Background
Robert Kennedy was born on November 20, 1925, in Brookline, Massachussets, United States to Joseph P. Kennedy Sr. and Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy.
(These essays by Robert F. Kennedy grew out of speeches, t...)
These essays by Robert F. Kennedy grew out of speeches, travel and his experience as Attorney General and a United States Senator. This book was published in 1964 while he was alive, unlike his other books that were not published until after his death. The office of Attorney General is in many respects the hot corner of political combat. All of the "hard cases of law enforcement, public administration and governmental services eventually find their way to his desk. lt is impossible, therefore, for an Attorney General not to have taken a position on most of the basic issues of his day. And it is impossible to conceive of a time when all parties interested in the stakes of government could be pleased with a decision, or a non-decision-of the man who holds the office. As a consequence, few posts in government share such public attention as that of the Attorney General. When the holder of the office is also a member of the innermost governing circle, public attention turns to fascination. Such a situation must be blood-curdling for the incumbent because the fascination is not of the passive and pleasant sort of engagement associated with the best television programs. The Attorney General is taken every way but lightly. This volume contains twelve essays or "position papers" dealing with those problems with which one such Attorney General was most occupied and preoccupied during his issue-1aden three years and nine months of service. During that time the United States faced many major crises at home and abroad and, for better or worse, met them. In meeting them, the Administration broke many precedents and established a few others. In so doing it gave the American people a political orientation stronger than any witnessed since the Roosevelt One Hundred Days. These essays treat many of those issues with considerable depth and clarity of argument and opinion Characteristically, it is not possible to take this book lightly, whether the subject is wiretapping, the radical right, Berlin. price-fixing, counterinsurgency, the injustices of poverty, or the dereliction of the lawyer's duties in effecting compliance of civil rights statutes. But within the wide range of subject and opinions, formal and informal there is an unmistakable unity. Professor Lowi describes it in his Editor's Foreword: "In all of this there is a characteristic answer that has, perhaps, come to be taken as a Kennedy family trait. This is the confounded optimism that individual will and action can in fact set the world to rights. The volume opens with a special chapter written by Robert F. Kennedy as a review of his years of public service and a statement of personal beliefs. The closing sentences of THE PURSUIT OF JUSTICE: however wise our efforts may be in unconventional diplomacy and unconventional warfare, however sensible our diversity of weapons and strategy, however great our military power and determined our counteroffensive of ideas, there is yet another obstacle to our opening to the future. That is the image of the future we project by our own example. What substance can we provide for the international hopes we can kindle? "Thus we end where we began. We must get our own house in order. We must because it is right. We must because it is might."
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Robert Kennedy was born on November 20, 1925, in Brookline, Massachussets, United States to Joseph P. Kennedy Sr. and Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy.
He graduated from Milton Academy before entering Harvard. His college career was interrupted during World War II; just after his oldest brother, Joseph, was killed in combat, Robert joined the Navy and was commissioned a lieutenant. In 1946 he returned to Harvard and took his bachelor of arts degree in 1948. He earned his law degree from the University of Virginia Law School and was admitted to the Massachusetts bar in 1951.
In 1951 Kennedy joined the Criminal Division of the U. S. Department of Justice. He resigned the following year to run John F. Kennedy's successful campaign for U. S. senator. In 1953 Robert was appointed one of 15 assistant counsels to the Senate subcommittee on investigations under Senator Joe McCarthy. But later that year, when Democratic members of this subcommittee walked out in protest against McCarthy's harassing methods of investigation, Kennedy resigned. Kennedy rejoined the Senate's permanent subcommittee on investigations as chief counsel for the Democratic minority in 1954. The following year, when the Democrats reorganized this committee under Senator George McClellan, Kennedy became chief counsel and staff director. That year the U. S. Junior Chamber of Commerce elected him one of "ten outstanding young men. " In 1955, at his own expense, Kennedy joined Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas on a tour of several Soviet republics. Kennedy became chief counsel to the Senate Select Committee on Improper Activities in the Labor or Management Field organized under McClellan in 1957, and he directed a staff of 65. His major accomplishment was the investigation of corruption in the International Brotherhood of Teamsters. The hearings became nationally prominent, particularly Kennedy's prosecution of the union's president, James Hoffa, which to some union leaders seemed more like persecution. Kennedy was responsible for several additional investigations of labor and management abuses. In 1960 Kennedy managed his brother's successful presidential campaign, and when John as incoming president appointed Robert U. S. attorney general, nationwide cries of nepotism arose. Robert's role in his brother's Cabinet was unique. He was virtually the President's other self. Shoulder to shoulder, the brothers stood together-through the Cuban missile crisis, the civil rights cases, and the growing war in Vietnam. Soon after President Kennedy's assassination in 1963, Robert resigned from Lyndon Johnson's administration to run successfully for New York State senator in 1964. Naive liberals wondered why he chose to run in New York-thus knocking out a good liberal senator, Kenneth Keating-when he might have opposed Harry Byrd in his resident state of Virginia; but Kennedy was thinking of the presidency by now, and Virginia was no power base. As senator, Kennedy achieved a splendid record. Kennedy leaped into the presidential sweepstakes in 1968, abruptly following Eugene McCarthy's solitary effort to dramatize the issue of the war in Vietnam. Kennedy's entrance into the Democratic primaries bitterly divided liberal Democrats. By this time Kennedy, who had come to sympathize with the African Americans' drive for "black power, " was the joy of radical activists. He could reach and unite young people, revolutionaries, alienated African Americans, and blue-collar Roman Catholics. Meanwhile, the white South hated him; big business distrusted him; and middle-class, reform Democrats were generally suspicious of him. On the night of June 1968, following a hard-fought, narrow victory in the California primaries, Kennedy was killed by an assassin's bullet. Robert had been no carbon copy of John. In some ways he was more intense, more committed than John had been, yet he shared John's ironic sense of himself and his conviction that one man could make a difference.
His tenure is best known for its advocacy for the Civil Rights Movement, the fight against organized crime and the Mafia, and involvement in U. S. foreign policy related to Cuba. After his brother's assassination, he remained in office in the Johnson administration for several months. He left to run for the United States Senate from New York in 1964 and defeated Republican incumbent Kenneth Keating.
In 1968, Kennedy was a leading candidate for the Democratic nomination for the presidency.
In 1978, the United States Congress awarded Kennedy its Gold Medal of Honor.
( "A minor classic in its laconic, spare, compelling evoc...)
(These essays by Robert F. Kennedy grew out of speeches, t...)
Kennedy's Catholicism was central to his politics and personal attitude to life and its purpose; he inherited his faith from his family. He was more religious than his brothers and approached his duties with a Catholic worldview.
Throughout his life, he made reference to his faith, how it informed every area of his life, and how it gave him the strength to re-enter politics following his older brother's assassination. His was not an unresponsive and staid faith, but the faith of a Catholic Radical, perhaps the first successful Catholic Radical in American political history.
In the last years of his life, he also found great solace in the metaphysical poets of ancient Greece, especially the writings of Aeschylus, suggested to him by Jacqueline after JFK's death. In his Indianapolis speech on April 4, 1968, following the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. , Kennedy slightly misquoted these lines from Aeschylus: "Even in our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart, until, in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God. "
In the Senate, he was a committed advocate of the poor and racial minorities, and opposed escalation of the Vietnam War.
Quotations:
"If I find out who has called me ruthless I will destroy him. "
"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. "
Kennedy was said to be the gentlest and shyest of the family, as well as the least articulate orally.
Quotes from others about the person
"Kennedy's approach to national problems did not fit neatly into the idealogical categories of his time. .. His was a muscular liberalism, committed to an activist federal government but deeply suspicious of concentrated power and certain that fundamental change would best be achieved at the community level, insistent on responsibilities as well as rights, and convinced that the dynamism of capitalism could be the impetus for broadening national growth. "
He married Ethel Shakel, by whom he had 11 children, one born posthumously.
He served as the 35th President of the United States
Senator, Attorney General
