At the conclusion of this fresh look at RFK's 1968 presidential campaign, cut short by his assassination in June of that year, Edward Schmitt refers to political scientist Karl Deutsch, who in an influential 1957 study had "asserted that the political leader most likely to facilitate a movement of social integration was one who could unite the 'most inside of the outsiders' and the 'most outside of the insiders' in society." (Three years later, JFK's election neatly illustrated the point.) It's a formulation that suggests both parallels and contrasts between 1968 and our present moment—beyond the scope of Schmitt's explicit attention but surely not lost on the reader.

Robert Kennedy, like Barack Obama, combined a shrewd (at times ruthless) grasp of what Schmitt rather stiffly calls "the conventional political medium" with a heartfelt "communitarian" appeal. The rhetoric of a passage Schmitt quotes from Kennedy's 1967 book To Seek a Newer World sounds very much like Obama in 2008 (and today), even though the details are dated: "Great gulfs now yawn between black and white, right and left; the Minutemen share nothing with the Revolutionary Armed Movement [who were they, anyway?]—except a conviction of their own right to use guns and violence against fellow citizens with whom they disagree." And so on.

We don't know whether, had he lived, Kennedy might have gone on to victory in November. We do know that, had he been elected president, he would have quickly found himself in the same old world we inhabit today. The interesting question is what we should infer from that.

John Wilson is the editor of Books & Culture.

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