The Ambivalent Conservative
CONTEMPORARY OBSERVERS WERE on to Bobby’s complexity. But after his death they conspired to forget the more original (and, to some, the more troubling) aspects of his statesmanship; they succeeded in persuading themselves that they were burying a pious liberal martyr. They remembered the progressive, nodded to the radical, and promptly forgot the conservative. Bobby was a conservative, conservative not only in the modern sense that he believed in the potential of free men and free markets, but in the older sense that he believed in learning from, and building on, ancient intellectual and cultural traditions, traditions whose value had been sanctioned by time and custom, traditions that could help people to act confidently in a complicated world. His use of tradition was very different from, say, T. S. Eliot’s. Eliot used tradition as a weapon: he used it to criticize, to condemn, to condescend to an Enlightened world he did not like. Bobby, on the contrary, accepted the modern, market-oriented world in which he found himself, and he accepted the theory of liberal individualism, the creed of Emerson and Lincoln, that underlay it. If he recognized the limits of the world that free markets had brought into being, he never repudiated that world. A tradition like the old Hellenic cult of community could, he believed, give men the strength and the confidence to prosper in it.
In reconciling his commitment to nineteenth-century theories of liberal individualism with his belief in the importance of those intellectual and cultural traditions that are the most valuable legacy of the past, Bobby used the past, not ironically, like Eliot, or frivolously, like the postmodernists, but constructively and practically, in a way that strengthened rather than undermined the first principles of his Enlightened nation. His approach to both the traditions of the past and the principles of the Anglo-Scottish Enlightenment was in great contrast to the approach of the Stimsonians who, under cover of theories of economic planning and control derived largely from the French Enlightenment and European socialism, sought to revive traditional notions, like the feudal notion of noblesse oblige, that have no place in a modern democratic society. The Stimsonians sought to transfer much of the political power that belongs by right to free and independent citizens to administrative and judicial bureaucracies that were largely insulated from electoral control.
Bobby condemned the welfare state. But he never made a clean break with it. He indeed helped to inspire two very different trends. One sees this in the subsequent careers of the two bright young men upon whom he so greatly relied for advice and counsel during his Senate years. Peter Edelman became an ardent defender of the welfare state; he married Marian Wright; he advocated a guaranteed minimum income; he resigned his position in the welfare state when President Clinton signed the welfare reform bill in 1996. Adam Walinsky traveled in a different direction. Obsessed with the growth of crime and the decline of public order in the United States, Walinsky, who has argued that “the federal welfare system began the destruction of black family life” that helped to bring about the “huge increase in violence” in the nation’s cities, has spent the last fifteen years advocating the creation of a militant domestic version of the Peace Corps called the Police Corps, an organization that he hopes will enable America to put at least half a million new police officers on the streets by the end of the decade.3 (Walinsky shrugs off suggestions that his efforts to deploy massive amounts of police power in America’s cities would turn police officers into an urban “army of occupation”; the cities, he observes, are already occupied by “hostile bands of brigands”4).
In what direction would Bobby himself have traveled? We don’t know. The right was suspicious of Bobby—but so was the left. The Ramparts journalist Robert Scheer thought Bobby particularly dangerous because he seemed like a radical but really wasn’t one; he provided “the illusion of dissent without its substance.” Bobby was, Scheer thought, a deeply orthodox figure, a believer in America’s free-enterprise system, one who looked to it to solve many of the nation’s problems.5
The End of the American Enlightenment and the Question of American Pain
HE WAS TORN between the Enlightened idea that a statesman ought to offer something new and better and his own realization that the intoxicating and medicinal properties of old wine are very often superior to those of more recent vintage. It has always been necessary for the successful American statesman to seem to be offering something new, something that promises to deliver his constituents from the evils of the moment, something that has about it the visionary gleam of miraculous progress—an escape from pain. Proposals for new deals, new frontiers, and new covenants—for new world orders and great new beginnings—for new heavens and new earths—have been so common in our history as to have made novelty itself un-novel. Bobby was himself much given to exploiting this American weakness for visionary poetry; he frequently invoked Shaw’s belief that there are two kinds of men: some who see things as they are and ask “Why?” and others who dream of things that never were and ask “Why not?” Bobby was not above resorting to such a cheap lollipop as this; it was a kind of Kennedy signature, one that gave the impression that Americans were going on to grander things, a better world, a new republic, without disclosing exactly how this wonderful progress was to be achieved. Friend, go up higher. But really the most original, the most novel, aspect of Bobby’s statesmanship was his willingness to see the usefulness of older, pre-Enlightened ideas (like the Hellenic idea of community) in mitigating the terror of a modern world governed only by the morals of the marketplace and vast impersonal bureaucracies. He was unembarrassed to admit how much we, the most modern of peoples, could benefit from the ancient traditions of our civilization. We might not be able to escape our pain, but the older creeds could at least teach us how to live with it.
His relevance today? He reminds liberals of the importance of remaining true to the nineteenth-century liberalism of Emerson and Lincoln; he teaches them that reforms should help to create self-reliance and self-respect in individuals, not undermine those qualities. Turn the safety “net” into a trampoline. And he reminds liberals not to overlook the value inherent in older strategies for dealing with pain. He reminds conservatives that any genuine conservatism must be allied to compassion, and that, in their devotion to the principles of a free market, conservatives should not forget their obligations to the less fortunate among us. He was an imperfect man, possessed of many grievous faults, and yet we may number him among the saints.
Sources
Below is a list of sources consulted, together with the abbreviations used in the notes.
PRIMARY SOURCES
BSDPO
Bedford-Stuyvesant Development Project Overview: A Working Paper (April 4, 1967), in Walinsky Papers, file 1.
Collected Speeches
RFK: Collected Speeches, ed. Edwin O. Guthman and C. Richard Allen (New York: Viking, 1993).
Edelman Papers
The Papers of Peter Edelman in the Kennedy Library.
The Fruitful Bough
The Fruitful Bough, ed. Edward M. Kennedy (privately printed, 1966).
Profiles in Courage
John F. Kennedy, Profiles in Courage (New York: Harper & Row, 1964; originally published 1956).
RFK Senate Papers
The Papers of Robert F. Kennedy (1965–1968) in the Kennedy Library.
Ribicoff Hearings
Hearings before the Subcommittee on Executive Reorganization of the Committee on Government Operations—United States Senate—89th Congress—2d Session—Federal Role in Urban Affairs—August 15–16, 1966.
Speeches
Speeches of the Honorable Robert F. Kennedy, Attorney General: 1961–1964 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Justice).
To Seek a Newer World
Robert F. Kennedy, To Seek a Newer World (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1967).
Walinsky papers
The Papers of Adam Walinsky in the Kennedy Library.
SECONDARY SOURCES
American Journey
Jean
Stein and George Plimpton, American Journey: The Times of Robert Kennedy (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1970).
An American Drama
Peter Collier and David Horowitz, The Kennedys: An American Drama (New York: Warner Books, 1985; originally published 1984).
Apostle of Change
Douglas Ross, Robert F. Kennedy: Apostle of Change (New York: Trident, 1968).
As We Remember Her
Carl Sferrazza Anthony, As We Remember Her: Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis in the Words of Her Family and Friends (New York: HarperCollins, 1997).
The Best and the Brightest
David Halberstam, The Best and the Brightest (New York: Ballantine, 1993; originally published 1972).
The Brother Within
Robert E. Thompson and Hortense Myers, Robert Kennedy: The Brother Within (New York: MacMillan, 1962).
Cape Cod Years
Leo Damore, The Cape Cod Years of John Fitzgerald Kennedy (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1967).
Conversations
Benjamin C. Bradlee, Conversations with Kennedy (New York: Norton, 1984; originally published 1975).
Crisis Years
Michael R. Beschloss, The Crisis Years: Kennedy and Khrushchev 1960–1963 (New York: HarperCollins, 1991).
The Dark Side of Camelot
Seymour Hersh, The Dark Side of Camelot (Boston: Little, Brown, 1997).
Death of a President
William Manchester, The Death of a President: November 20–25, 1963 (New York: Harper & Row, 1988; originally published 1967).
Founding Father
Richard J. Whalen, The Founding Father: The Story of Joseph P. Kennedy (New York: New American Library, 1964).
The Heir Apparent
William V. Shannon, The Heir Apparent: Robert Kennedy and the Struggle for Power (New York: Macmillan, 1967).
Honorable Profession
“An Honorable Profession”: A Tribute to Robert F. Kennedy, ed. Pierre Salinger, Edwin Guthman, Frank Mankiewicz, and John Seigenthaler (New York: Doubleday, 1993).
In His Own Words
Edwin O. Guthman and Jeffrey Shulman, In His Own Words: The Unpublished Recollections of the Kennedy Years (New York: Bantam, 1988).
I’ve Seen the Best of It
Joseph W. Aslop and Adam Platt, “I’ve Seen the Best of It”: Memoirs (New York: Norton, 1992).
The Last Campaign
Hays Gorey, Robert Kennedy: The Last Campaign (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1993).
Kennedy
Theodore C. Sorensen, Kennedy (New York: Harper & Row, 1965).
The Kennedy Imprisonment
Garry Wills, The Kennedy Imprisonment (Boston: Little, Brown, 1982).
Kennedy Justice
Victor S. Navasky, Kennedy Justice (New York: Atheneum, 1971).
The Kennedy Men
Nellie Bly, The Kennedy Men: Three Generations of Sex, Scandal, and Secrets (New York: Kensington Books, 1996).
Kennedy and Nixon
Christopher Matthews, Kennedy and Nixon: The Rivalry That Shaped Postwar America (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996).
Kennedy and Roosevelt
Michael R. Beschloss, Kennedy and Roosevelt: The Uneasy Alliance (New York: Norton, 1980).
The Kennedy Women
Laurence Leamer, The Kennedy Women: The Saga of an American Family (New York: Ballantine, 1994).
Let the Word Go Forth
“Let the Word Go Forth”: The Speeches, Statements, and Writings of John F. Kennedy, ed. Theodore C. Sorensen (New York: Delacorte, 1988).
Making of a Folk Hero
Lester David and Irene David, Bobby Kennedy: The Making of a Folk Hero (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1986).
The Making of the President 1960
Theodore H. White, The Making of the President 1960 (New York: Atheneum, 1962).
The Making of the President 1968
Theodore H. White, The Making of the President 1968 (New York: Atheneum, 1969).
A Memoir
Jack Newfield, Robert Kennedy: A Memoir (New York: Plume, 1988; originally published 1969).
Mutual Contempt
Jeff Shesol, Mutual Contempt: Lyndon Johnson, Robert Kennedy, and the Feud that Defined a Decade (New York: Norton, 1997).
The Myth and the Man
Victor Lasky, Robert F. Kennedy: The Myth and the Man (New York: Trident, 1968).
The New Politics
Penn Kimball, Bobby Kennedy and the New Politics (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1968).
One Brief Shining Moment
William Manchester, One Brief Shining Moment: Remembering Kennedy (Boston: Little, Brown, 1983).
On His Own
William vanden Heuvel and Milton Gwirtzman, On His Own: RFK 1964–1968 (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1970).
The Other Mrs. Kennedy
Jerry Oppenheimer, The Other Mrs. Kennedy (New York: St. Martin’s, 1995; originally published 1994).
President Kennedy
Richard Reeves, President Kennedy: Profiles of Power (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1993).
P.S.
Pierre Salinger, P.S.: A Memoir (New York: St. Martin’s, 1995).
A Question of Character
Thomas C. Reeves, A Question of Character: A Life of John F. Kennedy (Rocklin, Calif.: Prima, 1992; originally published 1991).
Reckless Youth
Nigel Hamilton, J.F.K: Reckless Youth (New York: Random House, 1992).
Remembering America
Richard Goodwin, Remembering America: A Voice from the Sixties (Boston: Little, Brown, 1988).
R.F.K.
Ralph de Toledano, R.F.K.: The Man Who Would Be President (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1967).
Robert Kennedy
Arthur M. Schlessinger, Jr., Robert Kennedy and His Times (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1978).
Robert Kennedy in New York
Gerald Gardner, Robert Kennedy in New York (New York: Random House, 1965).
Senatorial Privilege
Leo Damore, Senatorial Privilege: The Chappaquiddick Cover-up (Washington, D.C.: Regnery Gateway, 1988).
Shadow Play
William Klaber and Philip H. Melanson, Shadow Play: The Murder of Robert F. Kennedy (New York: St. Martin’s, 1997).
The Sins of the Father
Ronald Kessler, The Sins of the Father: Joseph P. Kennedy and the Dynasty He Founded (New York: Warner, 1996).
A Thousand Days
Arthur M. Schlesinger, A Thousand Days; John F. Kennedy in the White House (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1965).
Times to Remember
Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy, Times to Remember (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1974).
Unfinished Odyssey
David Halberstam, The Unfinished Odyssey of Robert Kennedy (New York: Random House, 1968).
With Kennedy
Pierre Salinger, With Kennedy (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1966).
A Woman Named Jackie
C. David Heymann, A Woman Named Jackie: An Intimate Biography of Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis (New York: Birch Lane Press, 1994).
OTHER SOURCES
Abinger Harvest
E. M. Forster, Abinger Harvest (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1936).
ACL
Laurence H. Tribe, American Constitutional Law, 2d ed. (Mineola, N.Y.: Foundation Press, 1988).
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