Like Old Times

Watching the New Hampshire returns in a Manhattan apartment, Robert Francis Kennedy remarked more to himself than to his companions: "I don't want to run against an incumbent President. What I want is for the Administration to show some signs of changing its policy. But there is no sign."

At the White House, after Kennedy had indicated that he would run, Lyndon Johnson lowered his cheerful fa cade. Oscillating in his rocking chair, jingling the coins in his pocket, the President squinted out over the south lawn and told a visitor in brooding tones: "Bobby Kennedy has been a candidate since the first day I sat here."

Both were compelling truths. It has always been a question of when, not whether, the Senator would attempt a Kennedy restoration. Until very recently, it seemed that he would bide his time until 1972. The tradition of party loyalty, the immense difficulty of unmaking a President, the risk to the unmaker, the fact that he is only 42, the knowledge that many Democrats who would be happy to support him later would oppose him now--all these factors militated against a Kennedy move in 1968. His strategy all along had been to take a position slightly to the left of the Administration on virtually every issue, to husband his following, to wait his turn.

Catastrophic Ending. Last year Postmaster General Lawrence O'Brien, the strongest surviving political link between the Kennedys and Johnson, reminded Kennedy of what the party had done for the clan, of the loyalty that Johnson had shown John Kennedy, of the fealty Bobby himself could expect upon orderly succession.

Thus on St. Patrick's Day, 1967, Kennedy peace-piped: "It's inevitable there should be political differences in a democracy, but I have a strong feeling that President Johnson has been an out standing President, and I look forward to campaigning for him in 1968." Last Jan. 30, still refusing at that point to assist Gene McCarthy's cause, Kennedy said: "I have told friends and supporters who are urging me to run that I would not oppose Lyndon Johnson under any foreseeable circumstances."

Yet, under pressure from within and without, Kennedy's much heralded reassessment was well under way in February. Quite aside from his thrusting ambition for the White House and his longstanding aversion to Johnson, Kennedy was increasingly despairing of the Administration's Viet Nam policy. And he feared that a "catastrophic ending," as he put it last week, was to come. After the Communists' Tet offensive, he believed a major U.S. military step-up to be inevitable. "How can I stay out," he asked a friend, "knowing what they are planning to do? I've got to do something." On domestic issues Kennedy grew ever more convinced that Johnson was failing the country.

In more personal terms, events were passing him by. Kennedys are supposed to stand for courage; the antiwar parade marshaled by a lonely Gene McCarthy was trampling that profile. To be accused of being both gutless and ruthless would be too much. Gradually, he came to the chilling conclusion that if he did not move now, he would grow old in the Senate, for which he has little love, or in private life, in which he has little experience.

Reassessment Arrow. In the days before New Hampshire, he was more than half convinced that he would go ahead. Kennedy's instincts and soundings told him of the turbulence in the country, the confused condition of the party, Johnson's palpable weaknesses. Then the vote in New Hampshire, in the words of one McCarthy aide, "took the bandage off and showed the Democratic Party its wounds."

Kennedy immediately seized on the vote as an end to the idea that any bid by himself would be a party-wrecking, personal vendetta against Johnson--the rationale he had earlier used for staying out. Now he could say that the split was already there and the "disastrous, divisive policies" of the Johnson Administration were to blame. Yet Kennedy himself, by his constant criticism, had helped cause division in the first place, and was well aware of the Democrats' dissensions long before New Hampshire. It was the practical demonstration that mattered: the results of the primary showed as nothing had before how vulnerable Johnson is.

Kennedy had no compunction whatever about trying to shoulder McCarthy aside a mere few hours after the votes were in. Yet between Wednesday morning, when he loosed his reassessment arrow at McCarthy's balloon, and Thursday night, when he made the irrevocable decision to go ahead, Kennedy went through some elaborate maneuvers. He met privately with

McCarthy in Ted Kennedy's office. He offered Johnson impossible terms for reconciliation (see box). Through an old friend, Defense Secretary Clark Clifford, Kennedy told the White House of his final decision to run. On Friday, Kennedy took a brief recess, flew to Long Island to serve as official fall guy at a club luncheon. Kennedy took the ribbing, managed to ignore a belly dancer's gyrations while studying his notes.

Exhibits A Through J. The next morning, looking almost relieved that contemplation was at last giving way to combat, Kennedy took the podium in the old Senate Office Building's Caucus Room, where John Kennedy had announced eight years before, where Eugene McCarthy had lodged his challenge four months ago. With him was Ethel, becomingly tanned from the ski slopes, one small boy attached to each hand and seven other children in tow.

(Douglas Harriman Kennedy, 14 months, stayed home.) Their hair brushed to Sunday-school neatness, wearing their dress navy blues, mother and children were exhibits A through J of the Kennedys' lean physical vitality.

Later, in a Senate office, states and regions were being divided, speaking schedules laid out, and many a 1960 staffer put to work. Pierre Salinger, looking little different from that campaign save for a more expansive manner and more expensive clothes, shuffled about roaring "Just like old times!"

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