The Best and the Brightest

by David Halberstam

  Even though he had not played their game, he was hoping, long after the convention was over, that he would get State; he believed himself best qualified. So when Kennedy offered him the post as Ambassador to the United Nations, Stevenson was appalled. He would not take it, he said privately, it was an insult, he had had that job before. “What will you do if you don’t come aboard?” an old friend asked him. “I’ll do what I’ve been doing all along,” he answered. “And have your speeches printed on page forty-seven of the New York Times?” the friend said.

  Kennedy, who was annoyed by Stevenson’s refusal to accept the offer immediately, and who had decided upon Rusk as Secretary, asked Rusk to call Stevenson. Kennedy took no small amount of pleasure in recounting to friends how Rusk had hooked Stevenson. “Adlai,” Rusk had said, “the President has asked me to take this job and it is a sacrifice, but I have given it careful consideration, despite the element of sacrifice, and I have decided I cannot refuse. I cannot say no. I feel all of us have a loyalty greater than our own interests. I’m going to be a soldier. I think this is necessary. We need you, the country needs you. I hope you will serve as he has asked you to serve.” In retelling the story to friends, Kennedy would chuckle and say, “I think old Adlai was really impressed.”

  There was an aura of thinly veiled contempt toward Stevenson at the White House; he was someone to take Jackie to the theater. It was all a humiliating experience. During the Cuban missile crisis, when Stewart Alsop and Charles Bartlett, both good friends of the President’s and disciples of Acheson’s, wrote a semiofficial account of the events, they quoted one high official as saying that Stevenson wanted a Munich. The article was published in the Saturday Evening Post and there was a great storm over those particular quotes; most Washington insiders suspected McGeorge Bundy, the sharp, caustic Bundy who had so frequently been critical of Stevenson. Only later, after the death of Kennedy and the end of the Saturday Evening Post, did one of the editors admit that the statements had come from Kennedy himself and that he had insisted that they be published. He had, however, been careful to ask the authors to exclude a part which showed Ted Sorensen being potentially soft; Kennedy would take care of his own, and Stevenson was not his own. (It was not surprising that in early 1964, when Stevenson showed up in Washington and had lunch with an old friend, he began to praise Lyndon Johnson extravagantly. “We have a great President now,” he said. The friend was somewhat surprised, since the Stevenson-Johnson friendship had never been that close, but as Stevenson described his meeting with the President, it soon became clear why he was so enthusiastic: as soon as he had walked into Johnson’s office, the latter had risen, pointed to his chair and said, “Governor, by all rights you should be sitting in this chair and in this office.”)

  But Kennedy wanted to be his own Secretary of State, and above all he did not want a Secretary who already had a constituency worthy of a President, rather he wanted Stevenson’s constituency, both here and abroad. Kennedy knew that he could not really perform as a President until he had taken Stevenson’s people away from him. This he proceeded to do with stunning quickness, depending more on style and grace than policies; nonetheless, when Stevenson died in 1965, a year and a half after Kennedy, he seemed a forlorn and forgotten figure, humiliated by his final years; his people mourned the loss of Kennedy more than of Stevenson. It would only be later, as the full tragedy of the Vietnam war unfolded and a Stevenson disciple named Eugene McCarthy challenged Johnson, as humanist values seemed to be resurgent and regenerative against the rationalist values, and the liberal community looked back to see where it had gone wrong, that Stevenson would regain his constituency. Posthumously.

  So it would not be Bowles or Stevenson. Nor J. William Fulbright, whom Kennedy had worked with on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Fulbright impressed him—the intelligence, the range, the respect he commanded on the Hill as the resident intellectual. Kennedy was not as close to Fulbright as he was to Mike Mansfield or even Humphrey, but they had worked well together, even though Kennedy had not been the most diligent member of the committee. He was often absent, and on the rare occasions when he was present, he seemed to spend much of his time autographing photos of himself which were to be sent out to fervent young admirers. To Fulbright’s credit was the fact that his constituency was the Hill rather than the New York intellectual world, so that his coming aboard would be an asset rather than a liability, as in the case of Stevenson. But Fulbright was not without his critics; the Acheson group now regarded him with some suspicion. (Fulbright was unfortunately something of a dilettante, Acheson had told Kennedy at a tea in late November 1960, given to making speeches calling for bold, brave new ideas, and yet always lacking in bold, brave new ideas.) He was not an entirely serious man. Besides, there was the problem of his position; he was chairman of the committee, and thus could do Kennedy and his policies a great deal of good sitting right where he was.

  Yet, for all this, Kennedy was inclined toward him. He was anxious to have a Democratic Secretary of State, and Fulbright seemed to be the ablest man around. His problem, finally, was similar to that of Bowles: he made too many speeches, had too many public positions and eventually too many enemies. He had signed the Southern Manifesto, an antidesegregation statement by Southern congressmen, he had voted against civil rights bills (indeed, elevating him to State would open a seat in Arkansas, and wasn’t Orval Faubus, the man who had become nationally known with his defiance at Little Rock, the likely candidate for his seat? Would a new Administration want that on its hands?). He had made speeches which the Jews, well organized, vocal, influential, regarded as suspiciously pro-Arab. In fact, when Harris Wofford, who was a liaison man with liberal groups during the talent-search period, heard that it might be Fulbright, he got on the phone and called Negro and Jewish groups imploring them to send telegrams criticizing Fulbright. Their wires made a profound impression on Robert Kennedy, who was already uneasy about how the underdeveloped world would regard a new Administration with a Secretary of State from Arkansas. Thus was Bill Fulbright vetoed by the left as Bowles had been from the right. (Later, when Fulbright visited Palm Beach, Joe Kennedy took him aside and said it was a great shame about his not becoming Secretary of State, but the NAACP, the Zionists and the liberals had all screamed bloody murder about the appointment. The senior Kennedy decided that a man with enemies like that could not be all bad, and when Fulbright returned to Washington he found a case of Scotch waiting for him, a gift of the ambassador.) Six years later, when there were several hundred thousand Americans in Vietnam, and Fulbright had become the Good Fulbright, he was at a cocktail party where he ran into Joe Rauh, the ADA man who had opposed his nomination as Secretary of State and had helped muster lobby groups against him. “Joe,” asked Fulbright, “do you admit now that I was right on my stand on civil rights so that I could stay up here and do this?” Rauh, somewhat stunned by the statement, could only mumble that it was an unanswerable proposition, “to do wrong in order to do right.”

  Nor would it be McGeorge Bundy. Walter Lippmann and others were pushing him very hard for high jobs, perhaps not State but something good, and Kennedy, listening to their recommendations, had thought, well, if he was that good, why not State itself? Kennedy liked Bundy and had been impressed by Bundy’s willingness to criticize the appointment of Lewis Strauss by Eisenhower, the kind of unpredictable response that Kennedy particularly valued. Bundy’s credentials were impeccable; he had support from the intellectual community, if not by dint of articles or books, at least by virtue of standing. He had taken no wrong positions, he was not soft, and though he was a Republican, even this could be dealt with. For a time Kennedy considered him for State, and flying down to Palm Beach right after John, Jr., was born, he told a group of trusted reporters that State was still a problem. He didn’t know what he was going to do, but he wished he could make Bundy Secretary of State; Bundy was now his personal choice. “Why can’t you?” asked Sander Vanocur, one of the pool reporters. “Because
he’s too young. It’s bad enough that I’m that young, but if there’s a Secretary of State that young it’ll be too much. Besides, he’s a Republican and Adlai will never serve under him.” Which was true. Stevenson might bury his disappointment about not getting State and might serve in the Department, but he had demanded at least some say in the choice of his boss. (It was typical of the political subtleties of the selection process that before Kennedy decided on who his Secretary would be, he had decided on who it would not be, and had already chosen some of the key assistants at State, as well as Stevenson for the UN, Soapy Williams for Africa, Harriman as ambassador-at-large. It was as if, knowing that it would not go to a real party enthusiast, he had balanced it by giving lower-echelon jobs to major party figures.) So Stevenson, unable to attain what he wanted, had retained, if nothing else, something of a veto power. This he used against McGeorge Bundy, brilliant intellectual, great liberal, who had voted for Tom Dewey over Harry Truman, and twice for Dwight Eisenhower over Adlai Stevenson. If there were limits to Bundy’s liberalism, there were also limits to Stevenson’s tolerance.

  Nor, finally, David K. E. Bruce—rich, patrician, the classic diplomat, smooth, intelligent, his assets including a very wealthy wife. He had haunted the great chambers of Europe for two decades, a man with a great sense of where power was and how to deal with it, the proper ambassador, the very American model of the British diplomat. He was well connected in the Democratic party hierarchy, in part because of many generous past contributions. Against Bruce was his age, sixty-two, which made him almost twenty years older than the President he would serve. There was a feeling that he would not be good going up on the Hill, that this was not a role he would enjoy. Nor was he helped by his own close ties with Stevenson; Kennedy had heard that Bruce’s wife had burst into tears when Kennedy had been nominated at Los Angeles. Yet if there was no great enthusiasm for David Bruce, there were at least few objections, and at one time it hung in the balance: a little passion for Bruce on the part of one or two people around Kennedy, and the job might have been his.

  What it came down to was a search not for the most talent, the greatest brilliance, but for the fewest black marks, the fewest objections. The man who had made the fewest enemies in an era when forceful men espousing good causes had made many enemies: the Kennedys were looking for someone who made very small waves. They were looking for a man to fill the most important Cabinet post, a job requiring infinite qualities of intelligence, wisdom and sophistication, a knowledge of both this country and the world, and they were going at it as presidential candidates had often filled that other most crucial post, the Vice-Presidency, by choosing someone who had offended the fewest people. Everybody’s number-two choice. Thus their choice would be determined by neither talent nor brilliance, but to a degree by mediocrity. It was a sign of the extent to which the power of the Presidency had grown that this was applauded in many quarters. That the man they turned to was virtually unknown was revealing in itself, for if he had really done anything significant in his career, then he would have a record, for better or for worse.

  Dean Rusk. He was everybody’s number two.

  At the height of the selection process, Kennedy had turned to Bowles and said, “If you were Secretary of State, what kind of organization would you set up?” Bowles, who was on the board of the Rockefeller Foundation, being the Foundation’s opening to the left, had answered that he would begin by naming Dean Rusk Undersecretary. “Dean Rusk?” Kennedy said. “Isn’t he the head of the Rockefeller Foundation?”

  Everyone spoke well of him. Good qualities. Hard-working. Patient. Balanced. Steady. A good diplomat. Lovett admired him. Acheson, the Secretary of State emeritus, put in a strong word: Rusk had been loyal and reliable. Fulbright spoke well of him, a fellow Southerner and a fellow Rhodes scholar. He also got support from Paul Nitze, another Establishment figure who was much honored within the group and rarely seen outside it. (Nitze was the real Acheson candidate for Secretary of State, but eventually he went to Defense as Assistant Secretary for International Security Affairs, where his deputy would be Bill Bundy, Acheson’s son-in-law.) Everyone spoke well of Rusk, even the old Dulles people, for Dean Rusk left few men with a bad impression. He was always courteous, hard-working and thoughtful. Only one person, McGeorge Bundy, was strongly opposed to Rusk. They had met several times when Bundy was the dean of Harvard and Rusk ran the Rockefeller Foundation and held the purse strings. Bundy did not like Rusk (the Rusks of the world do not, except under extreme provocation, permit themselves the luxury of liking or disliking; God did not create public servants for the purposes of liking or disliking) and had decided that there was something missing. Bundy was an elitist, flashing out his prejudices, partial to first-rate people, to a considerable degree a Semitophile because he believed Jews were bright, and like himself, combative, his mind drawn to combat with other first-rate minds but intolerant of second-rate minds, and sensing in Rusk something second-rate. Kennedy’s future adviser on national security affairs cast a vote against Rusk, but it was not that important, anyway, since he would be working in the White House and not at State.

  And so Dean Rusk slowly sidled into the prime position. Rusk was a quiet man of enormous self-control, his ambition carefully masked. It did not flash naked for all to see like a Bundy’s or McNamara’s, but it was there nonetheless. He had campaigned for the job cautiously and consciously in his own veiled way; through the Establishment’s channels he had sent up a few cautious signals to acknowledge that he was, well, available. He had taken Bowles aside so that Bowles could tell the Kennedys that Rusk had been working for them up there in Scarsdale. Though he was not known for his published work, he had published an article, a rare act indeed, in Foreign Affairs, the official journal of the Council on Foreign Relations, which was not given to turning down articles by heads of major foundations. The article, which was not entirely by chance published in the spring of 1960, dealt with the role of the Secretary of State. It called for the President to make a lot of decisions in foreign affairs and for the Secretary to travel less (no Secretary would travel as widely as Rusk). Similarly, Rusk had, just by chance, a willing citizen duly concerned, written a letter to the President-elect, dated November 22, 1960, on the subject of the electoral college, which also said that the President should work to heal racial scars (“As a Georgia-born citizen who believes that the Supreme Court decision on integration was long overdue . . .” the letter began). No Southern Manifesto for Dean Rusk, no Orval Faubus to take his place at the Foundation. Indeed, there seemed to be a mild element of lobbying, for on the same day that Rusk’s letter on the South and the electoral college arrived, the prominent Harvard government professor William Yandell Elliott (who, like Rusk, had close ties to the past Republican Administration) weighed in with a letter recommending Rusk: “But I hope he [the President] will not neglect the possibility that Dean Rusk could be attracted from his important duties at the Rockefeller Foundation to the post that may be the most critical for the success not only of the next President but of the American nation in confronting the world we presently live in . . . Dean combines a thorough knowledge of not only the military, but of political strategy . . .”

  Thus the coming of Dean Rusk. One pictures the process. The Establishment peers sit around and ponder who its candidates should be. Slowly varying possibilities are checked off. Most of the best-known are too old. The young President seems to want a Democrat and that eliminates a good many other names. And finally the name that comes to the fore is Dean Rusk, a man who is nominally a Democrat (he holds his job at the Foundation not so much through the courtesy of the Rockefellers as through John Foster Dulles, who got it for him). Knows the military, knows strategy, plays the game. So, quietly, the campaign for Rusk was put together and his qualifications tallied: not too young, not too old; a Democrat, but not too much of one; a Southerner but not too much so; an intellectual, but not too much so; worked on China, but no problems on that—in fact, good marks from the
Luce people, who watch the China thing carefully. The acceptable man.

  The Kennedy investigation into Rusk was marginal. There were a few phone calls, one from Richard Goodwin, a bright young man on the White House staff, to a reporter who had served in the China-Burma-India theater, a vast area which had contained the then Colonel Rusk. What about Rusk? Well, he was considered a good guy out there, not making enemies with the British like Stilwell, soothing tempers when Stilwell ruffled them, but he disapproved of the way the British treated the wogs. And he had a slight reputation as a ladies’ man. “Great,” said the New Frontiersman, “Kennedy will love that.” The first and last hint of Dean Rusk the swinger. “What about the China thing,” Goodwin asked, “was he involved in any of that?” “They never laid a glove on him,” answered the reporter, which delighted Goodwin, though later, in a very different era, he would note upon reflection that this should have been a tip-off, the fact that Rusk could have lived through those years and not be touched by the great events. An enigmatic figure before entering the government, he was an enigmatic figure during it (not surprisingly, the best article ever to appear about him was written late in his second term, by Milton Viorst in Esquire under the title “Incidentally, Who Is Dean Rusk?”). Luckily for Rusk, the Kennedy people did not check all of Rusk’s speeches made when he was Assistant Secretary of State for Far Eastern Affairs in 1950, for that might have jarred them slightly. There was one which, even given the temper of that particularly rigid time, was a horror, the blood virtually dripping off the teeth of the Chinese-Russian aggressor. It was a speech which might have made the cool Kennedy wince, an affront to his distaste for zealotry.