Throughout the 1960s, Robert F. Kennedy personally recorded ideas, ideals, and principles that spoke to his mind and his heart in a private journal. Now, thirty years after Robert's tragic death, his son Maxwell Taylor Kennedy has drawn from both this journal and his father's speeches to offer the quintessence and the depth of his thinking.

Maxwell Taylor Kennedy has written for the Santa Monica News, Double Take, and Conde Nast Traveler. He is a graduate of Harvard University and the University of Virginia Law School and has served as an assistant district attorney. He teaches environmental studies at Boston College and is codirector of the Watershed Institute

Acknowledgments	p. ix
Introduction	p. xiii
The Act of Living	p. 1
An American Spirit	p. 9
America	p. 11
Freedom	p. 23
Democracy	p. 25
Debate and Dissent	p. 29
Seeking a Better World	p. 33
Civil Rights	p. 35
Crime and Violence	p. 45
Quality of Life	p. 51
Employment	p. 55
Poverty	p. 59
Welfare	p. 65
A Hope for the Future	p. 71
Change and Renewal	p. 73
Community	p. 77
Youth	p. 81
Personal Knowledge	p. 87
Education	p. 89
History	p. 95
Toward Understanding	p. 97
A Citizen in a Civil Society	p. 101
Government	p. 103
Law and Justice	p. 105
Leadership and Public Service	p. 113
The Life of the Heart	p. 127
Courage	p. 131
Family and Friends	p. 137
Suffering and Tragedy	p. 143
A Greater World	p. 149
A Shared World	p. 151
War and Peace	p. 157
Epilogue	p. 165
A Brief Chronology of RFK's Life	p. 169
Notes	p. 173
Credits	p. 188
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Chapter One

Introduction

I guess more than anything this book began as a little boy's search for his father. About a year or so ago, my mother asked me to put together a book of quotations from my father's speeches. I avoided the project at first. I had built a life somewhat independent of my family, and I did not want to spend so much time on a project that would be inextricably identified with it. I also felt trepidation at the daunting task of spending so much time thinking about my father.

Finally, I had my own family to care for. I had two little children of my own, and my wife, Vicki, had just begun working again. (She had cared for Maxey and Summer during my years trying cases as an assistant district attorney, and now we had traded places: Vicki was a teaching fellow at Harvard, and I was taking care of our children.)

My son was just reaching the age I was when my father was killed. As I watched my own little boy, I thought more and more about my father, his work, and his life.

In Vicki's literature courses, she is always trying to make the characters in the books she teaches become real for her students, to become companions her students can hold on to as they make their way in the world--guides to help with their various struggles in life. I thought about the many books that have been written about my father, and then about the many stories about him in publications of all sorts; and I thought how few people had read these books. These days, information comes at us so quickly and thickly.

I thought that I would like to try to make Robert F. Kennedy available both to those who remember him and what he tried to do, and to those whose only information about him may have come from television. I wanted to create a book that could tell readers a little of who RFK was, even if they had only a few moments available.

As a son who lost his father early and to violence, I guess this book in some way attempts to put together the various pieces--the letters, the statements, the recordings, the pictures, the thoughts--to render a life. It is a life that is important for me as a son, but also important for me as an American who is looking not merely for a father who is gone, but for leadership, and perhaps even heroism.

My father was of the last generation to grow up in a time when Americans made an effort to remain consistent. Few of his peers thought much about reinventing themselves for some kind of gain; constancy was prized more than material success. We live in more complicated times. My father was an important bridge between two generations, across what was perhaps the greatest "gap" in the history of the country.

Most people become more and more set as they grow older. My father became more flexible, yet his core values and morality remained constant.

Americans seem to have two natures, one extraordinarily positive and forthright, the other dark and cynical. Historically, in challenging times, it has been easiest for politicians to appeal to that baser side. Thus we've had the success of Father Coughlin and Huey Long during the depression, and later, of George Wallace. (It has always struck me as odd that virtually all of the Democrats who supported George Wallace had previously been RFK Democrats. The same Americans who voted for Wallace were able to share RFK's vision of this country--a much different view.) I have never come across a public pronouncement by RFK in which he made an appeal to the darker side.

My father was not a typically introspective person. Few of his personal letters offer much real insight into himself. He seems rather to have been most insightful during moments devoted to other people. Preparing for this book, I began reading books about my father written by people who knew him well. Each time he was quoted, I underlined. I also read through the many letters he wrote home from school, and from the Navy, and from his travels. I read the letters he sent to his friends, and the ones lie saved from them. I read from papers lie wrote in law school. I reread the letters he wrote to us, his children. I read the private essay he wrote about his own father. I read virtually every speech he ever made. (I found them remarkable documents. I had read them often as I grew up, and I wanted to bring a part of the impact of that language to an audience that perhaps does not have time to read through RFK's collected speeches.) I reread the books he wrote, about mob rackets, about foreign policy, about the Cuban missile crisis.

He wrote mostly about America, where the country was, where he thought we were heading, and where we should be heading. And throughout his work he emphasized our responsibilities as citizens and as human beings, to ourselves and to each other.

Many of his most profound statements about the world, about society, and even about himself come in his public speeches. He had help. There is the unmistakable polish of many speechwriters from the years in Washington. Most significant is the impact of the three young writers: Peter Edelman, Adam Walinsky, and Jeff Greenfield. All under thirty, they contributed much to his words.

Finally I read and reread my father's daybook. It had begun as a joint project with President Kennedy, who kept a book in which he wrote down quotations from his readings that struck him as interesting, or funny, or poignant in some way. When lack died, my father continued the book and expanded it, using the quotations in many of his speeches. He would quote Aeschylus when he spoke to the poorest audiences that a presidential candidate had ever bothered with, and they cheered.

I read the Greek translations that so moved him. I went through old bookshelves and read his well-thumbed and underlined copy of The Echo of Greece, by Edith Hamilton. I found a little box hidden away at our home, Hickory Hill, filled with quotations he had taken from Camus. I went back and I found the old poems and plays, the essays by Camus that he loved. And I read them again.

I have tried to put together here a picture of a man. This book is not about specific policy concerns, though it may bring to mind many of the real challenges of the 1960s, nor is it much of a personal account. This book is not history, neither essay nor biography, and it is not even strictly a book of quotations. It contains not only quotations from Robert F. Kennedy, but also many from other sources cited in his daybook. These are the words he spoke to challenge and inspire us, and also the words he read that inspired and challenged him. The selections in this book can be read almost like poetry, or as meditations for someone who wants to think about Robert Kennedy and the 1960s and the nature of politics and leadership. It is my hope that people will read this book and think back to a time, a generation ago, when the country was much smaller. That they will think a little bit about who we were and what we have become--that the reader who is willing to spend a few hours will find reason to wonder what it means to be a politician, to be an American, and to contributes to one's family, society, and country.

--MAXWELL TAYLOR KENNEDY

October 1997