JFK

by Fredrik Logevall

  Gradually, a manuscript began to take shape, the work barely interrupted by Kennedy’s return to New York in February 1955 for another operation. (Surgeons removed the metal plate as well as the screws that had been drilled into the bone to hold it in place. Then they replaced the shattered cartilage with a bone graft. The procedure seemed to work, but the patient was prescribed several more weeks of bed rest.) In April, Harper & Brothers, which had turned down Why England Slept in 1940 and which initially passed on this new work, offered a contract, with a $500 advance and with Evan Thomas II, the son of the socialist leader Norman Thomas, assigned as editor. In March and again in May, Sorensen traveled to Palm Beach, each time for ten days, to work with Kennedy on getting the draft chapters into shape.* “The way Jack worked,” Sorensen later said, “was to take all the material, mine and his, pencil it, dictate the fresh copy in his own words, pencil it again, dictate it again—he never used a typewriter.” On Sorensen’s first visit, Kennedy was on his back throughout; by the second he was able to sit up and even take brief dips in the ocean.59

  VI

  The 266-page book that resulted features profiles of eight senators—John Quincy Adams, Daniel Webster, Thomas Hart Benton, Sam Houston, Edmund G. Ross, Lucius Quintus Cincinnatus Lamar, George Norris, and Robert A. Taft—who showed notable courage and risked their careers in taking political stances unpopular with their constituents, their parties, and in some cases their regions. Neither Kennedy nor Sorensen knew the historiography well enough to get much below the surface in any of the cases, and although they were helped in this regard by the counsel they received from Davids and Landis, some parts of the book have aged poorly.60 Although Kennedy wrote powerfully about Lamar, who served as an officer in the Confederate army during the Civil War but later championed reconciliation between North and South, he missed the Mississippian’s steadfast racism and white supremacist views. (In 1875, a year after eulogizing Northern abolitionist Charles Sumner, Lamar spoke of “the supremacy of the unconquered and unconquerable Saxon race.”) In the same vein, the book embraced the then-common rendering of Reconstruction as a bleak time in which the defeated and debilitated South was further beaten down by a sinister mix of Northern reconstructionists (or carpetbaggers, as they were called), scalawags (Southern whites who collaborated with the reconstructionists), and “uppity” former slaves. This depiction, which took a dim view of Radical Republicans such as Thaddeus Stevens, was in line with prevailing scholarly accounts but would soon be undermined by a wave of studies providing a more nuanced assessment of the era.61

  Profiles was hardly brilliant, in-depth history. Nor, given the cut-and-paste feel of some sections, could it be considered a stylistic triumph. Its principal contribution—both at the time of publication and today—lies in its broad interpretive claims, articulated most fully in the two chapters in which Kennedy’s own imprint was greatest, namely, the first and the last. The introduction, candid and engaging, contains humorous asides reminiscent, in tone and style, of the college-age Kennedy writing to Lem Billings two decades before (including a heavy use of dashes): “If we tell our constituents frankly that we can do nothing, they feel we are unsympathetic to inadequate. If we try and fail—usually meeting a counteraction from other Senators representing other interests—they say we are like all the rest of the politicians. All we can do is retreat into the Cloakroom and weep on the shoulder of a sympathetic colleague—or go home and snarl at our wives.” But the introduction’s core message is serious. Its title is “Courage and Politics,” but more than anything the chapter argues for the vital importance in a democracy of compromise, of having “the sense of things possible.” The absolutist’s condemnation of all compromise as immoral is shortsighted, Kennedy insists, for decisions of public policy often involve difficult choices, often mean choosing from a menu of lousy options.

  The fanatics and extremists and even those conscientiously devoted to hard and fast principles are always disappointed at the failure of their Government to rush to implement all of their principles and to denounce those of their opponents….[But] some of my colleagues who are criticized today for lack of forthright principles—or who are looked upon with scornful eyes as compromising “politicians”—are simply engaged in the art of conciliating, balancing, and interpreting the forces and factions of public opinion, an art essential to keeping our nation united and enabling our Government to function. Their consciences may direct them from time to time to make a more rigid stand for principle—but their intellects tell them that a fair or poor bill is better than no bill at all, and that only through the give-and-take of compromise will any bill receive the successive approval of the Senate, the House, the President and the nation.62

  For Kennedy, the compromise can be, should be, at the level of policy, not principle. “We can compromise our political positions,” he writes, “but not ourselves. We can resolve the clash of interests without conceding our ideals.” Idealists and reformers and dissenters in fact are crucial, because they prevent political situations from being about nothing but opportunism and expediency and careerism. Above all, “compromise need not mean cowardice. Indeed it is frequently the compromisers and conciliators who are faced with the severest tests of political courage as they oppose the extremist views of their constituents,” as their loyalty to the nation triumphs “over all personal and political considerations.”63

  Not all of the eight men profiled in the remainder of the book were “compromisers and conciliators”; some were unyielding in their commitment to absolute principles. Nor, Kennedy informed his readers, did he agree with each historical stand. But all eight men had one thing in common, he insisted: they showed courage, in transcending narrow interests for what they saw as the greater good, in making the Senate “something more than a mere collection of robots dutifully recording the views of their constituents, or a gathering of time-servers skilled only in predicting and following the tides of public sentiment.”64

  Thus did John Quincy Adams ignore the narrow interests of Massachusetts and New England to support the Louisiana Purchase and the Embargo Act; and thus did Daniel Webster, also from Kennedy’s home state, defy his constituents and his party in trumpeting nationalism over sectionalism in helping to broker the Compromise of 1850. Thomas Hart Benton, for his part, prevented Missouri from joining the seceding Southern states, while Sam Houston cast the lone vote among Southern Democrats against the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854. Edmund Ross of Kansas joined with six other Republicans to oppose the impeachment of Andrew Johnson, and Mississippi’s Lucius Lamar sought, in the wake of Reconstruction, to encourage national unity over sectional strife. George Norris won acclaim for standing against the despotic rule of House Speaker “Uncle Joe” Cannon of Illinois, and Robert Taft, recently deceased, was commended for daring to oppose the Nuremberg Trials because of his belief that the U.S. Constitution prohibited ex post facto laws. Not selected for inclusion, Kennedy noted, were those legislators whose battles, however determined and impressive, were waged “with the knowledge that they enjoyed the support of the voters back home.”65

  The concluding chapter returns to the broader themes; it matters to us today for what it says about Kennedy’s views on politics and leadership, and for serving as a kind of timeless antidote to the cynicism about politics and politicians that periodically courses through the American body politic. Representative democracy is hard work, he tells his readers, for unlike in an authoritarian system, leaders in a democracy cannot impose their will on society. “We, the people, are the boss, and we will get the kind of political leadership, be it good or bad, that we demand and deserve.” Kennedy extols both compromise and courage (the courage he most favors tends to be that of moderates who resist extremists) and argues that it is on national issues—on matters of conscience that challenge party, regional, and constituent loyalties—“that the test of courage is presented.” At the same time, Kennedy says his book is not intended to laud indep
endence for the sake of independence, or to imply that there is on every policy issue a right side and a wrong side. “On the contrary,” he writes, “I share the feelings expressed by Prime Minister Melbourne, who, when irritated by the criticism of the then youthful historian T. B. Macaulay, remarked that he would like to be as sure of anything as Macaulay seemed to be of everything.”66

  Kennedy then quotes Lincoln: “There are few things wholly evil or wholly good. Almost everything, especially of Government policy, is an inseparable compound of the two, so that our best judgment of the preponderance between them is continually demanded.”67

  Here the senator may have been influenced by an extended conversation he had at about this time with longtime friend David Ormsby-Gore. From his reading of American history, Kennedy told the Englishman, he had drawn the lessons that there were usually two sides to every serious political problem. The zealots of the left and right, in their constant demand for simple solutions, didn’t grasp this fundamental point. “Now this didn’t prevent him being capable of taking decisions,” Ormsby-Gore said later of the conversation, “but it did always prevent him saying, ‘I know that I have got nothing but right on my side and the other side is entirely wrong,’ and he never would adopt that attitude. He said that one of the sad things in life, particularly if you were a politician, was that you discovered that the other side really had a very good case. He was most unpartisan in that way.” According to Ormsby-Gore, Kennedy even wondered whether “he was really cut out to be a politician because he was so often impressed by the other side’s arguments when he really examined them in detail. Of course, he thought nothing of them if they were just the usual sort of partisan speech attacking his position on something, but where he thought there was a valid case against his position, he was always rather impressed by the arguments advanced.”

  “He knew that if you were President of the United States or indeed had any position in public life, for good or evil, somebody had to make decisions and you had the responsibility of making decisions,” Ormsby-Gore continued. “You did your best but you would be foolish to assume that you were omnipotent and all-seeing or that you were necessarily always right. The best you could hope for was that you were likely to be right more often than somebody else. It shows a considerable degree of humility in the conduct of human affairs. He felt that people who thought it was simple and that the answers were obvious were dangerous people.”68

  In July 1955, with the manuscript almost complete, Jack asked his sister Eunice and others for input on the title. He told them he had four possibilities in mind: “Men of Courage,” “Eight Were Courageous,” “Call the Roll,” and “Profiles of Courage.” Responses varied, and Kennedy himself soon dropped “Men of Courage” from consideration. Other options considered and rejected included “The Patriots” and “Courage in the Senate.” Ultimately, Evan Thomas and his colleagues at the publishing house made the call: it would be Profiles in Courage.69

  That summer, Kennedy and Sorensen worked to incorporate suggestions from a range of academics, notably James MacGregor Burns, Arthur Holcombe (who had taught Kennedy at Harvard), Allan Nevins (who would also contribute a foreword), and Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., who submitted four pages of single-spaced criticism in early July. (Kennedy had asked Schlesinger to be “ruthlessly frank in giving me your criticism, comments and suggestions, however major or however petty,” and the historian obliged, calling the Webster chapter problematic and the Taft chapter wholly unpersuasive. “If statesmanship implies a capacity to see the real issues,” he wrote with respect to the former, “then the architects of the Compromise [of 1850] were far from statesmen. Webster never saw either the political issue of Southern domination of the Union or the moral issue of slavery.” As for Taft, his condemnation of the Nuremberg Trials, however defensible, took place outside the Senate, and moreover it was “hard to recollect Taft’s doing anything else which required political courage.” Kennedy tweaked both chapters in response, though not to Schlesinger’s full satisfaction.) In early August, Kennedy informed Thomas that Sorensen would submit the finished version shortly, as soon as he received some final input from Nevins.70

  VII

  Sorensen would do the honors because by then Kennedy had decamped for a vacation in the South of France. Over the preceding months, his health had gradually improved. On March 1 he walked without crutches for the first time, and the next day he ventured to the beach, with Jackie and Dave Powers steadying him. There would be setbacks in the weeks thereafter, with long stints in bed, but the trend lines pointed in the right direction. He gained weight and grew steadily stronger. On May 23, 1955, after seven months away, he returned triumphantly to Washington. Family and friends were out in force at National Airport to greet his flight from Palm Beach, which also included Jackie and sister Jean. Later, on the Capitol steps, he posed for newsreel and TV cameramen, to the cheers of tourists and a delegation of southern textile workers who happened by. Inside the Senate Office Building, receptionists stood to applaud when the senator entered room 362, and he found his inner office crammed with waiting reporters. On his desk, among the letters and telegrams celebrating his return, was a giant fruit basket bearing a note that read “Welcome home,” signed “Dick Nixon.”71

  One of the reporters asked about his upcoming thirty-eighth birthday. “I’m looking forward to it,” he replied with a chuckle. “I’ll certainly be glad to get out of my thirty-seventh year.”

  Would Ike run again?

  “I don’t know.”

  Wasn’t the president’s strength as formidable everywhere as it had been when he entered the White House?

  “Well, I’ve been in a pretty limited area. I’ll say that he seems to be standing up well in Palm Beach.” Laughter all around.72

  If Jackie hoped her husband would proceed with care, easing gently back into his routines, she was soon disappointed. At his direction, his staff arranged an ambitious schedule, starting with a commencement address at Assumption College, in Worcester, on June 3, followed by another graduation address at Boston College on June 5 and the Jefferson-Jackson Day dinner on June 9. On the sixteenth he attended the fifteenth reunion of his Harvard class.73

  The big early event, though, occurred on June 10, when Kennedy hosted a picnic in Hyannis Port for close to three hundred state legislators and legislative assistants, including “secretaries” from the 1952 campaign but also many who had never been active for him. He greeted them in chinos, sweatshirt, and sneakers, looking youthful and energetic. It was a transparent attempt to show Massachusetts Democrats that he was back and healthier than ever, and it worked. “The thing I remember most about the event was that he was physically able to move around,” Kenny O’Donnell remembered. “There were no crutches. They had softball games and so forth, and it was an excellent outing.” Most important, to O’Donnell’s mind, the senator’s appeal to the rank and file hadn’t dissipated one iota.

  Jack Kennedy’s magic was as solid as it ever had been. He was on his feet. He was healthy again, physically and mentally. The great attraction of the candidate was on display, and the fear that he might not return, that siding with Jack Kennedy was a risk, was finally put to rest. To many of these regular politicians who had eyed Jack with suspicion as an outsider, a rich kid, and a lightweight now saw something else. They saw their political future and the future of the party in Massachusetts. They knew now it was better to be on the winning side, and for the regulars that meant siding with Jack Kennedy.74

  He was not, however, the same man. Close associates such as O’Donnell and Powers and Sorensen noticed that his long health ordeal had changed him, had made him more serious, more determined. Having long believed that he would not live past the age of forty-five, he felt enhanced pressure to achieve the goal, stated to his wife, of claiming his “place in history.” Said journalist Joseph Alsop some years later, “I’ve always thought he did not begin to tak
e his own career truly seriously, I mean to have any long range and high aim in his own career, until he went through his very serious illness in 1955….Something very important happened inside him, I think, when he had that illness because he came out of it a very much more serious fellow than he was prior to it. He had gone through the valley of the shadow of death, and he had displayed immense courage, which he’d always had.”75

  This isn’t quite right: Kennedy’s “long range and high aim” was evident well before the middle of 1955—indeed, arguably from the first House race in 1946. But the depiction of a more serious, more focused political figure coming out of the harrowing surgery and aftermath rings true, as does the suggestion that Kennedy emerged from the tribulations with his reputation for physical courage further enhanced. In this way the episode actually boosted his public profile. Newspaper and magazine editors found the story irresistible, and the fact that Kennedy’s misadventure came so soon after his high-profile society wedding made it all the more poignant. Photos of the senator entering the hospital, on crutches, while his devoted Jackie smiles bravely at his side played widely across the country, shaping the narrative of the handsome lawmaker and war hero who refused to give in to his ailments and ultimately vanquished them.76

  To those who knew him well, the turnaround was stunning: eight months after almost dying in a New York hospital room and four months after it seemed he might never walk unaided again, his political career in all likelihood over, John F. Kennedy was back, by no means fully healthy but so much better than he had been, and on the cusp of becoming what he had not been up until now: a figure of national renown.