Bobby Kennedy: The Making of a Liberal Icon

I have read previous books on Robert Kennedy and found them all interesting but I feel this one is the definitive biography of the man. Author Larry Tye gives a well-balanced portrayal of the man showing both his so-called ruthless side with other politicians and his compassionate side with children and the poor. I suppose to have lived through the tumultuous 1960s and well remember many of the times and trials this decade put American through would make this book somewhat more memorable. Bobby Kennedy was a strong supporter of Senator Joe McCarthy of Wisconsin during the witch hunt for Communists during the early 1950s. The drive of father Joseph Kennedy to get his oldest surviving son Jack elected president is covered. The bitter feud between Attorney General RFK and Vice-President Lyndon Johnson suddenly left the Attorney General insignificant in Johnson’s eyes. Bobby’s friend Richard Goodwin has said that if LBJ had to choose between RFK and Ho Chi Minh to succeed him as president he’d choose Ho without hesitation. Another arch
foe was Clyde Tolson, friend of J. Edgar Hoover, who had stated, “I hope someone shoots and kills that son of a bitch.”

RFK had many enemies but he had his compassionate side as well and author Tye provides us this side, also.. Following the assassination of JFK his brother went into a deep depression which eventually subsided with RFK’s run for Senator of New York and later for President of the United States. His travels took him to the deep south and Indian reservations where poverty reigned. Kennedy’s sincere compassion deeply affected him to wanting to do something for these people.

Robert Kennedy’s words from the 1960s ring equally true today when he stated that what we need today is not division, hatred, violence, or lawlessness but love, wisdom, and compassion for one another. It appears we haven’t learned very much if anything. Unfortunately his life was taken by an assassin just like his brother’s.

I learned a lot from this book and I’m sure I’d learn more if I read it again. Well done oh good and faithful servant.

Like the author Larry Tye I have over 300 books on the Kennedy family. I am pretty cynical about any newer ones because most of them rely on sources that are despicable—C David Heymann’s “A Woman Named Jackie” (for example) and the others about the Kennedy family that he wrote, sold for millions of dollars were found to be stuffed with lies. So I was cautious with this book until I started reading it, footnotes and all, and became very excited. Mr. Tye does a great job of synthesizing previous works on RFK, but he had the cooperation of Ethel Kennedy and some of her children in getting the pieces of Senator Kennedy’s life put together accurately. Bobby, as Mrs. Kennedy still calls him, was a complex, struggling person from his childhood on to his adult life. That is made clear; no holding back of his temper, his frustration, his adversarial behaviors which his colleagues, friends, enemies and family discuss clearly. But the growth which occurs in him as he runs the campaigns for JFK’s senate and presidential offices is also ignited in the book. Confidence and extremely hard work give him the maturity and gravitas to be trusted with the DOJ.

Of course the murder of his brother shattered him. We have read before about his grief, but now there are enlightening stories from Ethel and his friends which show just how drenched in pain he was. The burden he took on of being the leader of a sorrowful family while he was enduring a sadness beyond description is evidenced here. Mr. Tye handles it so eloquently. This loss in his life had its own part in making RFK a compassionate man, brought him to be able to speak with soaring belief in the goodness of man on the night Martin Luther King died. His final campaign, in 1968, allowed the entire country to see how he had evolved. Had he lived there is every chance this world might be a better place.

The author of this book deserves praise for his beautiful writing, his determination to be objective, his ability to serve the trust of Ethel Kennedy as she shared her thoughts, which she does not do often or easily. I really, really loved this book.

I was a cub reporter when Bobby was a Senator. In some ways I simply trailed his political and moral development by a few years, shaped by many of the same forces. So this well-written, well-researched book is a kind of memoir of, a tribute to, a time in America that I recall vividly, a time of a nation’s great hopes, great struggles, and great sorrows. Tye has taken RFK’s personal evolution, traced its roots, the forces that molded and re-molded this complex man, and the emotional and political forces that led him, like a shooting star, through the constellation of these hopes and griefs. I’ve always believed the nation would have been a better place had someone stayed Sirhan’s hand. Yet I can see now, after reading this book, that many of the people who were touched by Bobby’s ambition, determination and moral compass, have stayed on to help make changes for the better. Even after his death, RFK’s vision has helped alter our course. Tye has carefully taken a tragedy of Shakespearean — even Greek — proportions and made it human and tangible and honest.

Bobby Kennedy has been a personal hero of mine for years. I was in San Francisco celebrating his win in California. We were all over at the Red Garter yukking it up and consoling the McCarthy supporters when we heard the news of Bobby’s shooting. We stayed up all night and learned he had died in the morning, We lost a great person.
I love this book because it doesn’t sugar coat or gloss over any of Bobby’s faults or mistakes. It is very informative about the times; and I learned some things I had not known before. If you were ever an RFK admirerer, or want to learn about a great man, read this book.
If you can locate any of his great speeches online, it’s worth the time to listen.

Bobby Kennedy was shaping up to be one of America’s great presidents, as portrayed in this book. Believing he was on his way to the White House, he was campaigning on two main issues – ending the Vietnam war and tackling poverty. And most people believed that he was genuine in his beliefs and principles. Larry Tye has spoken to his wife, Ethel, and found other new sources for this appealing, convincing and moving biography. A charismatic introvert, he was a man of many apparent contradictions someone who was famed for his ruthlessness who also cared on a personal level for the people he met. Way ahead of his time, he predicted the arrival of a black US president within 40 years and worked hard to find proof of poverty in the US when the word in the middle classes was that no-one was poor. Nothing more than average at school and law college, he focused on learning all the lessons life taught him as he went along and accepted that his own initial views on political subjects needed to be modified by asking others about their experience. That is how, for instance, he became the one white politician whom blacks trusted. He was also deeply efficient and a forward planner. Attorney General in brother Jack’s administration, he gave JFK new dimensions in the White House someone he totally trusted with whom he could discuss all the issues (from the Cuban Missile Crisis to civil rights). I was very moved by the book and the terrible loss that America suffered when Bobby Kennedy was killed at the age of 42.

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