Sitting with him, Whitney riffled the latest Time until a film clip of Resurrection City caught her attention. A makeshift encampment on the Washington Mall, it was an attempt by the poor to dramatize their plight. “How will this change their lives,” Charles inquired aloud, “and what are they teaching their children? That government has all the answers?” But the scruffy campsite spoke to Whitney’s sympathies. “If they didn’t do this, maybe we wouldn’t think of them at all.” Her father shook his head. “Maybe not. But if they don’t want to improve themselves, what can anyone else do to help? This is just a sideshow, an excuse for the radical young to pursue their own destructive purposes.” Instinctively, Whitney thought again of Bobby Kennedy and the wounded young man she had encountered on the beach. Had her father always been this conservative? she wondered. Or had he acquired his beliefs from the moneyed classes he had joined upon marrying Anne, applying his keen intelligence until he could articulate them more clearly than his mentors?
