[This is a series describing the 12 Post-War American
Presidents from a British perspective.]
JFK was only President for a fabled “1,000 Days” but he
packed this rather brief period with a high energy performance. A very
glamourous figure in his time, JFK’s numerous admirers could point to many
initiatives taken and much eloquence expended: hard achievement was more
elusive. His early promise was sadly not realised; his assassination caused
global trauma and outpourings of grief. As the years passed revelations about
his private life and political methods tarnished his iconic status and
diminished the high esteem in which he was once held.
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| John F. Kennedy |
John F. Kennedy
(1917 – 1963), born in Brookline, Mass, was the second of 4 sons of Joe and
Rose Kennedy, (there were 5 surviving daughters), scions of the Irish Catholic
Democratic political community in Boston. His father, Joe Kennedy, was a
controversial business figure and a rather sinister man, who made a vast
fortune in the 1920s on unregulated Wall Street, where insider trading was rife
and not illegal. He was suspected of bootlegging during Prohibition but became
the legitimate US importer of Dewar’s and Haig whisky after 1933. He moved into
property development, owning the largest office building in Chicago, and
organised the merging of film studios.
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| Patriarch, Joe Kennedy |
Bizarrely FDR appointed him to clean-up Wall Street and when
an aide pointed out that Kennedy was himself a crook, FDR insouciantly replied
“It takes one to catch one!” Kennedy was US ambassador in the UK from 1938-40
at the start of WW2 but his defeatist
stance provoked him to say “Britain is finished” – very wide of the mark; he
was recalled and was never used by the State Department again. He befriended Red-baiter
Senator Joe McCarthy, deplored the civil rights movement and made anti-Semitic
remarks. Joe Kennedy’s eldest son, Joe Jnr, was killed on active service in
1944 and Joe Snr reposed all his high political ambitions in his son Jack.
Jack Kennedy himself was educated in mainly private schools:
he visited London in 1935, and was a freshman at Harvard. He accompanied his father and eldest brother to England
in 1938 and toured Europe in 1939. When his father was recalled, he returned to Harvard and in 1940 wrote his thesis on Appeasement, published as Why England Slept. It is not particularly
critical of Chamberlain and was well received.
With the US nearing entry to the war in autumn 1941, Jack
enlisted in the Navy, after his chronic back problems had him rejected by the
Army. Eventually he was given the command of a patrol torpedo boat, famously PT-109,
and it was rammed by a Japanese destroyer off the Solomon Islands in August 1943.
Kennedy led his crew to an islet where they were rescued; Kennedy was awarded
the Navy and Marine Corps Medal for his bravery. Jack’s spinal problems saw him
removed from active service in November 1944 and after a period of
hospitalisation he was honourably discharged in 1945. Being in some respects a
war hero naturally helped his political debut.
Jack’s career got under way in 1946 with his election,
busily organised by father Joe, as a House member for Massachusetts. He was a Congressman
for 6 years before defeating Republican incumbent Henry Cabot Lodge,
quintessential Boston Brahmin, for his Senate seat. As a senator Jack competed
for the Vice-Presidential nomination as Adlai Stevenson’s running-mate in 1956 but
lost out to Estes Kefauver. He gained
useful experience as a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Jack
was viewed suspiciously by the liberal wing of the Democratic Party for his
failure to denounce Joe McCarthy (his brother Bobby was on McCarthy’s payroll);
he was absent quite regularly, beset with concealed spinal problems and the
onset of the adrenal disorder Addison’s Disease.
He kept his name in the limelight by publishing Portraits in Courage, profiles of 8 senators who stood out against the grain.
This won a 1957 Pulitzer Prize for Kennedy but controversy surrounded its true
authorship; it seems that much of the text was actually the work of Jack’s aide
Ted Sorensen; such duplicity was typical of the Kennedy style.
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| Closest Adviser, brother Bobby |
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| Speechwriter Ted Sorensen |
In 1953 Jack married Jacqueline (known as Jackie) Bouvier,
daughter of a disreputable stockbroker “Black Jack”, but her mother remarried
top-drawer Standard Oil heir Hugh Auchincloss and Jackie was part of a
rich social set when he met Jack in 1952. Jackie brought elegance and some
culture to the philistine Kennedy ménage
and she proved a substantial political asset.
Jack and the family clan carefully planned his Presidential
bid for 1960. Various Democratic front-runners, Wayne Morse and Hubert
Humphrey, were defeated in primaries and Adlai Stevenson and Stuart Symington
were outmanoeuvred on the floor of the Convention. Lyndon Johnson, leader of
the Southern Democrats was wooed and, against Bobby Kennedy’s advice and the
wishes of the liberal wing, LBJ was offered the vice-presidential place on the
ticket, which he accepted. Jack delivered a powerful Convention acceptance
speech on the New Frontier:
"For the problems are not all solved and
the battles are not all won—and we stand today on the edge of a New
Frontier..... But the New Frontier of which I speak is not a set of promises—it
is a set of challenges. It sums up not what I intend to offer the American
people, but what I intend to ask of them."
It sounded great and no doubt inspired its listeners. Very
little emanated from this rhetoric and “The New Frontier” remained a phrase and
not a fact.
The election pitted Jack Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson against Richard
Nixon and Henry Cabot Lodge. Nixon was the more experienced politician but he
had “something of the night” about him to borrow Ann Widdecombe’s famous
phrase. Kennedy was more telegenic and did not spurn make-up before the
cameras, while Nixon sweated and showed his “5 o’clock shadow” in one of the
first TV debates between candidates. Such things should not matter – but they
did. Kennedy won the extremely close-fought election by a controversial
whisker. The difference in the popular vote was only 0.2% and although
Kennedy’s lead in the Electoral College was more decisive, some electoral fraud
was proved in LBJ’s Texas and strongly suspected in crucial Illinois - Chicago
Mayor Richard Daley held sway in notorious Cook County where vote-rigging was
commonplace. Such Republican challenges as were mounted soon petered out.
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| Mayor Daley and JFK |
Kennedy’s Inauguration in January 1961 was a moment of
rekindled hope for America. His Address that day was memorable: "Ask not what your country can do for
you, but what you can do for your country" and he invoked his relative
youth: "The torch has been passed to
a new generation of Americans". This idealism did result in the
creation of the Peace Corps (under Jack’s brother-in-law Sargent Shriver) a few
months later – some 200,000 Americans have since volunteered to serve.
His Administration was a vigorous one. His closest adviser,
Bobby Kennedy, was Attorney-General even though his legal experience was
sparse. Dean Rusk, a cautious character, became Secretary of State – Kennedy
was often impatient with him. Robert McNamara was a hyper-active Secretary of
Defense, McGeorge Bundy became National Security Adviser and Douglas Dillon at
the Treasury presided over a growing economy. JFK’s private retinue included
lyrical Ted Sorensen, intellectual Arthur Schlesinger Jnr. and voluble Press
spokesman Pierre Salinger.
They were soon tested. Inheriting a CIA plan of the
Eisenhower era, JFK authorised in April 1961 a covert invasion of Cuba by 1,500
anti-Castro émigrés. Castro was waiting for them and the Bay of Pigs debacle
ended in defeat and humiliation. The Russian success sending Yuri Gagarin into
space also in April 1961 triggered off a US-Soviet space race with JFK
announcing the creation of NASA and his determination to place an American on
the Moon by the end of the decade. Soon afterwards Kennedy met Khrushchev in
Vienna, where aggressive Khrushchev dominated; the discussion mainly revolved
around the status of Berlin and although Kennedy stoutly defended the status quo there, Khrushchev left
believing JFK was a weak President.
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| JFK and Khrushchev |
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| JFK and MacMillan |
The nuclear arms race was a pre-occupation as the Soviets
for a time had a lead in ICBM technology. The British were concerned and
MacMillan had talks with JFK in Bermuda in December 1961. Although MacMillan
tended to over-play the “special relationship” and even fantasised about
British Greeks mentoring American Romans, he acutely negotiated the Nassau Agreements
of 1962 whereby Britain bought Polaris missiles and became privy to their
technology and allowed the US to use the Holy Loch as a nuclear submarine base.
MacMillan was also deeply involved in the diplomacy which led to the Limited
Test-Ban Treaty of 1963, much reducing tensions between the US, USSR and the
UK.
The greatest foreign affairs test came in October 1962. US
spy planes discovered that Cuba had allowed the Russians to construct missile
silos on Cuba targeted at the US. This piece of Soviet adventurism alarmed the
Kennedy administration but needed immediate action. JFK declared a naval
blockade of Cuba, vowed to stop and search Russian ships and he demanded all
Russian missiles be removed. The Russians were defiant and the prospect of
nuclear war seemed imminent. Public opinion in Europe was in a funk and Bertrand
Russell et al pleaded that Kennedy
back down. In the event the Russians blinked first, agreeing to retire from
Cuba provided the US withdrew their missiles from Turkey. JFK had held his
nerve but it was a nasty moment and both sides sought less perilous
relationships thereafter.
On Kennedy’s watch, US involvement in Vietnam deepened. Dean
Rusk was weakly silent and McNamara advocated more tangible support for the
South Vietnam regime (although Diem was assassinated in the same month as
Kennedy). Some say that JFK intended to end US involvement in his second term,
knowing the war could never be won. This is one of history’s many
“unknowables”.
Kennedy kept up pressure where possible on communist
regimes, following the time-honoured policy of Containment. When Adenauer
neared retirement as West German Chancellor in June 1963, Kennedy travelled to
West Berlin delivering his fine “Ich bin
ein Berliner” speech, castigating the East German regime and the infamous
Berlin Wall. To those who praised the Communist regime he declared; “Lass
Sie nach Berlin kommen.” (Let them come to Berlin). This speech was a Cold
War highlight and much encouraged the people of free Berlin.
In US domestic politics JFK was frustrated by a hostile
Congress with Southern Democrats often making common cause with the
Republicans. JFK had been a rather cautious and tepid supporter of Civil Rights
but in June 1963 he gave a moving address, with a background of segregationist
violence at Mississippi University. He promised action:
“One hundred years of
delay have passed since President Lincoln freed the slaves, yet
their heirs... are not fully free. They are not yet freed from the bonds of
injustice... this Nation... will not be fully free until all its citizens are
free.... Now the time has come for this Nation to fulfil its promise”
JFK did not live to see his Civil Rights Act pass through
Congress, but LBJ adroitly steered it through in 1964.
The end of Kennedy came suddenly and brutally. On 22
November 1963 all the world remembers the shock of assassination on a motorcade
in Dallas, Texas. The grassy knoll – Lee Harvey Oswald – the Book Depository –
blood-stained Jackie – swearing-in of LBJ – Jack Ruby killing Oswald – the
Warren Commission, all this tragedy became only too familiar.
Kennedy was an enigma, real talent mixed up with cold
ruthlessness. After homely Ike and Mamie, Jack and Jackie were a heady
power-couple. JFK was idealised by many but he inherited many disagreeable
traits from his father. His womanising was appalling; “If I don’t have sex every day, I get a headache” he boasted and a procession of women was provided to sate his priapic obsession. Worse,
while women pursued him, his love-making was perfunctory; he was a feminist’s
nightmare discarding his women like a soiled tissue. This debased the office of
the Presidency.
Yet without doubt JFK energised and inspired a generation.
For all his faults, he was much loved and was much missed.
SMD
31.08.14
Text Copyright © Sidney Donald 2014
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