THE KENNEDY LEGACY

by Theodore C. Sorensen ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 29, 1969

A convincing hagiographer should be less conscious of his audience than Sorensen, who devotes much of this repetitive essay to stressing the growth he witnessed in both John and Robert Kennedy. RFK gets primary attention: his self-sacrificial motives and sensible timing in entering the anti-Johnson race (Sorensen himself is kind to Johnson), his liberal development even as Attorney General, and the likelihood that he would have been barely nominated and barely elected a healing President in 1968. As for JFK, he never expressed regret about having picked Rusk, saw the Bay of Pigs as a valuable lesson and Vietnam as less than an end in itself; his domestic accomplishments are described in superlatives which drive the reader to Nossiter, Stone et al for facts. Likewise, the latter part of the book rallies eloquent vagueness to outline a Kennedy-legacy program, with interesting marginal remarks on the decline of the Democratic Party's coalition and power-broker structures. Fraternal comparisons swing from Sunday-supplement inflation (John Kennedy ""lived by reason,"" Bobby ""lived by feeling"") to Sunday-supplement fatuity (""JFK was better on television than RFK""). In general, the roseate two-dimensional portraits are bad enough, but Sorensen presents them for the most part in artificial isolation from Kennedy associates like Bundy, Galbraith and Shriver . . . renouncing the benefits of detachment and all but the most antiseptic byproducts of intimacy.

Pub Date: Sept. 29, 1969

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Macmillan

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1969

Categories: NONFICTION