The political analyst Jeff Greenfield, who very generously gave a cover blurb to The Coup a few years ago, has written an insightful new book called Then Everything Changed, a very entertaining account of a bizarro political journey through three recent decades–sixties, seventies and eighties–in which a very plausible turn of one event sends the world spinning in a different direction. Jeff takes three moments that actually came close to happening–a lone nut who in 1960 actually wanted to kill JFK in this telling succeeds; a Kennedy brother-in-law who almost always accompanied RFK in this telling does not miss the walk through the hotel kitchen that would have put him in the way of Sirhan Sirhan; and the famous Gerald Ford debate flub about Soviet domination of eastern Europe is corrected before it becomes a fatal distraction–and narrates an alternative history that should be a delight to every political junkie. Jeff is best discussing what would have happened if Robert Kennedy had continued to run, which is no surprise, given that Jeff was an integral part of that legendary camapign. In my favorite scene, Bobby in in Chicago for the Democratic convention, and goes down to Grant Park to confront the angry young demonstrations. His reponse to their challenges–all comments culled from various Kennedy statements made during the campaign–show the tough-minded, common-sensical liberalism that so few liberals of later decades have managed to make their own. What I particularly like about this scene is that Bobby is accompanied by three legendary New York newspaper writers–Jimmy Breslin, Pete Hamill and Jack Newfield. A nice tip of the hat by Jeff to three legends of an era fast disappearing, and a tip of the hat to him for his lively what-iffing..
