Robert Kennedy, His Life - Review
Evan Thomas' Biography of the "Second Most Important Man"
Evan Thomas offers a personal and detailed account of Robert Kennedy's life, but provides little analysis of his political thinking.
Robert Kennedy, His Life by Evan Thomas is a meticulous and extremely personal biography of an intriguing figure in twentieth century history. Thomas obviously has strong empathy for his subject and argues that Kennedy’s famed “ruthlessness” was simply a shell the young Robert had developed to survive the competitive world of the clan under Joseph P. Kennedy.
Thomas evidently sees empathy as Bobby Kennedy’s strongest suit, emphasizing that the lesson of the Cuban Missile Crisis was the importance of putting oneself “in the other guy’s shoes”, rather then ensuring, (as Dean Rusk might have put it) that when you go eye-to-eye, the other guy blinks first. He also stresses Bobby’s ability to feel for children, the oppressed and the disadvantaged, because of the way he was brought up in the shadows of his brothers.
This personal and political empathy fuses as Thomas quotes the black activist Sonny Carson’ description of Kennedy as “this young brother full of pain.” This feeling was quite specifically focussed, however: by Thomas’ account, RFK could be insensitive to the friends around him whilst feeling deeply for those he had never met.
Thomas is at his best when describing the Kennedys as a group: he evokes their clannish culture vividly, and in particular Bobby’s menage at Hickory Hill. The book is definitely a personal study, however, and there is frustratingly little discussion of politics in the broader, ideological sense. After reading Bobby Kennedy, A Life, one would be hard pressed to say what either of the famous brothers actually thought about politics, as opposed to how they achieved power. Thomas seems more comfortable with quoting their speeches than analysing policy or questioning the ringing rhetoric. For example, he lets a comparison between America and Athens go by in a discussion on South Africa, without mentioning that Athens’ much-vaunted philosophical and cultural achievements were based on the oppression of a slave class.
This weakness is particularly noticeable when he mentions Kennedy’s interest in “the Greeks” and his self-improvement via reading and seminars at Hickory Hill. We learn very little about how these may have affected Bobby’s thinking, except on the broadest metaphysical level of “good and evil”. The interest in existentialism, the experiences of the desperate poverty of the Mississippi delta, the quotations from Shakespeare and Aeschylus, all seem to be offered as guarantees of RFK’s good faith, rather than as influences to be analysed and compared to the actions taken. Bobby Kennedy, A Life is an impressively well researched volume, and one which delineates the man’s character in detail, but is bafflingly silent on some questions.
