The Last Campaign: Robert F. Kennedy and 82 Days That Inspired America by Thurston Clarke (Holt, $25, 9780805077926/0805077928, May 27, 2008)

In this all too brief hiatus between the end of the grueling Democratic primary campaign and the beginning of what promises to be a nasty general election fight, it's a good time to look back at the remarkable 1968 presidential campaign of Robert Kennedy that Thurston Clarke has brought to life in this vivid and energetic work of popular history.

Forty years ago this month, Robert Kennedy was gunned down in the kitchen of a Los Angeles hotel, bringing to an end one of the briefest and most extraordinary presidential campaigns in American history. "No credible candidate since has run so passionately or recklessly," Clarke writes, "or without the customary and ever-expanding carapace of consultants, pollsters, spinners, and question-screeners." Kennedy's campaign, animated by his profound commitment to social justice, was perhaps the last one whose subtext was the notion that the simple act of electing a new leader could effect fundamental change.

Entering the race on March 16, 1968, Kennedy understood he'd have to run a campaign that was unconventional by any measure. By that date Eugene McCarthy had a strong grip on the antiwar vote and Lyndon Johnson was expected to run for reelection to defend his Vietnam policy. With only seven primaries remaining before the Democratic convention, Kennedy took his campaign to the streets, appearing before huge and sometimes frightening throngs of supporters, hoping their enthusiasm would convince party leaders (among them Chicago Mayor Richard Daley, whose tacit support for Kennedy is a fascinating theme of Clarke's account) to choose him over McCarthy and Hubert Humphrey, Johnson's Vice President and replacement after his withdrawal. Clarke chronicles this desperate, headlong race with striking immediacy, benefiting from the written recollections of key participants and the fact that many are still here to share their memories.

Of all the moments brought to life in Clarke's book, by far the most dramatic is Kennedy's appearance before a largely African-American audience in Indianapolis on the night of Martin Luther King's assassination. Brushing aside warnings that the police could not guarantee his safety, Kennedy's brief, extemporaneous remarks calmed the crowd and  someday will be studied as masterpiece of political oratory.

What would have happened if Kennedy had survived the assassination attempt, had secured the Democratic nomination and had defeated Nixon in November 1968: an earlier end to the Vietnam War; real progress toward racial and economic equality in this country; a generation without the corrosive politics that have divided us into red and blue states?
 
The questions linger in the air, unanswered. Forty years later, we pause for a moment. And we wonder.--Harvey Freedenberg