“That was twenty years ago. Anyway, Bobby can’t win the Democratic nomination.”

“I think he’ll be more popular than Johnson.”

“Popularity has nothing to do with it,” Wilson said. “Most of the convention delegates are controlled by the party’s power brokers: labor leaders, state governors, and city mayors. Men like Daley.” The mayor of Chicago, Richard Daley, was the worst kind of old-fashioned politician, ruthless and corrupt. “And the one thing Johnson is good at is infighting.”

George shook his head in disgust. He was in politics to defy those old power structures, not give in to them. So was Bobby, in his heart. “Bobby will get such a bandwagon rolling in the country that the power brokers won’t be able to ignore him.”

“Haven’t you talked to him about this?” Wilson was pretending to be incredulous. “Haven’t you heard him say that people will see him as selfish and ambitious if he runs against a Democratic incumbent?”

“More people think he’s the natural heir to his brother.”

“When he spoke at Brooklyn College, the students had a placard that said: HAWK, DOVE—OR CHICKEN?”

This jibe had stung Bobby and dismayed George. But now George tried to put it in an optimistic light. “That means they want him to run!” he said. “They know that he’s the only contender who can unite old and young, black and white, and rich and poor, and can get everyone working together to end the war and give blacks the justice they deserve.”

Wilson’s mouth twisted in a sneer but, before he could pour scorn on George’s idealism, Bobby walked in, and everyone sat down to breakfast.

George’s feelings about Lyndon Johnson had undergone a reverse. Johnson had started so well, passing the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and planning the War on Poverty. But Johnson failed to understand foreign policy, as George’s father, Greg, had forecast. All Johnson knew was that he did not want to be the president who lost Vietnam to the Communists. Consequently he was now hopelessly enmired in a dirty war and dishonestly telling the American people he was winning it.

The words had also changed. When George was young, black was a vulgar term, colored was more dainty, and Negro was the polite word, used by the liberal New York Times, always with a capital letter, like Jew. Now Negro was considered condescending and colored evasive, and everyone talked about black people, the black community, black pride, and even black power. Black is beautiful, they said. George was not sure how much difference the words made.

He did not eat much breakfast: he was too busy making notes of the questions and Bobby’s answers in preparation for a press release.

One of the journalists asked: “How do you feel about the pressure on you to run for president?”

George looked up from his notes and saw Bobby give a brief, humorless grin, then say: “Badly. Badly.”

George tensed. Bobby was too damn honest sometimes.