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

by Thurston Clarke

  He conducted his Thursday briefing as if intent on confirming these flattering cavils. Asked if he would care to comment on recent attacks by Senator Goldwater, he replied, “No. No,” and after a well-timed pause added, “Not yet. Not yet.” The laughter was audible to the millions of Americans watching the conference.

  A reporter attempted to draw him into a debate with Governor Nelson Rockefeller of New York, who had expressed disappointment that he had not stimulated more economic growth. The governor was not alone in expressing his disappointment, he said. “I got I suppose several thousand of letters when the stock market went way down in May and June of 1962, blaming me, and talking about the ‘Kennedy Market.’ I haven’t gotten a single letter in the last few days about the ‘Kennedy Market’ now that it has broken through the Dow Jones Average. So Governor Rockefeller is not alone in his disappointment.”

  He was asked to comment on resolutions passed by the California Federation of Young Democrats, urging the recognition of Red China and the withdrawal of U.S. forces from South Vietnam. After saying that he disagreed with their positions, he received the loudest laughs of the afternoon when he added, “I don’t know what is happening with the Young Democrats and Young Republicans, but time is on our side.”

  Asked to comment on Victor Lasky’s nasty biography and on a book about him by Hugh Sidey that reviewers were calling a hagiography, he said, “I thought Mr. Sidey was critical, but I have not read all of Mr. Lasky, except I have just gotten the flavor of it. I have seen it is highly praised by Mr. Drummond and Mr. Krock and others, so I am looking forward to reading it . . . because the part that I read was not as brilliant as I gather the rest of it is, from what they say about it.”

  He also gave a light touch to his response to the complaints about the Gronouski appointment, saying, “I don’t know why it causes so much excitement when the name is Gronouski as opposed to when it may be Smith or Brown or Day [the previous postmaster general]. . . . I think Mr. Gronouski is a fine public servant and I am glad to have him here and I think we just happen to be fortunate that his grandparents came from Poland.”

  He was in such a good mood that instead of waiting for the senior White House correspondent, Merriman Smith, to close the session with the traditional “Thank you, Mr. President,” he offered his own “thank you” and walked off the stage with a broad grin.

  While he was flying to Newport, Eunice called Evelyn Lincoln and asked her to relay this message: “I saw your picture in the paper this morning showing you now and ten years ago. Congratulations, we all know God is riding on your shoulder. You always get your wish. You wished that you would look older and God only knows you do today.” It was a mischievous tease for someone whose vanity was a family joke, and uncomfortably close to the truth. Television footage of his news conference showed deep lines meeting across the top of his nose, and the start of a double chin.

  Monday, September 16–Sunday, September 22

  WASHINGTON, NEW YORK, NEWPORT

  On Monday morning Kennedy expressed “outrage and grief” at the bombing and charged that “public disparagement of law and order”—a reference to Governor Wallace’s defiance of the integration of Birmingham schools—had “encouraged violence which has fallen on the innocent.” It was a strong statement but not a passionate one, and ignored the demand of civil rights leaders that he send federal troops to the city to protect its black population. He could have read it to reporters himself instead of having Salinger release it, or proclaimed a day of national mourning, attended the funerals, or sent a relative. His muted reaction resembled that of many white Americans. After Medgar Evers’s assassination and the bombings of black homes and gathering places in Birmingham, another bombing—even one killing four children—seemed less shocking. He praised “the Negro leaders of Birmingham who are counseling restraint instead of violence” but offered only an FBI investigation and the cold comfort of protection from the all-white Birmingham police force. He may have failed to speak out more forcefully because he would be delivering a nationally televised address urging support for his tax-cut bill on Tuesday and addressing the United Nations General Assembly on Friday, and he believed that giving a high-profile speech on civil rights during the same week would dilute their impact.

  On Tuesday, the White House press office released a mendacious statement about the First Lady’s trip to Greece. The result was a New York Times story headlined “President’s Wife Will Stay with Sister Near Athens on Private Island” that reported she would spend the holiday in a house rented by her brother-in-law and sister, Prince and Princess Radziwill. Kennedy presumably hoped to mitigate the damage by keeping Onassis and his yacht under wraps until the last minute, then present the cruise as a spur-of-the-moment decision.

  On Tuesday morning he asked the American ambassador to Moscow, Foy Kohler, what he thought about the possibility of U.S.-Soviet cooperation in outer space. Kohler said that his suggestion to Ambassador Dobrynin of a joint lunar mission had left the Soviets “intrigued.” Minister of Foreign Affairs Andrei Gromyko had given the idea a cautious welcome but was waiting for some concrete proposals. Kennedy admitted not having considered the details but said he wanted to proceed and believed the United States could save a lot of expense by teaming up with the Russians. “I would like to have an agreement on when we both try to go to the moon,” he added. “Then we wouldn’t have this intensive race—I don’t [even] know whether they are going to the moon.”

  He did not tell Kohler that he had decided to propose a joint moon mission at the UN on Friday, nor did he tip his hand to the NASA administrator Jim Webb when they met on Wednesday to review the space program. But he did say that he was beginning to question whether beating the Russians to the moon should be a top priority and was concerned that Congress and the public had become concerned about its cost. “If the Russians do some tremendous feat, then it would stimulate interest again,” he said. “But right now space has lost a lot of its glamour.”

  Webb countered that a successful lunar landing would be “one of the most important things that’s been done in this nation.” Throughout their conversation Kennedy appeared to be thinking out loud and challenging Webb to offer convincing arguments for continuing the space race. He finally asked flatly, “Do you think the . . . manned landing on the moon is a good idea?” When Webb said he did, Kennedy asked, “Could you do the same with instruments much cheaper?” Webb gave a rambling reply about inspiring American youth, searching for extraterrestrial life, and discovering how the universe was formed. He concluded, “And I predict you are not going to be sorry, no sir, that you did this.”

  Kennedy remained skeptical. He repeated to Webb what he had recently said to McNamara: “This looks like a hell of a lot of dough to go to the moon when you can . . . learn most of that you want scientifically through instruments, and putting a man on the moon really is a stunt and isn’t worth that many billions.”

  After meeting with his foreign policy advisers on Tuesday, Kennedy approved an “eyes-only personal” cable to Lodge outlining an interim plan that amounted to treading water. The cable told Lodge that, given the reluctance of the South Vietnamese generals to move against Diem, there appeared to be “no good opportunity for action to remove present government in immediate future.” Lodge should meanwhile “apply such pressures as are available to secure whatever modest improvements . . . may be possible.” The cable left open the possibility of a “more drastic effort [a coup] as and when means become available,” and gave Lodge permission to delay or reduce or reroute U.S. assistance to Diem, “bearing in mind that it is not our current policy to cut off aid entirely.” It enumerated a familiar list of reforms—freedom of press, free elections, and “a real spirit of reconciliation” toward opponents—that Lodge should pressure Diem to enact, adding, “We recognize the strong possibility that . . . pressures may not produce this result, but we are convinced that it is necessary to try.” The cable also an
nounced that Kennedy had decided to send McNamara and Taylor on a mission to Vietnam to assess the progress of the war, but promised that they would confine their inquiries to military matters, assuring him that “all political decisions are being handled through you as the President’s senior representative.”

  Lodge was not fooled. He cabled back that distinguishing between the political and military was “quite impossible.” McNamara and Taylor would have to call on Diem, he would have to accompany them, Diem would take the meeting as a sign that the administration had decided “to forgive and forget,” and it would “put a wet blanket on those working for a change in government,” that is, the generals plotting a coup.

  The press interpreted the McNamara-Taylor mission as more evidence of Kennedy’s indecisiveness. In fact, he was sending McNamara and Taylor to Vietnam not to help him decide what to do, but to make it easier for him to do what he had already decided: begin withdrawing U.S. advisers and reduce assistance to the Diem government. Schlesinger noted in his diary that the president was hoping “that their experiences there and Lodge will convince them that it is harder than they imagined to win with Diem.”

  He instructed Taylor and McNamara to tell Diem, “Unless you do certain things we have described, we are going to pull out in a relatively short time.” Yet if Diem did make the requested reforms, according to Taylor, this “would make possible a termination of the situation [the U.S. troop presence] in about two years.” In other words, if Taylor and McNamara reported that Diem was instituting reforms and the war was being won, as the Pentagon was claiming, Kennedy would have a rationale for a phased withdrawal of the advisers. If they reported that Diem’s intransigence was crippling the war effort, he had reason to withdraw even sooner. Taylor wrote in his memoirs, “If further deterioration of the political situation should occur to invalidate the target date [for withdrawal], we would have to review our attitude toward Diem’s government and our national interests in Southeast Asia.” In short, Kennedy had made it clear to Taylor and McNamara before they departed that he planned to remove American advisers regardless of the military situation.

  • • •

  MINUTES BEFORE DELIVERING his televised tax-cut address to the nation on Wednesday evening, he became concerned that it did not sufficiently explain how his bill would benefit the average American family. As the network crews prepared the Oval Office for the broadcast, he huddled with Ted Sorensen and Walter Heller, revising the text.

  Like most presidents, Kennedy had taken office with little understanding of economics, but unlike most of his predecessors, he had been determined to master the subject. Heller had spent the last two years giving him such a strong grounding in Keynesian economics that by 1963 he felt that Kennedy had become “a good orthodox economist.” Director of the Budget Kermit Gordon, who had witnessed their informal tutorials and read many of the hundreds of memoranda flowing between them, believed that Kennedy had become a good-enough economist to teach a respectable college course on the subject. He sensed that Kennedy had immersed himself in the subject not only because he thought it would make him a better president, but because he was naturally curious, “a person who liked playing with ideas,” and who “in moments of relaxation . . . would sometimes give an inordinate amount of time to matters that just happened to intrigue him.” Kennedy had also become intrigued by nuclear science, and his probing questions during an Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) briefing at a Nevada test site left the AEC’s chairman, Glenn Seaborg, convinced that he possessed “a first-rate intellect, a mind of a caliber equal to that of the best scientists I have known.” Walt Rostow, who served on Bundy’s White House staff and briefed Kennedy on foreign policy issues said flatly that “his mind was capable of grasping any idea,” and grasping it so quickly that he would become irritated if someone went on too long, repeatedly saying, “All right, I’ve got the idea. But what do you want me to do about it today?”

  Heller had persuaded Kennedy that a tax cut would stimulate demand, increase growth, lower unemployment, and prevent a recurrence of the mild recessions of 1957 and 1960. Although it would add to the federal deficit in the short term, its simulative effects would eventually produce a surplus. Kennedy had proposed a tax cut in his 1963 State of the Union speech, and then in a special message to Congress during which he made the argument that under certain circumstances a budget deficit could be healthy. Making his proposed tax cut even more extraordinary and controversial was the fact that the economy was growing, the deficit was substantial, unemployment was at 5 percent, and the business community was not demanding tax relief. Another president might have been content with this record, but he was determined to double the growth rate he had inherited from Eisenhower, preside over eight recession-free years, and leave office with the nation enjoying full employment—a record befitting a great president. During a meeting in December 1962 that he recorded, he told his economic team that the 1960 recession had ruined Nixon. “If you’re running for reelection in 1964, what is it you worry about most?” he asked. “Recession. That is what I’m worried about. . . . I don’t think the country can take another recession. Otherwise we are likely to get all the blame for the deficit and none of the advantage of the stimulus in the economy.” And so, motivated by a typical Kennedy mixture of optimism and hubris, ambition and realpolitik, he had proposed his tax cut.

  It received a lukewarm reception. Conservatives in both parties and most businessmen viewed a planned deficit as reckless and unnecessary. The bill languished in the House Ways and Means Committee for months, blocked by Southern Democrats extracting revenge for his civil rights policy. After it finally cleared the necessary committees, the House scheduled a vote for September 23. Before then, Kennedy wanted to explain it to a public that seemed neither to want it nor to understand it.

  Forty-five seconds before going on air he received a call from Teddy reporting that he had just had lunch in Belgrade with Madame Nhu, who was attending the same conference of parliamentarians. “This woman kicks me in the nuts,” he told his younger brother, referring to her recent comment that she did not feel “terribly safe” with him in the White House, “and the next day you have lunch with her.” Moments later, he was telling the American people that his tax cut was the most important piece of domestic legislation in fifteen years, a statement certain to unsettle the civil rights movement.

  Current tax rates were harmful, he said, because they did not “leave enough money in private hands.” His cut would mean “more jobs for American workers,” “more buying power for American consumers and investors,” “new protection against another tragic recession,” and “higher family income and higher business profits and a balanced federal budget.” Decades later, Republicans would offer the same arguments to support their own tax cuts. But in 1963, Kennedy was proposing cuts to the extraordinarily high marginal rates that Congress had passed to finance World War II and fight inflation. His bill reduced the top marginal rate from 91 to 70 percent, and the lowest from 20 to 14 percent. Nevertheless, in response to his speech, the chief GOP spokesman on taxes in the House attacked him for taking “an unprecedented gamble” by cutting taxes without reducing expenditures, and for “playing Russian roulette with our destiny.”

  Kennedy and Heller went to the Cabinet Room afterward so they could speak without being overheard by technicians dismantling the broadcast equipment. Senator Fulbright called to praise the speech as a model for how a president should educate the public. (After the 1960 campaign, Kennedy had told a journalist that he thought Nixon’s fatal mistake had been talking down to the American people. “In a presidential campaign,” he insisted, “you have to talk ‘up,’ over their heads.”) Treasury Secretary Douglas Dillon and his wife also telephoned to praise him during what Heller described condescendingly as “a touching little call” that led to Kennedy referring to them as “dear Phyllis” and “dear Dougie.” Heller did not mention Kennedy’s praising him, a curious omission for a man
priding himself on his sensitivity and social graces, particularly since if anyone deserved plaudits, it was surely Heller, whose ideas and phrases Kennedy had just articulated.

  The previous month, Heller had complained to the Washington hostess and Democratic Party stalwart Katie Louchheim that Kennedy seldom praised his staff, finding it difficult, he said, “to give one a boost or a pet.” Instead, he had the curious habit of offering praise to a third party. “He said great things about me to my brother, of Kermit Gordon to his child,” he told Louchheim, adding that Arthur Goldberg had said that he never would have resigned to accept a seat on the Supreme Court if he had known how much the president valued his services as secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare. Louchheim was sympathetic, saying that she had sometimes noticed a “chilly aloofness” in Kennedy. “How warmly he greets ‘pals,’” Heller said bitterly, “leaving the official [presumably Heller] standing there ill at ease.” For pals like Powers and O’Donnell there was “the warm handshake and ‘let’s go swimming’ check [that] he never tends the help.”

  Heller, like many in the administration, had fallen in love with Kennedy. It was a platonic affair, but romantic nonetheless, and his complaints sounded like someone bitching about a callous lover. The White House aide Walt Rostow spoke of an “unspoken but very powerful affection—going both ways” between Kennedy and his staff, and the CIA director, John McCone, a Republican, claimed, “Never in my time in public life have I known a man who drew so much affection from those with whom he closely dealt.” Schlesinger was also in love. In the summer of 1960, he had condemned Kennedy’s choice of Johnson as a running mate as “evidence of the impressively cool and tough way Jack is going about his affairs,” calling him “a devious and, if necessary, ruthless man,” and saying, “My affection for him and personal confidence in him have declined.” Kennedy invited Schlesinger to Hyannis Port three weeks later and seduced him all over again. After a four-hour cruise complete with Bloody Marys, swimming, and target shooting, Schlesinger was describing him as “warm, funny, quick, intelligent and spontaneous.”