Remembering Bobby Kennedy

Remembering Bobby Kennedy

By Nick Bryant

BBC News

Robert F Kennedy: a complex character and gifted orator

Robert Kennedy's campaign for the presidency was not yet a month
old when reports came through from Memphis, Tennessee, that Martin
Luther King had been assassinated.
Campaigning in the Indiana primary, the then New York senator
flinched at the news - so much so, that aides would later recall that
it was almost as if he himself had been struck by a bullet. Had he accepted the advice of his colleagues and the local
police chief, the improbably named Winston Churchill, he would not that
night have been heading towards a mainly black neighbourhood of
Indianapolis, where reports of Dr King's death had not yet reached the
pool halls, barber shops, corner drug stores. Standing on a flatbed truck, without apparent fear, Kennedy broke the news to the crowd.
"I have some very sad news for all of you, and I think sad news
for all of our fellow citizens, and people who love peace all over the
world," he said, before announcing that Dr King was dead.

Totally unscripted, it was a speech that surpassed even his brother John's more oft-quoted efforts

Then he issued an eloquent appeal for calm.
"What we need in the United States is not division; what we need
in the United States is not hatred; what we need in the United States
is not violence or lawlessness; but love and wisdom, and compassion
toward one another, and a feeling of justice toward those who still
suffer within our country, whether they be white or they be black." Totally unscripted, it was a speech that surpassed even his brother John's more oft-quoted efforts.
Bringing his brief remarks to a close, he said: "Let us dedicate
ourselves to what the Greeks wrote so many years ago: 'To tame the
savageness of man and make gentle the life of this world'." Such was its power that it even stood comparison with the words of the civil rights leader he sought to eulogise.
Such was its calming effect that Indianapolis remained peaceful,
despite the explosion of black fury in others parts of the country. Assassin's bullet
The impromptu speech also demonstrated that, by 1968, Kennedy
had emerged as by far the most extraordinary member of his ill-fated
family, with an emotional depth and passion that was lacking in his
more celebrated elder brother, John.

Kennedy was shot just after winning California's Democratic primary

How tragic, then, that just 63 days later Bobby Kennedy himself
became the victim of an assassin's bullet - shot at close range in the
kitchen of the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles moments after clinching
victory in the all-important California Democratic Primary. It was the third in a trinity of killings which denied America three of its most talented and seemingly providential leaders.
Still only 42 years old, Kennedy had declared for the presidency
in March, an audacious move which helped persuade his hated rival,
President Lyndon Baines Johnson, to withdraw from the race just over
two weeks later. Even after his victory in California, Vice-President Hubert
Humphrey remained the favourite to secure the presidential nomination,
not least because Johnson had bullied and corralled the party
establishment into supporting him. Still, 1968 was that most unpredictable of years - arguably
more so than 2008 - and anything seemed possible, especially given the
restless mood of the Democratic rank and file. Family loyalty
Though he ended his life a liberal darling, in the early stages
of his career Robert Francis Kennedy was the object not of affection
but mistrust.

Bobby Kennedy (right) agreed to be attorney general for his brother

He started out as a scrappy political hatchet man, whose
tightly-coiled energies were concentrated on promoting his brother's
career. Ruthless and abrasive were normally the adjectives that attached themselves to the young campaign manager.
Readers might be surprised to learn that in the early 1950s,
Bobby Kennedy was a participant in the McCarthy anti-communist witch
hunt rather than a critic - though he eventually resigned as an
assistant counsel in disgust at McCarthy's increasingly paranoiac
tactics. In 1960, JFK asked his brother to become his attorney general,
a post he did not want to take - not only was he worried about the
obvious charge of nepotism, but he had never argued a case in court.
Still, his profound sense of family loyalty eventually prevailed. Arguably, his time as attorney general proved the making of him.
Repeated battles with recalcitrant southern governors over the
extension of black civil rights eventually aroused the nobler instincts
of his character. And when the civil rights revolution threatened to overwhelm
his brother's presidency in the summer of 1963, it was Bobby who
provided much of the administration's fortitude. Legacy
Bobby was a complex character. The same man who venerated Dr
King had also authorised FBI wiretaps on the civil rights leader - and
not only at the insistence of the then FBI director J Edgar Hoover, who
had cabinets full of dirt files on the Kennedy brothers.

Kennedy's death came only a short time into his presidential campaign

The devoted family man, and pious Catholic, shared many of the sexual impulses of his brother.
What would Kennedy have made of the 2008 candidates, I wonder?
In Hillary Clinton, he might have recognised some of his own single-minded determination to win.
Certainly, he would have admired John McCain's physical courage and bravery - the qualities he admired most in other men.
But he would no doubt have warmed to the lyricism and political romanticism of Barak Obama.
The wave of nostalgia which will accompany this anniversary
should benefit Mr Obama, whose rhetorical skills and insurgent campaign
are reminiscent of Bobby Kennedy. Kennedy bequeathed his family a confronting legacy. Judged
against his memory, his surviving siblings or children have seemed
slightly pallid imitations. Perhaps that is the reason why the Kennedys
have struggled to produce a modern-day standard-bearer. These days, Kennedy might be judged an elitist for his habit
of peppering his speeches with poetry and the words of great writers. But it seemed to satisfy that intermittent need in America, and elsewhere, for the lofty and noble.
In his final campaign, he loved quoting George Bernard Shaw, whose words serve almost as an epitaph.
"Some men see things as they are and say 'Why?' I dream things that never were and say, 'Why not?'"
Nick Bryant is the author of The Bystander: John F Kennedy and the Struggle for Black Equality
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Ma devise:
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