Tuesday, January 3, 2017

Boldness......................


Bobby had never left anything to chance as a congressional staffer or campaign manager, and he took the same scrupulous approach in preparing for the anticipated battle over his appointment.  A Kennedy staffer scoured the records of all past attorneys general to see if any had entered office with less legal experience than RFK, who had never actually tried a case in a court of law.  "Even though I went back to the very, very beginning, I could find no one who hadn't practiced law," recalled John Reilly, who worked on JFK's campaign and would oversee the U. S. attorneys in Bobby's Justice Department.  "But we finally came up with the fact - or I finally came up with the fact - that Harry M. Daugherty, who was attorney general during the Teapot Dome scandal, had practiced law for thirty-some-odd years, so that we decided that experience wasn't much of a qualification anyway.  So at the time of the hearing we planted that question with [Senator] Phil Hart.
      Those preparations paid off especially with political reporters, who after eight dull years under Eisenhower took delight in the Kennedy brothers' whimsy and boldness.

-Larry Tye,  Bobby Kennedy:  The Making of a Liberal Icon.  Excerpt dealing with RFK's nomination to be Attorney General of the U.S. of A.

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