E-mail a friendThurston Clarke
airdate August 5, 2008
Thurston Clarke has written 11 widely acclaimed works of fiction and nonfiction. His Pearl Harbor Ghosts was the basis of a CBS documentary, and his best-selling Lost Hero was made into an award-winning NBC miniseries about Raoul Wallenberg. A frequent speaker on writing and modern history, Clarke's articles have appeared in numerous publications, including Vanity Fair, The New York Times and The Washington Post. His new book, The Last Campaign, is about Robert Kennedy's historic presidential bid.
Author explains why his generation has reserved its love for Robert F. Kennedy and not shared that enthusiasm with any politician until Sen. Obama. (1:21)
Full Interview. (12:01)
Thurston Clarke
Tavis: Thurston Clarke is a noted author of nearly a dozen books whose latest work has spent six weeks on "The New York Times" bestseller list. This summer, the book is called "The Last Campaign: Robert F. Kennedy and 82 Days That Inspired America." Thurston Clarke, nice to have you on the program.
Thurston Clarke: Nice to be here.
Tavis: These 82 days refer to what, exactly?
Clarke: The 82 days between when Bobby Kennedy announced that he was running for president and when he was assassinated.
Tavis: Contextualize historically for me, which you do in the book, of course, those 82 days, what they really mean for us.
Clarke: When people talk about 1968 as being a watershed, a pivotal year, these 82 days were really the center. They were the pivot on which the pivotal year passed. These were the 82 days during which Lyndon Johnson announced that he wasn't going to run for the presidency again and ordered a bombing halt of North Vietnam, and it was when Dr. Martin Luther King was assassinated. And two months after King's assassination, it was when Bobby Kennedy was assassinated.
Tavis: For you, why the fascination ongoing with this man?
Clarke: I was 22 years old when he was assassinated. I'd just graduated from college. It was a moment when my class was in turmoil. Lyndon Johnson had announced there would be no more deferments for graduate school. Everyone was making a decision - deciding whether to go to Canada, whether to go into the armed forces.
And Bobby Kennedy was the only candidate - now, Eugene McCarthy was an anti-war candidate as well - Bobby Kennedy was the only candidate who framed the whole issue of the Vietnam War in moral terms, telling us that the war was wrong - it wasn't just unwise, it wasn't just a mistake, it wasn't just alienating us from our allies, it was morally wrong, and that appealed to me and it appealed to many people in my generation.
Tavis: To your point now about what Bobby Kennedy had that appeal to you, when I talk to so many members of your generation I get the sense that obviously there was a particular love, if I can use that word, for Bobby Kennedy, the kind of love which your generation has withheld from anybody else - any other politician, at least - since Bobby Kennedy. Your read on that is? Am I right or wrong about that?
Clarke: You are absolutely right, but I would say until now.
Tavis: Until now?
Clarke: Until now.
Tavis: And that would be - John McCain?
Clarke: No, that would not be John McCain. (Laughter) That would not be John McCain.
Tavis: Oh, just a bad joke.
Clarke: (Laughs) No, that would be Barack Obama, who many in my generation see - and not just in my generation but Ethel Kennedy as well and other members of the Kennedy family - see as someone who could complete, could do what Bobby Kennedy was trying to do in 1968, do it in 2008.
And what it could do is heal the wounds to the national soul. These wounds have been inflicted by the Vietnam War in '68 and now by the Iraq war in 2008. And I think that the same kind of hope that people put in Bobby Kennedy - the hope that the country could feel noble again, that the wounds could be healed - I think they look to Barack Obama with that same kind of hope.
Tavis: It's one thing for a Kennedy, who is the - a Kennedy, now, who is the brother of the beloved slain former president to get America into that conversation; another thing, by his own admission, for a guy with a funny name who doesn't look like the presidents on our dollar bills to try to pick up that mantle. Is that possible, no matter how ready your generation might be for it, never mind the comparison, is the country read for it?
Clarke: That's what worries me, and what worries me specifically is that I think the country has become a lot more thin-skinned than we were in 1968. I think that Barack Obama is held back not by things within himself but by the American people. Let me give you an example.
Bobby Kennedy said things that would be inconceivable now - he criticized the American people, and the American people needed to be criticized. He said, "You are responsible for Vietnam. You're responsible for what is done in your name." And he also said things like, "I suppose I'm disappointed with our society; I think I'm disappointed with our country." In "The New York Times" he wrote "Once with Jefferson, we thought we were the last, best hope of mankind. Now we just seem to rely on wealth and power."
Now, you can't say those kind of things anymore - it's just not possible. I don't know why. Some people think well, maybe it's the whole Reagan morning in America thing that's kind of made it impossible to criticize the country. So I think Barack Obama is dealing with a different kind of electorate than Bobby Kennedy was.
Tavis: How much would he benefit - and moreover, how much, though, would we as the American people, the electorate, how much more would we benefit, though, by him having the courage to be more Bobby Kennedy-esque, to tell us those hard truths that you're suggesting to me now that Bobby was unafraid to do?
Clarke: Yeah, I think we would benefit. I think that it's - again, to go back, it's a little different because he's running in a general election now. Bobby Kennedy never ran in a general election, so we don't know how he would have run. I think he would have continued to criticize the American people. He would have continued to be what one reporter called "a reverse demagogue," telling people the opposite of what they wanted to hear.
Tavis: Now as you know, history doesn't bear that out. And what I mean to suggest by that, as you well know, is that everybody, once they get the nomination, Barack Obama included, starts moving to the middle.
Clarke: That's right.
Tavis: So there's no reason to believe that Bobby Kennedy, for all that we love about the guy, would not have done the same thing without - in the minds of some, had to do the same thing to get elected, yes?
Clarke: Yes, I agree with that. I agree with that, and that's the great unknown. But we can look at some other comparisons between them, and one of the things that struck me recently was the whole issue of religion and God. Now, that's part of the conversation in a presidential election - it has to be. It's brought up again and again. We've had the whole business with Reverend Wright about Barack Obama's faith and everything else.
Do you know that Bobby Kennedy, during the primary, he only mentioned God twice? And once was when he said to a crowd, "Well, the only one who can solve our problems this year is God, but she's not running." And then the other time was he was in Stockton and the mayor introduced him and said, "Well, we know that God is on your side."
And Kennedy was terribly embarrassed by this and he looked uncomfortable - he kind of shrunk into his coat. And then finally he said, "Well, if God's on my side, I hope he brings some delegates to Chicago with him." (Laughter)
Tavis: Compare and contrast for me, to the extent you can, how he wrestled or maybe didn't wrestle with what part of his faith to put out, with what his brother had to do when he ran for president successfully.
Clarke: His brother had already broken the ground - he didn't have to. Once John Kennedy was elected, an Irish Catholic could be a president, then Bobby Kennedy didn't face that problem at all. And that's one of the similarities between Barack Obama and JFK.
Many people see a lot more similarities between JFK and Barack Obama, particularly in their style. I mean, both of them are great speakers delivering a set speech. Bobby Kennedy was terrible at that. He stammered, he shook, he just wasn't any good at it. He was very good answering questions, in a back-and-forth.
And also Bobby Kennedy practiced this thing I call jazz politics. He was very extemporaneous - he'd speak off the cuff. You never knew where he was going to go. You don't feel that with Barack Obama, he's more like JFK. He's more polished, he's more under control, and I think that may be a good thing for us now, given how the American electorate has become.
Tavis: Of course, the flip side of that argument is - and I'm not naïve; I know that there's no way that the people who control Mr. Obama, the people inside the campaign, the handlers, would let him do this in the first place, it's just ill-advised, as you know, running for office these days. But I sometimes wonder how much more honesty and candor and truth and spirit you would get from not just Mr. Obama or Mr. McCain - anybody running - if these things weren't so scripted, if they weren't so (unintelligible).
We're preparing to go to cover both of the conventions on this TV program, the Democrats in Denver, Republicans in Minnesota, and one of the reasons, as you well know, why the networks now are so - PBS is still doing more coverage than anybody else - but they're turned off to covering these conventions, to your very point, because the candidates and everything around them is so scripted.
Clarke: Yeah, it's scripted and there are no surprises. Bobby Kennedy, it was one surprise after another. You never knew where he was going to go. He'd be given a speech, and if he didn't like it he wouldn't deliver it. He'd start delivering it, and then he'd speak so fast.
A famous episode was when he was in Gary, Indiana, shortly after Dr. King was assassinated. He was given this speech about educational policy, kind of point one, point two, point three, point four. You read it and you think, well, this must be the speech he delivered.
Then you listen to the tape and you find out that he talked so fast for the first couple of minutes you could hardly hear what he was saying. And then he launched into a moving speech about the riots and about the fact that White America had to look at the fact of the injustice and economic injustice that had led to the conditions in inner cities.
Tavis: Bobby Kennedy, for all that we celebrate about his humanity and about his raising higher on the American agenda a love for humanity, didn't start there, as you well know, on race, on a variety of humanitarian issues. He ended up in the right place, to be sure. He didn't start there as a Kennedy. What do you make, then, of his journey to get to the place where he arrived that we do, in fact, celebrate?
Clarke: I say right away - I try to inoculate myself against the charges of being too much of a Bobby Kennedy fan by saying listen, this man was no saint. He worked for Senator Joe McCarthy, he approved tapping Martin Luther King's phone, he was a tough manager of his brother's campaign in 1960.
What started to change him was his brother's assassination. Now when I say change, I want to step back for a minute because actually, people go around and say, "Well, he didn't change that much." But what happened is the side of him that he kept to himself, that he kept inside, the kind of shy and gentle man that he was suddenly came out and blossomed after JFK's assassination. So I think that was crucial.
I think there was a second event that was absolutely pivotal, which is when he went to Mississippi in 1967 and he went into the sharecroppers' shacks and he found starving children, two years old, with distended bellies. He broke down, he wept, he picked them up in his arms, he went back home.
He said to his children, "You can't believe what I've seen - do something for your country." The next day, he went to his aid, Carter Burton. His wife opened the door and Bobby looked at her and said, "I've done nothing with my life. Nothing I've done matters."
Tavis: His name is Thurston Clarke. His new book, "The Last Campaign: Robert F. Kennedy and 82 Days That Inspired America." A lot of folk are reading it, as evidenced by its long-standing appearance now on "The New York Times" bestseller list. Nice to have you here, sir.
Clarke: Nice to be here.
Tavis: Thanks for coming on.
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