The Politics of Expectation : The best of Robert F. Kennedy may be not in what he did, but in what he has inspired in others.

HE DIDN’T LIVE VERY long--only to the age of 42. And when he died--25 years ago today at the hands of an assassin--he hadn’t achieved the great office to which his admirers felt him entitled. Yet, Robert F. Kennedy left an impact on politics that every liberal Democrat who has followed him, particularly Bill Clinton, has had to contend with.

His impact is based partly on the circumstances in which he died. Only a few moments before the fatal shooting at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, he learned that he had won the California presidential primary. It was a victory that saved his faltering candidacy and seemed to make it likely that he would win the Democratic nomination. To those he inspired, as to those he repelled, the White House appeared to be within his grasp.

Yet, it may not have been. If many loved him, many others felt an equally powerful dislike or even hatred. He evoked visceral responses. And if he had been elected and had completed a full term in office, we can still only speculate on what he might have accomplished. It is possible, as many believed then and now, that he might have ended the Vietnam War, alleviated poverty, bridged the gaps of understanding between the races, set the nation on a new course and brought a healing idealism to a politics of cynicism and expediency.

Or, he might not have. He might have tried mightily and failed, for those enormous problems were hardly to be solved by a single man, however sincere and dedicated. It is also possible that he might have disappointed greatly, that his actions in power would have been greatly different from his message out of power, that he would have left an aftertaste of disillusion and pessimism.

But there is no way to know. Both knowledge and hope were shut off by an assassin’s bullet. The future became unknowable. It is not unimaginable. Great yearnings and deferred dreams also make their impact. That assassin’s bullet killed a man, but it also engendered a force that has endured for 25 years and promises to thrive far into the future. It has inspired political activists, fueled the rhetoric of politicians and filled the dreams of the aspiring and the committed. It is the politics of what-might-have-been.

A large part of the nation needed him so much in that terrible but strangely exhilarating year of 1968. Or, at least so many needed what it wanted him to be, that it was hard to be objective about him then, or even now. He was a complex of oddly matched qualities: tough but caring, dogmatic but open to change. Sometimes, he seemed uncertain or confused. But even in that he reflected the nation: caught in a war it didn’t know how to get out of, embroiled in racial turmoil it didn’t understand. People projected their needs and anxieties onto him.

What-might-have-been is another way of expressing those needs. Beyond that, it is a way of relating the past to the present, of holding out the possibility that what we have is neither what we deserve nor what we need to remain content with. As such, it is not so much a sigh of regret as an aspiration. Robert Kennedy has become a symbol not only of the politics we could have had, but of the politics that might still be.

The strength of the politics of expectation--and that is the politics we got and wanted from Robert Kennedy--was based not only on our articulated needs, but on unexpressed ones as well. His remedies were maddeningly vague: peace, tolerance, work, justice. People read into them what they would. Yet, he expressed what many believed they wanted in a way that others could not--not programmatically, not with precision or even consistency, but with an intensity that seemed to come from an overwhelming inner need.

In the end, it was that quality that made him so compelling to a generation of Americans, and which has a resonance even for their children. The Kennedy legend, (and it seems safe to call it that) flourishes because it taps into an unfocused consciousness. Its roots lie not only in the need of the audience, the citizens, but in the need of the leader as well.

Part of Robert Kennedy’s allure was that he appeared embarked on a journey that had already led him beyond mere ambition (although that was surely there), beyond conventional politics (although he connived easily with city bosses), and even beyond himself. He seemed to demand of politics more than it can deliver (for politics is, at bottom, only a way of gaining and organizing power). And he asked of his listeners more than they had been prepared to give of themselves. Above all, he appeared driven by some inner compulsion of which he was only dimly conscious himself.

He was certainly a shrewd and calculating politician. But he was also a man transfixed by visions that he had the power to evoke but never quite define. His audience filled in so much of the detail for him. This inevitably made him revered by some, and feared by others. Because his program was not limited by specifics, it could satisfy yearnings or threaten interests. Because it demanded commitment, and even a kind of surrender, it evoked fierce loyalty and a will to believe. Understandably, it triggered in its audience emotions so strong that they could be described as love and hatred.

If all that Robert Kennedy had done was to have sought the presidency as his brother’s brother, he would be but a historical footnote. If all he had accomplished was to have evoked noble sacrifices and raised unrealistic hopes, he would now be dryly evaluated by teams of political scientists and casually dismissed. If he were merely our past, or even only our dreams, he would be but a long-faded memory.

Yet, there is something that could be called a Robert Kennedy legacy. Unlike his elder brother, it does not rest on glamour, style or rhetoric. Nor unlike the resurrected Harry S. Truman, it is not about making a virtue of one’s own limitations. Rather, it is about politics as a force for justice and social change.

As attorney general, in his brother’s Administration in the 1960s, Robert Kennedy used the office primarily for two purposes: to punish those he believed to be racketeers, especially in the labor movement, and to promote racial desegregation and civil rights. His zeal was notorious and, to many, excessive. It reflected the conviction of one who seemed not to have the slightest doubt as to the parameters of right and wrong. His was a commitment verging on dogmatism. Its redeeming virtue was that it was in the cause of social justice.

Because he believed so fervently himself, he inspired those who worked for him and triggered in millions of people, particularly young ones, an idealism that always lies, ready to be tapped, just beneath the cynicism of our daily political life. If he was a preacher, he was also a cop. What made his convictions effective for both whites and blacks was that they were mated with a commitment to law and order. This combination of compassion and toughness was a powerful and appealing one.

Robert Kennedy is remembered today not for his toughness, but for his ability to cut across class and racial lines, to identify with blue-collar workers and college students, for an ability to reach out to the angry and the neglected for matching idealism with action, and for emphasizing the altruism that is as strong a part of human nature as is selfish pride and greed.

Politicians are not altruists. They must live in the real world more than in the idealistic one. What was special about Robert Kennedy was his ability to combine the two in a way that did not seem to sacrifice principles to action. In this way he has influenced the generation of political activists who followed him--not just those who run for public office, but millions more, from journalists to union organizers, who believe that power is justified only in the service of high principles.

Clinton consciously invokes the image of the Kennedys (and he is scheduled to speak at the Mass held today at Robert Kennedy’s grave site in Washington). The message he seeks to convey is that he is carrying on the legacy of Robert Kennedy: that politics is a worthy calling for a person of principle; that the pursuit of justice is not a choice but an obligation; that one person, no matter how humble, can make a difference; that the greatest satisfaction comes not in the indulgence of private pleasures but in the pursuit of the public good.

The best of Robert Kennedy may be not in what he did, but in what he has inspired in others. What he tried to convey, as he told a convocation of university students in South Africa exactly two years to the day before his own death, was that “idealism, high aspirations, and deep convictions are not incompatible with the most practical and efficient of programs--that there is no basic inconsistency between ideals and realistic possibilities, no separation between the deepest desires of heart and mind and the rational application of human effort to human problems.”

Robert Kennedy the man was fallible in many ways. But the example of his compassion and commitment has deeply affected the way that many look at politics today: what they ask of leaders, what they are willing to do themselves, what can be done to make a difference. That is the heart of his legacy and why, after a quarter-century, so many evoke his memory.