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By Root 1384 0

Democratic presidential candidate stood on the campaign podium saying that he was going to take on big business. A true man who had the gumption to attack Wall Street, however, would have shouted words that came from his heart. Stevenson stood there reading the speech. His words were eloquent, his voice was cultured, but he exuded nothing more, as Bobby saw it, than “an appearance of insincerity.” Stevenson tinkered for hours over his eloquent speeches and squandered days in meaningless discussions with his campaign staff. Bobby’s attitude toward Stevenson was not helped when one day Joe called the candidate and Stevenson moaned: “Oh, my God, this will be an hour and a half.”

While Bobby stayed close to Stevenson, Jack traveled from state to state giving speeches that advanced his own celebrity more than they did the Democratic presidential candidate. The good liberal matrons of the suburbs might be “madly for Adlai,” but Jack aroused passions in younger women. At Ursuline College in Louisville, Kentucky, the female students blocked his car shouting, “We love you on TV!” and “You’re better than Elvis!” They had seen him on television presumably at the convention and had connected with his persona. Like Elvis, Jack had his own unruly mop of hair that he brushed back casually with his hand. Later that month in Queens, New York, when hordes of older women nearly fainted away during his speech, he was the one who made the Elvis connection. “The Republicans remind me of two Elvis Presley records,” he said. “For three months before election they serenade the people with ‘I Love You, I Want You, I Need You.’ But the rest of the year they change their tune to ‘You’re Just an Ole Hound Dog.’”

As the weeks went by, Jack became primarily concerned with salvaging every last ounce of gain he could from the impending electoral debacle. Stevenson went down to ignominious defeat, winning only seven southern states. In politics much that passes as politeness is little more than organized hypocrisy. Bobby wrote the defeated candidate a warmly disingenuous letter. “I hate to impinge on your well-deserved rest but I wanted to write and thank you for your many kindnesses to me during the campaign,” he wrote in a handwritten note on Jack’s Senate stationery. “I regret that I was not able to make more of a contribution but your allowing me to travel with you was a wonderful opportunity and experience for me.” He did not find it expedient to mention to the former Illinois governor that he had been so appalled at what he saw that he hadn’t been able to bring himself to vote for Stevenson but had pulled the lever for Eisenhower.

Even before Bobby wrote his note to Stevenson, he had flown off to California to begin an investigation of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters as chief counsel for the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. For months he had been badgered by Clark R. Mollenhoff, an investigative reporter, to investigate the union’s corruption. Mollenhoff was a glowering hulk of a man who spoke in a hectoring, belligerent tone that offended many he sought to convince. “He had a tendency to use acid sarcasm, and he was inclined to be irritable or rudely blunt when he was crossed,” Mollenhoff said of Bobby, though he equally could have been describing himself. “Occasionally, I taunted him by questioning his courage to take on such an investigation,” Mollenhoff recalled. “At other times I prophesied such an investigation could do for him what the Kefauver crime investigation did for [Chief Counsel] Rudolph Halley.”

Union corruption was a canvas on which Bobby could write his name in bold letters. He knew, however, that every action he took now could impinge on his brother’s campaign for the presidency. It was a daring move going after corruption in the largest, most powerful union in America, though as he began his investigations he thought he would be clipping away a few precancerous growths on a healthy body. Even so, he risked alienating millions of union men and women whose votes Jack would need.

The Teamsters president,