ROBERT F. KENNEDY A Case of Mistaken Identity

...some inexcusably low blows (such as Franklin D. Roosevelt Jr.'s infamous West Virginia attack on Humphrey's military non-record) were struck with the obvious sanction of the Kennedy command, and Robert Kennedy made too many enemies by rough in-fighting...

...the grace and devotion of John F. Kennedy's brief Presidential years won him an amnesty from those who had initially resisted his candidacy in view of that background, but there seems to have been a transference of that early intolerance to Robert Kennedy...

...the circumstances of the Dominican intervention intensified his anxieties...

...Eleanor Roosevelt, Herbert Lehman, and other sturdy pillars of Democratic reforms were dedicated to the last-ditch Stevenson fight...

...someone asked...

...He went to Washington plainly hoping to avoid any semblance of a confrontation with the President...

...We can do these things because we all work twenty-four hours a day," he added...

...Because Charlie Buckley doesn't live in Virginia," he replied in deadpan reference to the venerable Bronx boss who was one of the early Kennedy boosters...

...The obvious implication of this incident was the intimation that a dark strain of anti-Semitism ran through the Kennedy lineage...

...Boss Buckley is an unsavory relic of the worst era in New York Democratic politics...

...Yet, rightly or wrongly, he felt that he could not cast a negative vote without creating dangerous misapprehensions abroad and seriously weakening the President's avowed quest for negotiated settlement...

...But this matter must be kept in perspective, and we can deal with it best in association with our allies in Latin America...

...He has what must be ineffectively described as charisma, and, from the moment he arrived in New York, every hack politician knew a formidable figure was at hand, and that things would never be quite the same...

...Kennedy has been plagued, too, by the endeavors of some discredited local machine men to use his advent as a springboard for their own rehabilitation...

...In many states the most liberal, enlightened elements in the party were committed to the "draft-Stevenson" effort...

...Still one gropes for the full answer: given all his frailties of demeanor and intermittent pugnacity, why is there a "hate-Kennedy" cult among those who ultimately embraced and enshrined his older brother...

...Perhaps it should also be added that the reception he received as he moved from house to house was so tumultuous that the progress of the inquiry was slow...

...he was to preside for the first time...

...It is probably a large misfortune that Johnson and Kennedy are so deeply incompatible, and perhaps time will prove a solvent...

...when Kennedy became the candidate, many Stevensonians branded him a brash alien...

...Early this year I encountered Kennedy at a gathering of middle-class Puerto Rican society—composed largely of those Puerto Ricans who had "made it" in New York's feverish political and social rivalries...

...He was being described at that time as mastermind (which he was not) of the struggle being waged by anti-Wagner Democrats in the Albany legislature, and I asked what other mischief he was up to...

...Damned if I know—I could just go on living on my old man's dough," he said with the same stolid countenance, and then proceeded again to give the proper reply about his dedication to public service...

...yet to one who saw him frequently during that interval, it was also plain that he would have preferred a younger, less congenial adversary...

...he took me on a tour of some of the miserable dwellings in which I heard, among other things, children describe life with rats...

...This will be a continuing problem for him...

...he had learned a good deal—perhaps most about the perils of excessive reliance on military power in Vietnam and underestimation of revolutionary ferment in Latin America...

...As the bombings of North Vietnam expanded, his misgivings mounted...

...This self-consciousness shadowed the autumn...

...yet in the warm sunlight of that afternoon, I found myself startled by the sound of a political voice so derisively rejecting a gambit on the simple ground of imprecision...

...But again personal history is perhaps the only important form of documentation...

...While the evaluation came from a disinterested source, it was guilty of ignoring some of the warts...

...Kennedy expressed quick interest...

...It was not a campaign that he enjoyed...

...He can be harsh and abrasive when confronted by what he regards as verbal filibuster or unjust criticism...

...Perhaps some who knew him at any earlier stage of his life still cling to impressions that may have had greater validity at the time...

...Perhaps the most revealing interlude came when one of his advisers outlined a proposed answer to a question about some alleged misdeed of his opponent, Senator Kenneth Keating...

...But there is overwhelming agreement that he is already the central character in New York's Democratic cast—a circumstance which inevitably makes him an object of suspicion among those who preferred things as they were...

...For success will depend not only on protecting the people from aggression but on giving them the hope of a better life which alone can fortify them for the labor and sacrifice ahead...

...Moreover, being the light, diminutive figure who had to fight his way on to any football team by unusual heroics, he has left more bloody noses in his path than most men...

...not all the judicial appointments were exemplary, and at no time did Kennedy's department audibly protest such obsolescence of the McCarthy era as the McCarran Act, which required it to pursue the tawdry business of hunting down the ragged remnants of the Communist Party...

...If Kennedy had been the author of the charge, rather than the target, I have no doubt that he would have been called an unreconstructed McCarthyite...

...Some reasons are obvious...

...Joseph P. Kennedy remains a bad name to many who equate him with the spirit of appeasement in the Nazi era...

...On the Dominican adventure he quietly lamented the unilateral nature of the American performance, rebuked the critics of the Organization of American States (OAS), and added: "Our determination to stop Communist revolution in the hemisphere must not be construed as opposition to popular uprisings against injustice and oppression just because the targets of such popular uprisings say they are Communist-inspired or Communist-led or even because known Communists take part in them...

...Wechsler is editor of the editorial page of The New York Post and a regular columnist for that newspaper...

...others rallied to Hubert Humphrey, either out of genuine devotion to his fighting progressivism or in the hope that he could successfully stop Kennedy in the primaries and pave the way for a Stevenson resurgence...

...Oh, that just isn't true," he commented cryptically, and brushed off the topic...

...Throughout that interval, it might also be said that Robert Kennedy often took the solitary rap for actions his brother never deplored...

...it has increased rather than diminished with the passage of time...

...On a national scale his situation is further complicated by his non-relationship with President Johnson, an estrangement probably beyond remedy in any political divorce court...

...Once such a story began, it seemed as if he might be required to announce that some of his best friends were Jews...

...some of the less illustrious politicos who cling to his coattails are tenacious characters...

...He had invited about ten associates and friends to throw their hardest questions at him (some of them harder than any he faced on the program...

...Among his books are The Age of Suspicion and Reflections of an Angry Middle-aged Editor.—The Editors The longer I have known and watched Robert F. Kennedy, the more it has seemed to me that some published critiques of him should bear the warning usually associated with works of fiction...

...he has already shown signs of being a notable, creative Senator...

...He has often said that he hopes his presence will be a magnet for new, spirited political participation by young people, and he clearly has a gift for attracting such allegiance...

...Perhaps the only ultimate clues can be found in the past...

...his career, still in its early stages, would seem to deserve respectful attention...

...One of my imperishable memories is of a day on a lawn when he was "rehearsing" for a "Meet-the-Press" program...

...I doubt that the Congressman who has theoretically represented this district for some years has made a comparable journey in a long time...

...as Vice President, Mr...

...Johnson felt deeply his exclusion from the Kennedy inner circle and blamed Robert Kennedy for the closed door...

...I would wish, for example, that the request for appropriations today had made provisions for programs to better the lives of the people of South Vietnam...

...To a certain degree he is a political puritan eternally staggered by the notion that he is regarded as a hatchet-man or demagogue, and his impetuous responses in such situations have defiled his portrait...

...In any case, we know that the revolutionary forces include also many non-Communist democrats...

...it cannot be simply ascribed to sentimental feeling about his slain brother...

...despite his determination to run as the candidate of New York's traditional liberal-labor coalition, he would not turn his back on those, like Buckley, who had been instrumental in his brother's 1960 success...

...It may be notable that some echoes of these positions were discernible in subsequent Presidential statements...

...The address on education received barely any press notice...

...he asked if I could arrange for him to meet Velez...

...Let me emphasize that there is ground for legitimate debate about the terms on which the case was closed...

...But they commanded few precinct battalions...

...Why do you want to run for the Senate at all...

...Sophisticates will say Kennedy was doing nothing more than any shrewd, newly-arrived politician would have done in the light of New York's large Puerto Rican population...

...And for some who had fought the Stevenson and Humphrey fights, all this revived painful memories...

...It was late afternoon during a Washington visit...

...they bear little resemblance to the living character I have encountered...

...but, in the cold terms of convention arithmetic, he was a clearly valuable ally...

...and we know, too, that a small number of disciplined and skilled Communists can have an influence out of all proportion to their numbers...

...I do not mean to suggest that Robert Kennedy never told a political fib...

...soon afterward Kennedy (without any press notices) was touring the same area with Velez...

...Senator Joseph R. McCarthy, on whose committee Kennedy served for a time, still haunts many memories...

...It is no tribute to the latter-day leadership of the party of Alfred E. Smith, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Herbert H. Lehman that it had no native son who seemed capable of offering serious competition to Keating...

...The New York Times editorially urged Stevenson to make the race...

...Why, in the face of that record, did the "hate-Bob Kennedy" cult persist during the campaign, and still makes its presence felt in the city and state...

...The roughest campaign thrusts were unleashed by Keating—most notoriously his effort (retracted after the headline-damage had been done) that Kennedy had given a big break to pro-Nazi interests in his resolution of the General Aniline case...

...Certainly what he said constituted one of the...

...He has redirected the efforts of the FBI, closed Alcatraz, broadened Presidential use of the power to pardon, partially humanized the Immigration Service, and improved the caliber of the Federal judiciary...

...Keating subsequently admitted that the settlement of the case involved a matter of questionable "judgment," not "improper motive," or any suggestion of softness on Nazism...

...someone else inquired...

...With respect to South Vietnam he said pointedly: "I believe we have erred for some time in regarding Vietnam as purely a military problem when in its essential aspects it is also a political and diplomatic problem...

...Perhaps Kennedy's impact would have been larger if his words had been more fiery and if he had even abstained from voting...

...Kennedy came to New York because a political vacuum existed...

...He has made the Federal government, for the first time, a vigorous enemy of organized crime...

...once upon a time John F. Kennedy made almost the same comment about his discomfort in rooms full of ADA types...

...But in a matter of days, his office was calling to arrange such a meeting...

...His gifts, one might say, are also his trouble...

...One consequence was that, in many areas, the Kennedy drive became increasingly dependent on some of the least distinguished Democrats of the day...

...Unsmilingly he responded that his staff was actively plotting the overthrow of the Chinese Communist regime...

...He is wounded by the feeling of being misunderstood, and too often exposes the scars...

...Kennedy, did you decide to run in New York instead of Virginia...

...Why, Mr...

...He has pushed equal rights for all Americans harder and farther than any Attorney General in history . . . and he has gotten from his aides work of such special excellence as has seldom before been approached in the Justice Department...

...If he possesses the "killer instinct" so often attributed to him, he generally suppressed it in this bout with his white-haired opponent...

...He deserves to be viewed as one of the serious political figures of our time...

...in too many places the old-line operatives and hacks were those who could be most easily tempted to join the Kennedy entourage...

...He happens to be a man possessed of an extraordinarily low-keyed wit...

...The origins of that conflict are well-known...

...Finally, when President Johnson decided to seek—through a supplementary military appropriation—what amounted to a vote of confidence in his foreign policy, Kennedy decided he could no longer remain mute...

...it was the Buckleys and Crottys who were available to John F. Kennedy and his fiery campaign manager...

...I paused at Kennedy's office and he invited me to travel over to the Senate floor with him...

...But such types were eventually to loom large in his Administration...

...He has guided more important legislation through Congress than did any of his predecessors in the past thirty years...

...But his critics die hard...

...Whatever the skepticism of some liberal dignitaries, Kennedy's capacity for evoking popular adulation is a national phenomenon...

...few bright, reflective interludes in what seemed too often a ritualistic ratification of Presidential policy rather than a serious national debate...

...His will to win was apparent and pervasive...

...Even as Robert Kennedy withdraws from a certain area of combat with liberal theoreticians, he remains almost accident-prone to controversy...

...In any case, it can only be reiterated that many of my own present-day judgments are the product of personal glimpses as well as the public record...

...I rather assumed this was a polite response, and that the matter would be forgotten amid the pressure of other business...

...I'll just look like an ambitious young guy trying to knock off a nice old man," he remarked to associates...

...He is less than a memorable orator...

...he is far more at home talking informally to a group of Harlem kids than reading a prepared paper to a convention of sociologists...

...Written by James F. Clayton, it concluded: "Kennedy may not be the best Attorney General this nation has had in a generation, but if he is not the best, he is awfully close to it...

...But it was only the sly imputations of "pro-Nazism" that gave this complicated transaction its political news value...

...Indeed, much of the negativism Robert Kennedy still encounters may be directly traceable to the bitter internecine wars of 1960 which ended in John F. Kennedy's Presidential nomination...

...Five years later, the echoes of that combat are still audible...

...It is, one must say again, this curious double standard in the treatment of Kennedy that is the essential provocation for these articles...

...his interview with James Baldwin and other Negro spokesmen was one of his least felicitous performances because he lacked the endurance to listen to certain far-out remarks from one in the group who had suffered cruel physical punishment...

...The Washington Post published a detailed examination of Kennedy's tenure in the Justice Department soon after his retirement...

...An underdog psychology pervaded the Kennedy camp in 1960...

...He happens to be a complicated man, endowed with great warmth, wit, and in-quisitiveness, and steadily deepening convictions about justice and equality...

...He has also been fortunate in the kind of staff men whose loyalties he has enlisted...

...He had been John F. Kennedy's closest confidant during the worst times and the best times in the conduct of foreign policy...

...Not too many New York politicians, however, would have chosen these rebel auspices for such an expedition...

...The abundance of money available to the Kennedy forces—in contrast to the poverty of the Humphrey enterprise-— deepened many resentments...

...tragedy itself may have deepened him, as it has many men...

...and John Kenneth Galbraith joined the Kennedy camp early and gave a degree of respectable rationality to the venture...

...Indeed, it was almost with a sense of having been here before that I heard him remark not long ago that he still experienced uneasiness in conversing with pillars of New York liberal society...

...his political performance was the story...

...When the issue of face-to-face debate arose, he had little enthusiasm for the prospect...

...But events quickly undermined the strategy of reticence...

...On one recent day he delivered a thoughtful, comprehensive speech on New York's educational problems^ but that was the same day on which he appeared briefly before the state legislature to elaborate on an explosive—and warranted —statement he had issued about the legislature's slow-motion activity...

...I had gone there at the invitation of Ted Velez, a spirited, personable young man who had graduated from a street gang into leadership of the East Harlem Tenants Council...

...those who deemed him a man of burning, unprincipled ambition cluck-clucked anew, unaware of the many serious things he had said earlier in the day...

...What has been fundamentally wrong in the criticism of Robert Kennedy is the premise that he is a simple man, possessed by a diabolical power complex, a ruthless man bent on destruction of all who stand in his way, a mirthless man who detects no irony in the human comedy, an inflexible man who neither listens nor learns...

...It simply did not occur to him that the man could fail to comprehend his sympathy or to recognize that he was doing as much—in his own judgment—as any Attorney General could do to right these wrongs...

...Such intellectuals as Arthur Schlesing-er Jr...

...Then a slight smile emerged, and he gave his formal response...

...But the reflective modification never caught up with the headline charge of a pro-Nazi "deal" and, among those who had long ago concluded that Robert Kennedy was a sinister character, this became a new, devastating piece of exposure...

...They were to haunt Robert Kennedy in his New York Senatorial race...

...But this smoldering feud undoubtedly creates a certain paranoia in both men, and some of those around them blunderingly exacerbate the tension...

...The New York Times, which had often voiced the same doubts about our Vietnamese and Dominican exercises, editorially ignored his remarks...

...He is a restless, impatient citizen who quickly drums his fingers on a table when he has grasped a thought before the visitor has finished the sentence...

...He compromised the dilemma by mingling an affirmative vote with a dissenting opinion...

...But, overall, few men of any legal eminence disputed the balance sheet...

...then—and even during the later years in government—the younger man conceived it as his function to draw the lightning...

...yet the fact was that the choice quickly narrowed to Adlai Stevenson (of Illinois) and Robert Kennedy (of Massachusetts...

...Only when intimate memoirs of the Kennedy era are published may we glimpse what actually happened...

...For Kennedy this creates special problems because he is keenly aware that anything he says or does—in foreign or domestic policy—that is remotely critical of the President will be exploited by the press as a massive maneuver...

...In the case of the Dominican Republic, we know that professional Communist operatives are backing the revolution...

...We went out to dinner afterward and I told Kennedy that I had rather mixed feelings about the assemblage because, only a few days earlier, I had visited the slums of East Harlem where thousands of Puerto Ricans cluster in squalid tenements...

...He was an eminent Attorney General...