What's Wrong (and Right) With Bobby

THE HEIR APPARENT by William V. Shannon. 309 pages. Macmillan. $5.95.

Two themes that authors seem to find irresistible are alienated man and Robert F. Kennedy. Which will exhaust the reader first is hard to tell, but so far there have been seven books of Bobbyana, and eight are in the works, to say nothing of uncounted magazine studies.

In many respects, this examination by New York Times Editorial Writer William Shannon is more compelling than its predecessors. Shannon is a native of Massachusetts, a Harvard graduate, an Irish Catholic and a liberal Democrat--the perfect candidate, it would seem, to write an admiring or even adoring book about Bobby. The surprise is that The Heir Apparent is often severely critical. But it is always dispassionate in its analysis and at times sympathetic.

A Contest Against Shadows. Noting Kennedy's obsessive risk taking, his compulsive rudeness and his legendary ruthlessness, Shannon offers the familiar explanation: they resulted from a lifelong "contest against shadows" that were cast by his older brothers and his strong-willed father. In a family that dismissed second best as no better than last, Bobby developed from what one acquaintance called "a hell of a nice little boy" into what Shannon describes as a ferocious, "mildly sadistic" competitor who inherited "a certain natural savagery" from his father.

Though Shannon thinks that John Kennedy established a bad precedent by appointing his brother Attorney General, he praises Bobby's conduct of the office. But he feels that Bobby's record in the Senate is far less laudable. "He is overextended and overscheduled," says Shannon, and while he concedes that Bobby is no longer "the two-dimensional, self-righteous young man of a decade earlier," he shares the skepticism of many Bobby-watchers concerning the genuineness of his transformation: "It is impossible to determine definitively where honest growth ends and alert opportunism begins."

Whose War? Shannon sees Bobby's ambiguous position on Viet Nam as the product of both opportunism and emotionalism. The war was "the ugly child of the Kennedy Administration's relief in the efficacy of counterinsurgency techniques against guerrilla warfare. And no one had been a more devoted proponent of those techniques from 1961 to 1963 than Robert Kennedy." What sent Bobby fluttering to the dovecote was partly a desire to capitalize on liberal distaste for the war, partly a sincere disagreement on strategy, but mostly a "dislike of Lyndon Johnson, bordering upon hatred, which made it easier for him to change his mind about Viet Nam the more he thought of it as Mr. Johnson's war."

Shannon also faults Bobby for his failure to take charge of New York State's unruly Democratic Party. "Not since New York Republicans began a dozen years ago to wipe Thomas E. Dewey's shoe polish from their faces," writes Shannon, has any politician enjoyed so promising an opportunity to make his influence felt. But Bobby has written "a record of defeat, inconsequence and confused purposes" in the state. And, warns Shannon, "if Nelson Rockefeller, Jacob Javits and John Lindsay can defeat Robert Kennedy's party in New York, they may be the men to defeat it in the nation."

Bobby's courtship of youth is both transparent and distasteful, as far as Shannon is concerned. "Although the young are very important, their political opinions are the least important thing about them." Yet Bobby's capacity "for exaggerating and romanticizing youth's role" is so great that sometimes "it is hard to say whether Kennedy is seeking the presidency or the leadership of a new Children's Crusade."

Ideologically Uncommitted. Bobby as President? For all his reservations, Shannon seems to think he might make a pretty good one. "He is more passionate, more openly aggressive, more impulsive and more capable of commitment than was his brother, but fundamentally he also is neither liberal nor conservative; he is an ideologically uncommitted man," says Shannon. "He remains a hardheaded pragmatist intent upon exercising power in the best national interests of the United States and the cause of freedom."

The question is: When will Bobby run? Most pundits figure on 1972 as the likeliest date, but not Shannon. Johnson could lose in 1968, forcing Bobby to challenge a well-entrenched Republican in 1972, or he could die in office, leaving Hubert Humphrey in his place with a powerful claim on the next nomination. As Shannon makes clear, the heir apparent may find considerable difficulty in trying to bring about the Kennedy Restoration.

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