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Extrasensory Contact. Amid the complexities and problems of his first nationwide campaign, Bobby Kennedy is an organizer to reckon with. "I don't have to think about organization," says Jack Kennedy. "I just show up." The brothers have an extrasensory communications system with each other: Bobby rarely has to consult Jack when confronted with a difficult decision; he acts quickly and instinctively. A young man of brutal honesty and impeccable integrity, Bobby frequently antagonizes politicians with his blunt opinions and untactful tactics. Says Jack: "Every politician in Massachusetts was mad at Bobby after 1952 [when he managed Jack's first, successful Senate campaign], but we had the best organization in history."
In the 1960 campaign, Bobby is running a taut ship. He has an abhorrence of laziness, works like a stevedore himself and demands the same kind of dedicated performance of his workers. In return he gives complete loyalty. (When the Senate labor rackets committee was winding up its investigation of corruption in the nation's labor unions, Chief Counsel Bob Kennedy called in each of his 50 hardworking staffers, talked at length about their problems, and arranged at least one job prospect for each man and woman.) Except for a handful of top assistants, Bobby trusts no one, feels compelled to assure himself of every situation. Many politicians and field workers accuse him of ruthlessness. and in his single-mindedness he often conveys that impression. In New York, at the campaign's outset, he made no friends with a tough speech to the reform Democrats who were warring with the regular organization: "Gentlemen, I don't give a damn if the state and county organizations survive after November, and I don't give a damn if you survive. I want to elect John F. Kennedy." Many of his listeners were offended, but Bobby achieved his purpose, and the feuding forces of Tammany Hall and the Eleanor Roosevelt reformers agreed to work together—separately—under the direction of a coordinator who was a Washington, D.C. neighbor of Jack Kennedy's.
Campaign workers grumble at Bobby's battering-ram methods ("Little Brother Is Watching" is a sub rosa slogan at San Francisco's Kennedy headquarters), but they work as hard as they complain. Says Bobby's father, Joe Kennedy: "Ruthless? As a person who has had the term applied to him for 50 years, I know a bit about it. Anybody who is controversial is called ruthless. Any man of action is always called ruthless. It's ridiculous." Bobby, says his father, is just dedicated: "Jack works as hard as any mortal man can. Bobby goes a little further."
Political Harvester. While Jack relaxed on the beach last summer, recovering from the primaries and the convention, Bobby hustled down to Washington. The machine that he and Jack had built had proved its mettle in a string of primary victories and at the convention. In the primaries the old, outmoded political organizations were bulldozed aside, the old, skeptical politicians brought into line or surrounded. But would the stream lined political harvester that had worked so efficiently and winningly in the furrows of Wisconsin and West Virginia and the Los Angeles Memorial Sports Arena be adequate in the back forty of the entire nation?