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Forty Ways to Look at JFK
By Gretchen Rubin Random House
Gretchen Rubin
All right reserved. ISBN: 0345450493
Chapter One
Kennedy as Ideal Leader
A Positive Account
Most of those who recount the story of John Kennedy present him in heroic terms--men such as Ben Bradlee, Red Fay, William Manchester, Kenneth O'Donnell, Dave Powers, Pierre Salinger, Arthur Schlesinger Jr., Hugh Sidey, Ted Sorensen, and Theodore White. And of all the mythmakers, none did more than Kennedy and his family to construct the idea of John Kennedy.
Just as in saint-making, when the "Postulator of the Cause" gathers every possible piece of information on the life of a prospective saint to search for signs of extraordinary virtue, these memorializers gather the evidence of Kennedy's character and accomplishments to testify to his merits. They furnish the evidence that proves their conclusion: John F. Kennedy was a great leader who transformed the spirit of America.
On November 22, 1963, John Kennedy, the young president who radiated youth, energy, and possibility, was struck down by an assassin--his presidency cut short before he'd served even three years in office.
Kennedy had had a meteoric rise in politics. He was elected to the House of Representatives at age twenty-nine and, six years later, won a Senate seat and, after eight years in the Senate, became president. He never lost an election.
Kennedy was president for only 1,037 days, but during his short tenure, he achieved much. At the Cold War's most dangerous hour, he preserved the peace. He improved relations with the Soviet Union and replaced tension over Berlin with a limited test ban treaty. Despite pressure from advisers, he resisted escalation of dangerous situations during the Bay of Pigs, the Berlin crisis, the Cuban missile crisis, and in Vietnam. At home, he assumed leadership in the struggle for civil rights and galvanized a generation with a renewed zeal for public service.
Kennedy believed it was American ideals, rather than American military might, that would lead the globe, and with his brilliant leadership, he captured the world's imagination.
John Fitzgerald Kennedy was born May 29, 1917, in Brookline, Massachusetts, the second son of nine children born to Joseph Kennedy and Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy. Descended on both sides from Irish Catholic immigrants, Jack had an impressive political ancestry: one grandfather, John Fitzgerald, "Honey Fitz," was the legendary former Boston mayor, and the other, Patrick Kennedy, was a state senator and respected Boston ward leader.
Jack's father, Joseph, was an extraordinarily successful businessman, and by 1957, Fortune would rank his family among America's richest, with a fortune estimated at between $200 million and $400 million. But Joe wasn't concerned only with money; in 1929, determined to free his children from the enduring Boston prejudice against Irish Catholics, he moved his family to New York. Joe also became involved in national politics. In 1934, President Franklin Roosevelt appointed him chairman of the new Securities and Exchange Commission and, in 1937, to be the United States' ambassador to Britain.
Although consumed with business and political affairs, Joe was an attentive and loving, if demanding, father who fostered an atmosphere of intense competition, while Rose made sure the Kennedy children had a proper Catholic upbringing, plenty of intellectual stimulation, and training in the social graces. Both parents had the highest expectations for their children--especially for their eldest, Joe Jr.--but despite this pressure, the Kennedy family was very close.
Jack grew up in a happy atmosphere of family affection, political engagement, and affluence, but his childhood was marked by frequent illnesses. Often bedridden, Jack became a voracious reader of biographies, histories, and adventure tales. From age thirteen, he went to boarding school--Canterbury and Choate--and he spent the summer months in Hyannis Port on Cape Cod, Massachusetts, where he and his siblings swam, sailed, golfed, and played touch football.
In 1936, Jack entered Harvard, where he majored in government and was a member of the freshman football and swim teams. Although not particularly studious, Jack was deeply interested in history and politics, and even at Choate, he'd subscribed to the New York Times. Jack accomplished something that neither his father nor his older brother, Joe, had been able to do at Harvard: he was accepted by one of the exclusive final clubs, the Spee Club--a considerable accomplishment at a time when prejudice against Catholics was still strong.
After his father became ambassador to the United Kingdom in 1937, Jack went to London to serve as his secretary for six months. Jack was actually present in the House of Commons on September 1, 1939, when Neville Chamberlain declared that Britain was at war with Germany. Although Ambassador Kennedy was initially popular with the British people, he destroyed his reputation by voicing his conviction that Britain would fall to Hitler and that America's only hope lay in staying out of the war. Joe Kennedy resigned his post in November 1940 and thereafter devoted himself to his sons' political careers.
Returning to Harvard, Jack decided to write his senior thesis on Britain's military unpreparedness before World War II. He later expanded his thesis and published it in 1940 as Why England Slept. The book won widespread acclaim; a review in the New York Times called it "a book of such painstaking scholarship, such mature understanding and fair-mindedness and of such penetrating and timely conclusions, that it is a notable textbook for our times."
In October 1941, Jack entered the navy's Office of Naval Intelligence in Washington, D.C., and after a stint there, was transferred to Charleston, South Carolina. He was eager to get to the combat zones and finally, in March 1943, left San Francisco bound for the South Pacific, where he took command of a patrol torpedo (PT) boat with a crew of twelve.
On the night of August 1, 1943, a Japanese destroyer rammed and split Jack's boat, the PT-109. Two men died, and several were badly injured. Jack rallied the survivors to cling to the boat wreckage until morning, and then, determined to lead his men to safety, organized their swim to a tiny island three miles away. For five hours, Jack swam the breaststroke and, ignoring his own injuries, pulled a badly burned man by holding the man's life-jacket strap in his teeth. After more than fifteen hours in the water, the PT-109 crew reached land. Jack drove himself to exhaustion over the next several days by venturing out to the straits to try to flag down ships and exploring a neighboring island to look for help. On the fourth day, two Solomon Islanders found the survivors and agreed to deliver a message Jack carved on a coconut shell.
NAURO ISL
COMMANDER . . . NATIVE KNOWS
POSIT . . . HE CAN PILOT . . . 11 ALIVE
NEED SMALL BOAT . . . KENNEDY
Rescuers came for the PT-109 crew two days later.
Jack's heroic actions hit the front page of the New York Times and won him the Navy and Marine Corps Medal. Sadly, Jack's brother Joe was not so lucky. In 1944, his plane exploded during a volunteer mission, and his body was never recovered. Another of Jack's siblings, Kathleen (or "Kick"), widow of the heir to the Duke of Devonshire, would be killed in a plane crash in France in 1948.
After the war, Jack began a promising career in journalism but soon turned to politics. As a candidate for Congress from Massachusetts's Eleventh District, he faced a tough race: ten candidates competed in 1946 for the open seat.
A young navy hero, best-selling author, grandson of famous Boston figures P. J. Kennedy and "Honey Fitz," with good looks, an outstanding education, and great wealth, Jack made an intriguing candidate, but he wasn't a natural politician. Even his father admitted later, "I never thought Jack had it in him." With the slogan "A New Generation Offers a Leader," Jack drove himself hard, and his performance far surpassed expectations. His large family turned out in full force to support him, and his father's resources allowed him to run a professional, well-financed campaign. He won a decisive victory.
Jack served three terms, then, eager for a new challenge, decided to run for the Senate against the popular incumbent Henry Cabot Lodge. Lodge seemed unbeatable, but Kennedy triumphed. His family had again rallied to his support: his mother and sisters held hugely successful "Kennedy teas," and his twenty-seven-year-old brother Bobby ably managed the campaign.
Soon after the election, Jack, dubbed "the Senate's gay young bachelor" by the Saturday Evening Post, married Jacqueline Bouvier, a beautiful, accomplished journalist: he was thirty-six; she, twenty-four. Their marriage in Newport on September 12, 1953, was the social event of the season. One of Jack's important actions as a new senator was hiring twenty-four-year-old Ted Sorensen, who started as chief legislative aide and who would become a key adviser and speechwriter.
The early days of Jack and Jackie's marriage were marred by Jack's chronic back trouble. By 1954, the pain was so terrible that Jack decided to undergo an operation, even though he was given only fifty-fifty odds of surviving. He developed a life-threatening infection and had to undergo a second operation just a few months later. Throughout his long recovery, Jackie tirelessly nursed him, doing everything she could to keep his spirits up.
During his convalescence, Jack began work on Profiles in Courage, a book of sketches of senators who defied public opinion to vote their consciences. The book became a best seller and won the 1957 Pulitzer Prize. (Jack donated the prize money to the United Negro College Fund.) The same year, Jack and Jackie's first child, Caroline, was born.
At the 1956 Democratic National Convention, Jack narrated a film recounting the Democratic Party's history, and his presentation was so well received that he was asked to make the speech nominating Adlai Stevenson. His brilliant performances started talk that he'd make a splendid candidate for vice president.
When, in an unusual move, Stevenson threw the choice of the vice presidential candidate to the convention by popular vote, Jack launched himself into a dramatic contest with Estes Kefauver. Although Jack lost, he proved a surprisingly strong candidate. His near success made him a national figure and convinced him to run for president in 1960.
He spent the next few years crisscrossing the country to build political support. His religion hampered his efforts; no Catholic had ever been elected president, and many voters feared that the Church in Rome would control a Catholic president. Nevertheless, despite his religion, his youth, and the fact that the Democrats hadn't chosen a senator as a presidential nominee for decades, Jack was increasingly seen as a leading candidate. His air of energy, intellect, and grace captivated all who saw him. Kennedy disagreed with those who counseled him to wait. In 1958, he said that if he stayed in the Senate for eight more years, "I'll have to vote politically and I'll end up as both a mediocre senator and a lousy candidate."
In 1960, Jack faced a tough primary battle. Once again, Bobby managed his campaign with tireless and ruthless determination. Jack hoped for a decisive triumph over Hubert Humphrey in the Wisconsin primary, but the vote wasn't conclusive enough to prove that a Catholic could win in a predominantly Protestant state. Jack's subsequent victory in West Virginia proved the strength of his candidacy. Throughout the campaign, he continued to tackle the religion question, telling audiences, "I refuse to believe that I was denied the right to be president on the day I was baptized." In a compelling address to the Greater Houston Ministerial Association, he said, "Side by side with Bowie and Crockett died McCafferty and Bailey and Carey, but no one knows if they were Catholics or not. For there was no religious test at the Alamo."
Jack's travels awakened him to the depth of the nation's problems. Back in Washington during the West Virginia campaign, he told aides, "You can't imagine how those people live down there. I was better off in the war than they are in those coal mines. It's not right. I'm going to do something about it. If we make it."
His hard work paid off at the Democratic National Convention. Jack won the nomination and, to balance the ticket, chose Lyndon Johnson, the powerful Senate majority leader from Texas, as his running mate. Kennedy later explained, "First, I had the feeling that Lyndon takes more of the Catholic flavor off me than anyone else. A Southern Protestant. Second, he obviously helps me in the South. Third, it wouldn't be worthwhile being President if Lyndon were the Majority Leader."
In his ringing acceptance speech, Kennedy announced, "We stand today on the edge of a New Frontier. . . . The New Frontier of which I speak is not a set of promises--it is a set of challenges. It sums up not what I intend to offer the American people, but what I intend to ask of them." He promised the voters "one thousand days of exacting Presidential leadership."
Kennedy then faced his Republican opponent, Richard Nixon. It would be a challenging race. Nixon, who had served two terms as vice president to one of the nation's most popular presidents, was known for his tough stand against communism and had successfully debated Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev.
Kennedy emphasized three themes: the Soviet Union's outstripping of the United States in military power; the American economy's stagnation; and the failure of the United States to keep pace with demands in public services, education, health, and transportation. Along with his policies, Kennedy offered himself. Nixon was associated with the Eisenhower administration, which seemed tired, slack, with a chamber-of-commerce mentality. After "eight years of drugged and fitful sleep," as Kennedy described it, the public was ready for something new, and Kennedy offered glamour, intellect, and challenge.
Continues...
Excerpted from Forty Ways to Look at JFK by Gretchen Rubin Excerpted by permission.
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