Learning from past poverty wars

LAST WEEK in Prestonburg, Ky., Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards declared, "I want America to join us, all of us, to end the great work Bobby Kennedy started." Edwards's comments came at the final stop of his "Road to One America" poverty tour, a journey that followed part of Robert F. Kennedy's itinerary through Appalachia in the weeks before his 1968 assassination -- and that ignored Lyndon Johnson's War on Poverty, which had begun four years earlier.

Edwards is wise to choose RFK rather than Johnson as his 1960s antipoverty legacy. Kennedy's approach to poverty stressed the creation of pragmatic community institutions that could create jobs, build housing, and connect low-income communities to outside resources. Johnson, in contrast, oversold his antipoverty initiative by declaring "war" and then focused the program on reordering existing local social services. Johnson's strategy failed, but Kennedy's has a four-decade record of -- mostly -- success.

Obvious political reasons make RFK a more palatable model for Edwards, as LBJ remains linked to Vietnam and the complex legacy of the Great Society. Meanwhile, RFK still bears the aura of Camelot, martyred at a moment when the Kennedys were associated with the idealistic best of 1960s liberalism.

Yet Edwards's choice also belies subtle but crucial policy differences between Johnson and Kennedy. Under Johnson, the War on Poverty sought primarily to create access to social and economic opportunity for impoverished Americans, but never really addressed the issue of access to good jobs. Although unemployment remained high in the communities that the War on Poverty served, Johnson rejected proposals to include a direct job-creation program and instead relied on training, education, and political empowerment to connect the poor with the opportunities of postwar society. Meanwhile, conflicts with big-city mayors and Southern Democrats meant that by 1966 the War on Poverty was under attack from both left and right.

As attorney general, Kennedy helped to shape the War on Poverty's opportunity emphasis, but after entering the Senate in 1965, he began to focus on job-oriented antipoverty strategies -- and, specifically, on a still-new concept known as the community development corporation. Beginning in 1966, Kennedy worked with community activists in Brooklyn to form one of the first CDCs, the Bedford-Stuyvesant Restoration Corporation. Operating out of a former milk bottling plant, Restoration involved New York business leaders in a program of comprehensive, community-directed redevelopment in Brooklyn's Bedford-Stuyvesant area. By the mid-1970s, it had established a $100 million mortgage pool to spur home ownership, employed and trained 900 young people in the restoration of more than 1,500 houses, built parks and playgrounds, funded local cultural organizations, and invested in more than 40 businesses that provided jobs for neighborhood residents.

Working with fellow New York Senator Jacob Javits, Kennedy secured federal funding for Restoration by adding a "Special Impact Program" to the War on Poverty. Despite hostility from both the Johnson and Nixon White Houses, the program granted $73.8 million to 42 urban and rural CDCs. Although the CDC approach has faced obstacles -- housing development has proved far easier than job creation and funding remains insecure -- it emerged during the final decades of the 20th century as one of the few practical strategies for inner-city redevelopment. Restoration itself remains a presence in the Bedford-Stuyvesant community.

Building on RFK's legacy makes sense politically, but it also inadvertently draws on what Kennedy learned from Johnson's War on Poverty.

First, do not evade the difficult issues of good jobs and economic structure. Many communities remain economically isolated or confined to low-wage, low-benefit job opportunities. RFK's approach shows that targeted federal aid can help community groups develop viable economic sectors and institutions. Education and opportunity alone are not enough.

Second, local politics and business interests must be taken into account. Community empowerment is crucial, but the War on Poverty usually failed when it circumvented local power structures. Restoration was more effective working with, rather than against, such structures.

Lastly, do not over-promise. Johnson's martial rhetoric raised expectations that could not be met. Restoration offered no vision of societal transformation, but instead tried to meet immediate development needs in targeted communities.

Whether poverty can be a winning political issue in the United States today remains debatable. Such lessons from history, however, offer John Edwards his best chance of matching the remembered idealism of Bobby Kennedy, the mostly forgotten aims of Lyndon Johnson, and the hard realities of present-day poverty.

Guian A. McKee is an assistant professor at the University of Virginia's Miller Center of Public Affairs and editor of two volumes of LBJ's recorded telephone conversations for the Miller Center's series on presidential recordings.