JFK's Last Hundred Days: The Transformation of a Man and the Emergence of a Great President

by Thurston Clarke

  Cronkite’s assessment of the interview was that the president had “effectively pulled the rug out from under Diem and changed the course of events in Vietnam.”

  • • •

  DURING THE AFTERNOON, KENNEDY cruised to Nantucket and back with his family and played nine holes of golf. (His hip flexor muscles had apparently undergone a miraculous recovery since Dr. Kraus’s flying visit.) His last appointment was a conference with Vice President Lyndon Johnson, who was planning to fly back to Andrews after their meeting and embark on a five-nation goodwill tour of Scandinavia. For days Johnson had been lobbying for a briefing with the president to boost the status of his trip. After O’Donnell rebuffed him, General Clifton had done an end run and arranged this last-minute meeting.

  Like most White House aides, O’Donnell disliked Johnson and had either forgotten or chosen to ignore Kennedy’s warning, delivered at the beginning of his term, that Johnson was “a very insecure, sensitive man with a huge ego,” and Kennedy’s request to “literally kiss his ass from one end of Washington to the other.”

  Kennedy had struggled to follow his own advice. He had made Johnson chairman of the National Aeronautics and Space Commission, and chairman of his Presidential Commission of Equal Opportunity, but the other members griped that he showed little leadership and contributed almost nothing, leading Kennedy to complain, “That man can’t run this committee. Can you think of anything more deplorable than him trying to run the United States? That’s why he can’t ever be President of the United States.” He had told State Department Chief of Protocol Angier Biddle Duke to “look out” for Johnson and include him in official functions, explaining, “We’re all going to forget. We’ve got too much to do around here.” He had invited Johnson to opening day of the baseball season, but he talked so much that he ruined the game, and the next time, Kennedy sat Dave Powers between them. He sent him a birthday telegram but complained that Johnson’s sensitivity made composing it “worse than drafting a state document.” He accepted Johnson’s invitation to visit his ranch, but Johnson presented him with a ten-gallon cowboy hat and sulked when Kennedy refused to wear it. He disliked hunting, but Johnson insisted that he shoot a deer (leading him to complain to a friend, “That will never be a sport until they give the deer a gun”), and then had the head mounted and sent to the White House. When it arrived, he told Jackie, “The three most overrated things in the world are the State of Texas, the FBI, and mounted deer’s heads.” He joked about repaying Johnson by taking him sailing during a hurricane.

  Kennedy could not make himself like the man. “LBJ’s simple presence seems to bug him,” Bradlee observed. “It’s not very noble to watch, and yet there it is.” They had nothing in common. He was a cool and restrained campaigner; Johnson was a cornball like Kennedy’s grandfather Honey Fitz. (He had told Bradlee and Cannon during their 1960 interview, “I think I’m the antithesis of my grandfather. . . . I’d rather read a book on a plane than talk to the person next to me, and my grandfather [would have] wanted to talk to him and probably everyone else on the plane.” Johnson would also have talked to every passenger.) He golfed, sailed, and swam; Johnson lived, breathed, and talked politics, and never relaxed. He could not stand people feeling sorry for themselves; since becoming vice president, Johnson had done little else, bitching to Fay during a reception honoring the astronaut John Glenn, “Nobody cares whether I come or I don’t come. I don’t even know why I’m here.” He could not bear being around unhappy people; Johnson was a world-class sulker. “I cannot stand Johnson’s damn long face,” he told Smathers. “He comes in, sits at the Cabinet meetings with his face all screwed up, never says anything. He looks so sad.” Johnson was a bullshitter; Kennedy was so impatient with bombast and verbosity that he would abruptly leave a meeting to avoid it. He was secretive; Johnson reveled in exposing himself. He was thoughtful to his staff; Johnson was “an insufferable bastard,” according to his aide George Reedy, who had accompanied him to the Labor Day meeting on Squaw Island. Their only shared ground was that they both were energetic philanderers with inferiority complexes. Kennedy felt inferior to the WASPs, while Johnson felt inferior to the Kennedys, complaining to reporters that instead of Harvard, he had attended a “little crappy Texas college.” All in all, it was an unpromising terrain for a friendship.

  By the summer of 1963, Johnson was miserable. He spoke of withdrawing from the ticket in 1964 and going back to Texas to run for his old Senate seat or to become the president of his alma mater, Southwest Texas State Teachers College. He claimed that the Kennedy inner circle had convened a secret meeting and decided to ditch him, and that Jackie had cast the only dissenting vote. He sat at White House meetings gray-faced, sullen, and silent, an “almost spectral” presence, according to Schlesinger. His aide Harry C. McPherson, Jr., was appalled when he saw him in a swimsuit. His stomach was enormous, his face blotchy and flushed, and he had obviously been eating and drinking too much. He spent hours in bed, staring at the ceiling and growling at anyone who disturbed him. George Reedy spoke of his “obvious depression,” and given Kennedy’s keen interest in White House gossip and the eagerness of his staff to relate anything reflecting poorly on “Uncle Cornpone,” it is unlikely that Johnson’s downward spiral had escaped his notice.

  The only vice presidential duties Johnson relished were goodwill trips like the one he was preparing to take to Scandinavia. He had resisted them at first, suspecting a Bobby Kennedy plot to get him out of town, but discovered that he liked escaping the White House, playing the statesman, and being cheered by friendly foreign crowds. Kennedy probably viewed the Hyannis Port meeting as an opportunity to massage his ego and send him to Scandinavia in a good mood, but Johnson had a different agenda. After reviewing his schedule with Kennedy he said, “I think it would be a good idea to expand my itinerary to include a visit to Poland.” Kennedy remained silent, forcing him to add, “It would be a dramatic sign of our desire to be friendly with the countries behind the Iron Curtain, particularly those that have shown a desire for freedom.”

  Taken by surprise, Kennedy remained silent as Johnson argued his case. The prospect of the loosest cannon in his administration making a last-minute excursion to a Soviet satellite at one of the most delicate and promising moments of the cold war had to be an appalling one. Intemperate remarks and impulsive gestures had marked his earlier trips, and his talk of making a “dramatic sign” in Poland suggested off-the-cuff speeches that might damage the fragile détente. He had to forbid him to go, but do it without hurting his feelings. After Johnson finished he played for time, asking if the State Department had approved adding Poland to his itinerary. Johnson admitted it had not. “I didn’t want to start any planning until I knew your reaction,” he said.

  Kennedy finally weighed in, telling him, “I don’t think such a trip is a good idea at this time. Maybe some time later.” After a strained moment, he said, “What do you plan to talk about on your trip? If you have a prepared speech, I’d like to see it.”

  He took a pencil to Johnson’s speech, crossing out sentences and whole paragraphs, explaining that he was removing a few sections that were “better unsaid.”

  Although Kennedy had gutted his speech and vetoed Poland, Johnson was pathetically grateful that he had agreed to meet with him at all. After boarding his helicopter he stepped out again and said to Clifton, “I want you to tell that young man that he did a very great and generous thing today.”

  “What was the pitch about wanting to go to Poland?” Fay asked after Johnson left.

  “The poor guy’s got the worst job in the government, and just wants to make a significant contribution. Unfortunately the timing isn’t right,” Kennedy said, adding condescendingly, “Otherwise I’d love to see him go and have a little fun.”

  The Scandinavian trip would be the most calamitous of Johnson’s vice presidency. He was boorish and cranky, plagued by kidney stones, and unable to connect with the middle-clas
s audiences. In Finland, he walked across the graves of the honored dead in a cemetery commemorating a famous massacre. In Norway, he interrupted the food service at a state dinner by having a long conversation with an aide, standing in the aisle and blocking the waitresses. He infuriated the Danes by ordering all the furniture designed by a famous craftsman removed from his hotel room. There is no telling what this miserable and impulsive man might have done in Poland.

  Tuesday, September 3–Friday, September 6

  WASHINGTON

  The official diary of Kennedy’s engagements kept by Ken O’Donnell shows the short week following Labor Day as among the least eventful of his presidency. He did not return from Cape Cod until Tuesday morning, and spent most of Thursday and Friday entertaining King Zaher of Afghanistan. On Tuesday afternoon, during a discussion of French atomic tests and the peaceful uses of nuclear power, he filled two pages with doodles, scribbling “test,” “biological,” “megaton,” “peaceful uses,” and, evidence that his mind was wandering, “Panama” (five times), “1964,” “discrimination,” and “Cuba.” He covered the bottom of the second sheet with an eighteenth-century man-of-war in full sail.

  Many of his doodles were composed of words taken from meetings and conversations, written several times, underlined, crossed out, and placed in boxes piled into towers or connected in chains. On rare occasions he would doodle his thoughts, once writing during a briefing, “I don’t understand all this.” When he drew something, it was usually a boat, perhaps because he would rather have been on it. In one of his more inventive doodles, he turned a U.S. flag into a treble clef, in another he drew the pillar of a canopy bed. He doodled when he was bored or wanted to release tension and frustration. “Vietnam” appeared frequently in his doodles that summer and fall, written down a page, put in boxes, crossed out, and underlined again and again.

  The political situation there remained stalemated. The generals had suspended their plotting, and Diem was refusing to dismiss his brother. The Pentagon insisted the war was being won and recommended supporting Diem; the State Department and U.S. press corps in Saigon believed it would be lost if he remained in power. The pro-Diem English-language Times of Vietnam condemned Kennedy’s statements to Cronkite and accused the CIA of plotting to overthrow Diem. The State Department dismissed the charge as “something out of Ian Fleming.”

  Roger Hilsman attended a meeting of the Far East Subcommittee of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Wednesday. He reported to Lodge, and presumably to Kennedy as well, that its members had “far-reaching doubts regarding not only Diem-Nhu leadership but also advisability of continued US participation in Viet-Nam war” and were considering introducing a resolution stating, “It is the sense of the Senate that the American people are no longer willing to support a regime in South Viet-Nam that oppresses the people and religious sects. Continued support of such a regime is inconsistent with the basic precepts of American democracy.”

  Kennedy missed most of Friday’s National Security Council meeting because he was entertaining King Zaher. In his absence, Bobby asked “whether we could win the war with Diem and Nhu.” When Rusk said we could not if the Nhus remained in power, Bobby replied, “If we have concluded that we are going to lose with Diem, why do we not grasp the nettle now?” Rusk called pulling out “very serious,” saying we would be in “real trouble” if the Vietcong took over. Bundy thought we had not yet reached “a moment of decision.” General Taylor pointed out that three weeks ago the administration had believed we could win with Diem, and that the Joint Chiefs still shared that view. Bobby wanted to know what they should do if it became apparent that Diem could not win. McNamara said that the Pentagon had insufficient information to answer that question. To remedy that, Bobby proposed sending a mission to solicit the opinions of the U.S. servicemen who were advising and training South Vietnamese military units.

  The president joined the meeting at this point and approved his brother’s suggestion. McNamara said he would ask General Harkins, who headed the U.S. military mission in Vietnam, to begin canvassing the advisers. Taylor proposed sending Major General Victor Krulak to Vietnam to solicit the views of South Vietnamese officers. It was agreed that Joseph Mendenhall, a State Department official with extensive experience in the country, would join him and that they would leave immediately and spend two days there assessing the situation. The notion that they could fly twenty-four thousand miles in four days, spend forty-eight hours in Vietnam, and return with any worthwhile insights indicated the confused state of the administration’s policy. The public affairs officer at the Saigon embassy who briefed them called their assignment “a symptom of the state the U.S. government was in.”

  Kennedy’s appointments usually filled several pages of his official diary. On Wednesday they took up only half a page. Between 10:30 a.m. and 12:52 p.m., he reportedly participated in an “OFF THE RECORD MEETING. (No list and no subject supplied),” an unusual notation since O’Donnell usually included these details. He had in fact spent these hours planning his reelection campaign, studying reports and polls, and conferring by telephone with his brother-in-law Steve Smith, who had agreed to manage his 1964 campaign, and with Bobby, who had managed his last one.

  Lincoln affixed a memorandum to the notes that he made that morning, explaining that they had been written as he “was going over some suggestions on campaign strategy for 1964.” On one page he had written, “Must win the South” and “We would at this point.” This was probably a reference to a recent memorandum from the pollster Louis Harris titled “The South in 1964” that suggested he could win the region by appealing to its more enlightened governors over the heads of its congressional delegation. The most important recent development in the South, Harris wrote, had been an “industrial explosion” accompanied by an “educational awakening” that had been “hidden mostly from view over the surface manifestations of segregation and the pratings about states’ rights.” He recommended targeting dynamic Southern cities like Atlanta, Houston, and Charlotte. “You can also stick it to the Republicans and the renegade Democrats by saying that . . . the main stream of the new South is not states’ rights, not bitter end segregationist, not ultra-conservative,” he advised, “and that you are willing to take your chances with this new South.”

  On the second page of his notes, Kennedy had written, “dismiss him as a second rate figure,” a reference to Senator Barry Goldwater, his likely Republican opponent. He was already making moves to counter Goldwater, and Salinger had announced that at the end of September he would be making a five-day conservation trip to ten Midwestern and Western states, visiting national parks, wilderness areas, dams, and power projects. Salinger called the trip nonpolitical, but reporters immediately put quotation marks around the word. His itinerary included states where Goldwater was expected to be strong because of his Western roots, eight states where Democratic senators were running for reelection, and six that had voted for Nixon in 1960 and that Kennedy hoped to win to offset expected losses in the South.

  It was probably on Monday that he decided to appoint Wisconsin’s commissioner of taxation, John Gronouski, to the vacant position of postmaster general, making him the first Polish American to hold a cabinet position. Although Kennedy needed to solidify his support among Polish Americans, who voted heavily in major Eastern and Midwestern cities, he also had strong personal reasons for making the Gronouski appointment.

  His strained flexor muscle continued bothering him, and on Thursday Lincoln noted that he was experiencing “discomfort” and had not been following Kraus’s exercise regimen. Despite having flown Kraus back from Italy, Kennedy had disregarded his advice and now wanted a fourth opinion. Unwilling to tolerate the pain of a minor muscle strain any longer, he called Carroll Rosenbloom, a family friend who owned the Baltimore Colts, and asked him to arrange a consultation with the team’s orthopedic surgeon. Lincoln reported that on Friday, “Dr. McDonald came & he reassured the President th
at his leg would snap out of it. He told him to continue the therapy he was getting from Dr. Kraus. The President felt much better from this reassurance.”

  Kennedy fussed over the trappings of his presidency almost as much as he did over his health. He had designed the sterling-silver calendars that he presented to members of the ExComm (Executive Committee) who had met throughout the Cuban missile crisis, and he had chosen the new colors and interior decoration of Air Force One, ordering that “United States of America” be painted in large letters on its fuselage and U.S. flags added to its tail fin. He was so pleased with the blue-and-white color scheme that he asked Postmaster General Day to hire the same designer to improve the appearance of the nation’s mailboxes and the hats worn by its mailmen, and commissioned a New York firm to make recommendations for improving the look of the brochures, logos, and visual footprints of other government agencies. While walking down Pennsylvania Avenue toward the Capitol with Jackie one evening, he was so shocked by its dilapidated shops that he established a commission to improve the thoroughfare’s architecture and ambience, and closely monitored its progress. He sampled the wines before White House dinners and pored over the guest lists, demanding an explanation for anyone he failed to recognize. He supervised the renovation of the White House Rose Garden, a place it was said he loved so fiercely that no one dared leave a heel print in it. He oversaw the placement of the television cameras broadcasting a ceremony bestowing honorary citizenship on Winston Churchill, directing that a fine-looking contingent of marines in dress uniform be framed in the middle of the picture, and a black marine stand in the center. He had a fondness for well-executed rituals and ceremonies (his Catholic upbringing), and understood that the design of his jet, the furniture and paintings in the White House, and a well-executed state dinner contributed to the nation’s prestige, and that in the cold war, prestige was a weapon.