The wonderful life and sad death of Bobby Kennedy: a book review

  

 Matthews' book, 2017

1968 was a year of bitter protest-marches and sit-ins in Australia against the Vietnam War and against conscription. As a university student then, I remember it well ☹. But in the USA, that year was marred by social and political tur­moil, and violence not seen since the brutal Civil War. Apart from the Vietnam War, 1968 was the year Lyndon Johnson’s presidency fell apart; Martin Luther King was mur­d­­ered; and George Wallace became more publicly racist than ever.

Robert Ken­n­edy (1925–68), the senator and former attorney general, was murd­ered in Los Angeles at 42, only 5 years after his brother President John Kennedy was murd­ered. So now is the time for us to read Chris Matthews' book Bobby Kennedy: A Raging Spirit (Simon & Schuster, 2017). Matthew’s stated aim was “to honour Kennedy’s life in pol­itics and to raise the hope that the county can find its way back to the patriotic unity he championed.”

The author followed Bobby’s life from his comfortable Boston childhood to the family’s time in London when dad Joseph was US ambassador to the UK. Rose and Joseph’s 7th child, Bobby, was a quiet child who simply wanted recognition from his dom­ineering fath­er, Joseph. Dad was driven by a passion to see first his oldest son, Joe, in the White House. When Joe died in WW2, Joseph turned his attention to his second son, John. But Jos­eph thought his third son had no redeeming qualities. Fortunately Bobby was his mother’s favourite child. And fortunately Bobby gain­ed a strength that would have filled his father with disbelief.

The Kennedy Brothers - Bobby, Teddy, John

Dad Joseph Kennedy was a right wing magnate who wanted to endear him­self to the Nazis, so father-son clashes grew. And the misery level went up, after Bobby’s two older brothers were killed.

Catholic Senator Joseph McCarthy (1908–57) established a very strong bond with the powerful Kennedys, a family that had already had high vis­ib­ility among American Catholics. As a result, Bobby was slow to turn­ against the racist McCarthy, given that McCarthy had been his fat­h­er’s close friend and Bobby’s own boss in the 1950s. The author showed that even though McCarthy’s war against suspected Com­m­un­ism was ev­ent­ually disastrous for him, loy­al­ty was one of Bob­by’s greatest virtues. This made no sense to me, since I always found Sen­ator McCarthy very nasty.

Note the even greater impact that Bobby’s Irish-American Catholic heritage had on Bobby’s young life and early politics; his awareness of the prejudice faced by Irish Catholics who emigrated to America under­pinned his sense of social justice. His growth into political mat­urity was driven by HIS sense of social justice. Clearly the hor­rific Vietnam War shook him up. But the author noted that al­though Bobby Kenn­edy at first op­posed the official US Vietnam policy, young Senator Ken­nedy refused to side with anti-war act­ivists op­posing the coll­ege draft. None­the­­less, Matthews believed, Bobby wanted to right wrongs that greatly mattered then! So which was it?

As Matthews wrote, the Kennedy brothers symbolised the optimistic zeitgeist then. Most American reviewers agreed the book presented a sensitive account of a man who evolved from his association with his brother… to become a presidential hopeful in his own right; from a focused political strategist to advocate for the marginalised communities.

So it was the political association with his brother John that was to define Bobby’s (short) life. At first it was an improbable rel­at­ionship. John, the older brother, said Bobby’s usefulness had to be proven. Afterall, who trusts their little brother? Bobby, busy working in the Justice Dept in Wash­ington, was also doubt­ful. But once accepted to run his brot­h­er’s senate campaign, the partnership worked. Bobby became the en­forcer who could make his presence felt in situations where John had to remain untouchable. When John dec­id­ed to stand for pres­ident, Bobby was the only man who could org­anise the cam­p­aign. 

Then John asked Lyndon John­son to be his vice presidential candidate, making Bobby very unhappy.

John’s presidential victory was great for Bobby’s own career, given that the younger brother was appointed attorney general at 35! The book clarified the significance of Bobby’s role in the key events of JFK’s pres­idency eg see the tension at the White House as the Cub­an crisis heated up. The Bay of Pigs and the Cub­an Mis­s­ile Crisis events showed the backroom in the Kennedy admin­is­tration and the role Bobby played in ending the crisis peacefully.

My favourite section of the book concerned Bobby’s empathy with the civil rights movement. Despite father Joseph’s nasty right wing politics, civil rights issues dominated Bobby’s time. Cor­etta and Mar­­tin Luther King needed him to weigh the abuse of power wielded by the judge in the King case. At each stop across the globe and around the USA, Bobby Kennedy listened, learn­ed and grew in intellectual depth and in focused commitment.

Matthews’ treatment of JFK’s death in Nov 1963 was brief so he moved on to the last 4.5 years of Bobby’s life - his el­ection as Senator for New York and his difficult decision to con­test the Democratic presidential primary.

  

The last day of Bobby's life, in Los Angeles

How shocking that he was the third Kennedy brother to be killed while serving his country, hav­ing just won the California primary.  What might have happened otherwise? Could Bobby have gone on to win the nomination and defeat Richard Nixon in the next election? Would he have ended the war in Vietnam on less destructive terms? Might the appeal he demonst­rated in his 90-day campaign, to both the working-class and the nation’s minorities, unite the nation?

Matthews presumably knew American politics better than his readers did, having been a presidential speechwriter and an adviser to a speaker of the house. He argued that Bobby might have been a man ahead of his time in the pivotal year of 1968. Yet his dreams faded as many Boomers turned to cynicism in the '70s and to materialism in the '80s.