Bobby Kennedy
Page 30
“Then there was the other:
“ ‘Always do what you are afraid to do.’ ”
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I want to thank Jonathan Karp of Simon & Schuster for this great assignment. After my two books on John F. Kennedy, I relished the chance to write about a central figure in the Kennedy story.
I began thinking seriously about Bobby Kennedy from the time he emerged into national leadership on his own. That was in the later months of 1967 and early months of 1968 when Eugene McCarthy and he converged in their struggle for the banner of the anti–Vietnam War movement.
In the years since, there were those who introduced Bobby Kennedy to me in unique ways. Wayne Owens was RFK’s Rocky Mountain coordinator in 1968. Three years later, he was the top aide to Senator Frank Moss of Utah. It was Wayne who hired me on my return from service with the Peace Corps in Africa. His heartfelt devotion to Bobby Kennedy brought me in personal touch with the influence Kennedy had on young people like him.
Paul Corbin was another, very different figure who was very close to the man he called “Bob.” I will never forget how this roguish character became emotional after reading a speech I’d written praising his hero. Nor will I ever forget his colorful stories of real-life politics he unloaded on me one winter night in a Chinese restaurant a floor above Brooklyn’s Court Street.
There are others who allowed me to better complete my portrait of Bobby Kennedy. Ethel Kennedy contributed a Palm Beach afternoon answering every question about her husband. Their daughter Kathleen, who joined us, was insistent in keeping the conversation both lively, penetrating, and genuine.
Another family witness I’ve relied upon is Bobby’s younger sister, Jean, who was helpful in my producing Jack Kennedy: Elusive Hero. Her book The Nine of Us offers the rare inside perspective on growing up a Kennedy.
I must once again acknowledge Helen O’Donnell for transcribing the oral history of her father, Kenneth O’Donnell. His account of the 1952 Senate race, especially of his successful recruitment of Bobby to manage the campaign, was indispensable. Kenny knew it all, including the backroom tactics Bobby used to swing big-shot support to his brother in 1960. He was my inside witness throughout.
I want to thank the many other people who helped me tell the Bobby Kennedy story. They include those who helped me with my books on Jack Kennedy. Charles Bartlett, Paul “Red” Fay, John Glenn, Eugene McCarthy, Thomas P. “Tip” O’Neill, Jr., George Smathers, Ted Sorensen, Charles Spalding, and Bill Wilson. Also: Mortimer Caplin, Peter Edelman, Dr. William Kennedy Smith, George Stevens, James Symington, William vanden Heuvel.
I have relied, too, on the memoirs of those who were close to Bobby at various stages of his life.
Lem Billings and Chuck Spalding were friends he inherited from Jack. Joseph P. Kennedy, Sr., accepted both men as proven family loyalists. Ed Guthman, who brought Bobby into the Rackets investigation and later served as his press secretary at the Justice Department, has been a seasoned guide for me to those years. I came across Ed later when he was editor of The Philadelphia Inquirer. He was a great journalist and trustworthy memoirist. I want to thank Frank Mankiewicz for his memoir of serving Bobby during his Senate tenure and Jack Newfield for inspiring me years ago with his dramatic witness to Kennedy’s run for president. Both men richly understood the man.
Certain people deserve my special appreciation. Michele Slung helped get this book into shape while correctly noting that my daily writing for broadcast had weakened my will to write in full paragraphs. Tina Urbanski, Hardball senior producer, made it possible for me to perform my job at MSNBC and meet all the deadlines for this book. Another contributor was Lauren Mick, who did a great job reading two stacks of books and gathering together all my underlinings, adding some of her own. I also need to thank Meghan Cunningham for her excellent work. For his fine contribution to the photographic artwork, I again thank the estimable Vincent Virga.
I want to thank the people who allow me to produce Hardball editions five evenings a week. They include MSNBC president Phil Griffin; my two executive producers, Court Harson and Ann Klenk; senior producers Tina Urbanski, Robert Zeliger, and Jennifer Mulreany; director Ray Herbert; and producers Adam Garnett, Makayla Humphrey, Geet Jeswani, Christine Kim, Valerie McCabe, Tiffany Mullon, Nkechi Nneji, Will Rabbe, and Rachel Witkin.
At Simon & Schuster, I want to thank Richard Rhorer, Stephen Bedford, Cary Goldstein, Larry Hughes, Marie Florio, Eloy Bleifuss, Kristen Lemire, Amanda Mulholland, Paul Dippolito, Jonathan Evans, Jackie Seow, and Misha Hunt.
Above all, I owe Kathleen, my loving spouse and my ambassador to the rest of mankind, for elevating my life.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
© TONY POWELL
Chris Matthews is the host of MSNBC’s Hardball. He is the author of Hardball: How Politics Is Played—Told by One Who Knows the Game, Kennedy & Nixon: The Rivalry That Shaped Postwar America, Jack Kennedy: Elusive Hero, and Tip and the Gipper: When Politics Worked.
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Authors.SimonandSchuster.com/Chris-Matthews
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Tip and the Gipper
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Now, Let Me Tell You What I Really Think
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NOTES
Two biographies of Robert F. Kennedy have stood the test of time. The first, Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.’s, Robert Kennedy and His Times, 1978, bears the keen intelligence of a great historian who knew his subject as a personal friend. Evan Thomas’s Robert Kennedy: His Life, 2000, is an essential second look at RFK by one of a later generation’s most respected biographers. His trustworthy narrative was my essential scaffolding in writing this personal account of Bobby Kennedy’s life and legacy.
My sources include interviews I conducted for Kennedy & Nixon: The Rivalry That Shaped Postwar America, 1996, and Jack Kennedy: Elusive Hero, 2011. They include Charles Bartlett, Ben Bradlee, Mark Dalton, Fred and Nancy Dutton, Paul Fay, Lester Hyman, Thomas P. “Tip” O’Neill, Jr., Terri Robinson, George Smathers, Ambassador Jean Kennedy Smith, Ted Sorensen, Chuck Spalding, and Billy Sutton. I’ve been able to add new interviews with Mortimer Caplin, Peter Edelman, John Glenn, Ethel Kennedy, Dr. William Kennedy Smith, George Stevens, James Symington, Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, and William vanden Heuvel.
As with Jack Kennedy: Elusive Hero, my indispensable resource for this book is Sander Vanocur’s interviews of Kenneth O’Donnell, which were made available to me by his daughter Helen. O’Donnell was a central figure in the Kennedy story from his days as Bobby’s Harvard teammate. I refer to his oral history as KOD interview.
There have been a good number of books written on Robert Kennedy by those who worked with him and by reporters who covered him. Together with the two masterworks by Schlesinger and Thomas, they are the foundation of my storytelling in each period of our subject’s brief—fifteen-year—public life. I will credit each of these authors in the notes below.
PROLOGUE
“I am announcing today”: Robert F. Kennedy, Washington, D.C., March 16, 1968.
“the throne in the”: Jeff Shesol, Mutual Contempt: Lyndon Johnson, Robert Kennedy and the Feud That Defined a Decade (New York: W. W. Norton, 1997), p. 439.
“the most generous little boy”: Evan Thomas, Robert Kennedy: His Life (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2000), p. 30.
“It’s pretty easy to”: Charles Spalding, John F. Kennedy Presidential Library, Oral History Collection.
“puny,” even “girlish”: Thomas, p. 30.
“All this business about Jack”: Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., Robert Kennedy and His Times (New York: Ballantine, 1978), p. 96. Note: Unless otherwise indicated all Schlesinger cites are to Robert Kennedy and His Times.
Bobby was smaller: Lem Billings quote: Jean Stein, American Journey: The Times of Robert Kennedy (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1970), p. 37.
“you were at a fair or something”: Author interview with Chuck Spalding.
“make difficult decisions”: Jean Kennedy Smith, The Nine of Us: Growing Up Kennedy (New York: HarperCollins, 2016), p. 111.
“Black Robert” he called him: Thomas, p. 47.
it’s estimated that a million admirers: “RFK, RIP, Revisited,” New York Times, June 1, 2008.
famous toast at an alumni dinner: John Collins Brossidy, Holy Cross Alumni Dinner, 1910.
1. ALTAR BOY
Jean Kennedy Smith is Bobby’s younger sister. He was the seventh in the family, she the eighth, both sharing the “little kids’ table” in their early years. Her brief, remarkable The Nine of Us: Growing Up Kennedy, 2016, refers to Bobby as the family “gem.” The same can be said of her memoir. I could find no better guide to his early years.
“The Child is father”: William Wordsworth, The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Volume 3 (London: Edward Moxon, 1836), p. 3.
Robert Kennedy would remark: Robert F. Kennedy speech, Friendly Sons of St. Patrick of Lackawanna County, Scranton, Pennsylvania, March 17, 1964.
NO IRISH NEED APPLY: Thomas, p. 33.
“Our forefathers”: Pittsburgh Press, March 18, 1964.
tradition had dictated: “Primogeniture and Ultimogeniture in Rural Ireland,” The Journal of Interdisciplinary History 10, no. 3 (Winter 1980): 491–97.
What separated Joe Kennedy: Schlesinger, p. 14.
“The castle or the outhouse”: Jack Newfield, RFK: A Memoir (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1969), p. 42.
left Boston to settle: Arthur Krock, Memoirs: Sixty Years on the Firing Line (New York: Funk & Wagnalls, 1968), p. 339.
“in his own railway”: Schlesinger, p. 6.
“Yes, but it was symbolic”: Ibid.
It was young Bobby who took: Ibid.
It made him more Irish: Thomas, p. 33.
Once he raced so hard: Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy, Times to Remember (New York: Doubleday, 1995), p. 88.
“I was very awkward”: Ronald Steel, In Love with Night: The American Romance with Robert Kennedy (New York: Thorndike Press, 2000), p. 38.
“It showed either”: Schlesinger, p. 23.
soon became her favorite: Thomas, p. 31.
overlooked by his father: Robert Dallek, Camelot’s Court: Inside the Kennedy White House (New York: HarperCollins, 2013), p. 39.
calling him her “pet”: Schlesinger, p. 42.
“thoughtful and considerate”: Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy, Times to Remember, p. 89.
“And probably the most religious”: Ibid., 89.
The most Irish of: Thomas, p. 33.
At night from his room: Steel, p. 35.
invited to join their: Thomas, p. 30.
“He longed to explore”: Jean Kennedy Smith, The Nine of Us, p. 113.
“Bobby strained his”: Ibid., p. 31.
Jean remembered how: Ibid., p. 118.
“never really loved him”: Jacqueline Kennedy interview with Theodore White, Camelot Papers, John F. Kennedy Presidential Library.
“History made him what he was”: Ibid.
became an altar boy: Thomas, p. 2.
2. AMBASSADOR’S SON
David Nasaw’s The Patriarch: The Remarkable Life and Turbulent Times of Joseph P. Kennedy, 2012, scrutinizes this grandly influential man as no one has before. It is hard to imagine another historian attempting to climb again to this peak. I owe his work for the background of this and the succeeding chapter.
“For the second time”: Neville Chamberlain speech, September 30, 1938.
“I was really worried”: David Nasaw, The Patriarch: The Remarkable Life and Turbulent Times of Joseph P. Kennedy (New York: Penguin, 2012), p. 171.
he began enthusiastically: Ibid.
He went to his pal William Randolph Hearst: Ibid., pp. 173–74.
Joe Kennedy expected in return a swift: Ibid., p. 186.
It wasn’t until the spring of 1934: Ibid., p. 207.
He proposed making Joseph Kennedy its first chairman: Ibid., p. 208.
asking him to chair: Ibid., p. 255.
“laughed so hard”: Ibid., p. 272.
the golden trio: Thomas, p. 30.
“acutely embarrassed”: Nasaw, p. 297.
“keep America out of any conflict”: Ibid., p. 310.
“it was not so much”: Ibid.
“Such pronounced attitudes”: Ibid.
the United States ambassador: Ibid., p. 311.
“While telling them what they wanted”: Ibid.
avoiding another European war: Ibid., p. 338.
In the last week: Ibid., p. 346.
“We have sustained a defeat”: Winston Churchill, Speech to the House of Commons, October 1938.
“It is unproductive”: Doris Kearns Goodwin, The Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1986), p. 566.
began sending his family: Nasaw, p. 410.
3. HONOR THY FATHER
“The most important obligation”: Caoimhín Ó Danachair, “The Family in Irish Tradition,” Christus Rex 16, no. 3.
St. Paul’s in Concord, New Hampshire: Thomas, p. 29.
despised red cap: Nasaw, p. 297.
never troubled by being alone: Thomas, p. 31.
Within a month: Ibid., p. 29.
put the blame on the Protestantism: Ibid.
relied solely upon the King James Bible: Schlesinger, p. 30.
education of her “pet”: Thomas, p. 30.
her strong-willed husband’s attention: Ibid.
More even than an appeaser: Krock, p. 335.
flown famed aviator: Nasaw, p. 339.
idea . . . of reaching “good relations”: Ibid., p. 354.
“I’ll bet you five to one”: Ibid., p. 474.
Roosevelt pushed him further: Ibid., p. 442.
he transformed the paper: Thomas, p. 32.
belief that the British would lose the war: Krock, p. 337.
persisted in fighting Roosevelt’s plan: Nasaw, p. 458.
backed Roosevelt’s opponent: Ibid., p. 457.
signaling his wish to come home: Ibid., p. 335.
Lyndon Johnson, then a junior Texas: Robert A. Caro, The Years of Lyndon Johnson: The Passage of Power (New York: Vintage, 2012), p. 62.
What gratified him most: Ibid.
Bobby Kennedy took it: Ibid.
Joe had been interviewed at: Nasaw, p. 498.
assuming the session was off the record: Krock, p. 337.
“Democracy is all done”: Louis M. Lyons, “Kennedy Says Democracy All Done in Britain, Maybe Here,” Daily Boston Globe, November 10, 1940.
offered his resignation: Krock, p. 336.
Recounting to me his first visit: Author interview with Chuck Spalding.
“the first of the tragedies”: Nasaw, p. 537.
Greatly more handicapped: Thomas, p. 34.
Rosemary’s surgery had been performed: Nasaw, p. 535.
Joe Kennedy, Jr., and his brother Jack: Thomas, p. 40.
Joe was down in Jacksonville: Nasaw, p. 540.
Its presence provided him and other students: Ibid., p. 41.
Bobby stayed intent on what was happening: Thomas, p. 35.
“If he got a 77 he would argue”: Ibid., p. 36.
“Mrs. Kennedy’s little boy Bobby”: Ibid., p. 31.
he was caught and: Ibid., pp. 36–37.
“Don’t, I beg you”: Ibid.
His next stop would be: Ibid., p.
37.
“Bobby ran every practice”: Schlesinger, p. 43.
liked playing, “The Mick”: Thomas, p. 47.
Hackett was both a legendary: Ibid., p. 38.
“I think we became friends right away”: David L. Hackett, John F. Kennedy Presidential Library, Oral History Collection.
“There was no altar boy”: Ibid.
“From the moment I met him”: Schlesinger, p. 45.
“He would move into those situations”: Ibid.
He had once asked him if something could be done: Thomas, p. 39.
“I think what he did have was”: Ibid.
“I think if you talked to most people”: Ibid.
“Once a person was his friend”: Chris Matthews, Jack Kennedy: Elusive Hero (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2012), p. 45.
4. RITES OF PASSAGE
“After every charge”: James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (UK: Penguin Classics, 1916).
“I want to go over there”: Author interview with Paul Ferber.
She did this by conspicuously: Thomas, p. 41.
“Dad just phoned from N.Y.”: Nasaw, p. 549.
A Japanese pilot: JFK letter to Lem Billings, in David Pitts, Jack and Lem: John F. Kennedy and Lem Billings: The Untold Story of an Extraordinary Friendship (New York: Da Capo, 2007), p. 96.
In the dark early-morning: Description of JFK’s command vessel, thirteen men including JFK, on PT-109, in Robert Donovan, PT-109: John F. Kennedy in World War II (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1961), p. 128.
I don’t think he should: Schlesinger, p. 52.
Bobby went on his own: Ibid.
Bobby began the V-12 officers training program: Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy, Times to Remember, p. 255.
“We haven’t really had too much action”: Ibid., p. 53.
“Say hello to all the Irish Catholics”: Thomas, p. 44.
recovering from back surgery: Herbert S. Parmet, Jack: The Struggles of John F. Kennedy (New York: Doubleday, 1982), p. 121.