Flawed Hero

...The evidence is persuasive that in 1961 Bobby lacked a burning commitment to civil rights, that strange man Lyndon Johnson of Texas was far more dedicated emotionally to genuine racial equality than wee the cool New England Kennedys True, 10 years ago very few white Americans considered civil nights an urgent national issue, but we can legitimately expect more of our favored national leaders than reiteration of the latest Gallup polls At the minimum, it is reasonable to require them to refrain from appointing racists of the ilk of Harold Cox to Federal courts m the South...

...Kennedy Justice is an important contribution to the continuing reassessment of the Kennedys Nava sky, now an editor of the New York Times Magazine, has generally preferred to allow his massive collection of facts to speak for themselves Yet he is quite openly torn between his damnation of Bobby's human virtues and his disappointment, even distress, at the policy failures for which his flawed hero was responsible Nava sky worries particularly about civil rights, wiretapping, control of the FBI, and the pursuit of Jimmy Hoffa...

...Although apparently no one was an open battle with J Edgar Hoover ??the master bureaucrat has too many files and memoranda on his side??aobi did prevail m a few limited skirmishes He drew the FBI, kicking and screams, into some half-hearted civil rights enforcement Hoover was compelled to recognize the possibility that crime was organized And, at least while JFK lived, he observed the formality of report-nig to the Attorney General rather than the President It may be, however, that he considered one Kennedy as distasteful as another...

...Nava sky implies that Cox's nomination was the price paid by the Kennedys to Senator James Eastland (D -Miss ) for the release of the Thurmond Marshall nomination from the Judiciary Committee Aside from its public imagery, the deal was a poi one Eastland could not forever have held up Marshall's clearance For that matter, a white liberal jurist might have won quicker Senate approval and performed better on the Supreme Court than Marshall Cox and his two like-minded Kennedy appointees caused endless civil rights trouble in the South In short, the Kennedy record was neither disgraceful nor rasping, Bobby's sensitivity to the issues increased at about the median American rate By the time he left the Justice Department, he was, to paraphrase one of his famous tags, doing better...

...James Meredith's all-out attack on the University of Mississippi Widespread bloodshed might have resulted were it not for the devoted and ingenious crisis management of Kennedy operators like Marshall and Dora...

...The final moral is melancholy In many ways he was a man of exemplary virtue, faithful to friends, loyal to his associates, and compassionate to those who touched his emotions Not especially intellectual, he had an instinct for intellectual distinction m others Who would not prefer him as an administrator of a great government department to any three members of the Nixon Cabinet9 Yet most of the marks of his term as Attorney General were easily eased by the agents of a new Administration Nothing permanent was changed The FBI remains an independent principality Excellence in the Justice Department vanished as an aspiration when the Kennedy band departed...

...If passion is the clue to Kennedy's pursuit of Hoffa, caution is key to his handling of the FBI The young Attorney General sometimes ran around Hoover, occasionally negotiated with him, but never did he challenge Hoover's authority over the Bureau, much less seek his removal Hoffa's very existence seemed to outrage Bobby, Hoover s obstructionism merely presented a practical problem to be handled after the Kennedy family recipe pragmatically Still, as Nava sky amply documents, an FBI fully under Bobby's control could have done far more, not only for civil rights enforcement but also for the crusade against organized crime...

...Hoffa of anything, methods smacking of entrapment were used, and the importance attached to the whole operation reflected a private emotional commitment It is always frightening when the chief law enforcement officer of the land, acting on obviously personal grounds, goes after any individual...

...Exemplary leaders who lack the inclination 01 the vision to transform institutions m the service of serious social purposes are likely to spend most of their time, as Robert Kennedy did, in bureaucratic infighting, and to win no permanent victories The two brothers wee extraordinarily talented ethnic politicians of quite conventional opinions The times required the boldness of which Lyndon Johnson at his best was capable...

...Flawed Hero Kennedy Justice By Victor S Nava sky A rhenium 482 pp $10 00 Reviewed by Robert Lekachman Victor S Nava sky??s study of Robert Kennedy as Attorney General is a fascinating account of three years when a young man of exceptional personal gifts but scant legal experience who happened to be the President's brother found himself directing the beginnings of the civil rights revolution, a concerted national assault upon organized crime, an unrelenting vendetta against Jimmy Hoffa, and a guerrilla war with J Edgar Hoover, his nominal subordinate Endowed with the Kennedy surplus of energy, determination, and personal magnetism, Bobby made the Justice Department an exciting place to work Men like Burke Marshall, John Dora, Nicholas Katz-enact, and Byron White glittered in Washington's Ivy League legal firmament??in glaring contrast to the political hacks and defeated candidates usually awarded Justice positions as consolation prizes John Mitchell's department, at once the most political and the least talented m memory, illustrates how quickly worse catena can supplant better The Kennedy men upheld standards of honor separable from political convenience and personal loyalties When the evidence could not be denied, family fends were prosecuted, notably m the sad case of James Landis, publicly disgraced and briefly imprisoned for his failure to file come tax returns The Kennedy brothers also displayed great personal courage dung such civil rights confrontations as the Freedom Riders' campaign to desegregate public transportation and...

...The pattern in civil liberties is similar Always impatient with "knee-jerk" liberals, the Kennedys were never overly impressed with ACLU definitions of the Bill of Rights Again Bobby improved with time The successive wiretapping bills he supported contained increasingly stringent safeguards against indiscriminate invasions of privacy Even at the end, though, he was a long distance from Ramsey Clark's principled opposition to wiretapping and bugging as unconstitutional invasions of personal liberty Then, too, there was the Martin Luther King episode It is indisputable that Bobby did authorize the taps and the bugs used by a vindictive Hoover more to impugn King's private morals than to identify any credible threat to national security The passion that was absent from Bobby's attitude toward civil rights displayed itself in his relentless hunt for Jimmy Hoffa, his own White Whale It is impossible to recall this story in a way that will do credit to his memory Hoffa was and is a dubious candidate for canonization Nevertheless inordinate amounts of scarce Department of Justice resources were devoted to convicting...

...Nava sky??s book reminds one of how conventional the Kennedys were Their rhetoric, style, and self-deprecatory wit certainly conferred a charm to national politics whose absence Richard Nixon daily rubs in All the same, they were liberal imperialists in foreign policy, ready to bear any burden in the defense of freedom At home Bobby was more alarmed by organized crime and political subversion than by organized racism or threats to civil liberties He shared the clich?¦s of his time and caste...