The Unfinished Odyssey of Robert Kennedy

by David Halberstam

  Yet his position was particularly vulnerable. In a sense there were not just two political parties in America in the late sixties, but really three—the Democrats headed by Johnson, the Republicans, and the Kennedys, almost a party unto themselves. It was a government in exile with its own shadow cabinet and with Robert Kennedy as the titular head. Everything he did was viewed as part of his own candidacy—every move, every motive was doubted; nothing could be innocent. If he spoke out on Vietnam it would not be judged as a statement by a concerned politician on a crucial issue, but as an instance of petty political maneuvering. Yet the other half of that coin was his power: dissent by Robert Kennedy on the war was not idle dissent, it was dissent by so powerful a political figure on so important an issue as to represent a frontal challenge to the administration. With Robert Kennedy on their side the doves would become that much more respectable. The Kennedys are not soft, they are tough; they are Irish; they are formidable practicing politicians, and one is not ashamed to have them as colleagues. Had any other politician in America spoken, as Robert Kennedy almost innocently had, of giving blood to the Vietcong, his career as a serious political figure would have been over; for Kennedy it was a temporary slip. If Robert Kennedy became a dove, a lot of other people, senators, writers and plain citizens, would feel more at ease in joining them; and those tenuously critical of the administration would be encouraged and strengthened, and they would become more sharply critical. The entire rhythm of protest would be accelerated that much more.

  In early 1966 Robert Kennedy broke with the administration over Vietnam. There was no single clear point of demarcation, rather it was more a matter of tone and emphasis. He did not really attack the war or the President, he simply said that the emphasis of the war was wrong, that the administration was placing too much emphasis on military solutions as opposed to political solutions, perhaps a coalition, perhaps a bombing halt. It was not so much criticism as implied criticism; it was not so much an attack upon the administration as it was implied support of the dissenters. But both the administration and the dissenters knew where Kennedy was headed. If Lyndon Johnson had escalated the war by stealth, Robert Kennedy was becoming a dove by stealth—but his course was clear. In November 1966, right after the congressional elections, at a time when American political conversation turns inevitably to the next presidential election, a group of Time magazine writers assembled at dinner. One reporter, just back from Vietnam and knowledgeable about the war and the coming frustration there, predicted that Kennedy would run for the presidency in 1968—not because he wanted to, not because he intended to, but because forces outside his control would demand that he do so. The war could only get worse, and as the war became worse the public malaise would grow, and by March 1968, the crucial time—the time of the primaries—the pressure on Kennedy as the leader of the opposition would be unbearable. He would have to either run or surrender leadership. For that position was not just his alone, the party at this particular time inevitably would have a bright young man who would represent fresher ideas and a rallying point The Kennedy phenomenon had made the Kennedys the controllers of that particular position, and after the assassination it had fallen by succession to Robert Kennedy. With their power and their ability to attract intellectuals the Kennedys so dominated the young leadership of the party that anyone else virtually had to fall into their orbit, clear it with them whether or not he ran. But that slot which Robert Kennedy held as the youthful attractive figure challenging the old order was one which would exist without him, it was a natural vacancy, not a man-made one—and his control of it might be only temporary.

  His dissent grew, and with it, the opposition to the war. The White House predictions about imminent victory came and went, developing a rhythm of their own. Optimism about imminent victory was followed by a call for more troops, which was followed by more optimism for a more imminent victory. The ghettos became increasingly restless; city after city burned. The unique ghetto was the one which did not burn. As these forces mounted, Kennedy himself became increasingly radical and listened more and more to radical social voices. By early 1967 he was preparing to make a major address on Vietnam—a real and serious break with the administration which would become a watershed of opposition. He traveled through Europe meeting heads of state. In Paris he might even have been the recipient of a peace feeler, though one never knew (peace feelers are where you find them, if you want to find them; there was a time in 1966 when the mayor of every city in every neutral country proclaimed that he had just received a peace feeler). Then he returned to Washington to meet with Johnson for a final break.

  All the bitterness and acrimony between these two powerful men, perhaps the two most powerful men in the country—one with actual power, the other with potential power—surfaced at the meeting. Kennedy had never been generous with the President after his brother’s assassination. He felt that Johnson was a usurper of his brother’s office, and a destroyer of his brother’s dream, the dream of all the fine young men. Now that dream was being betrayed, being dragged into a hopeless war. Johnson, proud and vain, nursed long-held antagonism for Robert Kennedy. Kennedy had not wanted him on the ticket in 1960; he had treated him with disdain for three years in office, and had then wanted to be Johnson’s vice-president. Johnson felt that Kennedy had never forgiven him for his ascension, that he had behaved ungenerously to him—“All that boy has done since I became President,” he told one friend, “is snipe at me. He’s been running for office since I was sworn in.” His feelings were sharpened by the ease with which Kennedy handled public relations, by the glamour which was attached to Kennedy and which eluded him, and he was particularly bitter about Vietnam. He felt he was carrying out the Kennedy mandate, using the Kennedy people, and now he was being politically attacked by the young man who started it. Robert Kennedy himself had said in 1962, in Saigon, “We are going to win and we are going to stay here until we win.” The President was angry and bitter. He began the meeting by denouncing Kennedy for having made alleged peace-talk leaks.

  Kennedy immediately replied that he had not leaked anything. “That came from your state department,” he said. “It’s your state department,” Johnson said angrily. Then they began to argue bitterly. Kennedy, according to some reports, called the President a son of a bitch. Then Johnson began to talk about the war, to criticize Kennedy for running down his own country. He told Kennedy that he would soon be in serious political difficulty. “We are going to win this war, and in six months all of you doves will be politically dead.” The President continued, in a line of argument he frequently used; the anger showed in his voice. Criticism by Kennedy and others encouraged Hanoi to hold on. Hanoi was tired and losing, but the doves kept alive their false hopes and kept the war from ending. The doves were prolonging the war. If you persist, he said, “the blood of American boys will be on your hands.” He looked at Kennedy and told him, “I could attack you in exactly those words and if I do, you will be finished.”

  “I don’t have to sit here and listen to this kind of talk,” Kennedy said. The meeting broke up.

  Less than a month later, after an enormous amount of advance build-up, Kennedy made his major Vietnam speech. The build-up had been immense, and for days reporters had been clamoring for leaks. Would he be hawk or would he be dove? “Well send up puffs of white smoke if it’s dovish, gray if it’s hawkish,” said Frank Mankiewicz, his press secretary. The decision, when it came, was a clear break with the administration. While admitting his own responsibility for past mistakes, he finally came out and attacked the war itself and U.S. responsibility for it. “It is we who live in abundance and send our young men to die. It is our chemicals that scorch children and our bombs which level villages. ...” He called for a bombing pause and a coalition settlement supervised by the United Nations. Johnson was not amused. He gave two speeches that same day, and also announced that Russia had agreed to discuss the limiting of the missile race.

  Thus Robert Kennedy broke with the a
dministration and acceded to the titular leadership of not only the Kennedy party, but also of those who were now leading the dissent on Vietnam and were looking for strong political leadership. (Many of them had been formerly anti-Kennedy; barely reconstructed Stevensonians.) It was perhaps smart politics, but it was done, ironically, without any political strategem in mind. In early 1967 it was quite clear that Kennedy had no intention of running for office—he did it because he could not do otherwise. Yet in accepting the leadership of the opposition, he accepted certain obligations too. He was leading on an issue of such gravity that it would not easily be postponed; it held that quality of moral imperative. But he had thought, in accepting this leadership, that though it might be distasteful he could wait five years, until 1972. Yet his troops were rallying to him, not just because he was a Kennedy or because they wanted a restoration, but because he looked like the only Democrat capable of beating Johnson in 1968.

  But he was really thinking in terms of 1972; he was not planning on 1968. The long-range forces he had counted on, the young people voting in large numbers, the dominance of television, the liberation from the bosses, would come with the new politics in 1972. But because of Vietnam, 1968—the transitional year from new politics to old politics—beckoned; and he was there.

  Robert Kennedy was in many ways the most interesting figure in American politics, not only because he was a Kennedy, not only because so much of his education had taken place in the public eye—it could be traced by putting together film clips of this decade—but primarily because he was a transitional figure in a transitional year. At a time of great flux in American life and politics, with old laws on the way out and new laws on the way in, Robert Kennedy was at exactly the halfway mark between the old and new. His career spanned the old politics of the past, he had worked successfully in it, electing his brother President; and he now planned on success in the coming politics of the future, to elect himself President. Thus there was a constant struggle, for his body, his soul and his campaign, between the traditionalists, the veterans of 1960—most often John Kennedy men: Larry O’Brien, Ted Sorensen and others—and the new breed, most often young men, more radical, and less professional in the pure sense. They were Bob Kennedy men first and foremost, prophets of the new politics—men like Adam Walinsky, the young speech writer, and Frank Mankiewicz, the press secretary. Though in part a struggle in tactics, it was more: it reflected a collision of forces in America just as much as a decade ago a debate between liberals and conservatives in the Senate had reflected a similar collision. The result was that Robert Kennedy, just as he was caught in the great contradictions between the thrusts of American power and American idealism, was also caught in the contradictory thrusts of the new and the old politics. But he would be too tied to the past, surrounded by men who knew more of the past than of the future, and this would force him into a fatal mistake.

  This year was a long way from 1960 and, for the first time since the New Deal, American politics were reflecting the major changes in American life. As such, the battle around Kennedy reflected shifts in the society. The old machine-based, party-centered, economics-oriented traditionalist politics were shifting, in our affluence, to new styles. New issues were surfacing, old alliances were breaking up, and new forces were coming into our politics. The party machinery, once the dominant force in the Democratic party, was steadily being weakened. There was a new middle class which was moving to the suburbs; if a family was already making $10,000, how could the machine offer a better job? There was also the onslaught of television which was wiping out the middleman, the power broker who, in return for certain promises and controls, could offer the candidate exposure. Now someone with money, or the ability to attract money, and the right personality, someone who could bear exposure, could go directly to the people. Political power, which once rested with party officials and labor unions, was shifting to the suburbs. Labor unions, threatened by the rise of the Negro, particularly in housing and employment, were fast becoming a conservative force. The easy old coalition between labor and Negroes was no longer so easy; it barely existed. The two were among the American forces most in conflict. Yet other groups, traditionally Republican, might now, in suburbia, be wooed to the cause.

  Yet if part of the new politics worked, so did some of the old. The mix varied greatly from state to state and region to region, depending on the affluence of the area, on the population shifts, and on how much the area represented the business and style of the old America and how much it represented the drives and technology of the new. The electronics industry with its all-engineer suburbs was new America; the textile mills, old America. Some states, like California, were almost totally new politics; others, like Indiana, were curiously old politics, strikingly unchanged from their voter profile in 1960 or 1956, albeit a bit more affluent.

  Thus the new politics was the sum of many changes. Labor and labor districts though more affluent were not very affluent, and their hold in the society was a somewhat marginal and insecure one. They no longer responded automatically to machine or union control. They feared the Negroes, and this undermined one part of the party’s traditional base. Similarly however, in the suburbs a large portion of middle-class America, nominally Republican, had been freed from some of its economic fears. It had become materially successful, and now had time on its hands to worry about the course of American life. Most often it is bothered by moral issues. Its feeling on race is ambivalent. It does not feel the thrust of the Negro and his anger the way the blue-collar whites do. It would like to be for the Negro, and yet it is uneasy about the new anger of American blacks; it does not like anger or sweatiness on the part of anyone. In a sense labor now resembles the middle-class Republican America of thirty years ago. In the thirties, white-Protestant small-town America was the heartland of America. It had its share of the pie, but was worried about the upward push of labor in the Democratic party: Would that diminish the pie? Labor was the radical, on the outside trying to get in. Now, those sons of businessmen, well trained in the new technocratic America, have moved up. Very secure in their jobs, they have learned that labor is no threat. But labor, finally getting its share of the pie, is now uneasy about the upward drive of the Negro. Is it a threat? Will it diminish the piece of pie? Labor is on the inside these days, but without much security or generosity. George Wallace discovered this in the early sixties. He had sensed the anger and frustration of the blue-collar people and the new class division in American life; that the middle class was for the Negro but had fled to the suburbs leaving behind an angry blue-collar class to live next door to the Negroes. (In late July, 1968, Wallace turned to a reporter and said, “You reporters are for McCarthy, aren’t you; and your editors are for Humphrey; but your pressmen are for me.”) The new middle class had moved to the suburbs; it now had the time and energy to work in American politics. It was far removed from blind party loyalty, indeed it regarded party loyalty as just a little bit unsavory and almost dishonest; rather, it voted for the better man (as seen on television). Who got the suburbs, and could continually understand its needs, would most likely dominate the new politics.

  Even the kids were different. They were largely middle class, affluent, not worried about their jobs—the jobs would always be there. They were a politically charged up generation, a product of stepped-up American education. They were in high school during the John Kennedy years; the civil-rights revolution was part of their times, it was a moral issue to them, and they were touched deeply by Vietnam. It was likely to be the most politically active generation in our history.

  Technically, and Robert Kennedy understood this better than most people, the first year for the Democrats to operate under the new politics would be 1972. (Indeed his friend Fred Dutton had written a book on the new politics. It was to come out during the campaign and would warn Kennedy not to run until 1972; Dutton would have to revise the book under combat conditions.) The Republicans, less tied to the machine, would have a quicker shot at it if they
chose the right candidate. If Kennedy himself was in a dilemma about his own decision, he seemed to view the opportunities of others much more clearly. Lindsay, he told one friend in January, was crazy not to go for it. It was wide open for him, and this was his year—just as 1960 had been Jack Kennedy’s year. All it would take would be organization and audacity; the money and the talent would find the candidate once he announced. But the friend protested: Lindsay was locked in by Rockefeller who had prior claim to the same constituency. “If I were Lindsay,” Kennedy said, “I’d go to Rockefeller and I’d say, ‘Governor, I admire you and your record, and I think you’re the man to lead the liberals to victory this year. And we need the leadership, and I want to be for you. But it’s important that this time we not be divided as before and that the liberals take the leadership early. So I hope you’ll announce. But if you don’t announce in three weeks, I’m going to announce myself.” He could have gone all the way this year.” By a hard-nosed look, the thing for Robert Kennedy to do was to wait until 1972. But life was not like that; the forces brought to bear by Vietnam were forcing him to make 1972 decisions at a time when the structure was still old politics. Mayor Daley of Chicago was still a powerful figure and there were other, lesser, unsympathetic bosses to deal with. The moral forces of the new politics were sweeping across the country in advance of the political realities of the new politics. Thus, a terrible struggle for Kennedy.