Link Between the New - - Politics and the Old

Saturday Review 2 Aug 69

An essay review of "Robert Kennedy: A Memoir," by Jack Newfield (Dutton, 318 pp., $6.95)

by GLORIA STEINEM

n that long bad day last summer lie, with a green cap from Havana when Robert Kennedy's body lay sticking out of his pants pocket"), Hay- SR: BOOKS 0 in state at St. Patrick's Cathedral den was mourning the death of a po- Book Reviesi, Editor: ROCHELLE GIRSO't in New York, one of the friends stand- litical leader he often disagreed with, ing honor guard beside the coffin was but one—perhaps the only one—he and Senator George McGovern. His turn others like him could talk to. over, McGovern stayed on to watch the So in Chicago, Tom Hayden, who had silent stream of mourners, and four been discussing with Kennedy ways to more Kennedy friends now taking keep blood from flowing in the streets, 19 "Robert Kennedy: A Memoir," by Jack Newfield their turn at vigil: Mayor Richard became the young leader most har- Daley and his sons. assed, followed, and threatened with 21 "The Warren Court: A Critical No one saw the irony then, two death by Daley's police. Since then his Analysis," edited by Richard H. Sayler. months before Chicago, that McGov- radical and compassionate philosophy Barry B. Boyer, and Robert E. ern, Senator Abraham Ribicoff, and has become more hospitable to vio- Gooding, Jr. two other dove Senators should be lence then it ever was before. As for 22 Book Forum: Letters from Readers replaced by a man soon to person- Daley, some of his worst enemies be- ify much they disliked and wanted lieve he would have called off his forces 23 European Literary Scene, to change. But McGovern remembers had someone he trusted told him (as by Robert J. Clements watching Daley stand, head bowed, Humphrey would not) about the real over the coffin; his face growing red police-rioting and head-crackings going 24 "Diary by E. B. B.: The Unpublished with emotion, the cords of his neck on in the street. ("He's a repressive Diary of Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, 1831-1832," edited by Philip Kelley and standing out uncontrollably just as politician," said an anguished McCar- Ronald Hudson they did again when he shook his fist thy delegate, "but he's not a monster.") and yelled obscenities at Ribicoff on Without a candidate who could and 25 "Mao Tse-tung" and "Chiang the convention floor. Only this time, would talk back, without that feisty Kai-shek," by Robert Payne Daley was crying. His big-hearted, fight- little Irishman who could win, Daley ing Irish friend was dead, and he was isolated himself more and more. Now 26 "Collected Essays," by Graham Greene; crying. his political future and personal pride "Beyond All This Fiddle: Essays 1935- 1967," by A. Alvarez; "Writing Against When I heard that story, I remem- depend on casting the Tom Haydens of Time: Reviews and Critical Essays," bered another that reporters told the world as The Enemy. by Howard Moss among themselves after the funeral: This is the loss Jack Newfield is writ- one that is documented in this book. ing about: the one potential President 27 "Going Places," by Leonard Michaels Late at night, when Kennedy's body both Tom Hayden and Dick Daley had just been brought back from Los would talk to and mourn for; the man 27 "Last Stop Camp 7," Angeles and only a handful of friends who, in the last year or so of his life. by Hans Hellmut Kirst and journalists were scattered around became an emotional, intellectual, and 28 "Anatomy of Europe," the shadowy pews of St. Patrick's, the activist link between the New Politics by Anthony Sampson tie-less, shaggy-haired figure of Tom and the Old. "Robert Kennedy was the Hayden was seen seated alone. And he one politician of his time," Newfield 29 "The Unredeemed: Anti-Semitism in was crying too. Revolutionary, founder writes, "who might have united the the Soviet Union," by Ronald I. Rubin of SDS, empathic visitor to Hanoi, or- black and white poor into a new ma- 30 "Franklin D. Roosevelt and Foreign ganizer in Newark's black ghetto (and. jority for change—and American lib- Affairs, Vols. II and HI." edited as described by Jack Newfield, who was eralism hardly noticed." by Edgar B. Nixon in the church, too, "an apostate Catho- The lack of notice, of understanding and recognition on the part of middle- GLORIA STEINEM, a free-lance writer and anumalA tosicasav contributing editor of New York Maga- class, educated, "liberal" Americans zine, worked in both the McCarthy and clearly frustrated and angered New- Robert Kennedy campaigns. field. The purpose of this memoir is to SR/AUGUST 2, 1969 19 delineate Kennedy's proper place in Of course, Kennedy won support with very much.' Then he squeezed the back history; to block out that "mistaken hope; Wallace, with fear. But those of the girl's neck, because he was bet- public image of Robert Kennedy cre- voters who switched from one to the ter expressing affection through action ated by the simplified and static re- other seemed to prefer a communica- than words." porting of mass media" and replace it tion of their real fears to no communi- Or his reply to Newfield's question with the flesh-and-blood man who was cation at all. on what he might have become had he his friend. "The Kennedy," advisor Newfield explores this Kennedy phe- not been born a Kennedy: "Perhaps a Fred Dutton once said, "with soul." nomenon in chapters on his politics juvenile delinquent or a revolution- Newfield does this very well, espe- ("Beyond Liberalism") and his primary ary." ("The young especially," Newfield cially when documenting Kennedy's victory- in—Indiana. "When Kennedy remarks, "saw in him, the qualities appeal to all the poor, from militant used the phrase, 'my people," New- they most easily identified with - black to backlash white. field explains, "he meant Negroes, or youth, dissent, authenticity, alienation, Unlike the issue-oriented intellectuals Catholics, or children, and not liberals even inarticulateness . . . the same in- who were confounded when McCarthy or intellectuals." Kennedy himself ex- congruous combination of toughness, voters switched to Nixon, or Kennedy plained his appeal to poor whites, in humor, and sensitivity they saw in voters to Wallace, Newfield perceived spite of his identification with the other generational cult figures like Bel- from the beginning the power of class much-feared blacks, by remarking that mondo, Dylan, and Bogart.") and character and heart. (Perhaps not he was "shanty Irish" and Eugene Mc- Newfield's forthright personal in- such a bad thing as the issue-oriented Carthy "lace-curtain Irish." volvement with Kennedy puts this book fear. "A candidate's speeches tell me "You know," Kennedy told Newfield more in the tradition of English mem- what he did yesterday, or today," ex- in Indiana, "I've come to the conclu- oirs, and less in that of American jour- plained a former Clean-for-Eugene med- sion that poverty is closer to the root nalistic biographies. Given the con- ical student who had switched to of the problem than color. I think there troversy surrounding this Kennedy, Nixon. "His character tells me what has to be a new kind of coalition to perhaps more than any other, the per- he'll do tomorrow:') keep the Democratic Party going, and sonal view is a good thing. So-called ob- Nixon and McCarthy, however far to keep the country together. ...We have jective journalists — even some very apart their political positions, came to write off the unions and the South good ones, like William Shannon in The across as cool, laissez-faire, middle- now, and replace them with Negroes, Heir Apparent—have seemed more pre- class men who valued reason, educa- blue-collar whites, and the kids. If we occupied with proving their objectivity tion, and a certain decorum. (McCar- can do that, we've -got a chance to do than with telling us who Robert Ken- thy's bridge-building to the young on the something. We have to convince the nedy was. Thus his early involvement issue of Vietnam was irreplaceable Negroes and poor whites that they have with Joe McCarthy is juxtaposed darkly but, as David Riesman pointed out, it common interests. If we can 'reconcile with his later civil rights activity as if led most effectively to the children of those two hostile groups, and then add to say, "See how I'm not being taken the white middle class.) Kennedy and the kids, we can really turn this coun- in by a glamorous Kennedy"; but we Wallace, on the other hand, shared a try around." are never told how he got from one to "hot" style that came across less well In that kind of revelatory quote lies the other. on the cool medium of television. They much of this book's value. Unlike most Jack, Newfield tries hard to convey valued experience, emotion, and ac- Kennedy biographers, Newfield has re- Kennedy's capacity for growth and tion; and seemed to be, if not presently lied very little on Popular Wisdom or change—not an easy thing, since his working class, at least aware of what secondhand research. He followed Ken- changes flowed from action, instinct, life among the working classes was all nedy for the last twenty months of his and experience: a non-theoretical mode about. life, copiously filled ten notebooks and, that Newfield has dubbed "sensual having come to criticize and stayed to politics"—but he is successful because find a remarkable kinship with his he was there. He tells us that Kennedy subject, he managed to be around at a arrived at his poor white-black coali- lot of crucial moments, large and small. tion, for instance, not through theory Such as Kennedy's first acquain- or logic, but through empathizing with tance with the Dump-LBJ movement, the needs of both; through discovering initiated by Al Lowenstein, and his that they both had the same emotional evaluation, even before he had been di- reaction to him. We believe him, be- rectly asked to run: "I would have a cause he saw it. problem if I ran first against Johnson. A fault of the book is that Newfield People would say that I was splitting doesn't trace this "sensual politics" the party out of ambition and envy. No back far enough. Having disliked Rob- one would believe that I was doing it ert Kennedy from afar during his because of how I felt about Vietnam brother's Administration, Newfield as- and poor people." sumes that Jack Kennedy's death was Or Newfield noticing, as he sat next "the classic identity crisis most of us to Kennedy on a plane, that his eyes go through during adolescence." For skipped over newspaper articles about the Robert Kennedy who existed before his brother's assassination. ("All of No- that, Newfield is willing to accept most vember is a bad month for him," a of the media clichés. friend says, and Kennedy's lack of in- Though I began to re-evaluate Ken- terest in any of the Warren Commis- nedy no earlier than Newfield, and was sion exposes suddenly seems plausible.) just as disapproving of him before Or Kennedy in a crowd, stopping 1963, there is probably evidence to suddenly to talk to a little girl wearing prove us both partly wrong. Kennedy glasses. " 'You know something?' he was, for instance, the advisor most in blurted out, 'My little girl has glasses favor of appointing Stevenson support- "The'Kennedy with soul." just like yours. And I love my little girl ers to high posts in his brother's Ad-

20 SR/AUGUST 2, 1969 Robert Kennedy

Continued from page 21 Walinsky were as influential in their radicalism as Newfield says, why were they so "mysteriously" absent from all discussions on whether or not Ken- nedy should run in New Hampshire? And the book contains two inaccura- cies. Senator McGovern, not Senators Morse and Gruening, made the first ma- jor speech against Vietnam; at least, that's what Robert Kennedy himself believed. (In 1963 in his maiden speech on the Senate floor, with his friend JFK still in the White House, McGov- ern predicted that "the trap we have fallen into [in Vietnam] will haunt us in every corner of the revolutionary globe"; and he added that money now .spent on the military must be utilized in cities. The speech is almost a cruel joke to read six years later.) Newfield also makes the popular as- sumption that Chester Bowles was ex- iled to India for being "right" about Vietnam and for publicly criticizing the Bay of Pigs. In fact, President Ken- nedy and Bowles had been extensively incompatible since the convention, and the State Department had taken ad- vantage of this to do a hatchet job on Bowles for his reforming tendencies. But I hope there will be more print- ings, more editions. Though not as well written as David Halberstam's, New- field's book has more facts: a detailed explanation, for instance, of New York's Bedford-Stuyvesant project. It is the best combination of information and understanding so far. ministration, and not "punishing" THE WARREN COURT: That is the approach taken by the form- them. "As Attorney General," Newfield A Critical Analysis er Solicitor-General, Archibald Cox, in writes, "Kennedy was not a partisan of his book, also called The Warren Court. the civil rights movement during edited by Richard H. Sayler, Barry B. published last year. its early Southern and integrationist Boyer, and Robert E. Gooding, Jr. But as commonly used "the Warren days." Perhaps not as partisan as some Chelsea House, 262 pp., $7.95 Court" surely signifies more than of us hoped. But, from the day he saw chronology. We do not refer to "the Negroes attacked by police dogs ("sen- EARL WARREN'S RETIREMENT as Chief Vinson Court" or "the Stone Court." sual politics" again), Kennedy was the Justice of the United States has oc- We do not even speak of "the Hughes man in that Administration most re- casioned a spate of books and articles Court," despite the great intellectual sponsible for pushing civil rights as a on "the Warren Court." This one is a and political eminence of Charles moral issue on his cooler, less Puri- collection of ten articles originally pub- Evans Hughes and the exciting events tanical brother. lished in the December 1968 issue of the that took place in and around the In The Next Kennedy by Margaret Michigan Ltrw Review (of which Rich- Court while he was Chief Justice. In- Laing, an English writer whose book ard Sayler, Barry Boyer, and Robert deed, if one were to use such an expres- was outdated by Kennedy's Presiden- Gooding were the principal editors). to sion, one would have to say that there tial campaign, and was never widely which have been added a preface by were at least two "Hughes Courts," reviewed, the "sensual politics" theory Leon Friedman of Chelsea House, an for certainly the "nine old men" of the is carried back further. Miss Laing doc- essay by Anthony Lewis of The New early Thirties were quite different uments at least two "sensual" events York Times on Earl Warren himself, from the Court at the time of Hughes's that occurred between the time that and an appendix containing the Court's resignation in 1941, with its six Roose- RFK was assisting Joe McCarthy (dia- decisions in the three cases Warren velt appointees including Black, Frank- mond-in-the-rough friend of Joe Ken- considers to have been the most signifi- furter, Douglas, and Murphy. But we nedy, Sr., and the godfather of Bobby cant during his tenure. do speak of a "Warren Court," and this and Ethel's first child) and Kennedy's Is—or has there been—such a thing book goes far toward telling us why. later tolerance toward what J. Edgar as "the Warren Court"? If so, what is Of the eleven essays included here, Hoover termed "subversives": First, it? If the phrase is taken to signify eight are by law professors, two by his instant dislike for the persona and nothing more than the period compris- journalists who have specialized in re- methods of Roy Cohn. (They got into a ing Warren's years in office, of course porting the Court's doings, and one by fist fight in the hall outside the Army- the answer to the first question is easy a practicing lawyer. Seven examine McCarthy hearings.) And, second, a trip and affirmative, and the second calls particular areas of judicial decision- he took at the age of twenty-nine (just for a description of the work and im- making: reapportionment of electoral after working for McCarthy) through pact of the Court as an institution districts, racial desegregation, criminal Asia and the Soviet Union with Su- since 1953, when Warren took the oath. procedure, church-state questions. free- preme Court Justice Douglas. Not only did Kennedy discover that the trees weren't Communist trees, but when he became very ill a Communist doctor stayed up three days and nights to save his life. Your Literary I. Q. However, these events are only earlier proofs of the man Newfield picks Conducted by David M. Glixon up after Jack Kennedy's death; the first OUT OF THE MOUTHS OF GROWN - UPS' three chapters of his book, devoted to Robert Kennedy's character, are still It's no surprise that some of the best-known verses for children—or adopted convincing. by children—were written by some of the best-known poets. Myra DeChaine of The next chapters on Kennedy's pol- Claremont, Calif., wonders how many you can place. The nursery library is on itics are somewhat less convincing, page 40. especially the occasional forcing of his views into currently correct positions 1. There was a little turtle./He lived in a box. ( ) a. Hilaire Belloc of a radical consciousness and/or the 2. There was a little girl/Who had a little curl New Left. (It is often mentioned as a Right in the middle of her forehead. ( ) positive virtue, for instance, that Ken- b. William Blake nedy skipped the dreaded stage of lib- 3. The green bug sleeps in the white lily ear. eralism, and actually disliked liberals.) The red bug sleeps in the white magnolia. ( ) c. S. T. Coleridge The book does not provide enough doc- 4. umentation for Kennedy's belief that What does little birdie say Eugene McCarthy would have been a In her nest at peep of day? ( ) d. Walter de la Mare poor President, or for his disdain of 5. Who has seen the wind?/Neither you nor 1. ( ) e. Vachel Lindsay the Reform Democrats in New York. Newfield shares these feelings, as do I. 6. Sea Shell, Sea Shell, For the sake of all three of us, I'm Sing me a song, oh, please! ( ) f. H. W. Longfellow sorry he doesn't amplify McCarthy's 7. He prayeth best, who loveth best voting iecord, or include his state- All things both great and small. ( ) g. Amy Lowell ments that "well-educated people support me," or elaborate on the self-de- 8. Be kind and tender to the Frog, vourings of some Reformers. And do not call him names. ( h. Christina Rossetti There is one riddle I would like 9. Sound the flute! /Now 'tis mute. ( ) cleared up in the next edition. If Ken- i. Carl Sandburg nedy aides Peter Edelman and Adam 10. Three jolly gentlemen,/In coats of red, (Continued on page 53) Rode their horses/Up to bed. ( ) i. Alfred Tennyson SR/AUGUST 2, 1969 21