Rating  - Very good but still lacking period piece
First off this is an excellent profile of the hectic RFK campaign in 1968. It does a wonderful job of expressing the frenetic pace of the campaign and how it inspired hope in so many people. The book does a wonderful job at trying to inspire in the reader the sense of optimism that RFK's campaign inspired in so many groups.
The one great weakness of the book is that it often descends into raising Kennedy to almost a sainthood. It is very obvious that the author admires RFK and thinks he would have made a great president. That maybe but it does cloud the author's work and makes this almost as much of a sports like bio then a work like history.
Rating  - Asking 'why Not
If I were rating Bobby, there aren't enough stars in the heavens to measure how I feel about him. I was 17 when he died, and I don't think I have taken politics seriously since. Even the left of center Democrats I usually agree with on policy seem pale, scheming elitists compared to Bobby. So do the other Kennedys actually.
Someone, I think Jack Newfield, has argued that Bobby Kennedy's murder was the most tragic event of the 1960s. That if you could go back in time and stop only one of the three murders that defined the decade, it would be Bobby, because he is the one who was still growing, whose work was not nearly complete already. He seems to be the one, who, had he lived, would have really been an agent for change.
The book however, is slight, more a compilation of admiring stories than anything else. Granted the book is a look at a very brief part of Bobby's life and not a full scale biography, but the author Thurston Clark does not go into much about Kennedy's past, and what set him on that road to the Ambassador Hotel.
He also assumes thoughout that had Kennedy lived he would have been elected president. I doubt it, the old machine politics still ruled. The question it seems to me, is how much more vigorous the anti-movement would have been with Bobby as part of it, possibly forcing Humphrey or Nixon to end the Vietnam war quicker, to even to act more aggressively against poverty and hunger in America.
Rating  - What politics should be about
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.
Rating - The Last Campaign
Enjoyed this a lot, gave me a great insight to a side of RFK I'd never known about. So much so that I had some problems that he really behaved as portrayed during this campaign. Very hard to imagine him crying openly at the sight of poor children and spontaneously going over and hugging some of them. But on the other hand, having 9 or 10 of his own,guess that side of him could come to the surface. Guess the residue of all the tough portrayals of him as Attorney General linger on. If all of this is true and accurate, makes me enormously sad that he didn't live to become President as it certainly seemed that's where he was definitely headed.
Go to the Product Information page
Customer Reviews for Henry Holt and Co.,0805077928,9780805077926,0805077928,973.922092 |
