THE POLITICS OF RESTORATION
THEY pronounce his boyish name with fear and derision or else with adoration and awe. To many enemies, he is more his father's son than his brother's brother. Indeed, it was old Joe himself who observed, "He hates just like I do." By this reckoning, Robert Kennedy is the spoiled dynast, reclaiming the White House as a legacy from the man he regards as a usurper. Yet to many who have worked closely with him, Bobby is like Jack, pragmatic and perceptive, tempered by history. Says Urbanologist Pat Moynihan: "Much has been given him and taken from him in life, and somehow he has been enlarged by both experiences."
Bobby himself notes with wry pride: "I am the only candidate opposed by both big business and big labor." Many foreign diplomats, especially Asians, fear that he might lead the U.S. back to isolationism. Orthodox politicians often cannot forgive his hauteur, and recoil at what seems to be his rule-or-ruin approach. He is unpredictable, uncontrollable. Would he attack agricultural subsidies? Farm groups wonder. How far beyond Medicare would he go in expanding Government medical services? Organized medicine worries. He speaks for tax reform and attacks the oil-depletion allowance, as others have for years, but Bobby might just be tough enough to get something done about it.
Crushed Argument. There are other Bobbys within that slim, taut, toothy exterior. If Michael Harrington discovered America's poor, Kennedy adopted them --not only in the urban ghettos, where the votes are, but also in the shacks of grape pickers, in the hillbilly hollers, along the rutted tobacco roads. He can communicate with the disinherited as few others of his race or rank are able to do. He can maul a William Manchester, then have the author serve as honorary chairman of a Kennedy for President club. He can be morose or merry, expansive or petty, merciless or magnanimous--all to an extreme degree. Says Lawrence O'Brien: "The pendulum just swings wider for him than it does for most people." For every Machiavellian maneuver there is a graceful gesture; for every half-truth or hyperbole there is a disarming pinch of self-depreciation: "You see what sacrifices I am willing to make to be President? I cut my hair."
He might just make it. For while Robert Francis Kennedy is succeeding Lyndon Baines Johnson as the nation's most controversial politician, while his complexities and contradictions are the subject of passionate debate, he is also proving that many somebodies out there like him enough to vote for him. Last week, following up his victories in the Indiana and Washington, D.C., Democratic primaries, Kennedy scored a smashing success in Nebraska.
The fact that he won 51% of the vote, against 31% for Senator Eugene McCarthy, was only part of his triumph. The combined loyalist vote in conservative, rural Nebraska--8% write-ins for Vice President Hubert Humphrey and 6% for Johnson, who remained on the ballot despite his non-candidacy--showed the extent of disaffection with the Administration, which Bobby did his share to provoke. And Kennedy's support was so broad in a state with only a 2% Negro population that it crushed the argument that his appeal is restricted to city dwellers, the black and the poor.
He carried every one of Omaha's 14 wards. He ran ahead in 88 of the state's 93 counties. Even in Lancaster County, home of the University of Nebraska and a putative McCarthy bastion, Kennedy lost by only two votes. McCarthy had entered a full slate of committed delegate candidates, while Kennedy was unable to match him, having entered the race after the filing deadline. Kennedy was therefore forced to line up uncommitted candidates and conduct an advertising campaign to identify them to the electorate. Picking and choosing among 75 unfamiliar names, the voters gave him at least 20 of the state's 30 delegates.
Plans to Stay Out. Humphrey pooh-poohed the results, saying that they would have been "a little different" if he had been an active contender. No doubt. But Humphrey is directly involved in none of the forthcoming primaries, and the "unauthorized" Nebraska write-in campaign on his behalf clearly bombed. Humphrey visited Nebraska four days before the primary, seemingly inviting votes. Now he plans to stay out of Oregon, California and South Dakota until those primaries are over. McCarthy, who is on the ballot against Kennedy in the three remaining contests, vows to fight it out, spurning the New Yorker's offer to join forces.
Nebraska was a Kennedy victory tactically and strategically. In narrow terms, it demonstrated the growing efficacy of the Kennedy organization and Kennedy's people borrowed the McCarthy technique of using student volunteer canvassers and deploying them everywhere the votes were. Local coordinators were set to work in more than 50 locations; in a state with only 292,000 registered Democrats, that provided a cell for every 5,800 voters. Kennedy himself seemed to be everywhere, and everywhere he went he wowed them. Nebraska was also the best vindication yet of his longer-range design: to create such an impact in the primaries that Humphrey delegates from the non-primary states will be shaken loose. The magic number in Chicago will be 1,312 votes, and most estimates of committed and potential delegate strength put Humphrey well ahead at present. But every Kennedy victory puts that lead in greater jeopardy.
Pink Nose. To increase Humphrey's danger, Kennedy has become the most frenetic campaigner on the road today, starting his days before 7 a.m., often skipping lunch, frequently chugging on until 3 the next morning before allowing himself food and rest. "He looks tired," the motherly types in the crowds say. "He looks like he needs a square meal." Another common observation:
"He looks like a little kid." And from younger women: "Beautiful!"
Late at night, in his chartered Boeing 727, Bobby, 42, looks neither young nor beautiful. Deep lines mark the brow. Stumping in the sun has turned his nose pink; lack of sleep has dulled and reddened his eyes. The grey wires in his tawny hair grow more visible. How goes the race for the nomination? From behind his cigar: "It's silly to talk about that. It's like trying to gauge the outcome after the first five seconds of a minute-long contest."
Exile in Proximity. That long minute runs from March, when he announced his candidacy until at least August. With luck, it will last until November. But it is the minute that his legion of kith and kin have been dreaming of ever since "President John," as Ted Kennedy refers to him, died in Dallas.
During Jack's administration, there was much half-joking about "Bobby's turn." After the assassination, it became a question of opportunity. Pierre Salinger took a leave of absence from his job as an airlines vice president last Jan. 1. Asked if he knew then that Bobby would run, Salinger replied: "I knew on Jan. 1, 1964." After Johnson ruled him out as his 1964 running mate, Kennedy was asked what he would do if something happened to the President before the next election. "I'd go after the nomination," he said.
Things were to happen to Lyndon Johnson and the nation, but he could not know it then. He could only look forward to eight frustrating years of physical proximity to and spiritual exile from the seat of power. He made the best of it, preparing for 1972, and meanwhile he built on his own legend, the good and the bad.
Charging into New York, he thrust aside resident Democratic aspirants to take on Republican Senator Kenneth Keating. The avuncular, popular incumbent accused the Kennedy people of distorting his record, and the nonpartisan Fair Campaign Practices Committee sided with Keating. It seemed of a piece with Kennedy's background: his brief stint with Joe McCarthy; the prosecutor's mentality and Sicilian yen for vendetta; the management of Jack's 1960 campaign, in which lovable Hubert Humphrey had been driven from the race and humiliated. Now, in New York, "carpetbagging" and dirty pool. But he went on to win, and to capture uneasy primacy in the party.
Although Robert Kennedy chafed at the Senate's rituals and pace, he was able to use his new position effectively to hew a niche of his own. He traveled widely, spoke incessantly, and became increasingly critical of the Administration. Addressing himself to issues ranging from auto safety to social justice in the Americas, North and South, Kennedy labored mightily to establish himself as the little man's big friend.
Was it wholly an image-building performance? His critics suspected as much. TIME Correspondent Hays Gorey, who has followed the career of Bobby as Senator and candidate, does not agree: "No one who has seen Kennedy on the Indian reservations of Arizona or Idaho, no one who has seen him in the stinking hovels of Appalachia, no one who has seen him take the hand of a starving Negro child in the Mississippi Delta, accuses him of acting. Neither he nor any other politician could be that good an actor."
Colored Ruthless. Nor was Kennedy's growing unrest over Viet Nam an act. He played the issue for political advantage, to be sure, but he also became increasingly convinced that the massive U.S. military commitment was a blunder that threatened catastrophe. He had helped plant the roots of Johnson's Viet Nam policy during the Kennedy Administration, and he acknowledged it: "But past error is no excuse for its own perpetuation. Tragedy is a tool for the living to gain wisdom, not a guide by which to live."
Beginning in 1966, he expressed his doubts with increasing vehemence. His proposal two years ago, that the Viet Cong be assured a role in South Viet Nam's future political life, brought an angry rebuttal from the Administration; today some such arrangement seems likely if a settlement is to be negotiated. Despite the rift with the White House, Kennedy insisted that he had no 1968 ambitions; that he would support Johnson regardless of the war. He maintained this posture even after Eugene McCarthy challenged Johnson last fall on grounds virtually indistinguishable from Kennedy's. It was then that Kennedy felt a double crunch, from within and from without. To run and lose would be to risk his entire political career. To remain on the sidelines would be to violate his own principles and his pugnacious spirit--and perhaps throw away his future as events passed him by. Already the liberals whom he had so assiduously cultivated were deserting him.
The timing of his entry into the race was proof to many that Kennedy had been slyly scheming all along, waiting for someone else to do his dirty work. His argument that an earlier challenge would have been interpreted as merely anti-L.B.J. animus did not save him from being colored ruthless and opportunistic once again. Even Arthur Schlesinger Jr. felt obliged to write a defensive article conceding that Kennedys "always do these things badly."
The Camelot Kids. Once the decision was made, all else flowed easily. Kennedy had all along retained a kind of prefabricated campaign organization. Although he is among the most junior of junior Senators, his office staff numbered over 40--the largest of any member. Then he drew on Brother Ted's aides, and, of course, Ted himself. Brother-in-Law Steve Smith was there to handle the money. Bobby always maintained widespread contacts in the academic world. And he had but to toot the trumpet to assemble such erstwhile Camelot trusties as Salinger, Ted Sorensen, Lawrence O'Brien, Kenneth O'Donnell, Dick Goodwin. Most of the oldtimers are even working without pay, although, as Rose Kennedy has pointed out, money is no object. For a bodyguard, he retained Bill Barry, a former FBI agent who happens to be a New York City bank vice president.
It is a staff of many levels, myriad contacts, much expertise. McCarthy has not been able to build one like it in seven months. Humphrey, despite his official perquisites, cannot match it. And no candidate of either party can boast aides who themselves have celebrity status. The impression that the Kennedy combine is principally retreads from the 1960 quest is illusory. A number of leading members are primarily Bobby's rather than Jack's. Adam Walinsky, 31, a former Justice Department aide, is the chief traveling speechwriter; Jeff Greenfield, 24, out of Yale Law, works with Walinsky; Peter Edelman, 30, another Justice Department veteran, concentrates on research; Frank Mankiewicz, 43, a former Peace Corps official, is chief press aide. Others, like Arthur Schlesinger Jr., move in and out. Fred Dutton, 44, a bit player in 1960, who became an Assistant Secretary of State, is now a luminary, traveling and advising Bobby constantly as a road-show coordinator.
The diverse crew is not without its frictions. There is something of a generation gap between the veterans and the youngsters, a certain amount of resentment that "Adamant Adam" Walinsky gets the last word so often on rhetoric. O'Brien and O'Donnell "speak to each other, but don't communicate," as one colleague puts it. O'Brien has been assigned to the primary states, O'Donnell to delegate work in the non-primary states. Goodwin is somewhat out of favor; he worked for both Johnson and McCarthy. Greenfield keeps on permanent display a college newspaper editorial he wrote criticizing Jack Kennedy's Viet Nam policies.
Filling the Lenses. But the team functions. Virtually all the advance scheduling through June 4--the last primary--was blocked out in late March. Special aides are called in for specific situations--Sorensen's brother Philip, former lieutenant governor of Nebraska, was summoned from his present job in Indiana to work his old home state. Jerry Bruno, who had run Kennedy's office in Syracuse, N.Y., supervises the candidate's advance work, attempting to get the widest possible exposure with as much drama as possible. Kennedy and entourage roll up to a small-town school. No one is in sight. Will he be photographed being greeted by no one? Hardly. At the proper moment, kids stream on cue from every door, engulfing the candidate, filling the lenses. After stumping a city, the staff sometimes prepares an exhaustive written critique on what went right--and wrong.
Kennedy did not get off so smoothly in the beginning. During his first days as an announced candidate, particularly before Lyndon Johnson withdrew from the race, he wobbled a bit. His attacks on Johnson sometimes bordered on the demagogic, as when he accused the President of appealing to the nation's "darkest impulses." He realized his error and soon pulled back. He also ceased invoking Jack's memory. His very presence is enough to evoke the old mystique anyway, and the press, which had given Bobby a bad time for the way in which he entered the race, was quick to pick up his obvious use of New Frontierisms.
"There is such a thing as evocation of the great dead," wrote Columnist Murray Kempton, "and there is also such a thing as the exploitation of corpses. Senator Kennedy seems appallingly far from recognizing the difference." In Salt Lake City, the candidate was actually introduced by a memory-haunted supporter as "the Honorable John F. Kennedy."
Pablum & Tranquilizers. Bobby rapidly developed his own style, blending hard proposals, double-edged wit and a tough platform manner. The Johnson dropout deprived him of his prime target, but Hubert Humphrey soon provided another. Kennedy seized on H.H.H.'s "politics of joy" slogan to offer his own contrast: "If you want to be filled with Pablum and tranquilizers," he said in Detroit's John F. Kennedy Square last week, "then you should vote for some other candidate." Again: "Let's not have tired answers. If you see a small black child starving to death in the Mississippi Delta, as I have, you know this is not the politics of joy." Dramatic pause. "I'm going to tell it like it is."
In the shopping centers, on city street corners, in village squares, at campus rallies, with the wind whipping his hair and the venturesome plucking at his clothes, Kennedy has had a difficult time getting across philosophy and pro-rams. In more formal settings and quiet interviews, he has been relatively specific (see box). In Indiana and Nebraska, perhaps fearing a backlash, he emphasized law and order to white audiences--but never failed to mention Negro needs as well. Nor does he shrink from challenging an audience. On campus after campus he has called for draft reform and an end to student deferments. Usually he wins applause. At Omaha's Creighton University, he demanded: "Why should we have a draft system that favors the rich? You should be the last people to accept this." There was stunned silence. For the long run, he wants to abolish the draft and create an all-volunteer military.
When a group of medical students asked who would pay for the additional social services for the poor that Kennedy proposes, he shot back "You!" In Redondo Beach, Calif., he told an audience of aerospace workers: "We can slow down the race to the moon." At Oregon State University, in response to a student who favored "going in and getting the Pueblo crew out," Kennedy suggested: "It's not too late to enlist."
Dad's Message. He has employed banter shrewdly, both to keep his audiences interested and to appear unruthless. In Tecumseh, Neb., the wind tore a scrap of paper from his hand. "That's my farm program," he said. "Give it back quickly." Of course, he has done more to raise farm prices than anyone else; just think, he says, of the milk, eggs and bread his children consume. Are his crowds packed with the young? "I'm going to lower the voting age to seven." What about all that money he's spending? He quotes from Jack: "I have a message from my father: 'I don't mind spending money, but please don't buy one more vote than is necessary.' "
To keep the crowds' attention, Kennedy employs a variety of tactics. At the proper moment, he orders: "Clap!" They do, and they laugh. Occasionally he tries a little antiphony. "Will you vote for me?" "Yeah," says the crowd. "Will you get your friends to vote for me?" "Yeah." "When people say something bad about me, will you say it isn't true?" "Yeah." "Have you read my book?" "Yeah." "You lie."
Not many of his proposals are original. His answer to poverty boils down basically to jobs, which is roughly what everyone else is saying, but unlike many other liberals, he opposes a guaranteed annual income. "To give priority to income payments," he argues, "would be to admit defeat on the critical battlefront of creating jobs." He wants to raise social-security benefits and finance part of the increase from general revenue. He wants better housing and welfare programs. His ideas about how to finance all this are debatable. Tax loopholes must be closed, he says, starting with a minimum 20% levy on all income over $50,000. He favors a tax increase, but not a heavy reduction in federal spending. The billions now being spent on the Viet Nam war are the key to the nation's fiscal and economic problems; he argues, perhaps too optimistically, that once the war is over, domestic needs can be met.
Moonlight Meeting. At this stage of the campaign, the crowds seem to be looking at the runners more than listening. On domestic issues, little of substance divides the three Democratic candidates. On Viet Nam, McCarthy and Kennedy are in basic agreement; and while the Paris talks are going on, debate with Humphrey is blunted. It is easier to differentiate them by their style. Kennedy's is tense, urgent, gritty. When the crowds are not attempting to steal his clothing, he will often take off his jacket and roll up his sleeves before talking. He shoots statistics that occasionally misinform but more often impress. His gestures jab and chop; sometimes his hands and lips betray in little movements the taut nerves within.
McCarthy is sardonic, still of hand, low or octane, occasionally obscure, nearly always cucumber-cool. He is so relaxed that when he reached one stop in Los Angeles a little early, he gave his talk immediately and was on his way out when most of his listeners were coming in. Humphrey is the old-school orator: expansive, ringing, grand and open in gesticulation. It is ironic that Kennedy, despite his scorn for Humphrey's "politics of joy," frequently generates a carnival atmosphere that approaches frenzy.
Blue-Eyed Soul Brother. When Bobby arrived in Columbus, last week, ostensibly to meet with Ohio's convention delegation, the scene was near-anarchy but fairly typical. Advance radio plugs had invited the populace to the airport for a "moonlight meeting" with Bobby and Ethel. A mammoth traffic jam resulted. Finally arriving in the city, Kennedy stood on his convertible's hood with his Irish cocker spaniel Freckles at his feet. At Mt. Vernon and North Champion Avenues in the Negro Near East Side, friendly crowds engulfed the car. Admirers fell over each other and into the motorcade's path; Kennedy aides had to scoop children from harm's way. One mother plunked her baby on Ethel's lap, trotted alongside for ten blocks while Ethel held the child. At one point, Bobby, his shirttails flying, his hair mussed, his cufflinks gone,* was hauled off the car bodily and had to be dragged back from the crowd's embrace. Ethel, two months pregnant, became faint and nauseated.
It was yet another display of Kennedy's extraordinary emotional impact on Negroes. In the early days of the Kennedy Administration, both Jack and Bobby were criticized by black leaders for inadequate and tardy attention to civil rights. That attitude changed gradually, so that now, when Kennedy visits Watts, the word is "Make way for the President." In Washington's ghetto recently, he was greeted as a "blue-eyed soul brother."
While Columbus Negroes were demonstrating that brotherhood, the Ohio delegation cooled its heels for two hours in the Neil House Hotel. Kenny O'Donnell had sent word: "Be on time. These are delegates." But for Kennedy, it was more important to bring out the crowds, to show the Ohio politicians his pulling power on the streets. The delegates, he figures, will come over only if he proves to them that he can electrify the electorate. Until June 4, his aim is not to wrestle delegates to the ground in non-primary states, but merely to keep them out of Humphrey's hammerlock.
"I'm not going to ask for your support on the basis that you were friendly to a relative of mine eight years ago," he told the Ohioans. "I'm asking for a fair shake, and when this is over, I'm coming back to Ohio and hope to talk about my record then." This is a far cry from the Kennedys' bone-crushing approach to Ohio in 1960, when they virtually forced Governor Mike Di Salle to stand aside as a favorite son so that Jack Kennedy could have the field to himself. Di Salle cooperated and, despite his hurt feelings, is a Kennedy backer today.
Old Enmity. As Kennedy strategists view the race, McCarthy is finished as a serious candidate, although he might still give them competition in Oregon next week and California the week after. Kennedy studiously avoids taking any pokes at McCarthy in the hope that eventually he will inherit some of the delegate strength remaining in the
Minnesotan's quiver. From McCarthy himself, Kennedy can hope for little. The two men's long-standing antipathy --going back to McCarthy's anti-Kennedy stand in 1960--has not softened at all this year despite their similarity of views on Viet Nam. While Kennedy has been needling Humphrey, McCarthy has been complaining that some Kennedy supporters have distributed nasty half-truths about his record as a Senator. "It is not the kind of politics," averred McCarthy, "to which I would lend my name or allow to go on without repudiating it."
But McCarthy does not rule out the possibility of a coalition with Humphrey: "It all depends on the progress of the peace talks, on Humphrey's positions, and on the progress of the campaign." Just how many delegates McCarthy would actually be able to transfer, however, is uncertain. If he fares poorly on the first ballot in Chicago, his control over those bound to him either by loyalty or law could disintegrate completely.
Wide, Not Strong. Humphrey, meanwhile, has been making progress on two fronts. Recently he has collected a bag of delegates in state conventions and caucuses in Maryland, Delaware, Arizona, Wyoming, Nevada, Hawaii, Alaska and Maine. Humphrey has also been doing well against Kennedy in public-opinion polls, outdistancing him by nine points in the Gallup sampling of Democrats reported last week. In April, Kennedy led by four. Humphrey has labor backing and strong support from businessmen, who by and large still distrust Bobby. He has even been gaining among younger voters--ostensibly Kennedy's strongest bloc. The May survey, however, was taken before Indiana and Nebraska: these and future primaries could affect the polls in Kennedy's favor.
"Obviously," says Kennedy, "I'm going to have trouble with Vice President
Humphrey." Larry O'Brien acknowledges that "Humphrey's base is relatively wide--now--but it is not strong." That is, many of the delegates now counted as committed or favor able to Humphrey are under no compulsion to remain so. Also, there have been no binding stands taken in some of the biggest Northern delegations, such as those from Illinois, Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania and New Jersey, although Humphrey is thought to have considerable strength in several of them. Chicago's Mayor Richard Daley, who could be the single most influential delegation chief at the convention he will host, maintains a cagey silence, although he did allow last week that Kennedy's Nebraska showing was "impressive."
One Last Push. Oregon and California will present new problems to Kennedy. Oregon is underdog territory, and McCarthy's campaign there is better organized than it was in either Nebraska or Indiana. Although the Minnesotan himself appears discouraged, his troops on the West Coast seem to be of a mood to give one last push for Gene. Kennedy enjoys support from the regular Democratic organization in Oregon, but that is puny by any reckoning in that anti-organization state. And some Oregonians remember that Bobby, as a Senate investigator in 1957, was instrumental in getting Portland's Mayor Terry Schrunk tried for bribery and perjury. Schrunk, who was acquitted, is still mayor. The party in California is traumatically split, and Kennedy's forces, headed by Jesse Unruh, the ambitious, abrasive speaker of the assembly, became bogged down in petty bickering to the extent that Kennedy agents from the outside had to scurry in to set matters right. In both states, the advance outlook is cloudy and the decisions may well hinge on the last days of campaigning.
In that case, Kennedy must be given the edge. He is the consummate campaigner, willing and able to outtravel, outspend and outwork McCarthy. Yet there are the animosities that will not evaporate. Some border on the irrational, as suggested by the remark of a Chicago editor, who feels that Bobby has been "the guy off stage pulling the strings, the guy who chopped heads." There is the residual feeling in some quarters that the Kennedy millions "bought" the White House once and that they are being unlimbered in another attempt to do so. And there is the criticism, sometimes justified, that Kennedy will do almost anything, say almost anything, for political advantage--his ill-timed pressuring of Lyndon Johnson, for instance, to accept Hanoi's selection for a peace-talk site.
Despite the hostility that he arouses, Kennedy has intangible and invaluable advantages. Kennedy is still Kennedy. He has the capacity to make the past seem better than it ever was, the future better than it possibly can be. He is lean and sinewy in a weight-watching society. He is dynamic. He is virile. He once faced down a rhinoceros that he met by chance in the jungle. He also faced down more immediate and formidable adversaries, including Lyndon Johnson.
For all his questing restlessness, an unwonted sense of contentment shows through these days. He talks about 1968 as being his last opportunity, but he is a fatalist, and his long-range future does not preoccupy him. Amidst all the talk of the new politics, the politics of reality, the politics of joy, Kennedy seems glad to be in combat again, waging the politics of restoration.
*Collectors in the crowd make off with dozens each week; Kennedy buys them cheap.
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