RFK: THE MAN WHO WOULD BE PRESIDENT

by Ralph de Toledano ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 19, 1967

de Toledano's Bobby Kennedy is intellectually weak, morally feeble, committed to any cause only so long as the headlines last, an incompetent voyeur and easy liar, and a parasite on the body politic with ambitions to take over his host. Kennedy's passionate detractors will enjoy the sustained hostility of the attack because de Toledano writes smoothly, sometimes wittily and just as often tastelessly to prove that Bobby is all bad. This Kennedy is a complex, contradictory and confounding public figure. An intelligent book length analysis would have been welcome, but de Toledano's failure to find any motivation from brother love to Civil Rights that is not mean or warped in the Kennedys fails to persuade. The propaganda techniques employed are the obvious ones; selective documentation, unnamed critics quoted, and no innuendo too small to include. Ponder this bit of powder room poison about the relationship of Bobby to Jacqueline after JFK's assassination--according to de Toledano, ""their two names were continually linked in newspapers always sympathetically and with few raised eyebrows."" How's that for an innocent kick in the en-trails? Oracle de Totedano did his partisan Nixon in 1960 and the Winning Side; the Case for Goldwater Republicanism in 1963. Logically this re cord of losers loved means this book is probably an omen of continuing Kennedy victory although it won't be Bobby's favorite reading.

Pub Date: April 19, 1967

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Putnam

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1967

Categories: NONFICTION