It didn't take long to feel comfortable working with Bobby. He listened well and he asked good questions. It couldn't have been easy for him to have surrounded himself with lawyers all slightly his senior and all with professional qualifications far superior to his. He embraced an interesting technique for asserting his leadership: he treated us as a team in which all of us had the same objectives. It was easy to have tension between the criminal division and the tax division, particularly in organized crime matters where the criminal division wanted to see confidential tax returns and the tax division did not see evidence of a criminal tax offense, but Bobby simply assumed that we would work together. Burke Marshall was a superb head of the civil rights division, but that did not mean that the rest of us might not have something useful to contribute. And so forth.

Bobby avoided serious controversy by using his team concept. All of us would be invited to his beautiful estate at Hickory Hill and have candid discussions about our own and others' problems. Differences became mooted and lawyers became teammates, not advocates seeking to protect their own territory. Bobby promoted this further by simply saying "Hey, you guys are all better lawyers than I am but I'm the Attorney General and I have to make the decision. So help me out." We respected each other's views and we genuinely wanted to help Bobby come to the right decision.

(Note: Nick Katzenbach is the author of the new book Some of It Was Fun: Working with RFK and LBJ.)

The team concept, as opposed to a hierarchy of positions with the AG alone resolving disputes, began to permeate the whole department. In his shirtsleeves Bobby would drop in unannounced on civil servant lawyers in their offices and ask them what they were working on and express interest in their views. Each month, he brought US attorneys who had organized crime investigations together with investigators from the FBI, Treasury, Immigration, and Labor for a day-long discussion of potential cases. The notion of the FBI revealing raw investigative information to the attorney general and to other agencies must have driven Hoover crazy but the young AG handled these meetings with skill. Sitting in the AG's office all day and participating in this way was a totally new experience for all of the participants. When I attended, I felt that all of them would have done anything possible to help this young man achieve his goal.

Nor did Bobby ignore the new lawyers. He would hold a discussion with thirty or so of them in his office almost every week, asking them questions and answering theirs. They, too, were members of his team. Of course it was helpful that he was the president's brother. In Washington, access to the oval office is always a sign of clout. And Bobby's access was unlimited. It rubbed off on all of us, from presidential appointees to the youngest recruit. There was pride and a certain cachet in being a member of Bobby's team.

Yet pride does not simply follow from proximity to power. It comes from being close to a leadership one can admire for how it uses, or refrains from using, that power. The acid test comes when compliance with the law and one's oath requires one to do what is politically or personally distasteful. Early in Bobby's administration the criminal division developed a corruption case against George Chacheris, the Democratic mayor of Gary, Indiana and an early supporter of JFK for President. When they took it to Bobby for his approval, the career lawyers waited skeptically while Bobby reviewed the evidence, thinking he would find a way to kill the case. When he said GO he won their loyalty and respect in a flash.

Bobby was open, candid, blunt, and honest and did not abuse his political power. There were times when his bluntness offended some who were used to a more accommodating brand of politics. But Bobby was not a politician in the ordinary sense of that word. He had very little personal ambition born of ego--he wanted to help his brother be a great president. After John Kennedy's assassination he tried to pick up the torch, but it was done from a sense of duty and brotherly love, not self aggrandizement.

I recall one evening when Bobby got the presidential yacht to entertain important members of the Senate and House on a dinner cruise down the Potomac and back. Like on most such cruises, there were too many steaks and too much booze. Bobby was the polished host, going from guest to guest, laughing at their stories, flattering their recent activities. A bravo political performance!

When we docked back in Washington I got a ride home in Bobby's limousine. He climbed into the back seat, took off his coat and tie, then turned to me: "What a shitty way to make a living" was his comment on the cruise.

Bobby understood that leadership is not the power to decide but the power to convince others that the decision is based on an honest and open reading of the facts and the law, rather than a conclusion reached as a result of some secret deal or from ideological or political conviction that might or might not be consistent with the facts. Honesty and candor are political assets, not problems. They are what most people are seeking in government officials.

Today the importance of money to politicians and the importance of government to business have created a huge challenge to the integrity of the decision making process. We stumble over campaign contributions and the possibility of serious conflicts of interest at every turn. Suspicion has often replaced respect, and is frequently met with evasion. Some corruption will always exist. But it is essential that the public have confidence that corruption will not be tolerated, that government is open and honest as I believe Bobby was. Government decisions must be rational and their reasoning understood. Neither the public good nor justice is for sale.

Despite Bobby's serious dislike of politics I think he would have made a great president. Of course I'm biased. I worked with him closely for four years. Despite obvious differences in personality and background, the appeal of President Obama is not unlike that of Bobby Kennedy. Both care about people, especially the underprivileged and children. Both present government as government for all the people and as the instrument of rational decisions arrived at openly and honestly. They hold many of the same values, and in both men the public sense a determination and a capacity to lead based on hope, not fear; a confidence in themselves and in other people to do the right thing; and a love of country rooted in emphasis on traditional democratic values and pride in our heritage.