The Promise and the Dream is inherently interesting in being a joint biography of two men who were very active public figures in the 1960s – at first as near-antagonists, then as allies in spirit, and then brother-martyrs in death.  One might reduce it to being the story of how the two men ‘experienced’ the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s:  1965 would be the Civil Rights movement’s high water mark,  culminating in a confrontation in Selma that would lead to the passage of the 1965 Voting Rights bill. 

 The most interesting part of the book is RFK’s – not because MLK is dull, but because he’s  both known and consistent, whereas the 1960s were a period of stress, profound loss, and  change for RFK.   The Brother K have an ambivalent attitude toward Civil Rights when JFK assumes office,  viewing the ‘Negro problem’ as something they’d to address in a placatory manner at most, simply to get it out of the way so that he could focus more firmly on issues that were more urgent for him, like the presence of a Communist dictator – and Soviet missiles – in Cuba. The Kennedys wanted to play a cautious game,  progressing on Civil Rights without upsetting the coalition applecart,  and they did not like King staging mass protests.   The Kennedy administration would in fact begin wire-tapping King,  for strategic rather than punitive reasons. They wanted to know what he was up to, and if there was damaging information out there, they wanted to know before anti-King politicians did so they could distance themselves from him. A moral paragon like JFK couldn’t consort with an adulterer, after all!  (That was sarcasm, gentle reader.) Part of what changed RFK’s attitude was suddenly being thrust out of power by his brother’s death: he no longer needed to protect Jack, and so his own strict moralism, and his preference to learn through exposure – visiting poor neighborhoods in the ghetto, in Appalachia, etc –  led to him becoming increasingly possessed by a desire to help the worst-off in America.  Of course, this book has such a sad, brutal ending – both men living under the pall of knowing they might die, and then dying.  It’s remarkable that when RFK and MLK were talking regularly, they were antagonists – and when they were allies,   they acted like ships passing silently in the night. 

This was a bittersweet book to read;  seeing RFK mature as a man through trials of the spirit is inspiring, but then the brutality of his death – and the random savagery of it, from a man who is still coldly unrepentant –  is jarring.

Quotations

“Jack travels in that speculative area where doubt lives,” a family friend, Charles Spalding, once said of these two Kennedy boys. “Bobby does not travel there.”

With Bobby Kennedy, it was different. Already by the 1950s, one word had attached itself to him with astonishing frequency and tenacity: ruthless. No person and adjective were ever so inseparable.

“No one became a friend of Bob Kennedy at first meeting,” Edwin Guthman, the veteran newspaperman who later became his press secretary, once wrote. “You had to go through something with him, to test and be tested. But once the bond was formed it was indestructible.”

Civil rights were a crusade to one and a problem to be managed for the other.

As dogmatic as Kennedy could be, he sensed what he didn’t know and what he needed to know. He was curious and, within the limits of his beliefs, open-minded. He was fearless, willing to subject himself to other, sometimes hostile points of view, but he was also naive and self-righteous, convinced that his good intentions should insulate himself from criticism.

He laid out a list of tenets: that “welfare” programs (in quotation marks in his printed text) were invasive, degrading, and counterproductive; that good jobs were the key to urban revival; that slum residents — the dropouts, the unemployed, welfare recipients — weren’t liabilities at all but valuable, untapped resources; that private groups — labor unions, universities — and businesses were crucial to any solutions; that urban problems were soluble, but residents had to take the lead in solving them.

When he returned to Hickory Hill that night, Kennedy was still shaken by the experience. “He said, ‘I’ve just come in and seen a family live in a room smaller than our dining room, with their tummies distended and sores all over them because they don’t have enough to eat and they don’t have healthcare,’” Kennedy’s eldest daughter, Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, later recalled. “‘Do you know how lucky you are? Do you know how lucky you are? Do something for this country.’”

Around two thirty that morning, Kennedy checked in again on his pair of young speechwriters. He found Walinsky asleep, typewriter still in his lap, and Greenfield passed out on his bed. Greenfield awoke to find Kennedy tucking him in. “You aren’t so ruthless after all,” Greenfield told him. “Don’t tell anybody,” Kennedy replied.