The Alabama sun can be cruel to a balding head. But even heatstroke couldn’t deter Nicholas deB. Katzenbach from making his stand. In 1963, at the height of the civil rights struggle, the Kennedy emissary faced off with Governor Wallace in the schoolhouse door. The sun blazed down. Katzenbach sweated. And the image of the White House’s battle against segregated education burned its way into America’s history books.

Now the picture of Katzenbach mopping his brow ornaments the cover of his new memoir ‘Some of It Was Fun: Working with RFK and LBJ.’ It’s an understated title for a book by one of the great young minds of the Kennedy administration: a man who could play the political field with the best of them.

Katzenbach was appointed as Assistant Attorney General in 1961. He learned of his confirmation in a phone call from Bobby Kennedy, the new Attorney General, who congratulated him with the words “I guess they thought I needed a lawyer pretty badly.” Katzenbach was 39, Kennedy a couple of years younger.

Over the next few years, Katzenbach walked the corridors of power against the backdrop of the civil rights era, the Kennedy assassinations and Vietnam. But anyone looking for a detailed history book should go elsewhere. Instead Katzenbach offers readers a peephole into events from the man in every meeting. He becomes a tour guide of the battles fought, the politicos manoeuvred and the personalities encountered. And he does so in a dry and humorous style remarkably free of tortuous legal prose.

Only some of it may have been fun to live through but all of it is fun to read about. There is the incident when Bobby Kennedy goes to work one holiday weekend and notices a number of cars in the garage. “Wishing to reward this dedication to the job, he got an assistant to take down license numbers and then wrote a personal note of appreciation to each employee.” Katzenbach goes on to recall the assistant who had to sheepishly admit that department parking was simply convenient for the theatre.

Such tales tell us why the Attorney General’s office was so effective. “His was a team of doers, people who could work together toward a shared objective and take pride in their membership on his team” writes Katzenbach.

And they needed to be. Routine judicial appointments and legal advice were overshadowed by the importance of drafting civil rights legislation. A simple bill requires a hundred small manoeuvres. The Civil Rights Bill proposed by Kennedy required thousands. Katzenbach takes us through his delicate machinations, as he tiptoes around regional demands, party loyalties, consciences and egos.

Then comes November 22nd, 1963. Katzenbach doesn’t dwell on the events of that day but the magnitude of JFK’s assassination colours everything that comes after it.

In some of the most compelling passages of the book, Katzenbach reveals that tension between the grieving Bobby Kennedy and Vice President Johnson began to show before Kennedy’s body had even been flown home. RFK wanted his brother to return in state as President but Johnson was sworn in before Air Force One left Texas.

Katzenbach had a ringside seat for the ongoing bout between his current and future bosses. “Bobby saw LBJ’s success as the product of sleaze and manipulation, maybe even corruption. And LBJ saw Bobby’s success as that of a spoiled little rich boy.” With characteristic precision, Katzenbach reduces the squabbles to one statement: “Bobby simply did not want to share the Kennedy dream with this man.”

Katzenbach, on the other hand, did. Although much of the zest goes out of his experiences after the assassination, he literally moves into Bobby’s desk as LBJ’s Attorney General. He may not have held LBJ in much affection but he respected him: “He could persuade, flatter, cajole, intimidate – depending on the problem and the person – and he had a sixth sense of when to apply the pressure and when to turn it off.” And he was impressed by his determination to pass the Civil Rights bill and secure Kennedy’s legacy.

In 1966, in need of a change, Katzenbach asked to move to the job of Under Secretary of State. Readers accompany him on a goodwill mission to Africa, closed-door foreign policy discussions and an encounter with Prime Minister Harold Wilson who leaves him with this poser: ‘Why do you suppose it is, he asked, that throughout history the names of the evil men behind the throne have so often started with ‘R’?

But all these trips and strategy sessions are overshadowed by the major issue of the day. “Vietnam, Vietnam, Vietnam – it got in the way of everything: LBJ’s Great Society programs, our African initiatives, the Middle East, everything.”

It also effectively ended the LBJ presidency. Johnson, defeated and disillusioned, decided not to stand again. Then Bobby Kennedy was killed. Katzenbach left government believing “the country suffered a loss the magnitude of which may never be fully appreciated.” He never returned to DC politics.

But his words now provide a useful handbook for the hopeful young minds headed to Bamalot – as Obama’s tenure is already known. “Some of It Was Fun” shows a political pro in action. But it also reveals the hard work involved in maintaining an age of optimism. In his epilogue, Katzenbach writes that when he thinks of the sixties: “most of all, I think of this nation coming together, finally, to face up to our problems and try to live up to our principles.” It’s a motto that the new administration will be trying to adopt in the months ahead.

Some of it was fun: Working with RFK and LBJ by Nicholas Katzenbach

Published by W. W. Norton & Co. £17.99

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