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Best of the Month, June 2008: When Senator Robert F. Kennedy entered the presidential race during the chaotic year of 1968, anarchy appeared to be gathering on the horizon. America was coming to grips with an unwinnable war in Vietnam and unacceptable social policies at home.
Exclusive Q&A with Author Thurston Clarke
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Clarke: The fact that he was the brother of a beloved and martyred president, and that he was also assassinated are of course important factors. But I think Bobby Kennedy continues to be relevant because he tackled issues such as race, poverty, and an ill-advised and unpopular war that remain relevant. And not only did he address these issues but he addressed them with an honesty and passion that no other president or politician has equaled since 1968.
: Despite his own fears, Kennedy made himself dangerously accessible to crowds. Was this an act of defiance or conviction?
Clarke: It was both defiance and conviction.
Speaking of President Johnsons bubble-topped, bulletproof limousine, he told a reporter, "Ill tell you one thing: if Im elected President, you wont find me riding around in any of those God-damned cars. We cant have that kind of country, where the President is afraid to go among the people." When his aides (who were worried about his safety throughout the campaign) urged him to spend more time campaigning from television studios and less time plunging into crowds, he told them, "There are so many people who hate me that Ive got to let the people who love me see me." Kennedy also knew that crowds revived him"like a couple of drinks," according to aide Fred Duttonand that letting people see him in person was the best way to prove that his reputation for being "ruthless" was unmerited.
: Hypothetical questions achingly surround Bobby Kennedy and his legacy. Did any single "What if?" occupy your thoughts as you researched this book? Kennedy campaigning in Los Angeles during 1968
Clarke: Several "What ifs" haunted me.
Kennedy had wanted to avoid going to the Ambassador Hotel on the evening of June 4, 1968 and instead watch the returns at the home of John Frankenheimer. The networks, however, protested that they needed him at the hotel for interviews and wanted to cover the victory celebration live if he won. Kennedy caved in and went to the hotel.
Kennedy always went through the crowd in a ballroom or auditorium after speaking, and became angry with aides who tried to hustle him out a back door. But on the night of his assassination, he broke his own rule and went through the hotel pantry where Sirhan Sirhan was waiting.
And what if he had won the nomination and become president? I doubt that there would have been riots at the Democratic convention in Chicago that year -- riots that helped elect Richard Nixon to the presidency and that have proven to be an albatross around the neck of Democrats for forty years. A President Robert Kennedy would have withdrawn America from Vietnam soon and there would be fewer names on the Vietnam wall. There would have been no bombing of Cambodia, Kent State, or Watergate, and so on, and so on.
: Kennedy's campaign strategy was fraught with risk, as one observer remarked that "he kept hammering away at the plight of the poor when there was more chance for political loss than gain." Had Bobby simply had enough with politics as usual?
Clarke: Kennedys obsession with the plight of Americas poor was more the result of his own personal experiences than any rejection of politics as usual. He had held a starving child in his arms in Mississippi. He had visited the appalling schools on Indian reservations where students learned nothing about their own culture and history. He had tramped through tenements in Brooklyn and come upon a girl whose face had been disfigured by rat bites. He believed that he had a responsibility to educate the American people about these conditions.
During a flight on his chartered campaign plane he told Sylvia Wright of Life magazine, ". . . for every two or three days that you waste time making speeches at rallies full of noise and balloons, theres usually a chance every two or three days . . . where you get a chance to teach people something; and to tell them something that they dont know because they dont have the chance to get around like I do, to take them some place vicariously that they havent been, to show them a ghetto, or an Indian reservation." And it was moments like these, Kennedy told Wright, that made a political campaign, despite all its banalities and indignities, "worth it."
: In your opinion, will we ever see another Bobby Kennedy? Have we become too jaded to embrace a candidate like RFK or has campaigning simply become political theater?
Clarke: One of the aides who scheduled many of Kennedys appearances that spring, told me, "What he did was not really that mystical. All it requires is someone who knows himself, and has some courage."
The definitive account of Robert Kennedyâs exhilarating and tragic 1968 campaign for president—a revelatory history that is especially resonant now
After John F. Kennedyâs assassination, Robert Kennedy—formerly Jackâs no-holds-barred political warrior—almost lost hope. He was haunted by his brotherâs murder, and by the nationâs seeming inabilities to solve its problems of race, poverty, and the war in Vietnam. Bobby sensed the countryâs pain, and when he announced that he was running for president, the country united behind his hopes. Over the action-packed eighty-two days of his campaign, Americans were inspired by Kennedyâs promise to lead them toward a better time. And after an assassinâs bullet stopped this last great stirring public figure of the 1960s, crowds lined up along the countryâs railroad tracks to say goodbye to Bobby.
With new research, interviews, and an intimate sense of Kennedy, Thurston Clarke provides an absorbing historical narrative that goes right to the heart of Americaâs deepest despairs—and most fiercely held dreams—and tells us more than we had understood before about this complicated man and the heightened personal, racial, political, and national dramas of his times.
After John F. Kennedyâs assassination, Robert Kennedy—formerly Jackâs no-holds-barred political warrior—almost lost hope. He was haunted by his brotherâs murder, and by the nationâs seeming inabilities to solve its problems of race, poverty, and the war in Vietnam. Bobby sensed the countryâs pain, and when he announced that he was running for president, the country united behind his hopes. Over the action-packed eighty-two days of his campaign, Americans were inspired by Kennedyâs promise to lead them toward a better time. And after an assassinâs bullet stopped this last great stirring public figure of the 1960s, crowds lined up along the countryâs railroad tracks to say goodbye to Bobby.
With new research, interviews, and an intimate sense of Kennedy, Thurston Clarke provides an absorbing historical narrative that goes right to the heart of Americaâs deepest despairs—and most fiercely held dreams—and tells us more than we had understood before about this complicated man and the heightened personal, racial, political, and national conflicts of his times.
“The images from The Last Campaign, Thurston Clarkeâs powerful account of Robert F. Kennedyâs campaign for the presidency . . . impel themselves on the reader, touching chords of memory and sorrow.â—Michael Kenney, The Boston Globe
"The Last Campaign is a quick, engaging read, which once again reminds us of what might have been. Thurston Clarke draws numerous parallels between the Kennedy campaign of 1968 and the politics of the late 1990s through the current election cycle, and seems to have a great deal of disdain for both Democrats and Republican for not picking up the work and the legacy of Robert Kennedy. Nevertheless, after reading the book, I, like many others, couldn't help myself from asking the same question that so many have asked over the last 40 years: 'What if?'"—David A. Serafini, Daily News
"Mr. Clarke advances at a sprightly pace, has a keen eye for detail and captures not only the externals but the fascinating inner dynamics of the contest . . . Ever the contrarian, [Kennedy] would articulate angry black concerns to angry white audiences, and vice versa. Amazingly, he appealed to both, drawing in George Wallace supporters as well as Black Panthers. He would go hundreds of miles away from where the votes were to court Native Americans on reservations; children and elderly in ghettos; and remote rural Americans whoâve barely seen a presidential candidate since. He flouted an essential rule in American politics (never quote a French philosopher under any circumstances), citing Camus and Sartre with reckless abandon, and then immersing himself again in the crowd. Has there ever been a greater existentialist? Mr. Clarke captures this transformation with skill, showing R.F.K. emerging, page by page, into a brilliant and utterly iconoclastic politician over those short months on the trail. Though his anguish over Dallas never left him—and may have explained his desire to taunt danger—Mr. Clarke argues, persuasively, that R.F.K. was a completely different kind of Kennedy, willing to say things and go places that his more carefully scripted brother never would have . . . Hauntingly, he had predicted, just before his victory, that 'Los Angeles is my Resurrection City.' The religious wording almost fits—for as he wandered deeply into the invisible parts of America that lay below the poverty line, he began to seem like someone out of a medieval pilgrimâs tale, part Christian mendicant, part Greek philosopher. Just as J.F.K. had loved Camelot, so R.F.K. loved Man of La Mancha, and throughout this book thereâs a sense of the quixotic journey, and the beautiful world that might have come into existence if the pilgrimage had reached a better terminus. One witness cites the 'phantom presidency' that all of R.F.K.âs staff identified with, like the memory of an amputated limb, long after his assassination."—Ted Widmer, The New York Observer
"Thurton Clarke's new book, The Last Campaign, shines new light on one of the darkest chapters in American political history. Forty years since Robert F. Kennedy's incredible presidential campaign was snuffed out by crazed assassin Sirhan Sirhan, Clarke reveals that despite the passage of time, the killing remains a wound that will never heal for the men and women who knew him best."—David Exum, Boston Herald
"The transformation of Robert F. Kennedy after his brother's assassination is one of the most startling and inspiring events in modern American politics. The snarling, vindictive attorney general became a reflective presidential candidate who challenged his audiences to look beyond themselves and focus on the greater good. There have been lots of books about Kennedy's too-brief run for the White House in 1968; Clarke's is one of the very best."—Jeff Baker, The Oregonian (Portland)
"When Bobby Kennedy announced his run for president, America was on the brink of disaster. With an unwinnable war in Vietnam and social policies that weren't working on the home front, Kennedy worked for a tragically shortened time to bring back the social conscience of the country. Assassin-wary, Kennedy once predicted 'I'm afraid there are guns between me and the White House.' But Clarke doesn't get stuck on the might-have-beens had Kennedy not been correct. Instead, he reminds us that for a short period, Kennedy drew Americans together."—ML van Valkenburgh, Charleston City Paper Â
"The Last Campaign is a great read, an evocative and engaging reminder of the glory and the tragedy of Bobby Kennedy's run for the presidency in 1968. Thurston Clarke's keen eye for the telling detail and his fast-paced narrative make The Last Campaign a must-have for any student of American politics."—Tom Brokaw
"The Last Campaign is a triumphant look at Robert F. Kennedy's heartfelt plunge into the poverty underbelly of America. The reader can't help but be moved at how deeply Kennedy cared about the underclass. Thurston Clarke has written a smart political book which actually inspires."—Douglas Brinkley
"Haven't had your fill of politics this year? Read about the presidential campaign of another first-term senator who preached hope in the face of racial divide, widespread poverty and an unpopular war. Thurston Clarke, of Willsboro, reveals both the pain and promise of 1968 America in The Last Campaign . . . Clarke presents a tempting look at what politics could have been—and still could be."—Adirondack Life
"There have been novels I have not wanted to end, so I found myself reading increasingly short sections. So it has been with this account of Robert Kennedy's final campaign, the 82 days in the spring of 1968 that ended with his assassination in June."—Charles Stephen, Lincoln Journal Star
"Perhaps the most chilling thing about this book is that Bobby Kennedyâs assassination, 40 years ago last month, was not only foreseeable but foreseen, by both the candidate and the people around him . . . Having examined contemporary accounts and interviewed survivors of the campaign and its press corps, Clarke makes the case that the allegedly `opportunistic' Kennedy—scorned by antiwar aficionados of Sen. Eugene McCarthy because, unlike McCarthy, he did not enter the presidential race until after President Lyndon Johnsonâs loss in the New Hampshire primary—had actually made his plans several days beforehand . . . As for the charge of 'ruthlessness' that dogged Kennedy, Clarke combats it with instance after instance of the candidateâs apparently genuine affection for poor people, whom he often spoke to, at his i...
