An Unfinished Life: John F. Kennedy 1917-1963

by Robert Dallek

  As Harriman anticipated, negotiations “[ran] into heavy weather in attempting to get reasonable treaty language,” but Khrushchev’s desire for a U.S.-Soviet accommodation made him willing to sign a limited test ban agreement “without commitment on other subjects.” Reciprocal American eagerness for a treaty led to completion of a test ban pact only ten days after Harriman went to Moscow.

  Thoughts of an agreement with the United States, which would improve relations with Washington and Europe and free Moscow to focus more on an emerging threat from Peking, exhilarated Khrushchev. As Harriman reported to Kennedy, Khrushchev was jovial in his exchanges. At a large reception on July twentieth attended by the diplomatic corps and numerous Soviet officials, Khrushchev asked where Harriman was. When he appeared, Khrushchev said he was “glad to see the ‘imperialist.’” Harriman replied, “When you came to my house in New York you called me a capitalist. Is this a promotion or a demotion—or did we have to consult the protocol officer?” “No,” he said, “it must be a promotion because there are many capitalists who only deal with matters in their own country, whereas an imperialist is a capitalist who interferes in other countries, for example, as you are in South Viet-Nam.” Harriman, amid much laughter, said he “was very much flattered” at the promotion. After Harriman explained that he was going to a track meet, Khrushchev exclaimed, “It is better to have this kind of race than the arms race.”

  After the treaty—which outlawed atmospheric but not underground testing of nuclear weapons—was initialed, Khrushchev and Harriman walked across Cathedral Square on their way to dinner in Catherine the Great’s palace. Khrushchev stopped to chat with a crowd of people who applauded him. He introduced Harriman as “Gospodin Garriman,” saying, “He has just signed a test ban treaty and I am going to take him to dinner. Do you think he deserves dinner?” The crowd responded enthusiastically. Harriman, who had clear memories of Stalin during World War II, saw a “fantastic contrast [in Khrushchev] to the way Stalin used to behave. Stalin never appeared in public. He lived in the Kremlin where no one was allowed to enter. When he went to his dacha from the Kremlin, he traveled at high speeds . . . with the blinds of his car windows drawn.” Whatever the consequences for the arms race and long-term U.S.-Soviet relations, the agreement was a public relations triumph for Khrushchev, who seemed to be giving socialism a human face.

  Kennedy was happy, too, but there was still much to be done. Remembering Woodrow Wilson’s League of Nations defeat at the hands of the Senate and fearful that a coalition of southern conservative Democrats and Republicans would find the thirty-four votes needed to block the treaty, he mounted a determined campaign to ensure approval. During the negotiations, he had kept all senators abreast of developments and asked five of them—three Democrats and two Republicans—to attend a treaty-signing ceremony in Moscow. The reluctance of any Republican senator to accept, joined by private expressions of doubts by the Joint Chiefs and public warnings by conservatives and newspapers that the United States might be courting disaster, deepened the president’s concern about ratification.

  As he had done so well before, Kennedy decided to play to his greatest strengths: He would speak directly to the country in behalf of the treaty. His speech on July 26 avoided any suggestion that he was trying to dodge the concerns of skeptical military chiefs and senators. But his address presented an apocalyptic vision of a world teetering on the brink of universal disaster. In the eighteen years since World War II, he said, the United States and USSR had talked past each other, producing “only darkness, discord, or disillusion.” This fog of gloom threatened to turn into a conflict unlike any before in history—a war that, in less than sixty minutes, “could wipe out more than 300 million Americans, Europeans, and Russians, as well as untold numbers elsewhere. And the survivors, as Chairman Khrushchev warned the Communist Chinese, ‘the survivors would envy the dead.’” But now, he said, “a shaft of light [has] cut into the darkness. . . . For the first time, an agreement has been reached on bringing the forces of nuclear destruction under international control.” The test ban agreement was no panacea, Kennedy conceded, but it was a step away from war: It reduced world tensions; limited the dangers from radioactive fallout; raised the likelihood of nuclear nonproliferation; and promised to rein in the arms race between East and West.

  Kennedy worked hard behind the scenes, too. The military and senators were told that this was not a “ban the bomb” treaty; it would in no way inhibit the United States from using nuclear weapons in a war, and it allowed the United States to withdraw from the treaty if national safety dictated. They were also assured that the United States would be free to hold underground tests, maintain laboratories for upgrading nuclear weapons, and design plans for renewed atmospheric testing if it seemed essential. Assertions that a treaty served the United States by driving a wedge between Russia and China scored additional points with skeptics.

  Ultimately, Kennedy’s fear that the Senate would reject the treaty and repudiate his administration was overdrawn. His courting of clear opponents as well as potential supporters had obviously helped. But the treaty was so transparently a step in the direction of better Soviet-American relations and away from the brinksmanship of the Cuban missile crisis that it is difficult to imagine the public and the Senate turning it aside. “Maybe we can save a total war” with the agreement, Truman told Kennedy. Fulbright had worried that the physicist Edward Teller, the architect of the hydrogen bomb and an anti-Soviet evangelist, might weaken support for the agreement, but he could not believe that “these fellows [a majority of senators] [would be] so stupid as to vote against this treaty.” A Harris poll published on September 1 showed 81 percent approval for the pact. Moreover, as one Republican senator predicting Senate approval candidly told Newsweek in August, “I don’t see any political mileage in opposing the treaty.” He predicted Senate approval. He was right. On September 24, the Upper House overwhelmingly endorsed the agreement by an 80 to 19 vote.

  Of course, there would be second-guessing. Could Kennedy have had a more comprehensive ban if he had agreed to the limit of three annual inspections Khrushchev had proposed? Perhaps, though Khrushchev’s determination to use underground testing to catch up with the United States probably put a broader agreement out of reach. And the conviction in the United States that three inspections would be an insufficient bar to Soviet cheating made Kennedy’s reluctance to accept Moscow’s limit understandable. Did the treaty inhibit proliferation and slow the arms race? Clearly not. The agreement did not deter China, France, India, Israel, or Pakistan from developing nuclear weapons. Nor did it prevent the building of additional and more devastating nuclear bombs and delivery systems. Yet Kennedy, Macmillan, and Khrushchev took great and understandable satisfaction from the treaty. The agreement, as millions of people appreciated, marked a pause in Cold War tensions that, in the early sixties, seemed to make a global conflict all too likely.

  In March 1963, 60 percent of a poll expected the Soviets to use a hydrogen bomb against the United States in a war. In June, before the completion of the test ban treaty, 37 percent of Americans believed it “impossible to reach a peaceful settlement of differences with Russia.” In September, after the successful negotiations for a ban, only 25 percent of a survey saw a threat of war as the greatest problem facing the country. The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, which features a doomsday clock on its cover, moved the clock back from seven minutes before midnight to twelve minutes before midnight.

  The treaty, as Kennedy publicly acknowledged, “will not resolve all conflicts, or cause the Communists to forego their ambitions, or eliminate the dangers of war. It will not reduce our need for arms or allies. . . . But it is an important first step—a step towards peace—a step towards reason—a step away from war.” In this, he was correct. The treaty—the first significant arms control agreement between the United States and USSR—was a milestone in the successful forty-five-year struggle to prevent the Cold War from turning into an all-out conf
lict that would have devastated the planet. It raised the possibility of détente, of a belief that Moscow and Washington were not strictly in the grip of militant cold warriors who saw safety only in the ability of their military establishments to outbuild their adversaries. And it gave hope to millions of people who believed, with Kennedy, that mankind must do away with nuclear war or war would do away with mankind. The treaty, which was universally recognized as Kennedy’s handiwork, created an imperishable conviction that he might bring the Cold War to a peaceful conclusion.

  CHAPTER 19

  An Unfinished Presidency

  Countless individuals have noted that the President’s death affected them even more deeply than the death of their own parents. The reason, I believe, is that the latter situation most often represented a loss of the past—while the assassination of President Kennedy represented an incalculable loss of the future.

  — Theodore C. Sorensen, December 1963

  BY 1963 IT WAS CLEAR to all who saw him in the White House that Kennedy enjoyed being president. One of the first things visitors to the Oval Office noticed was how much he had put his stamp on the decor; a naval motif expressed his love of the sea, and his desk, which had belonged to President Hayes, was constructed from timbers of the H.M.S. Resolute. Aside from an alligator desk set, a gift from de Gaulle, naval artifacts covered the desk: the coconut shell with the message that helped rescue the PT-109 crew, two whale teeth engraved with sailing ships and a third with the presidential seal, a ten-inch glass ornament etched with a likeness of PT-109, and bookends with replicas of brass cannons on the U.S.S. Constitution. The walls flanking the fireplace held pictures of the famous naval engagement in 1812 between the Constitution and the British frigate Guerriere. Above the mantel was a picture of the September 1779 engagement between the Bonhomme Richard and the British ships Serapis and Countess of Scarborough. The sword of naval hero John Barry, crossed with a boarding saber, hung on another wall.

  Kennedy “loved being President,” Schlesinger said, “and at times he could hardly remember that he had ever been anything else. He never complained about the ‘terrible loneliness’ of the office or its ‘awesome burdens.’” Dave Powers echoed Schlesinger’s recollection: “John F. Kennedy enjoyed being President. He loved being where the action was. He was always at his best under pressure. He became more determined after each disappointment.” This attitude partly explains why Kennedy saw his health problems not as a deterrent to becoming president but as a challenge he enjoyed overcoming.

  Yet, not everything was dandy. In July 1963, O’Donnell and Powers recalled that Kennedy was frustrated over the tax cut, civil rights, and problems with Vietnam. His inability to win congressional approval for education and Medicare bills also troubled him. “We will probably get our jocks knocked off on this aid to education,” he told Sorensen earlier in the year. Nor did he always find the compulsory socializing at the White House appealing. One evening in January, when Jackie and her sister, Lee Radziwill, had arranged a dinner party with several Hollywood entertainers, Kennedy asked, “Are they all coming to dinner?” When told yes, he said, “You girls must be crazy, but I guess there isn’t anything I can do now.” Yet in spite of these occasional annoyances, O’Donnell and Powers remember Kennedy at this time as “more forceful and sure of himself, and more relaxed and happier than we had ever seen him.”

  In April 1963, when Newsweek journalist James M. Cannon interviewed the president for an article about his brother Joe, Cannon “was struck first by the serenity of the [Oval Office] surroundings and the self-possession of the principal.” Cannon recorded in some notes he made on the meeting, “In this man, at this moment, there was no evidence that he was worn with the cares of office. He was casual. He was affable. He was unhurried, unbadgered . . . .‘How are you doing?’ I said. ‘I must say you look fine. From all appearances, the job seems to be agreeing with you.’ ‘Well,’ he said, with a big smile, ‘I think it’s going well. As you know we do have our ups and downs, the tides ebb and flow. . . . [But] in general, I think things are going well.’”

  Kennedy’s self-assurance registered not only on White House insiders and Americans more generally but also on Western Europeans. His popularity with them, Time magazine journalist John Steele privately told the White House, was “at an exceedingly high, really inspired level.” The British were ready to consider Kennedy the initiator of a family dynasty: They expected the president to have a second term, followed by the attorney general for eight years and then the senator from Massachusetts. (“Whatever other deficiencies the family may have, it is abundantly supplied with heirs,” one English writer observed.) Pressed to provide some philosophical wisdom about the position, Kennedy joked, “I have a nice home, the office is close by and the pay is good.” His quick wit about his family and politics was on display at a 1963 gala: “I was proud of the Attorney General’s first appearance before the Supreme Court yesterday,” he solemnly declared. “He did a very good job, according to everyone I talked to: Ethel, Jackie, Teddy.” Bobby’s performance showed that “he does have broader interests—that he isn’t limited to the slogan: ‘Stop the world—I want to get Hoffa.’” Kennedy also made light of the resistance to his legislative proposals: “With all our contacts in show business and culture,” he said, “the Democrats should make some progress. I’m trying to get [television series doctors] Dr. Kildare and Ben Casey to support my Medicare bill. And Kirk Douglas said he would support my proposals to strengthen the nation’s economy with a tax cut. In fact, he said he’s willing to go all the way and pay no taxes at all.” During a presidential briefing breakfast with economic advisers, Kennedy turned aside criticism with good humor. When a favorable review for right-wing columnist Victor Lasky’s book JFK: The Man and the Myth came up, the president recalled the only time he had been at the reviewer’s home, where he had been served “some kind of orange pop, and people sat stiffly around.” Kennedy jokingly added, “Never trust a man who serves only soft drinks.”

  By October 1963, Kennedy had established the sort of rapport with the public that had made Theodore Roosevelt, FDR, Truman in 1948, and Ike so popular. The death in August 1963 of Patrick Bouvier Kennedy, a baby born five weeks before term, only deepened the public’s ties to the president and Jackie. The loss registered on millions of Americans, who sympathized with the Kennedys and identified with their vulnerability to human suffering. Picking up on an item in the New York Times—“As they walked out of the Presidential office, Mr. Kennedy took a white handkerchief from his pocket and wiped the boy’s nose”—New Yorker editor E. B. White composed an affectionate poem about JFK:

  A President’s work is never done,

  His burdens press from sun to sun:

  A Berlin wall, a racial brew,

  A tax cut bill, a Madame Nhu.

  One crisis ebbs, another flows —

  And here comes John with a runny nose:

  A President must rise and dress,

  See senators, and meet the press,

  Be always bold, be sometimes wary,

  Be kind to foreign dignitary,

  And while he’s fending off our foes

  Bend down and wipe a little boy’s nose.

  BUT FOR ALL his occasional insouciance, Kennedy never lost sight of the limitations and frustrations all presidents face. “Every President,” he wrote in 1963, “must endure a gap between what he would like and what is possible.” He was also fond of FDR’s observation that “Lincoln was a sad man because he couldn’t get it all at once. And nobody can.” When James Reston pressed him to say what he hoped to achieve by the end of his term, Kennedy, Reston said, “looked at me as if I were a dreaming child. I tried again: Did he not feel the need of some goal to help guide his day-to-day decisions and priorities? Again a ghastly pause. It was only when I turned the question to immediate, tangible problems that he seized the point and rolled off a torrent of statistics.” It was not that Kennedy was without larger hopes and goals—better race relat
ions and less poverty in America and improved East-West relations, with diminished likelihood of nuclear war, were never far from his mind. But it was the practical daily challenges standing in the way of larger designs that held his attention and seemed to him the principal stuff of being president.

  By 1963 Kennedy had few doubts about his suitability for the presidency. But his self-confidence did not include the conviction that he was politically invulnerable. He understood that his political fortunes could change overnight—that unanticipated events could suddenly undermine his popularity and make him vulnerable to defeat in 1964. And the source of his eclipse could come from revelations about private behavior as well as from a downturn in public affairs or a stumble in handling a domestic or foreign crisis.

  In March, when Schlesinger returned from a trip to England, he had given the president news of an emerging embarrassment involving John Profumo, Macmillan’s war minister, who had been having an extramarital affair with Christine Keeler, a twenty-one-year-old call girl who was also the mistress of a Soviet deputy naval attaché. Even though no one could prove that Profumo had given away state secrets, his indiscretion made Macmillan’s government vulnerable to collapse. A Gallup poll Schlesinger brought to Kennedy’s attention in June showed 71 percent of British voters favoring either Macmillan’s resignation or dissolution of parliament and a test of his popularity in a general election.

  Kennedy’s interest in the scandal had been evident to Ben Bradlee, who later described the president as having “devoured every word about the Profumo case; it combined so many of the things that interested him: low doings in high places, the British nobility, sex and spying.” After someone in the state department sent Kennedy a cable from U.S. ambassador David Bruce recounting the details of the case, Kennedy “ordered all further cables from Bruce on that subject sent to him immediately.” And it was concern about Profumo fallout that led Kennedy to visit Macmillan in Sussex instead of London.