Just as Bobby seemed to be getting his fire back, George’s disillusionment with President Johnson had been completed by the president’s reaction to the Kerner Commission, appointed to examine the causes of racial unrest during the long, hot summer of 1967. Their report pulled no punches: the cause of the rioting was white racism, it said. It was sharply critical of government, the media, and the police, and it called for radical action on housing, jobs, and segregation. It was published as a paperback and sold two million copies. But Johnson simply rejected the report. The man who had heroically championed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965—the keystones of Negro advancement—had given up the fight.

Bobby, having made the decision not to run, continued to torment himself with worry about whether he had done the right thing—as was his characteristic way. He talked about it to his oldest friends and his most casual acquaintances, his closest advisers—including George—and newspaper reporters. Rumors began to circulate that he had changed his mind. George would not believe it unless he heard it from Bobby’s own lips.

Primaries were local races between people from the same party who wanted to be that party’s presidential candidate. The first Democratic primary was held in New Hampshire. Gene McCarthy was the hope of the young, but he was doing badly in opinion polls, trailing a long way behind President Johnson, who wanted to run for reelection. McCarthy had little money. Ten thousand enthusiastic young volunteers had arrived in New Hampshire to campaign for him, but George and the other aides around the table at “21” confidently expected tonight’s result to be a victory for Johnson by a huge margin.

George looked forward to the presidential election in November with trepidation. On the Republican side the leading moderate, George Romney, had dropped out of the race, leaving the field clear for the flaky conservative Richard Nixon. So the presidential election would almost certainly be fought between Johnson and Nixon, both pro-war.

Toward the end of the gloomy meal George was summoned to the phone by a staffer who had the New Hampshire result.

Everyone had been wrong. The result was completely unexpected. McCarthy had gained 42 percent of the vote, astonishingly close to Johnson’s 49.

George realized that Johnson could be beaten after all.

He rushed upstairs and gave Bobby the news.

Bobby’s reaction was downbeat. “It’s too much!” he said. “Now how am I going to get McCarthy to drop out?”

That was when George understood that, after all, Bobby was going to run.

• • •

Walli and Beep went to Bobby Kennedy’s rally to disrupt it.

Both were angry at Bobby. For months he had refused to declare himself a presidential candidate. He did not think he could win, and—they believed—he had not had the guts to try. So Gene McCarthy had stuck his neck out, and had done so well that he now had a real chance of beating President Johnson.