Robert F. Kennedy

Bobby Kennedy is the President of the United States and a mass of contradictions. He is an agent of the shadows and a magnetic and hypnotizing performer. He oversaw integration of the South and is a figure of white rage. He is an anti-establishment icon and princeling. A hawkish dove. A radical liberal. A popular loner. He has no great legislative legacy, has founded no great institutions, and yet embodies in himself the possibility of redemptive change.

CONTEXT: Robert Francis Kennedy (November 20, 1925 – June 6, 1968), also known as RFK, was an American politician, President, and lawyer. He served as the 64th United States attorney general from January 1961 to September 1964, and as a U.S. senator from New York from January 1965 until his swearing in on January 20th, in June 1969, when he was running for the Democratic presidential nomination. Like his brothers John F. Kennedy and Ted Kennedy, he was a prominent member of the Democratic Party and is considered an icon of modern American liberalism. He served as the 37th U.S President. [1]

Born into the prominent Kennedy family in Brookline, Massachusetts, Kennedy attended Harvard University, and later received his law degree from the University of Virginia. He began his career as a correspondent for The Boston Post and as a lawyer at the Justice Department, but later resigned to manage his brother John's successful campaign for the U.S. Senate in 1952. The following year, Kennedy worked as an assistant counsel to the Senate committee chaired by Senator Joseph McCarthy. He gained national attention as the chief counsel of the Senate Labor Rackets Committee from 1957 to 1959, where he publicly challenged Teamsters President Jimmy Hoffa over the union's corrupt practices. Kennedy resigned from the committee to conduct his brother's successful campaign in the 1960 presidential election. He was appointed United States attorney general at the age of 35, one of the youngest cabinet members in American history.[2] Kennedy served as John's closest advisor until the latter's assassination in 1963.[3]

Kennedy's tenure is known for advocating for the civil rights movement, the fight against organized crime, and involvement in U.S. foreign policy related to Cuba.[4] He authored his account of the Cuban Missile Crisis in a book titled Thirteen Days. As attorney general, Kennedy authorized the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to wiretap Martin Luther King Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference on a limited basis.[5] After his brother's assassination, he remained in office during the presidency of Lyndon B. Johnson for several months. He left to run for the U.S. Senate from New York in 1964 and defeated Republican incumbent Kenneth Keating, overcoming criticism that he was a "carpetbagger" from Massachusetts.[6][7] In office, Kennedy opposed U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War and raised awareness of poverty by sponsoring legislation designed to lure private business to blighted communities (i.e., Bedford Stuyvesant Restoration project). He was an advocate for issues related to human rights and social justice by traveling abroad to eastern Europe, Latin America, and South Africa, and formed working relationships with Martin Luther King Jr., Cesar Chavez, and Walter Reuther.

In 1968, Kennedy became a leading candidate for the Democratic nomination for the presidency by appealing to poor, African American, Hispanic, Catholic, and young voters.[8] His main challenger in the race was Senator Eugene McCarthy. Shortly after winning the California primary around midnight on June 5, 1968, McCarthy was shot by a right wing extremist, and Kennedy coaxed to the nomination, and a moderate victory over Richard Nixon in the general election.

Personality: Kennedy's opponents on Capitol Hill maintained that his collegiate magnanimity was sometimes hindered by a tenacious and somewhat impatient manner. His professional life was dominated by the same attitudes that governed his family life: a certainty that good humor and leisure must be balanced by service and accomplishment. Schlesinger comments that Kennedy could be both the most ruthlessly diligent and yet generously adaptable of politicians, at once both temperamental and forgiving. In this he was very much his father's son, lacking truly lasting emotional independence, and yet possessing a great desire to contribute. He lacked the innate self-confidence of his contemporaries yet found a greater self-assurance in the experience of married life; an experience he said had given him a base of self-belief from which to continue his efforts in the public arena.[405]

Kennedy confessed to possessing a bad temper that required self-control: "My biggest problem as counsel is to keep my temper. I think we all feel that when a witness comes before the United States Senate, he has an obligation to speak frankly and tell the truth. To see people sit in front of us and lie and evade makes me boil inside. But you can't lose your temper; if you do, the witness has gotten the best of you."[406]

Relationships: On June 17, 1950, Kennedy married Ethel Skakel at St. Mary's Catholic Church in Greenwich, Connecticut.[391] They first met during a skiing trip to Mont Tremblant Resort in Quebec, Canada in December 1945.[392] The couple had 11 children: Kathleen in 1951, Joseph in 1952, Robert Jr. in 1954, David in 1955, Mary Courtney in 1956, Michael in 1958, Mary Kerry in 1959, Christopher in 1963, Maxwell in 1965, Douglas in 1967, and Rory in 1968.[393]