Luce’s commitment to the civil rights movement was, like his engagement with the “National Purpose” project, a sign of his increasing engagement with the liberal activism that was coming to be embodied by the image and rhetoric of John F. Kennedy. And it came as something of a surprise to many readers of his magazines, and many of his own friends, that Luce was an admirer, if not necessarily a supporter, of the young senator. Luce had urged his editors to put Kennedy on the cover of Time in 1957 as he began his ascent. The story his editors wrote was as gushing as anything the magazine had written since Wendell Willkie:
[Kennedy] is an authentic war hero and a Pulitzer-prizewinning author (for his best-selling Profiles in Courage). He is an athlete (during World War II his swimming skill saved his life and those of his PT-boat mates); yet his intellectual qualifications are such that his photographer wife Jacqueline remarks, in a symbolic manner of speaking: “If I were drawing him, I’d draw a tiny body and an enormous head.” Kennedy is recognized as the Senate library’s best customer, reads six to eight books a week, mostly on American history. No stem-winding orator (“Those guys who can make the rafters ring with hokum, well, I guess that’s O.K., but it keeps me from being an effective political speaker”), Kennedy instead imparts a remarkable quality of shy, sensemaking sincerity. He is certainly the only member of the U.S. Congress who could—as he did—make a speech with his shirttail hanging out and get gallery ahs instead of aws.53
This was not the first evidence of Luce’s admiration for Kennedy. In 1940 Luce had written an introduction to Why England Slept, a book drawn from Kennedy’s recently completed senior thesis at Harvard in which he traced the failure of British leadership in the late 1930s to avert what became World War II. Joseph Kennedy, the future president’s father and in 1940 the American ambassador to Great Britain, was a friendly acquaintance of Luce’s, and it was he who had proposed that Luce write the introduction. Luce had asked to see the manuscript. He later recalled that “I was very impressed by it. I was impressed by the scholarly work.” In the introduction itself Luce wrote: “I cannot recall a single man of my college generation who could have written such an adult book on such a vitally important subject during his Senior year at college…. If John Kennedy is characteristic of the younger generation—and I believe he is—many of us would be happy to have the destinies of this Republic handed over to his generation at once.”54
By 1960 Luce was in something of a quandary. In every election since at least 1940, he had been an impassioned supporter of the Republican candidate for president, or a passionate opponent of the Democratic candidate, or both. But the Kennedy-Nixon race was a clear exception. Luce was certainly not opposed to Nixon. He entertained the Nixons at his home in Phoenix in 1958 and in his New York apartment in 1959. He wrote fan letters to the vice president, praising him for various speeches and articles that he claimed to have admired. And in the summer of 1960 Luce praised Nixon’s acceptance speech at the Republican convention, beginning his letter with: “In a few short months it will be ‘Dear Mr. President,’ so we hope and pray.” But Luce was clearly also attracted to Kennedy. He sent flowers and notes to the ailing senator during his periodic hospitalizations in the mid-1950s. The two men had occasional lunches together in Washington in 1959 and early 1960, and they carried on an intermittent but mutually admiring correspondence. Kennedy’s visit to the Time-Life Building in August 1960 was a notable event in the company’s history. Many candidates had paid visits to the Time-Life headquarters over the years, but none produced so remarkable a response. Inside the building, employees lined the hallways as he passed; outside, large throngs crowded the streets waiting for a glimpse of the candidate (whom Luce uncharacteristically escorted to the door and into the crowd). Like many people in 1960, Luce was impressed by Kennedy’s glamour, sophistication, poise, and ability to engage with intellectual issues. He was particularly impressed with Kennedy’s voracious reading, and once expressed astonishment that the candidate, in the midst of a campaign, had read a new biography of McKinley that Luce had also just finished. (Charming and impressing smart people was one of Kennedy’s most notable talents; Nixon had few such skills.) Luce was also attracted by Kennedy’s well-educated view of American foreign policy and his strong commitment to anti-Communism and the Cold War—a stance that Luce sometimes considered stronger than Nixon’s. (Kennedy’s seeming toughness was particularly important to Luce because he had never forgotten, or fully forgiven, what he considered Joseph Kennedy’s weakness in giving up on England in 1940.)55
Luce’s magazines swung back and forth in their enthusiasms, reflecting not only the long-standing political divisions among the editorial staffs, but also Luce’s own uncertainty about whom he preferred. After the Democratic convention Life praised the party’s platform for “urging us all to look forward again—instead of backward, upward or around.” In the past it had gone without saying that the Luce magazines would endorse the Republican candidate. But in 1960 Luce was bombarded with questions about whether or not he would do so again—and for a time he was uncertain of his answer. When the New York Times wrote in early August that Luce had expressed a “personal preference” for Nixon, Luce denied the story the next day. The Wall Street Journal reported that Luce was toying with “the surprising notion of backing Kennedy.” Luce did little to dampen the speculation, replying in Life that “we have applauded both candidates for saying that world policy—and U. S. purpose—makes up the paramount issue.” The sudden illness of Otto Fuerbringer, Time’s managing editor and a staunch Republican, led in late summer to the temporary editorship of Thomas Griffith, a Democrat who was committed to rigorously fair and nonpartisan coverage (a significant departure from earlier Time election years). That made it easier for the magazine to reflect Luce’s own admiration for Kennedy as well as for Nixon.56
On July 15, 1960, the night of Kennedy’s acceptance speech in Los Angeles, Luce was at home in New York when Joseph Kennedy called and asked to stop by to see him.* Luce eagerly agreed. Kennedy arrived at about seven o’clock at Luce’s Waldorf apartment and joined Luce and his son Hank for a lobster dinner. Over coffee they began a conversation about the magazines’ attitude toward Jack. Luce later recalled saying that “of course Jack will have to be left of center,” since that was what the Democratic Party required. “We won’t hold that against him.” But, he added, if Jack were to show “any signs of weakness … toward the anti-Communist cause, or … any weakness in defending and advancing the cause of the free world, why then we’ll certainly be against him.” Joe replied, “Well, there’s no chance of that; you know that.” When they gathered in front of the television to watch Kennedy’s speech, the candidate’s father interrupted frequently, often with obscene remarks about politicians who had not supported his son. He was particularly vitriolic in his characterization of Adlai Stevenson. Luce remembered the acceptance speech without great enthusiasm, but with “no particular criticisms of it.” (He kept his lukewarm response to himself.) When Joe Kennedy got up to leave, he stopped at the door and said, “I want to thank you for all that you’ve done for Jack.” Luce was “a little taken aback” by the comment and wondered “did we do too much” since he had never openly supported Jack Kennedy. But they were both aware that the Luce publications had treated Kennedy well—much better than they had treated any Democrat in many decades. And Luce could not disguise his fascination with John Kennedy, whom—shortly after his dinner with Joe—he privately described as “one of America’s great success stories … a stirring prospect … a tough fellow, but educated, with a good and even beautiful mind.” Several years later Luce recalled the evening with Joe: “It was a memorable moment in my life.”57
Luce did, in fact, consider endorsing Kennedy that fall. There were long conversations with his senior staff, whose opinions were divided; and there were some editors, occasionally including Luce, who believed that Kennedy was in fact the more reliable leader in confronting the Communist threat. Luce wrote a private me
mo about a month before the election in which he said that “a lot of good” would come from a Kennedy victory. “It will shake up the country and perhaps bring on a great new burst of the old American dynamism.” But in the end, and perhaps inevitably, Life endorsed Nixon, although in a guarded way that seemed designed to reduce the impact on Kennedy. Luce was never fully satisfied that Nixon’s positions on foreign policy were as strong as Kennedy’s, and he suggested as much in the late and somewhat tepid Life endorsement of Nixon days before the election. It praised Nixon’s domestic policy but was silent on his foreign-policy positions.
Having encouraged Billy Graham to write a piece for Life about his admiration for Nixon, Luce ultimately pulled the story after talking with Kennedy about it. (Graham was relieved, fearful that publication would have politicized him.) When Kennedy finally won the close presidential election, Luce wrote Nixon expressing deep disappointment at his defeat. But he wrote Kennedy as well, saying that “we didn’t find it difficult to find respectful and complimentary things to say about the President-elect.” And soon after, he wrote to a friend: “We find it difficult to do anything but cheer the 35th president of the U. S…. At the moment there is a kind of good excitement in the air—reminding some of us old fellows of our boyhood hero, T. R.”58
Luce’s enthusiasm for Kennedy did not diminish once the election was over. He and Clare traveled to Washington for the inauguration, sat in the president’s box for the swearing in, and attended a private dinner that night at which the new president was a guest. When Kennedy’s Why England Slept was republished in 1961, Luce wrote an update to his 1940 introduction:
Imagine that as a young man in college you wrote a book of judgment on the behavior of a contemporary empire…. Imagine that 20 years later when you are still young, you become President of the United States at a time when America faces grim possibilities of destruction and surrender…. Imagine, then, that you re-read the book you wrote in college and find that you would not be embarrassed by having it exposed again; this surely would be an extraordinary experience. Perhaps nothing like it ever happened before in the lives of all the leaders of men.59
Luce’s relationship with Kennedy was never as intimate or rewarding as his friendship with Eisenhower, who had been a regular correspondent and who included Luce frequently in the president’s famous “stag dinners” and other events. Kennedy was more aloof and, at times, less conciliatory. His tough White House staff, sometimes known as the “Irish mafia” (or what Luce once called “the whole blinking Clan—including selected O’Learys, O’Briens, etc.”), could react furiously and even vindictively if they did not like the Luce magazines’ coverage of the president, as they frequently did not. Kennedy himself could be waspishly critical as well. Luce in turn was not always happy with Kennedy’s policies. He opposed the president’s tentative efforts to improve relations with China (efforts that produced no significant results). He was dismayed by the ill-begotten Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba in 1961, not because of the decision to invade but because it so conspicuously failed. Gen. Maxwell Taylor, former Army Chief of Staff and soon to be “military representative” to President Kennedy, came to New York with a seventeen-point rebuttal to the Time account of the Bay of Pigs; Luce disputed all his criticisms, and Taylor left without rancor. But complaints from the White House did not stop, in part because Kennedy himself was, as Luce put it, a “regular and careful” reader of Time, convinced of its influence and importance, and thus highly sensitive to even minor criticisms. Luce was particularly irritated by a long critical analysis of Time’s coverage of Kennedy from Theodore Sorensen, the president’s special assistant. It was, Luce said, as if “some schoolboy … had written an analysis for the White House which was cited by Mr. Sorensen.” And he was annoyed as well by the barbed and slightly condescending congratulatory message that the president sent to the fortieth anniversary dinner of Time in the spring of 1963 (which, to Luce’s great disappointment, Kennedy failed to attend). After kind words about Luce the president’s message turned to the magazine itself:
Time … has instructed, entertained, confused, and infuriated its readers for nearly half a century…. I am bound to think that Time sometimes does its best to contract the political horizons of its audience…. I hope I am not wrong in occasionally detecting these days in Time those more mature qualities appropriate to an institution entering its forties.60
Luce shrugged off his disputes with the Kennedy White House and remained, on the whole, an admirer of the President, who—despite his occasional testiness—continued to cultivate Luce through letters and occasional invitations to the White House. Kennedy, Luce believed, echoed his own long-standing commitment to a more energetic pursuit of America’s mission and purpose. Kennedy, like Luce, wanted a more robust and flexible military capacity that would give the United States the ability to pursue its goals without relying on nuclear weapons. And Kennedy, like Luce, called constantly for “action,” for “getting the country moving again,” for setting great goals. Luce loved Kennedy’s space program, as its avid coverage in Life made clear. He greatly admired the president’s Berlin Wall speech, with its ringing denunciation of Communism. (He was less pleased by the conciliatory speech at American University a few weeks earlier, in which Kennedy called for better relations with the Soviet Union.) Luce was especially impressed by Kennedy’s handling of the Cuban missile crisis (perhaps in part because of Kennedy’s flattering summons to Luce, in the midst of the crisis, to come to the White House and offer advice, a meeting that was probably also designed to influence Time’s coverage). Kennedy asked Luce if he supported an invasion—the favored course for most of the president’s military advisers, and at the time apparently the president’s own inclination. Luce supported a blockade instead, which was the option Kennedy ultimately chose. The successful resolution of the crisis was, Luce later wrote, “a high point” in American foreign policy.61
Luce was leading an editorial meeting in a private dining room in the Time-Life Building on November 22, 1963, when he heard the news of the assassination of President Kennedy. The editors dispersed immediately, leaving Luce behind, slumped over the table, his head in his hands. But he soon joined the epic effort to cover this extraordinary and terrible event—which included Life’s discovery, purchase, and partial publication of the famous Abraham Zapruder film, the home movie shot by a bystander in Dallas that became the most important recording of the assassination and the basis of myriad conspiracy theories. There was a vigorous debate over whether Time should violate its consistent policy of never putting a dead person on the cover of the magazine. Luce ordered a picture of Lyndon Johnson instead, a decision that produced much criticism. Equally controversial was Luce’s insistence that the publisher’s letter in the front of Time take note of Kennedy’s “special feeling” for the magazine, a decision that also angered some readers, one of whom accused the magazine of deciding “to eulogize itself rather than the late President.” But on the whole the Time and Life coverage of the assassination was extraordinarily thorough, visually powerful, and sensationally popular—so much so that the company quickly sold out the postassassination issues even after almost doubling the print run. A few weeks later Life issued a “special memorial edition” that combined two issues of Life coverage into one massive magazine (with no advertising). It sold nearly three million copies.62
On the day after Thanksgiving, Jacqueline Kennedy called Theodore White—Luce’s old protégé, sometime antagonist, and once-again Time Inc. correspondent—and asked him to come see her in the Kennedy family compound in Hyannisport. White drove up from New York through a storm in a rented limousine (frantic because he was leaving behind his aging mother who had just suffered a heart attack) and sat late into the night listening to Mrs. Kennedy’s concerns about how her husband would be remembered. She worried that “history was something that bitter old men wrote.” She wanted to get her own story out first. After a long and emotional description of her experience in Dallas,
she told White that she could not stop thinking about “this line from a musical comedy.” At night in the White House, she said, she and her husband sometimes lay in bed listening to the melancholy Lerner and Loew song “Camelot.” The line she remembered was “almost an obsession,” she said: “Don’t let it be forgot, that once there was a spot, for one brief shining moment that was known as Camelot.” And she gave special emphasis to the sentence, “There will never be another Camelot again.” White dictated a story to his Life editor from the Kennedys’ kitchen telephone at 2:00 a.m., and the “Camelot” theme became an iconic one that suffuses the public memory of John Kennedy to this day.63
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