Then Everything Changed

by Jeff Greenfield

  “The Community Development Corporation,” he had argued in his campaign, “is at the heart of what I believe must happen to restore and renew the blighted neighborhoods of our cities.” He took that message to Cleveland’s Hough neighborhood, to Southside Chicago (with a not entirely thrilled Mayor Richard Daley in tow), to Detroit’s Twelfth Street and Claremont Avenue, where the bloody riots of 1967 had broken out, to the Crenshaw District of Los Angeles. In each neighborhood, he announced the same kind of emergency jobs program he had brought to eastern Kentucky, pointedly noting that these were temporary measures; that only the vigorous, permanent engagement of private enterprise could provide a long-term solution. And that will be a piece of cake, he thought as Air Force One flew back from Los Angeles to Washington. It only took my staff eight months to fight through the turf wars in Bed-Stuy; we should be able to put a nationwide program in place in, what, twenty-five years?

  IF REVENGE is a dish best served cold, then in the spring of 1969, President Robert Kennedy enjoyed a two-course meal at the expense of one of President Johnson’s closest advisors.

  For two decades, Washington lawyer Abe Fortas had served as Johnson’s personal attorney and confidant. After 1965, when Johnson had all but ordered Fortas onto the U.S. Supreme Court, Fortas had continued to advise Johnson on matters ranging from Vietnam to politics; and on at least one occasion, he had at Johnson’s behest tried to persuade his fellow justices to extract information about FBI wiretaps that would likely prove embarrassing to former Attorney General Kennedy. So Kennedy managed to restrain his grief when Johnson’s attempt to elevate Fortas to Chief Justice in 1968 failed after Republicans and Southern Democrats mounted a protracted floor fight against him. A mix of Fortas’s liberal opinions on civil liberties, his ties to the President, and some eyebrow-raising financial dealings was too toxic a brew.

  Now the choice of a Chief was in President Kennedy’s hands. The Washington insiders assured each other that the obvious choice was Harvard Law professor and former Solicitor General Archibald Cox; but a mix of political obligation, political advantage, and political fear led Robert Kennedy elsewhere.

  Arthur Goldberg had regretted his decision to step down from the high court almost from the moment he had yielded to Johnson’s demand in the summer of 1965 that he become Ambassador to the United Nations. To his admirers, Goldberg’s move came from a willingness to do anything that might help end the war in Vietnam. To cynics, he made the move because Johnson had sat with Goldberg in the Oval Office and told him, “The man who settles this war will be sitting in this chair, and Arthur, you can settle that war.” His tenure had been marked by frustration, by growing dissent from Johnson’s Vietnam policy, and by his resignation in the spring of 1968.

  Robert Kennedy owed Goldberg; his endorsement in June had been a significant help in the New York primary. There was also a clear political advantage in naming America’s first Jewish Chief Justice, and in putting a second Jew on the Court. (A joke quickly made the rounds describing Goldberg’s mother responding to the comment, “You must be so proud.” “Yes,” she supposedly said, “his brother’s a doctor.”)

  There was another dimension to the choice, one that the White House was disinclined to discuss. Goldberg had been telling friends that he was seriously considering a run for governor of New York in 1970 against Nelson Rockefeller. Given Goldberg’s minimal political charisma—“I spent a week listening to Arthur Goldberg last night,” went one wisecrack—the prospect of Goldberg leading a Democratic ticket in New York was a nightmare no Democrat, those in the White House most especially, wanted to live through.

  Goldberg’s nomination sailed through the Senate despite halfhearted efforts by some Republicans and Southern Democrats to block the return of the liberal justice. As Georgia’s Richard Russell later explained: “The idea of filibustering to stop a Supreme Court nominee would have the Founding Fathers rolling over in their graves.”

  Just as Goldberg was heading toward confirmation, Life magazine revealed that Justice Fortas had accepted a $20,000-a-year-for-life retainer from a financier entangled in legal difficulties. After a highly unconvincing attempt to explain away the arrangement, and under heavy pressure from his fellow justices, Fortas resigned. Once again the insiders assured each other that the choice was clear: Archibald Cox was headed for the High Court. And once again, political calculation pointed elsewhere.

  While Democrats held a 58-42 margin in the U.S. Senate, those numbers were illusory; there were a dozen or more mostly Southern conservative Democrats with minimal enthusiasm for Robert Kennedy’s domestic agenda. Among Republicans, there was an equal number of moderate, even liberal senators—Javits of New York, Case of New Jersey, Scott of Pennsylvania, Percy of Illinois, Hatfield and Packwood of Oregon—whose support could be critical. Moreover, given Kennedy’s lingering reputation as a ruthless political partisan, an early move across party lines made good political sense.

  So Kennedy turned to fifty-eight-year-old Californian Thomas Kuchel, whose sixteen-year career in the U.S. Senate had ended when he lost the Republican primary to the zealously conservative superintendent of state schools, Max Rafferty. (That major political event had gone all but unreported since it happened on the same night Robert Kennedy almost died.) Kuchel’s GOP colleagues had chosen him as Senate Republican whip, making the thought of a confirmation battle out of the question. The President received muted praise from Republican-leaning newspapers, leaving it to columnists Evans and Novak to note that Kuchel had declined to endorse Nixon for governor, Goldwater for President, and Reagan for governor after they had won the party’s nominations. (“My kind of Republican!” Kennedy said to his political team, and called Archibald Cox at Harvard to assure him he’d be next—“unless I can find a really impressive woman.”)

  JULY BROUGHT two pieces of good news to the Kennedy administration: one that had been nearly a decade in the making, the other in the form of a providential escape from disaster, both linked to his family.

  On July 16, Apollo 11 blasted off with a three-man crew headed for the moon. Commander Neil Armstrong—“You sure his first name isn’t ‘Jack’?” cracked Press Secretary Mankiewicz—would step off from the lunar module onto the surface of the moon four days later. For Robert Kennedy, it was an event that put the legacy of his brother front and center.

  Throughout the 1968 campaign, Kennedy’s forces had pushed back against the idea of a “restoration.” His advisors winced when they saw signs at rallies calling for “Camelot Again!” After early speeches that invoked Jack’s “We can do better” mantra, Kennedy had been at pains to say, “We can’t solve the problems of the 1970s and 1980s with solutions out of the 1960s.” But the conquest of the moon was different. John Kennedy had embraced the challenge at a time when the Soviet launch of Sputnik had raised real doubts about America’s vaunted technological superiority. It was John Kennedy who told a joint session of Congress in 1961: “I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the earth.” The Apollo 11 Saturn V rocket had blasted off from the Kennedy Space Center on Merritt Island, Florida.

  So when the public relations teams from NASA and the White House convened to plan the stagecraft of the spacecraft’s mission, Robert Kennedy walked into the Cabinet Room and heard of Armstrong’s intention to pronounce, “One small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind.” He said: “I’ve only got one small suggestion of my own: Tell Commander Armstrong that if he does not quote John Kennedy when he steps off the module, he will have to find alternative transportation back home.” So when Armstrong walked onto the surface of the moon, he said: “We come here not under a flag of conquest, but under a banner of freedom and peace.”

  Kennedy watched the moon landing with a profound sense of relief. The risk of failure, or catastrophe, from lift-off to moon landing to return to splashdown, was a constant worry that would have troubled any President. Kenned
y’s relief, however, was more personal, with no connection to the moon mission. For several days, his brother Ted had been at the Cape to compete in the Edgartown Yacht Club regatta. He’d brought along four of Robert Kennedy’s children—and that was what averted a near disaster. On the night of July 18, Ted Kennedy had ferried over to Chappaquiddick Island, to drop in at a party where several White House employees, young women who had bonded in Robert Kennedy’s Senate office, were taking their first days off since the Inaugural. Sometime after eleven p.m., Ted Kennedy told the group he was driving back to Edgartown, and one of the women, Mary Jo Kopechne, asked for a ride back. As it happened, two of Robert Kennedy’s children were also at the party—which meant that two Secret Service teams were also there. One of the agents, Jesse Colin, leaving on a shift change just moments after Kennedy and Kopechne left, spotted the Senator’s car making a turn onto Dike Bridge road, and took off in pursuit; having surveyed the area around the party in daylight, the agent knew how rickety Dike Bridge was. (“I didn’t know what Teddy was up to,” Colin told colleagues later over a drink, “and I didn’t want to know. But he was just going too damn fast for that bridge.”)

  Colin’s fears were realized when he saw the 1967 Oldsmobile Delmont 88 plunge into Poucha Pond. Within seconds, the agent stripped to his briefs, dove into the water, and pulled Kopechne and Kennedy out of the car.

  The incident might have remained private, except that Deputy Sheriff Christopher “Huck” Look was driving to his home just south of Dike Bridge, saw the flashing lights of Agent Colin’s car, and “stopped to render assistance.” The resulting police report provoked a spate of rumors and wisecracks, and in the weeks afterward, Massachusetts Republicans plastered their cars with bumper stickers reading: “TED’S ALL WET!”

  THEY SAT AROUND the long rectangular label in the Laurel Lodge on a late July morning, summoned to Camp David to talk about The Issue That Dared Not Speak Its Name.

  In the Kennedy history, China was far from its finest hour. As a young congressman, John Kennedy was an enthusiastic member of the “Who lost China?” chorus, questioning the patriotism of many of the “old China” hands at the State Department who had doubted the popularity of Chiang Kai-shek, and who were driven out of public life in the wake of Mao’s triumph. As President, John Kennedy had dismissed the idea of recognizing the Communist government as unworthy of serious discussion. Nor were the Chinese offering any signals that an accommodation with the West would be welcome. They had scoffed at Soviet Premier Khrushchev’s idea of “peaceful coexistence,” scorned his retreat during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Mao himself had once said that if half the world perished in a nuclear war that ended with a Communist triumph, those two billion lost lives would be a reasonable price to pay.

  By 1969, it was clear that the continued isolation of China from the West was no longer sustainable. With its six hundred million people and its massive army, China would be crucial to any hope of long-term stability in Asia. The more it was excluded, the more inclined it would be to support armed uprisings in the name of “national liberation.” By contrast, a China engaged with the West opened up all sorts of possibilities. It could serve as a powerful check on the ambitions of the Soviet Union. And while China was still an impoverished, rural nation, the future prospect of a market that big would put a gleam in the eye of the most ardent capitalist.

  The problem, of course, was political. For twenty years, a “China lobby” with a powerful presence in both parties and the media had effectively shut down even the semblance of a debate about China. It was, in fact, a measure of the lobby’s power that Kennedy and his advisors had chosen as the site of their conversation one of the most secure facilities on earth.

  “You remember what Ben-Gurion told me a couple of years ago?” Senior Counsel Ted Sorenson asked Kennedy.

  “Something dramatic, right?”

  Sorenson nodded.

  “He told me that the peace of the world depended on you being elected President, and then traveling to China in secret to meet with Mao.”

  “Well,” Kennedy said drily. “He’s one-for-two. Can you imagine what our Republican friends would say about that? Not to mention Time magazine. Talk about a Manchurian Candidate . . .”

  Dick Goodwin raised a finger.

  “Mr. President, I’ve been wanting to bring this up, but I’ve been a bit afraid you’d either laugh me out of the room or have me shipped off to St. Elizabeth’s for observation.”

  “Let me guess,” Kennedy said to his Undersecretary of State. “You want to sneak off to Peking and meet with Mao like you did with Che in Uruguay?”

  “Not me,” Goodwin said. “And God knows not you—you’d be crucified. But”—he took a folded paper out of his jacket—“I’d like you to listen to this.”

  He began to read:

  “‘Taking the long view, we simply cannot afford to leave China forever outside the family of nations, there to nurture its fantasies, cherish its hates and threaten its neighbors. . . . In the long run, China must be brought back into the community of nations.’”

  “Reasonable enough,” said Secretary of State Ball. “Who wrote it?”

  “You’re not gonna believe it,” Goodwin said.

  Three months later, on a Thursday morning, Press Secretary Mankiewicz told the White House press corps and the networks that the President would be making “a major announcement” within the hour. Since there had been no hint of any impending appointment or policy change filtering through the White House, the speculation ranged from a White House shake-up to a Supreme Court retirement. No one was prepared for the sight of President Robert Kennedy walking into the East Room . . . with Richard Nixon at his side.

  “Last August,” Kennedy began, “we received indications from the People’s Republic of China that they would welcome conversations with a representative of the United States about matters of interests to both nations. Because of his wide experience in international matters, I asked Vice President Nixon if he would serve as our envoy to Peking, and he graciously accepted. Let me ask the Vice President to report on his conversations.”

  “Well, gentlemen,” Nixon began, flashing his painful grin, “this may not be my last press conference, but it is surely the most unexpected.”

  Then he was all business; detailing the role of Pakistan in acting as an intermediary; his trip to Karachi, ostensibly to negotiate a business deal on behalf of one of his law firm’s clients; his flight to Peking aboard a Pakistani military jet; and three days of talks with Premier Chou En-lai, and other leaders of the government. The only revelation more shocking than the invitation to Robert Kennedy to visit China in 1970 were the photographs of Richard Nixon toasting the health of Mao at a private dinner.

  “I also had the opportunity to visit some of the historic sites of China,” Nixon added. “And I can say that it truly is . . . a Great Wall.”

  There was an angry response from some in the conservative movement.

  “So He Was ‘Tricky Dick’ After All,” read the cover of National Review. Barry Goldwater, newly returned to the Senate from Arizona, charged that “Richard Nixon has betrayed six hundred million Chinese, and his own professed principles.”

  For most Americans, however, the anti-Communist credentials of Richard Nixon insulated Robert Kennedy, especially when Kennedy announced at the press conference that Nixon would be traveling with him to Peking. (Kennedy kept to himself his plan to name Nixon as permanent envoy to China when limited diplomatic relations were established—just about when the’72 campaign was heating up.) Moreover, the sheer boldness of the move won Kennedy applause from some Republican voices. The Wall Street Journal, perhaps contemplating the business possibilities of a nation with hundreds of millions of unskilled workers, found comfort in the prospect “that a seasoned, prudent Richard Nixon would be a moderating figure who would, hopefully restrain the more impulsive instincts of the President.”

  The opening to China and the peace agreement in Vietnam were sign
al successes, achieved in substantial measure because Presidents always have running room in the international arena. At home, however, the dilemmas facing Kennedy, and his power to resolve them, were tough enough to make Vietnam and China look like walks in the park.

  ROBERT KENNEDY HAD COME to the Presidency accompanied by a mass of contradictions. He was born into wealth and power, raised by a father who employed both with remorseless focus. He had spent three years at the right hand of Presidential power. Yet his life as the undersized outsider—the “misfit,” as his oldest friend Dave Hackett called him—had attuned him to the pain of power’s victims even before the shots in Dallas had driven him into exile. He could absorb into himself the hunger of a child in Mississippi, the deprivation of a migrant worker in New York or California, the need for work of a jobless miner in Eastern Kentucky; but he accepted as his due the luxuries and privileges that exempted him from the routine burdens of ordinary men and women. (“I could do much more,” his longtime colleague Ed Guthman once said waspishly, “if I had someone to buy my clothes, pay my bills, do the taxes, watch the children, mow my lawn.”)

  He spoke to and of the new currents flowing through the cultural life of America in the late 1960s. But while he quoted Bob Dylan, his tastes ran to Broadway show tunes. He listened to Allen Ginsberg chant the “Hare Krishna” in his Senate office, but he quoted Ralph Waldo Emerson and Alfred, Lord Tennyson. He wanted the levers of power in his hands, but in those years with John Kennedy, he had learned what other Presidents had to learn on the job: the limits of knowledge, the illusion of omniscience, the vast distance between intentions and execution, the primal instinct of subordinates to tell the President what he wanted to hear, to shield him from unpleasant realities.

  His years in the Senate had given him a chance to think through the hard dilemmas of race and poverty and crime, and his stature had provided him with an army of veterans from his brother’s Presidency, as well as another battalion of thinkers and planners who were eager to share their thoughts with the young man who might soon be running the country. But he had also become well acquainted with some of the darker forces in American life: organized crime, a military hungry for conflict, shadowy forces within the government but accountable to no one, all of them forces that powerfully resisted change. Indeed, his father had partnered with organized crime, used its power to help win the Presidency for his son, and Robert Kennedy’s own zealous determination to bring down Fidel Castro had led his brother’s administration into alliances with gangsters and secret armies—so much so that in the years after Dallas, he was never fully free of the nagging questions that those alliances had somehow led to his brother’s assassination. If he could not defeat or at least contain those same forces, he would not be able to do much of what he wished to do.