The Kennedys

by Thomas Maier

  But other interpretations of Frost’s advice suggested just the opposite. The Jesuit magazine America described the poet’s comment as “one of the most perceptive and titillating observations that anyone has made about our new President.” The magazine perceived the president as performing an elaborate balancing act, fully engaged in this pinnacle of American society without self-denial.“He is an Irishman descended from a long line of Irish politicians,” the magazine editorialized. “He is an Irishman from New England. And when you’ve that kind of Irish in you, it doesn’t and shouldn’t readily rub off.”

  Now that Kennedy was president, it appeared the Establishment was trying to adopt him, to perform a makeover in their own image, that his finer qualities of intelligence and style couldn’t possibly fit their idea of an Irish Catholic politician. But in its essay, America said that Kennedy was no “stage Irishman” and that his patrician style was similar to that of “many of today’s offshoots of ancient Hibernian stock.” In taking stock of the nation and its new president, the magazine lamented that “some people—to their discredit— will never forgive or forget the fact of Mr. Kennedy’s origins.” By America’s estimate, Frost’s words were a reminder to Kennedy of his strengths rather than his weaknesses. “Harvard hasn’t hurt his career, but it did not and could not make him over into a Yankee, or into anything other than what he is in his deepest marrow—an Irish-American from Boston.” One historian pointed out that a reading by a poet was virtually unprecedented at presidential inaugurals and was more in line with “the ancient Irish tradition that demanded the presence of the poet at the coronation of the High King.” In his own 1977 tribute to his brother, Words Jack Loved, Teddy Kennedy offered a distinctly one-sided quotation from Frost that was probably more than the poet ever said. “You’re something of Irish, and Isuppose something of Harvard. My advice to you as President is to be Irish,” said Frost, according to the youngest brother in a section of his small book marked “Irish Heritage.”

  The vastly divergent interpretations of the poet’s words were testament to the elliptical nature of John Kennedy’s character and personality—an image of splendor and high calling in whom many Americans could claim to see themselves, in whom so many willingly filled in the blanks. To the Establishment insiders of the early 1960s, Kennedy was the perfect specimen of America’s melting pot, polished and shined at Choate and Harvard. To those on the outside, he was one of their own, forever Irish, beloved for succeeding in places once believed out of reach, beyond their dreams. Each formed their own part of the broad Kennedy constituency, just as the new president mingled artists, writers and scientists among the big-city politicos and party hacks at his inaugural gala. As Gore Vidal observed: “It is a tribute to Kennedy’s gift for compartmentalizing the people in his life that none knew to what extent he saw the others.”

  Close observers noticed the ethnic strains in their boss. Though JFK “departed considerably from the Irish-American stereotype,” Harvard professor, historian and White House aide Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. wrote, the “Irishness remained a vital element in his constitution. It came out in so many ways—in the quizzical wit, the eruptions of boisterous humor, the relish for politics, the love of language, the romantic sense of history, the admiration for physical daring, the toughness, the joy in living, the view of life as comedy and as tragedy.” Perhaps Frost’s insights were exaggerated, but clearly the words were contemplated by their recipient. When Arthur Goldberg recalled the inscription to him later in 1961,Kennedy smiled.“As President,” he explained, “I have to be both Harvard and Irish.”

  A STERLING EXAMPLE of that intended mix was Kennedy’s inaugural address. His words were filled with Yankee idealism, Cold War rhetoric, a pronounced faith in God and the righteousness of his cause against communism. They underscored the threat of nuclear annihilation, both perceived and real. The bomb—with its sheer terror and randomness of sudden extinction—lent a fatefulness to decisionmaking that now seemed beyond human grasp.“The world is very different now, for man holds in his mortal hands the power to abolish all forms of human poverty and all forms of human life,” Kennedy proclaimed. “And yet the same revolutionary beliefs for which our forebears fought are still at issue around the globe— the belief that the rights of man come not from the generosity of the state, but from the hand of God.”Kennedy suggested that certain beliefs were still immutable, worth fighting for, perhaps even dying for. “Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty,” Kennedy declared in an often-quoted line that served as a philosophical underpinning for his “long twilight struggle” against Soviet tyranny.

  The fervent, almost apocalyptic anti-communism in the president’s inaugural address was balanced by his liberal idealism for the world. He emphasized his support for “human rights to which this nation has always been committed,” to the United Nations (“our last best hope in an age where the instruments of war have far outpaced the instruments of peace”) and to eradicating poverty, famine and disease through U.S. assistance. “To those people in the huts and villages of half the globe struggling to break the bonds of mass misery, we pledge our best efforts to help them help themselves . . . because it is right,” Kennedy declared. In his ending, calling for “high standards of strength and sacrifice,” the new president asked for divine guidance “but knowing that here on earth God’s work must truly be our own.”

  An immediate outcome of this speech was the creation of the Peace Corps, headed by Sargent Shriver,Kennedy’s brother-in-law. Over the next quarter century, the Peace Corps would send more than 120,000 volunteers to “help others help themselves” in underdeveloped nations around the world—perhaps the most vivid demonstration of the idealism expressed in Kennedy’s inaugural. Its philosophic origins could be traced to a 1951 speech that Kennedy gave in Massachusetts in which he advocated a federal program whereby “young college graduates would find a full life in bringing technical advice and assistance to the underprivileged and backward Middle East.”As this speech suggests, his family’s experience with Catholic charities and his own observations around the world formed the prototype for what would become the Peace Corps. “In that calling,” Congressman Kennedy explained,“these men would follow the constructive work done by the religious missionaries in these countries over the past 100 years.” Kennedy determined that his Peace Corps would be the West’s answer to the atheism and socialism extolled by Soviet apparatchiks in the countryside. His movement would inspire a generation of “young Americans [to] serve the cause of freedom as servants of peace around the world.” He didn’t want the new international effort to become a “nest of spies” for the CIA, as the Communists accused it of being, nor a tool for U.S. corporate interests. His selection of Shriver, a devout Catholic married to Jack’s equally devoted sister, guaranteed that the Peace Corps would live up to its high moral principles in the way Kennedy intended. Yet the Peace Corps honored Kennedy’s vow of a firm wall between state and religion. Shriver made sure the agency stayed separate from the missionary enterprises of all churches, including his own—a move resented by some in the Catholic hierarchy. Another early Kennedy program, the Alliance for Progress, though not as successful in the long term, reflected much of the same idealism, promoting democracy and development in the poor nations of Latin America.

  THE BALANCE OF competing interests in Jack Kennedy’s own mind, the mix of insider and outsider influences, was reflected in the composition of his staff and how the new commander in chief relied upon them. As a minority president elected with the slimmest of margins—as what his civil rights adviser Louis Martin called “the first really ethnic President”— Kennedy deliberately cultivated the counsel of the Establishment’s wise men, venerated figures such as Robert Lovett,W. Averell Harriman and banker John McCloy, to help guide his way through the corridors of power. From academia,Kennedy recru
ited many talented administrators and advisers, so much that some joked a Phi Beta Kappa key was needed to enter the White House gates.

  Early in the administration, the press noticed a schism between the intellectuals, or “eggheads”—such as Harvard dean McGeorge Bundy appointed to the National Security Council and Ford Motors chief Robert McNamara to the Defense Department—and the political aides in a separate group dubbed the “Irish Mafia” (“a newspaper designation bitterly resented by its designees when first published,” recalled Sorensen) that included congressional liaison Larry F. O’Brien, Ken O’Donnell and the ever amiable Dave Powers. Some even counted the attorney general in that crowd. At his father’s insistence, Bobby had joined the government despite the old-style feel of political nepotism behind it. Jack used wit to defuse the critics’ howl. “I’ll open the front door of the Georgetown house some morning about 2:00 A.M., look up and down the street, and, if there’s no one there, I’ll whisper, ‘It’s Bobby,’” he quipped. Later, he claimed that he selected his brother as the nation’s top law-enforcement official to give him “a little legal experience before he goes out to practice law.”

  President Kennedy looked for key aides who were experienced and yet open to new ways of solving problems. (Sargent Shriver, acting as a headhunter for his brother-in-law, was impressed that McNamara, a Protestant, was reading a book on contemporary Catholic theology.“How many other automobile executives or cabinet members read Teihard de Chardin?”asked Shriver, referring to the French Jesuit theologian whose book, The Phenomenon of Man, he too had studied.) As the first Irish-Catholic president, Kennedy opened the door to the first Italian-American in the cabinet, the first of Polish ancestry and the first Negro in a major domestic post, Robert Weaver, as housing administrator.“In many ways, Jack still felt something of an upstart, an Irish Catholic who looked to the Brahmins for a model of how to act,” recalled his friend Lem Billings. One astute observer of the Kennedys, columnist Murray Kempton, originally claimed in 1960 that there was no Irishness to JFK who, he said,wanted to “purge the Boston Irish off his trouser cuff.” Upon reflection, though, Kempton arrived at a more nuanced view. As he wrote in 1965:“The President seems to us now to have been born for command. He was not. He was a Catholic politician in a country so Protestant as to have turned many of its Catholics dourly Presbyterian in its atmosphere.”

  Publicly, Kennedy’s attractive air of sophistication and wit—exemplified by his often entertaining press conferences, his ability on television to handle deftly any pointed question or barb thrown his way—conveyed a charismatic impression that he very much wanted for himself. He was fascinated by Richard Neustadt’s rumination on presidential power and the importance of heroic image making. When asked by the media for his favorite books, the list seemed taken from the musty library of a British aristocrat: The Young Melbourne by Lord David Cecil, Pilgrim’s Way by John Buchan, the future Lord Tweedsmuir, and one or two Ian Fleming novels about the fictional British secret agent James Bond. “He was an Anglophile and delighted in the romantic accounts of the British Empire,” declared Hugh Sidey, whose aggrandizing accounts in Time magazine helped weave this image around JFK. (Interestingly enough, Sidey’s comments are contained in an introduction to JFK’s European diaries from the summer of 1945, which actually show a far different reading list. His handwritten journal notes show Kennedy devoured such books as The Irish in America by Thomas Dowd, Irish in America by James Farley, and Ireland’s Contribution to the Law by Hugh Carney—all presumably in preparation for running for Congress in Boston the following year.) For those inclined to project Anglophilic imagery to their new president, Kennedy appeared only too happy to oblige.

  Throughout America, there seemed a need to ignore the psychic consequences of the nation’s first election of a president from a minority group, with its devastating suggestion that this land founded by Puritans might no longer be theirs exclusively. Few journalists and historians at that time examined its cultural significance and instead dressed up this non-WASPpresident in familiar cultural garb, as if the impact of his election might somehow be diluted or mitigated if America could be convinced that Kennedy was not really ethnic at all. In The Kennedy Imprisonment, author Garry Wills shares this Anglophile interpretation to Kennedy’s character and devotes a chapter to exploring JFK’s British mannerisms and affiliations. As others do,Wills suggests that the Kennedys were not a progression of the Irish-American experience in America but rather “a miniature aristocracy he [Joseph Kennedy] created, hovering above the Irish-American scene.”Yet Kennedy’s own diary notes and family letters suggest something quite different. In a 1945 visit to see Kathleen in England, for instance, Jack was far from enthralled with what he witnessed of real-life British nobility. “The Duke of Devonshire is an eighteenth-century story book Duke in his beliefs—if not his appearance,” Jack wrote about the father of Kick’s dead husband, the same father-in-law who hosted his visit. “He believes in the Divine Rights of Dukes, and in fairness, he is fully conscious of his obligations— most of which consist of furnishing the people of England with a statesman of mediocre ability but outstanding integrity.” Hardly a ringing endorsement.

  Journalists noted Kennedy’s long-time friendship with David Ormsby- Gore, Billy Hartington’s cousin and the future Lord Harlech, and how the president convinced British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan to appoint Ormsby-Gore the British ambassador to the United States. Ormsby-Gore was a trusted international adviser who shared much of the same view about the postwar world as Kennedy, particularly on how to deal with the Soviets. Many suggested that Kennedy emulated Ormsby-Gore’s cool, elegant style as part of some innate desire to be like the British. A simpler and more direct reason for their closeness, however, lies in their early history together and their sentimental link to the president’s beloved sister, Kathleen. Unlike the Hartingtons, Ormsby-Gore never showed religious bigotry or rank prejudice when he married his Catholic wife, Sissy. The couple were quite supportive to Kathleen in the 1940s, during this very difficult time in the Kennedy family’s life. Ormsby-Gore showed understanding and respect for Catholics in Britain. More important, he demonstrated personal loyalty to the Kennedys, a trait highly prized by the family.

  Ormsby-Gore was the only foreign diplomat with whom the president “really had a close relationship at all,” explained Robert Kennedy.“He was part of the family, really. . . .You see Kick was the godmother to their oldest child and they were married into the same family. His mother’s sister was Kick’s mother-in-law.” Indeed, Bobby recalled how his brother worried that he might not get along with Macmillan at all “because of his youth—the kind of person he was—Irish—Joe Kennedy’s son—‘How can I possibly get along with this boy when I had such a nice relationship with Eisenhower?’” Ormsby-Gore helped ease the way between his boss and the young president, and was instrumental in the creation of the Test Ban Treaty. As with most things Kennedy, Bobby’s explanation suggested Ormsby- Gore’s good graces with the president lay not in his British mannerisms or political acumen but in his relation to the clan.

  Kennedy’s friendship with the Ormsby-Gores was evident in their ease together. At a White House cocktail party, another old London friend, William Douglas Home, recalled that Sissy went up to Jack as she was leaving and said, in front of several journalists, “I don’t know whether to kiss you or say ‘Good-bye Mr. President.’”

  Without hesitancy, Kennedy replied teasingly:“You’re a good Catholic, Sissy—you can kiss my ring.”

  For all of JFK’s perceived British stylings, the president privately still retained much of the cultural heritage of his Irish Catholic background, often in surprising ways. Instead of classical music or the opera among the highbrows, he preferred in the company of friends those Irish roundabouts or tearjerkers such as “Danny Boy.” Around his neck, he “possessed with pride” a set of dog tags engraved with the identification: Kennedy— Commander in Chief—Blood Type O—Roman Catholic. In chats with Tip O’Ne
ill, he liked to reminisce about the old crowd of Irish pols from the 11th Congressional District (“he still had a feeling in his heart for those old friends that started with him,” O’Neill recalled).To Red Fay, his Irish Catholic pal from the navy, Kennedy complained that the Irish still couldn’t get into the Somerset Club in Boston, including himself as president. Part of the delight of hiring Brahmins such as McGeorge Bundy was the ability to tease them about their own biases. (Bundy once called Paul Blanshard’s book attacking American Catholics a “very useful thing” during a 1950 Unitarian panel discussion.) When a scandal broke out exposing the restrictive policies of Washington’s Metropolitan Club, prompting Bobby Kennedy and several other administration officials to quit the place, Bundy defiantly kept his membership. After much ribbing by the president, Bundy became annoyed and pointed out that Kennedy had belonged to clubs in New York, such as The Links, that didn’t have many Jews or Negroes. “Jews and Negroes,” responded Kennedy. “Hell, they don’t even allow Catholics!”

  Without much provocation, the Kennedys could revert back easily to their family’s immigrant roots. When India’s Nehru met JFK in November 1961, he recounted the indignities suffered by his people at the hands of the British. Kennedy replied that what they did to the Irish was far worse. Not to be outdone, Bobby engaged a British official in a heated conversation about Ireland during an embassy dinner.“Why are we, the Kennedys, here in America? Why are we here at all?” Bobby demanded, ready with his own reply. “It is because you, the British, drove us out of Ireland.”