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The Last Campaign: Robert F. Kennedy and 82 Days That Inspired America

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Less than a month into Bobby Kennedy's campaign for the 1968 Democratic presidential nomination, Martin Luther King, Jr. was gunned down. Bobby was in Indianapolis at the time, and said a few words. He didn't make a political speech. He didn't read from a script. He just said a few heartfelt words that expressed his horror at the assassination and his vision for a better nation, a nation dedicated to taming the savageness of man and making gentle the life of the world (p. 96).

In this moving, eloquently written, and well researched narrative of the 82 days of Bobby Kennedy's last campaign, Thurston Clarke provides a much-needed reminder of what presidential politics could look like but hasn't for four decades. Kennedy was a genuine progressive, a man who intensely believed that the purpose of government was to protect the least advantaged in society, to set a high moral standard, and to speak the truth courageously. As Barack Obama is quoted near the book's end, it's hard to place Kennedy in the categories that "constrain [today's presidential candidates] politically...[he wasn't] a centrist in the sense of finding a middle road" (p. 279).

Kennedy ran for president saying that he wanted to end the Vietnam war and poverty. In the process, he dared to speak unpleasant truths to the American people, something rarely done by political candidates. Kennedy's famous speech at Creighton University, in which he challenged the all-white student body about their indifference to the Vietnam war, is a typical example. "Look around you," he said. "How many black faces do you see here? How many American Indians? The fact is, if you look at any regiment or division of paratroopers in Vietnam, 45% of them are black. How can you accept this!?" (p. 190). Creighton students booed him.

Kennedy insisted that the populace which elects a president who pushes through irresponsible public and foreign policy must share moral responsibility for that policy's consequences. He recognized that unwise laws and social policies can institutionalize and legitimize violence, and called for sweeping reform (p. 108). But he also offered hope, assuring voters that they and the country had an opportunity to heal. He himself forthrightly admitted to past complicity in mistaken and even immoral political decisions, such as his early support for the Vietnam war, and humbly expressed regret (p. 45). And he assured the electorate that both they and the country could seize the moral high ground and change (p. 12).

He told the country that the existence of poverty among blacks, Chicanos, southern whites, and Native Americans was a blight, and that in allowing it to endure we mocked Thomas Jefferson's claim that the U.S. was the last, best hope. Bobby's 1967 trip to Cleveland, Mississippi, where he saw some of the country's worst poverty, shook him as nothing had since his brother's assassination, and he vowed to dedicate himself to ending it. As Cesar Chavez said, Bobby Kennedy "could see things through the eyes of the poor" (p. 79). No other presidential candidate except John Edwards has so emphasized poverty in his or her campaign.

Clarke's account of Bobby Kennedy's presidential campaign leaves the reader with mixed emotions. On the one hand, Clarke points out that a presidential candidate today could run on nearly all the issues that Bobby did because "little has been done to address them" in the 40 years since his murder (p. 280). Clarke also invites the reader to think about how different the nation would be today if Kennedy had lived and become president: the Vietnam war would've ended 6 years earlier with 20,000 fewer American casualties, for example, and Watergate wouldn't have eroded trust in government. That's the bad news. But on the other hand, Clarke reminds us, Kennedy showed that an idealist who courageously spoke truth to power could appeal to the American people--Kennedy's supporters came from all constituencies--and that Jefferson's high estimation of the country's promise needn't be empty rhetoric. That's the good news, the hopeful news.

Highly recommended.

With so many RFK books already out there, I was hoping that this one would be worth the wait....and it was. In great detail, we are taken back in time to a two and a half month period of 1968 that was full of incredible drama and intensity.

The chapter covering the Indianapolis speech was especially moving. I think anyone reading it would just get goose-bumps as it goes into more backround detail than was previously told. My God....that speech actually changed history in that city.

That story....and the whole book tries to tell us what IT was that Robert Kennedy had or did that made over 2 MILLION people cry or stand at attention or just look shattered as his funeral train traveled from New York to Washington. Heart-wrenching and at the same time so uplifting....that there was once a real politician who was a human being who grew and changed and could set this kind of example for the country. Highly recommended for anyone who loves history and / or incredible life-changers.

I worked on RFK's '68 campaign and have always been interested in accounts of it. Two journalists who covered the campaign, Jack Newfield and Jules Witcover, wrote excellent memoirs about it at the time. Forty years later, one has to ask what remains to be told.

A great deal, it turns out. Mr. Clarke's account is extraordinary in its depth and balance. For me, he has recreated the time and the man better than anyone else ever has. Reading this book, for me, was like reliving the campaign, with its exultation and ultimate desolation. An extraordinary achievement.

What was there about this intense, brave, confused, very funny, and very tender-hearted campaign - one that lasted a mere 82 days - that haunts us more than ever after 40 years? Why is it impossible to see even a glimpse of Robert Kennedy on TV without feeling, in Norman Mailer's words: "sorrowful as rue in the throat"?

Thurston Clarke's "The Last Campaign" moves us toward that answer, in a way that is more like a piece of music than a literary creation. He makes us understand that the campaign -- the wound that will never heal - was not constructed as an ideological pursuit, and as Clarke takes us forward we understand that it doesn't seem to make much strategic sense either. Yet it is impossible to imagine a campaign that has ever embodied something as intensely specific as this one: what it means to be human. For Robert Kennedy that meant obsessive concern with all that is hurt, hungry, ignored, degraded, invisible; tenderness toward the broken; self-deprecation bordering on shame for all he was blessed with; political, moral and physical bravery that would make Hemingway flinch; self-criticism and self-learning.

Robert Kennedy burned with everything that has been burned out of our land and out of our political culture. His last campaign recalls us to those moments in all our lives, so rare, that made us fully alive, better than we thought we could be, more romantic, more brave, more moral. He lived that way every day, at least toward the end.

The heartbreak of the book is, or course, the knowledge we have of what followed the extinguishing of the flame. Nixon. Watergate. Carter. Reagan. Let me mention that one again: Reagan. Bush I. Clinton I. Bush II. And almost Clinton II.

Which leads to our current hope. As someone who worked for the Obama campaign, this book made me quite sad. Perhaps a leader, especially in the cool ironic virtual world of our own, cannot burn by such a light. Yet the comparison goes beyond that. Compared to the RFK campaign, Obama's did not do anything to challenge the paradigm of spin, calculation, focus groups, or safety which has suffocated just about every national campaign since 1968. In the closing days of the current campaign, Obama was giving the same stump speech in South Dakota that he gave in Iowa back in January. Kennedy changed his message all day, every day! Challenging whomever he was speaking to, saying the things which would irk them the most. Whenever Obama came to a fork in the road, between going toward courage or going toward safety, he chose safety every time(denouncing his pastor, leaving his church, suddenly turning into an anti-Castro Cuban in Florida, changing his positions in several ways before AIPAC). Well, we have what we have, and we must make do. Perhaps Senator Obama is also an existential figure, with whom God is not finished. Let us hope so.

Thurston Clarke's book is as passionate and human as was the campaign he's covered. And as short. One takes it slow. One does not want to come to its end. It is a major achievement.

Norman Mailer, once more: "Tragedy is amputation. The nerves of one's memory run back to the limb which is no longer there."

Robert F. Kennedy - R.I.P.

Thurston Clarke has written one of the most emotionally charged and inspiring books I have ever read. I was 9 years old when RFK was assassinated, much too young to understand the ramifications. I do remember my older sister sobbing uncontrollably, and just repeating, they killed him, they killed him. RFK's Last Campaign was his legacy and he knew it, he knew the day would come that he would be assasinated yet he strove to raise all of us up. Up to a higher standard of caring for each other and raising the conciousness of this nation up. RFK asked, I dream of things that never were, and ask why not? He gave and he gave until he had no more to give and then he rested and got back to work. A couragous leader who was different because he spoke as to what he truly believed and he truly believed what he spoke. Rarely have I ever felt so much emotion while reading a book, RFK's soul and spirit are truly captured in this gem of a book. It made me think hard about what I can do to be a better person and examine my own moral courage. RFK defined moral courage and we can only ask ourselves, what if RFK had been president?

I was born in 1970 so don't have first hand perspective of the 60s or RFKs presidential campaign. However, I've always been fascinated by the decade, one of the most tumultuous, calamitous and important decades in our country's history. While many figures loom large over the 60s, one can make the case that the two figures who loom largest over that decade are MLK and RFK. They carried the hope and promise that JFK ushered in with his presidency until the latter part of the decade and their assassinations slammed shut that optimism a mere two months apart.

Clarke does a masterful job capturing the gestalt of the time pitch perfectly and the impact of RFKs presidential campaign through the course of those 82 days. To start, one must realize the difference in presidential elections today vs. this time period. The primaries were not nearly as important as they are today. The political machine still dominated the party selection process and Kennedy faced near insurmountable challenges as he entered the race from the Democratic party establishment. He recognized that he had to basically hit a home run in the remaining primaries to convince delegates to turn their support to him because of popular support of Democratic votes. May of the establishment viewed him as "ruthless" and "opportunistic" and we see how this was reinforced after McCarthy's surprise showing in New Hampshire and Kennedy's decision to jump in the race soon after that. I found Clarke's account of Kennedy's announcement and first speech at Kansas State moving. Today, politicians stump speeches are carefully crafted, crowds controlled to ensure no hostile questions and control so tight to prevent any extemporaneous occurrence that might spread like wildfire across the internet. Kansas State was not that environment and Kennedy demonstrated the traits and attributes during that night that would make his improbable run to the Presidency become an almost certain nomination as he won the California primary (and started to convince the party machine that he should be the Democratic nominee).

Clarke captures all the inherent contradictions of RFK -- his strengths, weaknesses -- and one gets a close personal "ride" through the whirlwind campaign trail. We see an RFK haunted by JFK's assassination and the realization that the same fate might befall him. (Clarke shares moments of balloons popping or other similar situations that caused RFK to recoil as if a gun was shot) We witness Kennedy's disdain for public speaking, comfort with the poor and under-privileged, moral conviction about race and poverty as central campaign themes, in spite of the advice of his advisers. We relive his campaign and amazing victory in Indiana - including the night of April 4th in Indianapolis when he stood in front of an African-American crowd in the inner city (a place the police refused to go to provide him protection that night) and probably was as big a reason Indianapolis was spared the riots that broke out across almost all other major American cities.

I wish this book didn't end - then again, that is much similar to the legacy that RFK left and especially his presidential campaign. We are left wondering what if to many questions - knowing that if RFK had lived, certainly the course of the following months of 1968 would have been different, maybe even the next four or eight years. Hope and optimism would give way to despair and disillusionment - more violence and death in Southeast Asia and at Kent State, Watergate - and we are forced to relive those 82 days and only imagine "What if".

What if Robert F. Kennedy had lived to become President of the United States? It's a question that has lingered in the minds of millions of us for forty years and Thurston Clarke's terrific new book, "The Last Campaign", ends with those thoughts. By the time the reader has reached that point, a succinct and well-paced narrative has unfolded, reminding us of a time of hope and possibility. If we still marvel at the short, one thousand days of the presidency of John F. Kennedy, the eighty-two days of Bobby Kennedy's presidential campaign seem all but suspended in time.

"The Last Campaign" follows a necessary timeline...Kennedy's entry into the race in mid-March, LBJ's withdrawal on March 31, the assassination of Martin Luther King a few days later and the intense primary season of May and early June. Clarke looks at the campaign from all angles and tells a remarkable story. Kennedy loved to be with children and Native Americans, preferred large, boisterous crowds to small ones and disliked speaking to university audiences. His ruthless reputation, earned from his days working with Joseph McCarthy and later as Attorney General, softened in the spring of 1968, as if he had finally been released to be himself. Indeed, Clarke points out that the most exhilarating times of the campaign were at the beginning and right at the end.

The author is careful to include much of the relevant political scene that spring. Eugene McCarthy, who had the support of the young idealists and who was a man RFK loathed, was his chief rival, but Hubert Humphrey loomed large and had the support of the party establishment. But it was the New York senator, (with the help of the "honorary" Kennedys... those linked to RFK through marriage and politics) who put a personal stamp on the issues of the day and who had the engaging touch reflected in his primary wins in Indiana, Nebraska, South Dakota and California.

It is noted in the book that many of today's campaign issues are not all that different from 1968...an unpopular war and an even more unpopular president and race relations, to name just two. Speculation will always be the order of the day when it comes to thinking about what a Robert F. Kennedy presidency might have been like, but Thurston Clarke has laid down the groundwork for what that might have been, and in doing so, has given us a lasting tribute to Robert F. Kennedy and his final political endeavor.

"The Last Campaign" by Thurston Clarke is the excellenly-written story of Robert Kennedy's 1968 presidential campaign. While many older Americans--including Tom Brokaw, who's praise can be found on the book's back cover--have called Clarke's study of Kennedy's campaign the first book to truly 'bring them back' to 1968, I think that Clarke's book is more important for younger readers. As a college student myself, I knew nothing of the chaos of the 1960s except what I had learned in a classroom and seen in movies and on poorly-produced television shows. In my previous encounters with media dealing with the 1960s, no document ever made me feel anything about the subject except fascination, until I read Clarke's book. Clarke's writing about RFK's '68 campaign evokes in its readers all of the emotions--excitement, fear, joy, anger, sadness--that the 1960s produced in those Americans who lived through them. In the end, Clarke's story is a description of an ideal political candidate, one who said what needed to be said even when it wasn't prescient, and who treated every American as his brother. That is ultimately something that America's youth need to experience, not so that they know the way things were in the 1960s, but so that they can understand what is possible today.

One of the best campaign books I have ever read. As he did in "Ask Not," Thurston Clark brings out the back-story of a great moment in history. In this case, RFK's decision to run for president, despite his many misgivings about doing so. It chronicles his determination to run the way he wanted to - not the ways the polls and pols told him to run. Ultimately, though, "The Last Campaign" shows us what a real leader looks like and ought to behave. With his characteristic bluntness, RFK didn't shirk from reminding people that in a democracy, everyone is responsible for the country's actions. One cannot blame Washington for their problems without holding themselves just as accountable. Sadly, as Clark cites in the book, no politician from any party could get away with such an attitude today.

A great book about a great man.

Probably many Americans still play the "What if ... " game when it comes to historical events. What if the Mayflower blew off course and went too far south? What if Roosevelt was defeated in 1940? What if Martin Luther King survived his assassination attempt? What if Bobby did? Probably one of the most haunting "what if's" our country could ever have would be the last one, and Thurston Clarke's examination of the too-short presidential campaign of 1968 is a "what iffers" dream.

Being a fan of RFK, I must admit to how much I didn't know about his presidential campaign prior to reading this book. It's a thorough, complete recounting of the 82 days, from his announcement to his killing, of the events on the trail. The book takes us through the Indiana primary, where RFK defied conventions and campaigned the way he wanted to. We go with him to the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation where he befriends a boy that stays by his side during the entire day he's there. Oregon fails to roll out a welcome mat, while California has a red carpet for him. We see him in tough audiences, and in mobs where people can't wait to touch him. Bobby was many things to many people.

By covering his schedule, we also come to terms with the man who was Bobby Kennedy as well. Throughout the book, Clarke allows us insights into his persona and character, through conversations with people who knew him, and extensive quoting by the candidate himself. RFK clearly had many different sides, but the one I shall always remember is reading about RFK meeting children in abject poverty, and cradling their diseased and dying bodies in tears.

Clarke's book starts out with a recounting, in a prologue, about the train ride that took RFK's body back to Washington for burial. This probably was one of the best prologues I had ever read in any book. It was so moving and eloquently written that I actually read it twice. It sets up the book perfectly, as he describes the countless people who came out to stand along the train ride back, honoring the man who died trying to make our country better. It's a moving tribute to him that I shall never forget.

So, we play the "what if" game. Would our country have been better off with RFK in the White House? What would have happened, and what wouldn't have happened, with our political system? No one knows. We can only ponder. After reading this book, it only makes me wonder even more.