Bobby Kennedy

For those of us that old enough, when we think back to JFK and Camelot, we think of a time of innocence, of renewal and of possibility.  And then the 60’s happened.  There has been a lot of talk lately about the 60’s. About the fissures it opened up, and about the fact that we are still trying to heal them.  Sydney Schanberg, the great reporter who died last week, once told me in an interview that he thought Vietnam represented the end of consensus politics in America.

Since then we have been seemingly searching for the politician or the leader that could bridge that divide. The irony has been that in a time of polarity it’s been impossible for that leader to emerge.  So we look back to what might have been.  And when we do, the image and mythology of Bobby Kennedy rises as almost an apparition from the body politic.  

Why?  What was it about Bobby that made us think he was different?  It wasn’t his conviction, or his ideology or his morality or his intellect or his manners.  Perhaps it was a unique ability to empathize, to see all sides, to shape-shift in ways that allowed him to find truth, or at least consensus where none had existed.

This is the Bobby Kennedy we get in Larry Tye new biography 

Bobby Kennedy: The Making of a Liberal Icon.

My conversation with Larry Tye: