Nation: THE POLITICS OF RESTORATION

(10 of 10)

In that case, Kennedy must be given the edge. He is the consummate campaigner, willing and able to outtravel, outspend and outwork McCarthy. Yet there are the animosities that will not evaporate. Some border on the irrational, as suggested by the remark of a Chicago editor, who feels that Bobby has been "the guy off stage pulling the strings, the guy who chopped heads." There is the residual feeling in some quarters that the Kennedy millions "bought" the White House once and that they are being unlimbered in another attempt to do so. And there is the criticism, sometimes justified, that Kennedy will do almost anything, say almost anything, for political advantage—his ill-timed pressuring of Lyndon Johnson, for instance, to accept Hanoi's selection for a peace-talk site.

Despite the hostility that he arouses, Kennedy has intangible and invaluable advantages. Kennedy is still Kennedy. He has the capacity to make the past seem better than it ever was, the future better than it possibly can be. He is lean and sinewy in a weight-watching society. He is dynamic. He is virile. He once faced down a rhinoceros that he met by chance in the jungle. He also faced down more immediate and formidable adversaries, including Lyndon Johnson.

For all his questing restlessness, an unwonted sense of contentment shows through these days. He talks about 1968 as being his last opportunity, but he is a fatalist, and his long-range future does not preoccupy him. Amidst all the talk of the new politics, the politics of reality, the politics of joy, Kennedy seems glad to be in combat again, waging the politics of restoration.