Norman Mailer on Barack Obama Robert Kennedy:

He was as attractive as a movie star.   Not attractive as his brother had been, for Jack Kennedy had looked like the sort of vital leading man who would steal the girl from Ronald Reagan every time, no, Bobby Kennedy had looked more like a phenomenon of a movie star — he could have filled some magical empty space between Mickey Rooney and James Dean, they would have cast him sooner or later in some remake of “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington”, and everyone would have said, “Impossible casting!  He’s too young.”   And he was too young.  Too young for Senator, too young for President, it felt strange in his presence, thinking of him as President, as if the country would be giddy, like the whirl of one’s stomach in the drop of an elevator or the jokes about an adolescent falling in love, it was incredible to think of him as President, and yet marvelous, as if only a marvelous country would finally dare to have him.

Source:
Norman Mailer [1968]: Miami and the Siege of Chicago. (New York: Primus),  pp. 201-202.