Bobby Kennedy: A Raging Spirit by Chris Matthews (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: Bobby Kennedy: A Raging Spirit by Chris Matthews Peter Fields Chris Matthews. Bobby Kennedy: A Raging Spirit. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2017. 396p. Chris Matthews, longstanding host of MSNBC’s bristly Hardball, retells the life of Robert F. Kennedy with edgy prose. He begins with Bobby as sheltered altar boy, brooded over by the family matriarch, but races ahead to the 1950s and ‘60s, intent on submitting for our approval the paradox of RFK’s contradictions and the lurching two-steps-forward, one-step-backwards of his learning curve for civil rights and the Vietnam War. To be sure, we do not have in A Raging Spirit the comprehensive erudition of Arthur Schlesinger’s Robert Kennedy and his Times. Matthews by comparison [End Page 329] has no patience with his muse. He acknowledges this telling appraisal by one of his editors: “Michele Slung helped get this book into shape while correctly noting that my daily writing for broadcast had weakened my will to write in full paragraphs” (345). Indeed, Matthews hurriedly collects up his facts, opens each chapter in media res, and sweeps aside whole swaths of life and times as if his unyielding grip on RFK as our hero, our beloved brother “Bobby,” was self-evident in its meaning and significance. The italicized epigraph comes closest to what Matthews feels is his theme: This book is about the Bobby Kennedy we’d want to have today, the kind of leader we lack today. But this “Bobby” cannot be so simply conveyed. He is always the paradox of steely single-mindedness opening suddenly upon deeply-felt valleys of empathy for those who suffer injustice—a tragic person who still tantalizes our sense of possibility 50 years after his assassination. In fact, A Raging Spirit, published at the end of 2017, functions admirably as a kind of companion source, or annotation, for what cable television has been doing with the 50th anniversary of 1968: first came the CNN series American Dynasties: The Kennedys, followed by CNN’s 1968: The Year that Changed America. Presently, Netflix is making available its four-part documentary Bobby Kennedy for President, which in its first episode seems to have A Raging Spirit open in front of it. As in the book, we see and hear Harry Belafonte reminiscing about how hesitant Civil Rights leaders were about both Jack and Bobby. Suddenly, in October 1960, weeks before Jack’s November presidential election, Belafonte’s hero Martin Luther King lands in prison in Georgia, facing the very real prospect of hard time on a chain gang for organizing a sit-in at a lunch counter. Some on the campaign convince JFK to call and express his sympathy to Coretta King. Campaign manager Bobby finds out, harangues the staff for letting his brother make such a colossal error, and then, a few hours later, picks up the phone and makes everything work together for both Jack and King. Belafonte states that everything changed as of that rapid-response intervention. The Civil Rights movement and African Americans throughout the country began to line up behind the Kennedy name. Such are the lightning strokes of the cable documentary. A Raging Spirit gives us the Jack Kennedy of spring 1960 casually assigning civil rights to Sargent Shriver. Campaign Manager Bobby then hires former legal assistant Harris Wofford to work for Shriver, perhaps vaguely aware that Wofford seems to know people in King’s movement. Bobby does nothing until October when the campaign is in full swing and southern Democratic leaders are staunchly opposed to anything like coddling or encouraging civil rights agitators. Coretta King, alarmed for her husband in prison, begins, with the help of black activist Louis Martin, to besiege [End Page 330] Wofford and Shriver to bring up King’s predicament with Jack. Wofford, Martin, and Shriver watch for their moment and then make the case for Jack to commiserate with Coretta by phone call. He could offer to help, but the important thing would be his expression of concern. Bobby then descends on Wofford, Martin, and Shriver, calling them “bomb-throwers” (193). He knew specifically of three southern governors who considered that helping King was on...