bobby and then returned home to eat dinner in her apartment. She stayed up until three fifteen watching the results from the West Coast before going to bed knowing that Bobby had won.

  At around four o’clock in the morning, her brother-in-law Stash Radziwill called from London asking about Bobby.

  “Isn’t it wonderful?” Jackie said. “He’s won. He’s got California.”

  “But how is he?”

  “Oh, he’s fine. He’s won.”

  “But how is he?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Why, he’s been shot!”

  Stash proceeded to tell her about the gunman who had been waiting for Robert in the kitchen of the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles.

  The next morning, Jackie woke up John and Caroline, brought them to her room, and broke the terrible news. “Something’s happened to Uncle Bobby,” she told them gravely, “and I have to fly off to California to be with him.” Caroline asked her what had happened. “A very bad man shot him,” Jackie answered. Both John and Caroline burst into tears.

  My brother Franny and I learned the news around the same time. My mom always woke up early to get us ready for school. She would go downstairs and turn on the television to watch the news while she made breakfast and packed our lunches. She was so shocked by the report that she raced upstairs, shouting, “They shot the other one! They shot the other one!” We ran downstairs to follow the live coverage.

  June 5 was Kathy McKeon’s scheduled day off, and she awakened that morning not knowing the news. Within a few minutes, she received a call informing her that RFK had been shot and that she needed to come to the apartment to take care of the children while Jackie flew to California. Mrs. Kennedy greeted Kathy with “a puppy face and swollen eyes” and asked, “Will you talk to John and Caroline?” When Kathy expressed her sympathies, Mrs. Kennedy responded, “Same story
all over again.” She then uttered two sentences that she would repeat many times later. “We will all miss him dearly. He was a second father to my children.” When Kathy went to John’s room, she found both him and his sister crying. “Your Uncle Bobby is up in heaven looking down on you two,” she consoled, though realizing that they had likely been told the same thing when their father died. “He’ll always take care of you.”

  While it’s impossible to know the emotions flowing through John’s mind that morning, it’s fair to speculate that Robert’s death impacted him more than his father’s had nearly five years earlier. It was always a source of frustration for John that he did not really remember his father. However, he had vivid memories of the time he spent with RFK. John was now old enough to comprehend the finality of death. There would be no more questions about when he would see Robert again. His mother was able to insulate him from the images of his father’s assassination, but it would have been impossible for him not to have seen the photograph of his uncle lying in his own blood on the kitchen floor of the Ambassador Hotel, his head cradled by the teenage busboy Juan Romero, who’d shaken the senator’s hand just as Palestinian-born Sirhan Sirhan fired a .22-caliber revolver at Kennedy, hitting him three times, including one bullet in the brain.

  The complexities of John’s personality must be understood in light of the repetitive traumas of his childhood. He became agitated after his father’s assassination and even more restless after Robert’s death. As an adult, John hungered to be perceived like everyone else, but he was always different. Few people experience the persistent and intense trauma that John endured as a child. He embodied contradictions: a man who seemed to have everything but who spent most of his life trying to process the repetitive strain of a tragic childhood. John developed coping mechanisms to deal with the many pressures that he faced. On the surface, he projected an image of casual nonchalance, but underneath he struggled with his sense of loss. Public expectations brought him yet another burden. People wanted John to fulfill his father’s legacy, but he wanted to find his own identity separate from that of his family. I observed how, over time, therapy helped him come to terms with the traumas of his youth, and when therapy did not work, he exercised to release his anxiety. But the underlying restlessness never disappeared, nor did his desire to take unusual physical risks.