The Passion of RFK: Thurston Clarke on 'The Last Campaign'

| Print Post This | Like (0) | Comments (0)

THURSTON CLARKE'S NEW book "The Last Campaign: Robert F. Kennedy and 82 Days That Inspired America" is a deeply moving account of RFK's race against time to secure the 1968 Democratic presidential nomination.

Of course, Kennedy's campaign ends tragically, when he is gunned down at close range hours after winning primaries in California and South Dakota.

Clarke's exceedingly detailed book tells you what RFK ate for breakfast, lunch and dinner and also how he was touched or seen by hundreds of thousands — perhaps millions — of Americans as he did slow-moving motorcade tours of the countryside and inner-cities, along with huge rallies and brutally candid — and funny — Q&A sessions with voters.

In fact, Clarke could have just called the book "The Passion of RFK."

The senator heals the sick, surrounds himself with troubled children and social outcasts, tells the people hard truths, exhibits a weary fatalism about his coming death, and endures both the adulation and abuse of massive crowds. Kennedy appears as a prophet without honor, less appreciated by his own comfortable white upper-class than by urban African-Americans, Hispanics, Native Americans and working-class whites.

"The Last Campaign" contains nary a discouraging word about the candidate. Clarke's portrait of RFK's wild, passionate, outrageous, free-wheeling, exuberant and doomed final months is a fast, easy, infectious read. When Clarke describes scenes such as Martin Luther King Jr.'s funeral march — in which Kennedy joined the multitudes — the author writes so vividly that "The Last Campaign" may move a cynic to tears.

Express spoke with Clarke about his research methods, Barack Obama, Jeff Greenfield, white "backlash" voters and more. He will also discuss his work on Tuesday at Politics & Prose.

» EXPRESS: What kind of research did you do for the book?
» CLARKE: I went back to many of the towns in Indiana, Nebraska and South Dakota that Kennedy had campaigned through during the primary. That way I could interview people who hadn't been interviewed before. These weren't necessarily his top aides. I interviewed people who ran a particular county, and one man who ran Students for Kennedy in Indiana. I'd often take them to places where Kennedy had spoken, which made it even easier for them to think — to evoke what happened. ... I also had a lot of luck at the Kennedy Library.

There've been a lot of biographies of Bobby Kennedy — but nobody's, since the year after the campaign, when there were a couple of campaign memoirs done by [people] who covered it — there hasn't been anything done that synthesized all of the oral histories and all of the journalistic accounts. So, that's what I did, and [at the Kennedy Library] I found a lot of oral history and raw material that had not been used.

» EXPRESS: Do you think an apt title for the book might be, "The Passion of RFK?"
» CLARKE: Well, there's a lot of passion and there was also a lot of outrage — RFK, [it was] said, was in a perpetual state of outrage: outraged about [the state of] Indian reservations, outraged about poverty, outraged about the war and other things.

You know, the book was originally called "Prayer for Our Country" — taken out of the speech he gave in Indianapolis [the night Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated], when he said, "Everybody go home and say a prayer for our country." That was the title for a while. Then the publisher didn't like it, because they thought "prayer" would make people think it was about his religion.

» EXPRESS: I meant "passion" more in a biblical sense. You actually use the phrase "slow motion suicide," beyond that, and it seemed there was a real Christ-like presence that he had, to the point where he is literally healing the sick and surrounding himself with children.
» CLARKE: Yeah. That didn't occur to people at the time, because people were bound up in the day-to-day and it was so frenetic.

Certainly, there's the fondness for children that everybody remarks on, even less sympathetic commentators, and there was a sense among the people who were covering Kennedy — and, I think, Kennedy himself — that someone was going to try and kill him. Of course, they didn't know whether [the assassin] was going to be successful or not.

When Kennedy talks about "guns between me and the White House," and when people talked about the possibility of an assassination, he calls it "an attempt" — it's not necessarily clear if it's going to be successful or not. There was the sense that someone was going to try something and I think that became even more the case after the King assassination.

I was just reading the other day that CBS, toward the end of the campaign, put a second camera crew on Kennedy so that they would be sure not to miss any attempted assassination.

» EXPRESS: And you write that CBS' cameraman smashed his camera against the wall in despair when RFK was assassinated.
» CLARKE: Right, right. There were plenty of other cameras there.

» EXPRESS: The obvious question for you is: Could you compare Kennedy's campaign to Obama's?
» CLARKE: Well, that was easier to do in the primaries. The problem is that Kennedy never ran in a general election.

Would Kennedy have modified some of his positions and moved towards the middle? I'm not so sure he would have, because everybody was urging him to do that in [the Indiana primary]. And although he stressed "law and order" and he might have mentioned it more, he always mentioned it as a part of the fact that there was great injustice which was at the root of the violence and the desperation in the ghettos.

But I think the biggest comparison is that probably no one has inspired the young and African-Americans as much since Bobby Kennedy. I think that's why people see a similarity.

I see more similarities in [Obama's] campaign style with JFK's. Obama's a very smooth, practiced, good public speaker. He's somewhat cool and aloof and doesn't hang out and banter with the press much.

Bobby was a nervous public speaker. He was great at answering questions and having a dialogue with people, but when he had to read a prepared speech, particularly on television, he wasn't very good. He was quite nervous and he stammered and stuttered.

» EXPRESS: More like John McCain.
» CLARKE: There are some similarities. The big similarity is the relationship between McCain and his press corps and Bobby Kennedy and his press corps — it's very similar. ... These are people who do better in a Q&A. I mean, these are matters of style rather than of substance. ... There's also the "vulnerability" that I heard again and again when I talked to people in Indiana and Nebraska — they would often refer to Kennedy seeming "vulnerable" and "small." One woman would say, "I just wanted to hug him."

I don't think people have that reaction to Obama. He doesn't look vulnerable.

And also there's the question of being tough on people. I haven't heard from Obama the way that Kennedy would challenge an audience — telling people what they don't want to hear — which he did again and again. I think it was such a habit — I think he would have [done so] in the general election.

» EXPRESS: Jeff Greenfield, a familiar name for D.C. readers, plays a role in your book. Can you talk about his role in the campaign?
» CLARKE: Jeff was one of the two young turks who had been urging Kennedy to get into the campaign. He worked for Kennedy. He was one of his Senate aides and he and Adam Walinsky — Jeff was about 24 or something; Walinsky was 30 — were considered the two bomb-throwers, the more liberal types, on the campaign. They wrote a lot of the speeches, along with other people. He had a pivotal role. He traveled a lot with Kennedy.

We talked about the campaign a lot. He says it's hard for him to read about it. It's very emotional experience for him and for anybody who worked on the campaign. They still get very emotional when they talk about it.

» EXPRESS: RFK was extremely popular with African-Americans. What explains his simultaneous appeal to white "backlash" voters who would otherwise have supported George Wallace?
» CLARKE: There was, of course, residual affection for JFK and the Kennedy family. It was very important. Beyond that, there was the image Bobby Kennedy had of being a tough Irish cop. He'd been a tough attorney general — one of the best — and people were frightened.

White people were frightened, then, that the ghettos were going to explode — that there was going to be a race war. And Bobby Kennedy was seen as somebody who could handle [it] — who had support in the black community and could mediate it and could perhaps keep the country from blowing up. I think some of the white ethnics voted for him for that reason.

I also think a lot of voters appreciate courage. And Kennedy showed — again and again — that he was courageous. ... Kennedy had both kinds of courage. He had plenty of physical courage, but he also had moral courage: courage to say things that were uncomfortable and to take stands that were unpopular. Not many politicians have combined those two types of courage.

» Politics & Prose, 5015 Connecticut Ave. NW; Tue., 7 p.m., free; 202-364-1919. (Van Ness)

Written by Express contributor Tim Follos