This discussion of Senator Kennedy and his prospects comes to us without the blurring of hindsight that would settle in two months later. Mr. Buckley reminds us of how Bobby was viewed in those days, even by many liberals: a ruthless tactician, a cynical exploiter of his dead brother, a master of political expediency. Mr. Carter (who had come to prominence in the Thirties and Forties attacking the likes of Governor Huey Long and Senator Theodore Bilbo) defends Senator Kennedy ably-but without softening the edges of this picture. One sample: WFB: "Under the circumstances, the burden is on you to find some cosmic consistency in [someone who] has taken every position there is to take on Vietnam, on Lyndon Johnson, on Joe McCarthy, on liberalism, on Chiang Kai-shek. For all I know, on you." HC: "I'm afraid to get cosmic, but I think he has been consistent in his reaction against labor racketeering, his reaction against the Mafia. They've gone underground, Hoffa went to jail, and Ross Barnett went back to private life. And I think in every case it has been in great part because of his unswerving determination to-uh-to do these people in."