Kaleidoscope; "with James Day, Guest: Robert F. Kennedy"

Why. Do you think the Senator Robert Kennedy and his years as a public figure has been the object of a multitude of paradoxical bouquets and arrows that have made him one of the most controversial men in public life today. But if he has controversy although he is also immensely influential and one of the principal architects of public policy a man not easily pigeonholed. Robert Francis Kennedy was born on November 20 one thousand twenty five in Brookline Massachusetts one of a family of four boys and five girls. Born to Rose and Joseph Patrick Kennedy. His father a second generation immigrant stock had become Boston's youngest bank president at the age of 25 and went on to amass a fortune and become the

American ambassador to Great Britain. He instilled in his children a debt of gratitude and service to a country where such wealth success and accomplishment was possible. Robert Kennedy was educated at Milton Academy in Massachusetts attended Harvard interrupting his college education to serve in the Navy during World War Two and returned to earn a B.A. from Harvard and went on to earn a law degree from the University of Virginia. When he first entered government service in 1051 as an attorney with the criminal division of the Department of Justice in one thousand fifty three he was named an assistant counsel to the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations and two years later succeeded Roy Cohen as chief counsel and staff director of that subcommittee. His unique abilities as a thorough interrogator were exercised again in 1957 when he served under Senator McClellan as chief counsel for the Senate Select Committee on improper activities and labor and management. He was appointed attorney general of the United States

by his brother the late President John F. Kennedy serving under him and under President Johnson until he was elected junior senator from the state of New York in 1965. Senator Kennedy is the father of nine children and the author of four books the most recent of which is entitled to seek a newer world. Senator Kennedy it's been said of politics that despite its slings and arrows it has a kind of wanton that attacked attraction to some man. Why have you found politics attractive. Can I first make a correction. Yes and of course since you read my biography I had another time. See I'm sorry we're not up to date on it. I just barely and I think I spose. It's you're in the public arena of an area in which you can if it's effective

public. Policy. Affect the course of government which in the last analysis of much direct bearing on all of our lives. And if you perhaps feel strongly about some of these great issues that are facing the country that you feel that you can have your influence one way to affect those issues you think there are. Changes that should be made or injustices that can be remedied there are different directions that you would like to see your own country moving in the way that you're going to have any effect on that is really through government or politics. You can't think president has now once said that he. An. Hour. And I think he did and also was supported by a poll of mothers around the country use it. It's now 78 percent of them said that they were glad to see their children president are going to government but they don't want them to go into politics on the way. But I don't think you can avoid that aspect of it. And there's no reason to

avoid it but I think that that's basically the reason and we were always brought up are all of our brothers and sisters that. That this was an area in which we should make an effort to serve and you're in it. I might say that when people describe that and say what was in that marvelous that wonderful sacrifice that they're all making working government is no sacrifice you don't feel a lot of sacrifice at all. As a matter of fact. You were quoted as as saying that it is not a sacrifice but an opportunity and this was part of the family heritage that your father felt strongly about this. Yes but I think it's not paternity. It's not a sacrifice an opportunity but it's more than that and it's something that I think all of us have enjoyed. I mean there are obviously unpleasant parts to it. One of the unpleasant part I was thinking for example when you visit San Francisco's you were today you were on public view constantly. This must be a tremendous drain upon a person where his every movement every thought

is in front of an audience. Isn't don't you sometimes cry out for privacy a chance to be always Oshie deal or do you find it agreeable to be on public view. No I think that you would like the privacy and then you have some of that. And I have it in my own home and I have it done on other occasions. But also I think that they what I say is satisfying and what I think makes it worthwhile is just the fact that you feel that you can have an effect and perhaps do some good that involve other people. You know I suppose the most unhappy people in the world are those who are just involved just with themselves in the last analysis us. I suppose basically what makes people unhappy if you think just about yourself are you and I sat here for a half hour and just thought of ourselves if you could write both very unhappy. If you just said it so I think that if you begin to think about somebody else if you think that perhaps you're what you're doing is as an effect on the possibility of Indian children that wouldn't

have had an education before now that's a possibility that you make the right kind of an effort that you that's their lives are going to change and that they have for their whole existence is going to change in their children's lives are going to change. You are. If you think that there is somebody that's going to. Or is going to live a better life or is mentally retarded who's going to be treated or whatever that might be. And there are a lot of professions that perform that function. But I think that you have that opportunity in politics. You know that one so that's a great advantage for us you know when you first became conscious of this and your family life as a child because your father felt so strongly about it when you first began the sense that public service was going to be your life was it something it was a subject of the no I think I was mentioned in politics was always the subject of conversation are how my grandfather Fitzgerald was mayor of the city of Boston and he was a congressman from Boston my grandfather Kennedy was a you owned a tavern and was the

political leader of East Boston. They were not. Close political allies by any means but they both were in politics I had two or three uncles great uncles who were mayors of various cities and then my father was and government Jim the Securities and Exchange Commission the first human maritime commission and as you point out invest in England and then my brother Joe was symbolic of his oldest number a family he went to the Democratic National Convention in 1040 and was. Actively involved in the political life of Massachusetts. So it was always assume that it was I just always got involved someway in anything you've And you've been quoted as saying that as I said earlier it's not a sacrifice but an opportunity but the rest of that quotation was that it was an almost an extension of family life. Now politics is a highly competitive thing was family life equally competitive. I don't remember describing it in those towns and. Yes I suppose the family life is competitive. We all get along well

together and enjoy one another's company as we still do. But your father has said that a measure of a man's success in life is not the money he's made of the kind of family he's raised so from him all of the family apparently has felt strongly about a family life and the importance yes I think my mother had a great effect on all of them. In what way. She's very religious and and. Very considerate and very generous. Was your religion a discipline or was it to a warmth that brought you together. I think probably the latter it's been a good source of great strength to her and I think it fits and I think for anybody who's that has that advantage of you know faith in something that's that's that can be very very helpful. But in any case the that that aspect of she stressed I spect it wasn't that I know more attention is focused on my father than it is in the Other than the mother had a very great effect on all of us.

How does that affect your mother's affect transmitted to your own children or can you say with 10 children of your own obviously from your own family life have derived some very strong values and part of the I suspect that was of your mother. Well I don't quite understand the question. We're just trying to survive and that's where your course came from a large family yourself or I suppose in a sense survival was a bit of a problem certainly competitive survival with so many youngsters. Yes well I was number seven so that was quite a game. Does is just put you any give you any particular approach toward life of being number seven being so far down the aisle I don't know. Did you have to try harder in a sense. Oh I don't know that. I suppose in some ways the my youngest to the youngest member of the family is my brother who's from Massachusetts is you.

Most I suppose the greatest most extraverted is that the right extroverted and the most one is the greatest extrovert and I don't know what effect all of those things I read about in books but I don't know I think that they find out what happens to you when they write a theory that I say will seem reasonable. Let me ask one more question about these influences and that is the influence of money in this particular case you grew up knowing that you would never have to worry too much about money I assume and therefore it could dismiss this as something that you had to yes try for. Does that mean and dismissing the need for striving for money you could put emphasis upon something else. I think so costs a great advantage. I mean obviously all of us which the other people did not have and and again I think was stressed in our family that therefore because we had those advantages which was doomed to nothing that we had ever done or ever contributed that in turn we had a responsibility to others.

Has it ever been a disadvantage to you. I can't think of one as that question a matter of having having to prove yourself that much harder because you came from a wealthy family. I don't think so. I don't I mean I never never left the planet and I was you're very much concerned now about poverty and the slums. Yes I had had you in your early experience or had a brush with with poverty. No but I think just from what I've described from our own home that we had all of these advantages and my mother and father and as we were brought up on terms that this was not just. The average in the system we had these tremendous advantages and that this course women during the 1032 were a great number of people who didn't have food and had no jobs and all the rest of it. And so that was at a very young age not living at not experiencing it personally

obviously but having. That aspect of it stressed in our home it was always it was always a point there was great concern then I think probably as we traveled around after. I suppose particularly in the end and maybe in the primaries political message doesn't really have those kind of problems when we get down West Virginia. Doris are a good deal of starvation in their own country and as I traveled to Latin America right after the Second World War travel to Africa and travel to other parts of the world and then I was involved in some of these matters as attorney general I think you learn through those experiences and has an effect on your life. Well obviously it had an effect because in your book to seek a newer world you said we are now as we we may well be for some time to come in the midst of what is rapidly becoming the most terrible and urgent domestic crisis to face this nation since the Civil War.

Yes and you were referring to the plight of the people in the ghetto and us respect Now this is a strong state and I think really not just the ghetto I would think that also the role for many of whom end up in the ghetto. But there is the urban poor in the world poor who are the focus of attention is really on the urban poverty. But the world poverty is can be very very great. And it catastrophic. And that exists in the country. I've been to places in the United States where in rural areas where their children are literally starving where they have bloated stomachs and they get sores that come from malnutrition and starvation covering their faces. So they are. Having. That kind of a tragic existence as the poor are in the ghetto. Why have we failed to solve this problem in the most affluent of all the oceans of the world. Well I think that perhaps. It's

it's the realisation that it's there I suppose is number one the knowledge that it's present. It was extremely important I don't think the people or I think perhaps more aware now but perhaps not always been aware people been struggling for their own existence and been less aware of some of these other kinds of problems a person who lives in a city and has a job a white person coming in from suburbs perhaps never sees it. The very poor travels through a freeway or a bypass of some way and so he doesn't see them doesn't see them and every day life simply doesn't see them on the weekend. He's not going to go to the rural areas of Mississippi. Under ordinary circumstances. So he's not going to really come in contact with that kind of poverty. It might be a man who worked his own way up during the 1930s and went through that period of time and then through the 1950s and developed a family now. And he's made his own way and some of these others have been left behind for one reason or another. It's a

different kind of problem but. At least for the last decade or so preps doesn't have any personal contact with that and is not. And the children aren't. Aware and they don't have the contact they're off to a college or university so they're unaware of the fact that there are people who are suffering a great deal and there is we see so much affluence abound around us all the time. That's what stressed you have to have three cars instead of two cars in the morning you have to have the best time of all of this equipment it's advertised on television and you hear on radio and in the newspapers and that's the part of society that is. Material part that's really stressed in our system and our existence here making them conscious of what they don't have constantly that makes them conscious of what they don't have and makes other people conscious really of what needs to be had rather than what the neighbors don't have when we spend in the United States. About three billion dollars on pets we spend about 2 billion dollars on dogs. And yet

we argue and fight about spending. A billion six hundred million dollars on the poverty programs y of y of our federal programs failed to make any more headway with us than they have. Well I think part of it obviously is money financial resources money. Yes I think that's part of it. Second it's an experiment we're going into an area that we hadn't tried before it's not just Washington coming in and handing out money which is what we've done in the past with the welfare program is trying a different concept and you always have difficulty doing that. Third I think that our philosophy about that is I think developed during the New Deal days in the 1980s accepted by the Democratic administration Republican administration since then as although perhaps accomplishing some good has also been a tremendous amount of harm and I speak particularly about the welfare system. To me the philosophy of giving giving. And I think to give people money instead of permitting them to have jobs so they can earn money as a

very very adverse effect. So employment is the single greatest. I think so but I mean I think employment as I say in the book is is essential but employment by itself. Perhaps not going to be sufficient unless you do something about the health delivery of health services educational system and you think that in a ghetto and that again the situations will worsen our OnStar will pool in the ghetto. Only three out of ten finish high school and they have a 50/50 chance of having the equivalent of an eighth grade education. You know that they are going to have a very difficult life finding a job and being able to keep it in the 1960s and 1970s you could've gotten by with that in the 1930s but you kind of get by with it. Now you say in the book also we're failing to teach and goes we're just not teaching well and so we know all of these things and then you know I don't think that the problem is as again as I stress and they are not just for the poor It's the

problems of just everyday living for the people who live in the suburbs and the middle class where they are and they're the ones that are being taxed so heavily and they're the ones that have to make arrangements for the children to go on to college which is much you know it becomes more difficult. The air pollution the water pollution all of these problems make it make it. The kind of existence and the kind of society that I think that we should step back and examine what we're trying to do where we're trying to go. What do you feel that your experience with the Bedford-Stuyvesant experiment in New York City with which you've been associated holds some hope for the solution of these ghetto Prague. Yes because I think it brings in the private enterprise system into trying to find the solution it's more than a federal. Yes I think that way if we rely just on the federal government we're not going to have an answer any more than we've had an answer in the last decade. The situation's not getting better it's getting worse and we rely just on the federal government doing it. In the last analysis we have to bring the private enterprise system in we've started to do that that that status and

I think that needs to be done to a much greater extent and made attractive to the private enterprise system by doing giving tax credits and you also make tax allowances and you also make the point as I recall that but Stuyvesant was able in a sense to help solve its own problems because it became a community a manageable we're trying to do that and that we're trying to do that. But by no means if we ended the problems of the Heifetz and I mean we just we started trying to get the community to work together work with businessmen. If you feel that most governmental units dealing with us are too large. I think that's part of the problem too much and you know the philosophy perhaps has not been what it should be quick. Let me turn your attention to another chapter in your book which deals with young people and particularly the spirit of dissent or dissension which is much abroad in this country right now. You say in your book that the politics of confrontation and the kind of thing that's going on in which these young people

see an opportunity some of them see an opportunity for a basic change you don't share their confidence because this dissent is or as you put it it is undoubtedly healthy for us to confront ourselves and each other together. And you've emphasized together and with a consciousness of shared aims and goodwill but to confront each other across a gulf of hostility and mistrust only invites disaster as does the intemperate and emotional rejection of general standards of decent speech and behavior we're seeing much of this new off course. Yes. Now you feel apparently that this lack of shared goals of knowing where we're going or even where we are is VERY doesn't lead to important dialogue. No I think that the that that really the dialogue has broken down has broken down between the youth and the older generation it's broken down between races. Why has it broke and with all the modern technology of communication Why should a breakdown I think we've perhaps become more.

I mean the technology doesn't make us more tolerant doesn't. New television sets to do not necessarily make us more understanding of another person's point of view already generous and more compassionate. Are we entitled to young people. I think we're all and perhaps more intolerant of one another and. I think to try to understand another person's point of view is a real effort. But it's essential in a democratic system. But these emotions these issues are emotional. The. Country gets larger we become more crowded on top of one another. We feel that perhaps we don't have the role of the. And. Affecting. Our own future whether it's in business or universities or whether it's in government that role of props is less and less and so that we're going to make up for it by perhaps being more violent about it so that somebody will know we exist. We're going to wear funny looking clothes or with long hair or whatever it might be. And

just again our sense of individual so that you know that in this mass of humanity that is in the United States which is the government or rather the country of which is mankind generally that someone somewhere knows that I'm still around. And that's I think one of the great problems and if you have a strong point of view and nobody's listening to you then perhaps you're going to take it to the next step. You're not going to just sit there and argue about it but you're going to start to. What about the young people who oppose the war in Vietnam and feel they can't affect policy. Are they people who feel that they have been victims of racism for a century and who feel that it's a time for decent talk and decent action has passed. What about those people who feel that but I think we have to make an effort. I mean the sense of frustration I understand and I think we being all of us in all day and all of us you know I think the younger generation is

greater education. Are you training more of a commitment perhaps than any other generation for a long long period of time. But they also have to have an understanding and a tolerance and also doesn't underestimate requires a sense of self-discipline. It's freedom and it's liberty but it's it's also discipline self discipline is it's not license to do anything you see fit that's not what a democratic system is. So I think that that's perhaps. Required and and the idea that all one has to do is to be opposed to be negative is also not sufficient. I mean it's all very easy or much easier to be a critic. And. But to become involved and try to affect things yourself is requires another major step and I think that. Young people. Really have to take that step in

addition. I can understand the frustration and they just they've come to me and say What do you suggest we do. They were involved with the Peace Corps. They were involved with them registration drives were involved with the civil rights struggle. But as the negroes turned perhaps to black power than the young boy or girl figures What role can I play in that. The Peace Corps of enlistments of fallen off which I think is perhaps the greatest indictment of what is happening in the country at the moment in the last 30 to 40 percent. What does this represent a lot of people turning off when feeling. No I think that that was a great sort of spirit and feeling of idealism and the feeling that you're going to have to make an effort to affect other people's lives that you're going to commit yourself to improving the existence of others. And if you don't do it if you decide that that's not worthwhile and that's not why not going to do that are and perhaps carrying it one step further when I don't we're just going to keep quiet or we're just going to criticize then you lose

all of that energy and all of that talent. That's very dangerous for the country. What can turn them on what can bring them back together. What can tap the resources that I know you feel you with has. Well I think that the cost of war has some effect but I don't think even the war ended that that would end. I mean the problem is dealt with. But I think that in one thousand sixty one President Kennedy turned them on with with all of these other factors leadership I suppose from the man from all levels required and and again some understanding on on this side. Are you hopeful about these young people you referred to the most highly educated more tightly motivated and you're identified with them of course but you are hopeful that they that something will happen that will bring all this white full

energy and high idealism into play in this country or do you think this sense of futility may grow and grow and despair. Well I have I will. You know you have if one is an optimist or has confidence you have to come out for the on that side of the fact that it will all work out reasonably satisfactorily. I don't think we're moving in that direction much at the moment. And I don't not sure that would be great improvement during this period of the next year or so but. But you are an optimist. Just because you can't live any other way can as you've said that in your book only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly. You never bothered with fears of failure. Now I'd rather not fail but I mean I suppose that you're always taking that chance aren't you. That was really sort of the fluffy of the Greeks wasn't in that friends and I mean I suppose that that's it's basic as

it's been said that even in the games your children your own children play that there is always the risk that they're being taught to dare to risk because as a philosopher you know I don't think so. I. I shouldn't say rest that's too strong a word but I'd like you to chill it out. But the the daring to risk is in the sunlight not just you're not just a risk to in order to receive course or Dare in order to dare I suppose children always play that but timidity can be a danger yes but also rashness can too are over you know boldness to an extreme can be. And I say again this is a question of balance isn't. But I think that and all of these matters if you're dealing with these kinds of subjects. You're always taking a chance and you're taking a chance if you I suppose in political life but never be an aspect of one's existence you take some chances if you take a position on any it matter if you want to. I

want to bring perhaps about changes or whatever you want to do we're going to take some risks. Your own personal life. Thank you very much Senator thank you very much. I am. I am.