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<text>
<title>
(1960s) The Politics of Restoration:RFK
</title>
<history>TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1960s Highlights</history>
<article>
<source>Time Magazine</source>
<hdr>
THE POLITICS OF RESTORATION
May 24, 1968
</hdr>
<body>
<p> 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 his
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."
</p>
<p> 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.
</p>
<p> 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-
deprecation: "You see what sacrifices I am willing to make to
be President? I cut my hair."
</p>
<p> 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.
</p>
<p> 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.
</p>
<p> 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.
</p>
<p> 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.
</p>
<p> 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.
</p>
<p> 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!"
</p>
<p> 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."
</p>
<p> 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.
</p>
<p> 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.
</p>
<p> 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.
</p>
<p> 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.
</p>
<p> 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.
</p>
<p> 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 him in the stinking hovels of
Arizona or Idaho, 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."
</p>
<p> 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, 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."
</p>
<p> 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 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.
</p>
<p> 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."
</p>
<p> 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 number 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 Sorenson, 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.
</p>
<p> 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.
</p>
<p> 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.
</p>
<p> 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--Sorenson'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.
</p>
<p> 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.
</p>
<p> "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."
</p>
<p> 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."
</p>
<p> 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 programs.
In more formal settings and quiet interviews, he has been
relatively specific. 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.
</p>
<p> 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."
</p>
<p> 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.'"
</p>
<p> To keep the crowds' attention, Kennedy employs a variety
of tactics. At the proposer 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 some
thing bad about me, will you say it isn't true?" "Yeah." "Have
you read my book?" "Yeah." "You lie."
</p>
<p> 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.
</p>
<p> 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.
</p>
<p> McCarthy is sardonic, still of hand, low of 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.
</p>
<p> 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
(Collectors in the crowd make off with dozens each week.
Kennedy buys them cheap.), 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.
</p>
<p> 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."
</p>
<p> 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.
</p>
<p> "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.
</p>
<p> 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."
</p>
<p> 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.
</p>
<p> 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.
</p>
<p> "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 favorable 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."
</p>
<p> 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.
</p>
<p> In that case, Kennedy must be given the edge. He is the
consummate campaigner, willing and able to out-travel,
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.
</p>
<p> 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.
</p>
<p> For all his questing restlessness, an unwonted sense of
contentment shows through these days. He talks about 1968 as
being the 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.
</p>
<p>R.F.K.: "WHAT THIS COUNTRY IS FOR"
</p>
<p> When Robert Kennedy gets down to specifics, as he did in
three private session with TIME Correspondent Lansing Lamont
last week, he offers a blend of pragmatism and utopianism that
defies any tidy ideological compartmentalization. R.F.K.'s
view of the issues:
</p>
<p> NATIONAL PRIORITIES: Most important is to end the strife
between our own people and solve their problems. I suppose the
most pressing issue is to resolve the war in Viet Nam. If we
hadn't been so involved in Saigon, I think we could have dealt
more effectively with our own cities, with inflation and all
the rest. We can't withdraw, and there will be dangers in the
future. But I think we have to make an effort, especially a
military one, only when our national security really demands
it and where we have a real chance of being successful. If
Viet Nam makes us rethink our foreign policy around the world,
which is very different from the 1950s, when we took on the
role of global defense, then it will have had at least one
important good result.
</p>
<p> THE QUALITY OF LIFE: We talk so much about poverty, we
can't forget other people have serious problems--whether it's
high prices and interest rates, crime, pollution and all the
rest. If we are trying to improve the lives of everyone, that
in turn will make us more willing to make a real effort for
the poor. If the country recognizes the serious concerns of
the middle class, we can get greater understanding for the
concerns of the poor.
</p>
<p> POVERTY: Welfare has proved ineffective and demeaning.
The only answer is to create jobs. I'd do it through tax
incentives to the private sector, using the Government as
employer of last resort. I think business can handle most of
it if we make it economically attractive.
</p>
<p> EDUCATION: We don't just need more classrooms; we need to
worry about what happens in the classrooms. We give students
marks, and we should also give them to the system. I don't
think they'd be very high in some parts of the country.
</p>
<p> NUCLEAR CONTROL: Until a real peace is assured, we are
going to need nuclear weapons to deter the Soviet Union and
Chinese. But we must move toward less reliance on these
weapons. There is something terribly dangerous in the fact
that men, with all their possibilities of error and weakness,
can blow up the world in an hour or two. So we have to move
toward agreement, perhaps beginning by further restrictions on
nuclear tests.
</p>
<p> THE PRESIDENCY: I'd work in a major way to get people
across the country to become involved. I would not just have
press conferences in Washington. I would go around to the
schools and to small communities. I'd hope to bring new people
to Washington to unleash what I think is a great talent that
is seldom called upon except in times of crisis and war. I'd
look for innovative ideas. And I'd look for people of talent
who have no ties or commitment to the past but only to the
future.
</p>
<p> THE MOOD OF AMERICA: Basically, we are spiritually
healthy people. But there is a sort of unrest, even a sense of
emptiness. Most people need a sense that they're part of some
common purpose, and it has to be a purpose that they believe
in and think worthwhile. We've lost a lot of that really
because people feel cut off by bigness and the rapid growth of
today's society. Everything seems beyond their control. I
don't want to dismantle the Federal Government--it's sort of
heresy on my part to talk of decentralizing control--but I do
think that a lot of the things now being done by Washington
could be done at the local level and by private business. This
would not only be more efficient; it would enrich the life of
the individual, and that's what this country is for.
</p>
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