He could not stand to be touched. Finally, in a 1968 scene just after LBJ's political surrender and just before RFK's death, Steel sketches Kennedy's White House visit to pay his respects to Johnson as a candidate to succeed him. He whispered the words so softly that Johnson asked him to repeat them. Now the bad news. These are among Steel's most suggestive character moments, and he does nothing with them to refine the Kennedy myths.
Steel shows no interest.
He neither recognizes nor explores the layered irony of the Manchester incident, so that we are presented with RFK who was both selfishly and honorably ruthless about being less mean to Johnson. As for the farewell meeting, Steel takes from it the standard fare about how much they disliked each other and ignores the begging invitation to reappraise the polar images of Johnson and Kennedy on Vietnam. Recent scholarship shows that LBJ expressed far more doubt than critics ever guessed about the soundness and even the morality of his policy, while Kennedy, who called the war immoral, never said it should be ended outright. This is not to say that Steel or anyone else is obliged to wrestle all ambiguity to the ground for either man. The truest and most riveting characters are full of internal conflict, and a writer might conclude in good faith, hypothetically, that Kennedy felt on the same day both the piano wire hawk and the immoral-war dove in full mythological strength.