The Unfinished Odyssey of Robert Kennedy

by David Halberstam

  Failing with Kennedy, the coalition started looking around for another candidate. There was the possibility of General James Gavin, the ex-paratrooper who had been making dovish noises, but when they spoke with him, Gavin said he was a Republican. There were some well-known doves in the Senate such as Frank Church and George McGovern and Wayne Morse, but all three had tough fights for reelection on their hands. McGovern, one of the most decent men in the Senate, suggested Lowenstein go out to South Dakota to sample the waters and decide whether he could run for both the Senate and the presidency. Lowenstein did, and reluctantly concluded that McGovern would have to run two different races with two different tones, something that might prove at best embarrassing, and at worst, disastrous. McGovern did say, however, that if no one else would do it they should come back and see him. Then they turned to Eugene McCarthy of Minnesota, perhaps not as outspoken as some of the others on the war, but nonetheless a member of the liberal Senate group, and a man, and this was crucial, who was not up for reelection. McCarthy, when approached by the Turks, was neither messianic nor coy. Yes; he thought someone should make the race, but no; he did not think he was the best choice. He suggested Robert Kennedy as a likelier candidate, a man with a broader base, but he did say that if no one else would run, he would make the race. “There comes a time when an honorable man simply has to raise the flag,” he said.

  McCarthy seemed an unlikely man to challenge the most active, restless President in recent history. He was a particularly calm, low-keyed man, and even his friends sometimes suspected he had something of an energy gap. He was a liberal (with a few bad marks from the ADA for some of his oil-depletion votes—“Gene is a little soft on minor issues,” explained one friend), an ex-professor, and a devout, almost mystic, Catholic. Later in the campaign his aides sometimes complained to each other that he was not available; he could not be reached either physically or spiritually; he was in one of his mystic moods. He was witty; sharp and acid in his comments. Describing the government in South Vietnam, he said it was “not a dictatorship, but a public-relations job.” When asked by a reporter what he would do if elected, he mimicked the Eisenhower vow of 1952, saying, “I will go to the Pentagon.” He obviously looked down upon most of the men he dealt with in politics, including his colleagues in the Senate, and regarded much of the press with considerable distaste. He was also obviously bright: he would listen to someone for a minute or two and then turn off, having absorbed as much as he thought he wanted to and having become bored. Yet it was part of his particular appeal that his admirers and his critics were equally divided as to whether he was the humblest man ever to enter American politics, or the most arrogant. Indeed it was a distinction that McCarthy himself was well aware of: “There is a fine line,” he said once, “between humility and the ultimate arrogance.” He could be caustic and witty, and at times his humor bordered on bitterness and one sensed in him a certain petulance; as if the American system had never really given him his due. He was at once the kind of man who could inspire the youth of America with his New Hampshire campaign, bringing them to a feverish pitch of activity, and then note afterward that his primary had proved that all one needed in American politics was a candidate and someone to drive him—a statement which did not endear him to these thousands of young volunteers.

  McCarthy had had national ambitions before and, for a variety of reasons, he was not unreceptive when, in late 1967, he was asked to run. In 1960 he had told friends, in one of those half jokes which are much more serious than anyone really intends, that he was a better candidate than Hubert Humphrey, Jack Kennedy, or Stuart Symington, “because [he was] twice as liberal as Hubert, twice as Catholic as Jack and twice as smart as Stu.” He never favored the Kennedy candidacy before the nomination, looking down upon Kennedy, as many of the Stevenson disciples did at that time, as something of an intellectual lightweight. In addition, McCarthy, a serious lay intellectual and a not entirely secular man, tended to look down on Kennedy’s religious feeling which he thought was less serious than his own. This angered the Kennedys, and Robert Kennedy in particular. The bad feeling was sharpened by McCarthy’s behavior at the Los Angeles convention. He arrived there as a supporter of Lyndon Johnson and yet, when the Stevenson boom started, it was he who made the nominating speech. It was probably the best of his career: “Do not turn your back on this man who made us proud to be Democrats.” The moment was regarded by most liberals as the high point of the convention—a moment of the heart and brain working together—but was regarded by the Kennedy camp as part of a cynical Johnsonian cabal; a move to halt Jack Kennedy and nominate Lyndon Johnson. Indeed it was a deliberate part of Johnson’s strategy to use Stevenson to stop Kennedy on the first ballot. Recalling this incident, in 1967, McCarthy remembered that he preferred Johnson to Kennedy but recalled some of his doubts. “I told people I was for Johnson for prime minister which is a pretty good indication of my reservations. I was sure he could get as much out of a given situation as any man could, but I had doubts about whether he could project the country into a certain direction. That’s why I said prime minister—the prime minister operates within the pattern of his party, subject to his cabinet and the path the party sets, and thus tries to get the most out of that path. It’s not as personalized as the presidency. I was wrong about Kennedy though; he did have an institutionalized sense of the presidency, whereas with Johnson you have this terribly personalized presidency—‘they’re all my helicopters.’ (A reference to an incident during which a young airman said ‘this is your helicopter, sir,’ as the President was about to board the wrong one. The President explained to the airman the error of his ways; ‘they’re all my helicopters, son.’)”

  McCarthy and Johnson had stayed reasonably good friends during the Kennedy administration (neither was an insider in those days), and in 1964, when Johnson was dangling the vice-presidency all over Washington, McCarthy was one of those interested. Indeed Senate aficionados attribute one of McCarthy’s soft oil votes to vice-presidential hopes. McCarthy was convenient for Johnson in those days too; the President could keep Robert Kennedy off the ticket and still end up with a liberal Catholic. McCarthy rose to the bait. Johnson delighted in playing Humphrey and McCarthy against each other; there was one particularly banal television show in which they outdid each other flattering the President. There was a certain quality of low-level humiliation to it and finally McCarthy, realizing what was happening, sent a telegram to the President, withdrawing. Thus he spared himself, as Senator Thomas Dodd did not, being a puppet in the very last minute of the marionette show. (William S. White, Johnson’s favorite columnist, later wrote that McCarthy was still bitter over the incident and that this had made him more willing to run in 1968. “What meat then is feeding this improbable Caesar, Eugene McCarthy?” intoned White, no small authority on Caesars himself, “... a fierce fire of ambition, fanned by the hot, fanatic thirst that now grips the throats of the American peacenik movement”)

  But now in 1968, after McCarthy entered, the feeling between Kennedy and McCarthy—the two key men who would be in opposition to Johnson—was still surprisingly hostile. This became a vital factor as the campaign developed and minor points became major ones, and the uneasiness and mutual suspicion developed into genuine hard feeling. At the start, when McCarthy first went in, they wished each other well and spoke well of one another. Though Kennedy still talked ambivalently about supporting Johnson, he gave McCarthy good advice about New Hampshire; enter and run against the machine. And McCarthy spoke well of Kennedy, regularly denying that he was his stalking horse. However McCarthy did concede, as he told this reporter in early December, that, because the issue involved was so great, if Kennedy finally did enter, he would probably move aside. There would be no problem there; Kennedy had a larger base. But underneath there was considerable hostility. McCarthy regarded Kennedy as an intellectual inferior, an arrogant and pushy young man cashing in on his brother’s myth and his family’s money. One always sensed that a good de
al of McCarthy’s hostility toward the American political system, and this hostility existed, came from the advantages he felt it gave the rich. He felt his own natural resources were greater than Kennedy’s, and if wealth were not a factor, there would be no comparison.

  Robert Kennedy, for his part, retained a blind spot as far as John Kennedy was concerned. Those who had helped him (such as Hubert Humphrey; there was a curious sense of sympathy and friendship for Humphrey because after the Kennedy’s had fought him, and had broken him in West Virginia, Humphrey had rallied to campaign for Jack Kennedy and had wept at the news of his death) had a special place, and those who had downgraded him were rarely reprieved; and McCarthy had downgraded him. But it went deeper; Kennedy, the evangelist, thought McCarthy a cynical man, a lazy man; and the part of Kennedy which loved power was uneasy about McCarthy’s course. Sometimes he saw in it elements of another Henry Wallace campaign (a curious aspect of Kennedy, for he himself sought the very people that McCarthy had), and he wondered whether McCarthy was stronger than some of the people swirling around him. In late December their relationship was still cordial but suspicious; Kennedy was still playing Hamlet on whether or not to run. The Kennedy people suggested to McCarthy that he enter New Hampshire and run there and stay out of Massachusetts, which might prove more difficult and which, of course, was regarded as their very own preserve. McCarthy, hearing that, immediately entered Massachusetts. He had not intended to enter New Hampshire until his arm was virtually twisted into it by his own people. There was no mutual ease, and it was to get worse between them. One remembered Kennedy, several months later, preparing to go on Face the Nation and going through a mock press conference with aides. Someone, posing as a reporter, asked him, “Senator Kennedy, would you support President Johnson if he is the nominee?” “That’s easy,” Kennedy said smiling, “but don’t ask me whether I would support McCarthy.” Fortunately for him no one asked.

  The race seemed on the surface a dubious honor in the first place. In late December and early January, Lyndon Johnson appeared to be supreme. He dominated his own party and though his own party was restless, it appeared paralyzed and bound to him by loyalty and tradition. The Republicans might run against him, but it was hard to imagine a Republican candidate running to the left of him on the war and on the ghettos. Johnson appeared to be a war president who would somehow hold the center. Anyone to the left of him would be a super-dove, anyone to the right of him would be a super-hawk. He would try and hold the Negroes with one hand (behind his back), while he would softly work the crime-in-the-streets issue with the other hand. Though the war was not going well, it did not appear to be going badly either, and again, the dissent was within his own party and thus not serious dissent. But Lyndon Johnson was tied to the war, and it was becoming a bitterly unpopular war. Both the nature of the war and the nature of Lyndon Johnson would combine in 1968 to destroy him, and destroy him where he was supposed to be unbeatable, within his own party.

  The war. Nothing dominated American life in 1967 and 1968 like the war. It flashed across the television sets each night; it sapped the financial resources of the country and more, it sapped its moral fiber. In a country consumed by serious social problems everything eventually led back to the war; nothing could be done until the war was over. Much of the tension between black and white was directly traceable to the war and the breakdown of poverty programs it had effected; much of the intensifying division between young and old stemmed from youth’s opposition to the war. At a time of growing disillusion with American life, a younger generation found many of the inequities of this country difficult to accept. The war somehow seemed to them to symbolize the thrust of American life; and it was Lyndon Johnson’s war.

  Curiously enough it had been a minor issue in the election of 1964. Vietnam was simply a distant country which Barry Goldwater wanted to defoliate and which Lyndon Johnson thought unworthy of the lives of American boys, particularly because Asian boys should be doing the job. So it was a muffled issue, overshadowed by the overall issue of Goldwaterism: Was Goldwater safe? Wouldn’t he just lob one into the Kremlin men’s room? Did you want Goldwater’s finger on the button? Johnson would ask, and then he’d gnash his own thumb on an imaginary button, and one knew with great relief that Johnson would not do anything foolish, would not push buttons, would not send the Marines anywhere, would not lob grenades into anyone’s men’s rooms. (The post-election Republican joke was: “They warned me if I voted for Goldwater we would get in a big war, and the Marines would be sent out, and we would bomb North Vietnam; and I voted for Goldwater and they were right.”)

  But the atmosphere was curiously relaxed in 1964. A reporter just back from Vietnam and covering the political campaign found a surprising lack of interest among the candidates and their staffs about the war, though fateful decisions were near at hand. Everyone seemed to assume that it was going badly or at least not very well, but that somehow it would go away. The campaign went its way; Vietnam was not the issue, Goldwater was. Goldwater destroyed himself as a candidate. Johnson was elected by a landslide on a mandate of peace. The words hawk and dove did not exist together in the modern political lexicon. The thrust of the right wing seemed terminated; they had finally run their very own candidate, with disastrous results for the Republican party. Now the country seemed curiously united; ready, after many years of delay, to turn this great restless powerhouse of a President loose on long neglected urban and racial problems. Johnson, though not beloved by the liberal columnists, was respected by them. They described him as a healing man and America, God knew, had enough things to heal. Yet the day after his landslide victory aides placed on his desk a list of targets to be bombed in the north—thus assuring, at its very beginning, the end of the Great Society, the destruction of Johnson’s presidential years, and his downfall in 1968. For though the issue had been avoided during the campaign, the problems had not gone away; they were all there. All the agonizing decisions of Indochina, delayed ten years, finally had to be confronted—whether the president be Lyndon Johnson, Barry Goldwater or John Kennedy. The proxy war, itself a desperate measure, had been going badly for more than a year and a half. Our proxies could barely hold out (indeed that they had held out that long was itself astounding). The Vietcong had reached the point where they were ambushing not just platoons at night, but now battalions, and even regiments, and often in the daytime. Despite all the calm and placid assurances of Secretary McNamara and General Maxwell Taylor, it was obviously only a short time before the whole proxy effort would collapse.

  The war in Vietnam is different from other wars, it is not a war for control of terrain. The side with the greater armament, with all the airplanes, could appear for a long time to be stronger than it really was, its kill statistics would be greater, and its political liabilities barely visible (except in the cold sullen eye of a peasant) and for these reasons it had been possible to sweep the problems of Vietnam under the rug. It had made it possible for men in high places to fool themselves and fool men in even higher places, and for the reality to be delayed, again and again, until finally, one day, the problems surface. When they surface to the insider, they do so only after he has already been caught out on a limb—made too many rash statements, too many easy promises and predictions—and gotten himself in a position where he and his vanity are terribly trapped. When they surface to the general public, it is with a deadly finality.

  The American commitment to Vietnam began in 1954 after the French had lost their war and the country was divided. It was the time of Dulles containment, and the idea was to create an anti-Communist, anti-colonialist state in the South. But from the start the idea was doomed; the Communists had taken over the nationalism of Indochina during their eight-year war, and now all the dynamism, all the talent and drive, all the best young men were on their side, and it would be only a matter of time before that showed militarily and politically in the South. Frustrated by the U.S.-Diem decision against holding free elections (Eisenhower had not
ed very simply at the time that had the elections been held, Ho Chi Minh would have won in the South), Hanoi, in 1959, began to use its proxies in the South in the second Indochina war. The American proxy was the Diem regime, suspicious, increasingly isolated from all other elements in the country, its base narrowing all the time. Diem’s situation did not improve with the American aid. In 1962 Bernard Fall interviewed Pham Van Dong, the North Vietnamese prime minister, and asked about Diem’s personal position. “It is quite difficult,” Dong said. “He is unpopular and the more unpopular he becomes, the more American aid he will need to remain in power. And the more American aid he gets, the more of an American puppet he’ll look and the less likely he is to regain popularity.”

  “That sounds pretty much like a vicious circle,” commented Fall.

  “No,” said Pham Van Dong, “it’s a downward spiral.”

  The Kennedy administration had come into office in 1961. It immediately suffered a series of foreign policy setbacks—a particularly difficult position for a young president with a razor-thin margin of victory. There was the Bay of Pigs, Laos, the Berlin Wall, Khrushchev’s bullying at Vienna, and now it looked like Vietnam was about to go down the drain. Its government clearly could not hold out much longer despite its own predictions. In addition to their setbacks there was one other quite separate force which drove the Kennedy administration into Vietnam, and this was a basic contempt for the Eisenhower administration. The Kennedy people looked upon their predecessor as flabby, unaware of a changing world, and far too dependent upon military response. It had been ignorant of the subtleties and possibilities of guerrilla warfare in the third world. The Communists they felt, had been using this effectively against us, and now it would be used against them. They believed that the failure of the Eisenhower administration in Vietnam lay in the fact that the South Vietnamese army had been trained for a conventional war, while it was fighting in reality an unconventional one. There was a certain arrogance to this, a feeling that they were tougher, brighter and more contemporary than the Eisenhower people, and Robert Kennedy was one of the worst offenders. He became the New Frontier’s leading student on guerrilla warfare and Green Beret-ism, the latter being something of a Washington fad.