“Even in the Senate today,” Kennedy said, “I’m not, in a sense, a traditionalist. For example, I supported strongly the Fulbright development loan program putting the development fund on a long-term basis through direct borrowing from the Treasury rather than annual appropriations, thus bypassing the Appropriations Committee. I’m willing to follow the traditional procedure if we’re going to get action, even if it means a delay of a week or two, but I won’t follow the procedures if it means diluting or destroying action.
“It’s going to be a hell of a revolutionary time—the increase of population here and abroad, changes in the underdeveloped world, changes in weapon strategy, and all the rest. The best the President can do is to track down the best talent he can get—people with ideas which are actionable, because the problems are quite sophisticated now—and then try, by his political management, by his mobilization of public opinion, by his hard work almost day by day in Congress and the nation, to bring along that more conservative and localized body.
“How far would I go? I believe that our system of checks and balances, our whole constitutional system, can only operate under a strong President. The Constitution is a very wise document. It permits the President to assume just about as much power as he is capable of handling. If he fails, it is his fault, not the system’s. I believe that the President should use whatever power is necessary to do the job unless it is expressly forbidden by the Constitution.
“Congress is quite obviously not equipped to make basic policy, to conduct foreign relations, to speak for the national interest in the way that a President can and must. I am a traditionalist in that I believe in the procedural as well as substantive rights. I do, however, believe that in the next two or three decades there will be greater demands upon the President than ever before—and the powers are there, if the man will use them.”
“To what extent would congressional problems boil down to the conflict between North and South in the Democratic party?”
“Of course there are conflicts within the Democratic party—it is inevitable that there will be when you have a national party which takes in varying regions which have been the scene of great historical struggles. But I believe that the Democratic party on the whole is progressive and will support a vigorous and progressive President. I think having had Congressional experience, which Eisenhower never had, could mean a good deal toward success in the job.
“Roosevelt maintained intimate relations with the Congress; and while he was never able to remake it in the way he wanted, nevertheless he was able to get through almost his entire program, at least initially. My judgment is that with the industrialization of the South you are going to find greater uniformity in the Democratic party than you had in the past.
“In the final analysis, this phase of the work comes down to how good a politican the President is or wants to be. You remember Eisenhower, when early in his first term a questioner asked him how he liked the game of politics, replied with a frown that his questioner was using a ‘derogatory’ phrase. ‘Being President,’ he said, ‘is a very fascinating experience—but the word “politics”—I have no great liking for that.’
“I do have a great liking for the word ‘politics.’”
A Place of Moral Leadership?
Kennedy as President would mobilize traditional tools of presidential power and use them with force, astuteness, and tenacity. He would show a flair for personal influence and manipulation, perhaps some of the flair Roosevelt had. He would drive hard bargains, forming alliances with Republicans when necessary, but compromising, too, when he lacked the votes.
But would all this be enough? The presidency “is preeminently a place of moral leadership,” Franklin D. Roosevelt once said in a now-famous quotation. “All our great Presidents were leaders of thought at times when certain historic ideas in the life of the nation had to be clarified.” It is precisely in this respect that Kennedy’s critics, especially in the liberal wing, have trouble imagining him in the White House. What great idea does Kennedy personify? In what way is he a leader of thought? How could he supply moral leadership at a time when new paths before the nation need discovering?
To these questions Kennedy’s friends offer no certain answer. They do point out that Kennedy is not unique in this respect—that few other candidates in recent years, except for Taft and perhaps Stevenson, and few recent Presidents, displayed strong leadership in behalf of a solid program. They argue, too, that something besides high-toned moral leadership may be needed for the 1960’s—for example, adroitness and tenacity in getting through Congress measures to meet the accumulating needs of the nation. Roosevelt, they point out, had gone on in that same quotation to say something a little different—that the presidential office was also a “superb opportunity for reapplying, applying under new conditions, the simple rules of conduct to which we always go back. Without leadership alert and sensitive to change, we are all bogged up or lose our way.” It is precisely this alert leadership sensitive to change, Kennedy’s friends assert, that the Senator is ideally equipped to provide.
One of Kennedy’s aides, who has worked and campaigned with him for years, feels that people exaggerate his moderation and restraint. He is able “coolly to keep prejudices, whims, and unreliable emotions out of the way when making a hard, tough decision,” this aide says, but he does believe deeply in what he says and will fight fiercely for what he believes. While far from a fatalist, he accepts difficult assignments because, as he wrote in the last chapter of Profiles in Courage, a man does what he must, in spite of personal consequences or obstacles or dangers, and that is the basis of all human morality. “Kennedy should be judged by his times and his contemporaries—and it should be obvious from the crowds he attracts, the applause he stimulates, the devotion of his followers, and the electricity he has created across the country that he combines extraordinary qualities of strong leadership and intellectual brilliance with an uncanny sense of public relations and the public mood.”
Obviously, much depends on the demands of the times. If the 1960’s call simply for consolidation, continuation, and expansion of the New Deal–Fair Deal policies, Kennedy’s political skill and liberal convictions would be enough for the presidential job. But what if the 1960’s are a time of radical change, of unprecedented new crises? What if problems arise for whose solutions guideposts do not exist?
Such times would call for two types of leadership, and each would demand something of Kennedy that he might have difficulty supplying. One type is creative leadership. Instead of responding to political pressures and gusts of public opinion, the President seeks positively to change the shape of public opinion. He has many tools for this—speeches, press conferences, whistle-stop trips, fireside chats, and the like. But his most powerful tool is not persuasion but action, not the propaganda of the word but the fact of the deed. By boldly taking a position, without regard to Gallup polls, newspaper editorials, or congressional timidity, the Chief Executive can alter the whole constellation of political forces—at least until the next election.
During one of his presidential campaign tours, Kennedy spoke to the United Negro College Convocation in Indianapolis. His remarks were intelligent, liberal, eloquent, and unimpassioned. The audience applauded warmly. Afterward a long line formed the length of the big hall to shake Kennedy’s hand. But hardly anyone in the line talked about the speech; they seemed interested only in meeting the attractive young man who had delivered it. He had satisfied them intellectually and attracted them visually—but he had not aroused them spiritually. Watching Kennedy campaign in Wisconsin in October 1959, Cabell Phillips of the New York Times noted the same quality. Kennedy radiated a gentle, honest warmth when among small groups, and people were instinctively at ease with him. “He tightens up noticeably, however, on a platform, facing larger audiences. He is more the advocate than the orator, and lines out his speech in a flat, hurried monotone. His talks are liberally sprinkled with apt, and often erudite, quotations and bit
s of verse, but he rarely reaches for a laugh or builds a climax or plucks at the heartstrings—nor, inevitably, has he often to wait for the applause to die down.”
Kennedy is a rationalist and an intellectual. He wants political campaigns to be conducted like debates—“courteous but candid, friendly but frank, incisive without becoming inflammatory.…” He has denounced the “horrible weapons of modern internecine warfare, the barbed thrust, the acid pen, and most sinister of all, the rhetorical blast.” But it was in part with rhetorical blasts that Wilson and Roosevelt moved their party and their country—and the world.
Could Kennedy supply creative leadership of this sort? In his studies of why Britain slept, he placed the chief blame on the failings of the people as a whole and little on the leaders who might at least have tried to arouse them. In Profiles in Courage, the heroes seemed simply to face the choice of giving in to public opinion or of defying it and becoming martyrs. But is there not a third alternative—especially for Presidents: consciously shaping public attitudes by positive leadership?
The other type of leadership that the 1960’s may demand is charismatic leadership—the capacity to inspire, to lift the hearts, to exalt, to make people lose themselves in a cause they may not fully comprehend. Such leadership calls for magical qualities of heart and spirit, of joy and earnestness, indeed of rhetoric and passion, that are bequeathed to few men. It calls for faith in leadership on the part of the people, and the capacity of the leader to invoke and deserve that faith. “In the midst of doubt, in the collapse of creeds,” Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., said, “there is one thing I do not doubt … and that is that the faith is true and adorable which leads a soldier to throw away his life in obedience to a blindly accepted duty; in a cause which he little understands.…” Charismatic leadership can be dangerous, too, for it may demand too much trust, blind faith, and dependence on a father image. But at its best—and assuming always the safeguards of free speech and fair elections—that leadership may be essential to guide a democracy through perilous times.
It is illuminating, indeed, to compare Kennedy’s potential with that of Roosevelt. In some respects the two resemble each other. Like Roosevelt, Kennedy forged his own liberalism out of day-to-day experience rather than abstract dogmas; was caught between different classes and traditions and lingered between different worlds; became a pragmatist, a realist, a hardheaded political tactician willing to compromise—sometimes to the despair of his supporters—in order to gain some progress. Like Roosevelt, he can stand up under tremendous pressure, but a seemingly trivial thing—in Kennedy’s case usually the antics of certain Massachusetts politicians—can lead to sharp irritation and some blowing off of steam. Like Roosevelt, he can be courageous, actutely intelligent, quick, responsive. Kennedy, like Roosevelt, is a moderate in his behavior as well as in ideas. He has a gentleman’s distaste for lack of self-discipline, and self-restraint, for displays of emotion, for personal brawls and scenes. The bright charm is only skin deep; underneath there is a core of steel—metallic, sometimes cold, sometimes unbending, unusually durable.
But there are differences, too—and these relate to Roosevelt’s special qualities of leadership. Kennedy lacks Roosevelt’s humor and joyousness, his superb acting ability, his magnetism with crowds, his power of oral expression. He lacks also Roosevelt’s blarney and exaggerations and deviousness. Clinton Rossiter has said that if Roosevelt was “as busy as Rabbit and as bouncy as Tigger, he was too often, I fear, as big a bluffer as Owl.” But in a time of danger and evil, Roosevelt was able to use his less attractive qualities—as well as his superb imagination and daring—against democracy’s foes.
Would Kennedy show similar imagination and daring under crisis conditions? A final answer to the question must take into account the role of the Presidency itself. The office has shown an almost magical power, as in the case of Truman, to elevate men, to bring out the best in them, to convert able politicians into great political leaders. Throughout his life, Kennedy has had the capacity to move into an office, exhaust its possibilities, and move beyond it. He is too young, curious, and flexible not to continue to grow. His life seems to show a steady growth into commitment from a position of detachment.
If the Presidency has an impact on its occupants, however, the times have an impact on the Presidency. It may be that the 1960’s will be less demanding than the decade over which Roosevelt, or even Eisenhower, ruled. But Kennedy believes that they will be far more demanding and dangerous. “For now the age of consolidation is over and once again the age of change and challenge has come upon us,” he has said. “The next year, the next decade, in all likelihood the next generation, will require more bravery and wisdom on our part than any period in our history. We will be face to face, every day, in every part of our lives and times, with the real issue of our age—the issue of survival.” To that battle for survival, Kennedy could bring bravery and wisdom; whether he would bring passion and power would depend on his making a commitment not only of mind, but of heart, that until now he has never been required to make.
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
Aside from published matter, the material for this book was drawn from two main sources: records in Senator John F. Kennedy’s Washington office and interviews with Senator Kennedy, members of his family, aides, friends, opponents, and others. Each of these main sources requires a further note.
The records in the Kennedy office are located in two main places: in a screened-off room under the eaves on the fifth floor—actually the attic—of the old Senate Office Building, and in the Senator’s regular suite of offices on the third floor of the same building. In the following notes the former is referred to as “Attic Office,” the latter as “Main Office.” As of this writing, files on the years prior to 1958 are located in the Attic Office, the others in the Main Office. The most important files for my purposes were the Legislative Files, grouped by year, and broken down by alphabetical order of names of legislative subject matter, such as “Agriculture” or “Foreign Policy.” I have gone through all these files in both offices. Another set of files consists of carbons of letters from Kennedy to correspondents grouped by years, and then alphabetically according to name of recipient of letters. I have used this file as a guide to, and check on, the Legislative Files. A third file is a “case” file composed of correspondence involving individual matters, favors, requests for pictures, etc.; I have only sampled this file for its flavor. The Attic Office also contains some files from the House of Representatives period, but regrettably incomplete, unorganized, and located in old cabinets and cardboard cartons. These I have gone through completely. Finally, the Attic Office contains a plethora of plaques, awards, souvenirs, and bric-a-brac that were of marginal usefulness to this study, and four-foot stacks of stationery, mimeographed speeches, and handouts, which were impediments.
The files in the Main Office are organized in the same fashion as in the Attic, minus the impediments. There are also special collections of political and campaign materials and other specialized materials located in cabinet files and other places in the Main Office, and miscellaneous collections such as manuscript material for Profiles in Courage. I have had unrestricted access to all the above sources, and no restriction has been placed on my use of materials gained from them.
Interviews were conducted with most members of the Kennedy family, including Mr. and Mrs. Joseph P. Kennedy, and I have corresponded with other members. I interviewed Senator Kennedy on several occasions at some length during 1959, and the quotations in the text not otherwise attributed are from these interviews. The interviews with the Senator were tape-recorded and transcribed. I have also had access to a collection of letters written by Senator Kennedy during his childhood and youth, cited below as Kennedy family papers.
Writing of a contemporary figure imposes special responsibilities of protecting the names of sources. Consequently, I have generalized the source of information received from particular members of the Kennedy family through use o
f the term “Kennedy family interview,” and I have not specified the names of other persons interviewed. I have also omitted the names of persons corresponding with Senator Kennedy, but I have tried to indicate the kind of person making the remark I have quoted by a descriptive phrase, for example, a “priest in Pennsylvania” or an “ADA housewife.”
CHAPTER NOTES
I. Room at the Top
On Lismore Castle see Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th ed., 1911. The account of the New Ross visit is based on Kennedy family interviews.
To the Land of the Shanties: On immigration from Ireland, see W. F. Adams, Ireland and Irish Immigration to the New World (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1932); Oscar Handlin, Boston’s Immigrants (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1941, and revised edition 1959), and works cited therein. Information on the first Pat Kennedy is from interviews and correspondence with members of the Kennedy family; there seem to be no records. For the journey of the Irish to Boston, see M. L. Hansen, The Atlantic Migration (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1940). Chief source on immigrant life in Boston is Handlin, cited above, a painstaking and perceptive study; see also W. S. Rossiter, ed., Days and Ways in Old Boston (Boston: R. H. Stearns, 1915); G. E. Ellis, Bacon’s Dictionary of Boston (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1886); Nathaniel Dearborn, Boston Notions (Boston, 1848); R. A. Woods, ed., Americans in Process (Boston, 1902). The quotation beginning “Unable to participate …” is from Handlin, op. cit. (1959 ed.), p. 176. The quotations by John Kennedy beginning “Each wave …” are from a speech to the Washington chapter of the American Jewish Committee, June 4, 1957, reprinted in the Congressional Record, Vol. 103, Part 12, Aug. 29, 1957, p. 16,492.
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