In four different passages, he traces the emotional power of the JFK funeral to careful research by the Kennedy family on the symbols and trappings used for Lincoln. Bobby could then become the inheritor of the future. The book surrenders all but the pretense of transcending or improving romance to discover a new Robert Kennedy, beyond the familiar twin legends. His book is stippled with acid. Steel is neither the first nor last writer to feel betrayed by the Kennedys over the lost innocence of the 1960s, but he has matched its fabled credibility gap with his claim to have learned something.
Steel resists the notion of growth in any politician.
Politics in a democratic society is about interest groups and deals, not about salvation. I think Steel is imprisoned in his own myth of the great calculation. He seems stuck on dilemmas from Vietnam's scalded turning point of the Cold War, where he ended his excellent work on Walter Lippmann, and somehow blames Robert Kennedy for the misplaced hopes ever since. The fact is that Kennedy lived at the volcanic core of historic events in transformation, between Cold War enemies and post-Cold War nonviolence. Steel calls Robert Kennedy the most avid believer in the Kennedy myth of innocent hope, but he also acknowledges that Kennedy avoided discussion of his brother's assassination in part because he felt the undertow of hidden government earlier and more keenly than the rest of us.