The Kennedy Men

Laurence Leamer

• Publisher: William Morrow
• Year: 2011
• ISBN:
  9780062039880
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Political Biographies
• Index: Politics & International Relations

The renowned biographer and New York Times bestselling author of The Kennedy Women returns with this first volume in a multigenerational history that will forever change the way America views its most famous family...

Book Three

21
The Torch Has Been Passed

On the day before the inauguration of the thirty-fifth president of the United States, a fierce storm fell upon Washington, blanketing the capital with eight inches of snow, stranding ten thousand cars across the city, grounding planes, and slowing trains. Crews worked during the night cleaning the main roads, and by noon on January 20, 1961, a crowd of twenty thousand stood on the Capitol grounds in the twenty-two-degree cold, braced against the eighteen-mile-an-hour winds and looking up at the portico where the nation’s leaders sat outside to witness the ritual of passage. One million other Americans began gathering along Pennsylvania Avenue to greet the new president as he traveled in a parade that would carry him to his new home in the White House.

The onlookers had bundled themselves up against the fierce cold wearing an eclectic collection of wool coats, snowsuits, fur hats, ski jackets, hiking boots, galoshes, mufflers, face masks, hoods, and scarves. Up on the podium, seventy-year-old Dwight Eisenhower, then the oldest president in American history, sat wrapped in a heavy topcoat and scarf. The other largely aging politicians and officials were equally protected against the cold, many of them in top hats or homburgs. In the row upon row of largely indistinguishable black and gray coats, hats, and pale faces, there was one tanned, radiantly healthy-looking man.

Forty-three-year-old John F. Kennedy was the youngest elected president in American history, and he stood there the personification of the nation’s energy and ambition. The new president tended to speak quickly, but this noon he spoke with a careful, deliberate pace:

Let the word go forth from this time and place, to friend and foe alike, that the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans—born in this century, tempered by war, disciplined by a hard and bitter peace, proud of our ancient heritage—and unwilling to witness or permit the slow undoing of those human rights to which this nation has always been committed, and to which we are committed today at home and around the world.

The audience listened closely, the words seemingly resonating so deeply that they did not even applaud until Kennedy had spoken nearly five minutes. He appeared to be a strong young leader for a difficult new age. Kennedy had many virtues to bring to his presidency. He had a political mind as sharp as that of any of the politicians who surrounded him, but he understood nuances and subtleties on a deeper level than did most of Washington’s narrow men. This was a brilliant attribute, nurtured by his father’s influence, cultivated at the Court of St. James’s and in his extensive travels, honed in the House of Representatives, where he was as much an observer as a participant, and seasoned in the Senate, where he had to deal with a complex, contradictory world. He had a sense of history that was not an academic’s abstract vision but a vivid sense of human character moving through time.

Kennedy’s father had taught him that he could make history and write it in his own name. And so he was setting out on this day as if he had a massive mandate and his youth was an added virtue. He had always been a cautious leader, and he knew that the path ahead was fraught with dangers both known and unknown, but he set forth an uncharacteristically bold and daring message:

In the long history of the world, only a few generations have been granted the role of defending freedom in its hour of maximum danger. I do not shrink from this responsibility—I welcome it. I do not believe that any of us would exchange places with any other people or any other generation. The energy, the faith, the devotion which we bring to this endeavor will light our country and all who serve it—and the glow from that fire can truly light the world.

Many who heard the new president’s words thought of him as a hero. Kennedy was a philosopher of courage who had written a book on the subject. Although those listening did not know it, during his life Kennedy had struggled against physical disabilities that would have hobbled most men. He considered politics at its highest level an arena for heroism, a colosseum where a few good men performed noble acts whose merits were often only dimly perceived by the rancorous, fickle masses.

And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you—ask what you can do for your country. My fellow citizens of the world: ask not what America will do for you, but what together we can do for the freedom of man.

As much as Kennedy wanted to sit in the company of greatness, he knew that no longer could civilized men stand on fields of battle fighting each other with bullet, sword, and fire when at any moment they might be enveloped in mushroom-shaped clouds vaporizing all humanity. The young leader’s great test would be in part to see whether he could define political courage in a new way for a nuclear age.

Kennedy called upon the citizenry to face the new era with intrepidness. The president wanted millions of Americans to rise out of their privatism, shake off their passivity and cynicism, and move forward in acts of sacrifice and selfless service. Since there appeared to be no great war to be won, and no immense frontier to conquer, it was unclear just where this journey would lead, or what this leader would light with the torch he raised.

Kennedy believed that as president, his overwhelming concern would lie in international affairs, and his entire speech dealt with America’s relationship to the rest of the world. He said nothing of the greatest American moral dilemma of the age: the political and economic disenfranchisement of the majority of black people. Sorensen had added the only vague reference to civil rights on the eve of the inauguration when Wofford had lobbied the speech-writer to add the words “at home” to the president’s commitment to human rights “at home and around the world.”

Kennedy talked “to those people in the huts and villages of half the globe struggling to break the bonds of mass misery,” but he said nothing of the four million Americans who would have starved if not for the surplus foods the government gave them or of the tragic lives of millions of migrant laborers across America whom Edward R. Murrow had poignantly portrayed in his recent documentary Harvest of Shame.

Kennedy’s eloquent idealism was a cup overflowing, and the new president’s auditors heard what they wanted to hear and needed to hear, be they black ministers in the South, the poor and hungry of his own land, the peoples of Europe, or the masses of Asia and Latin America. Even Castro had reached out to the new administration, saying that he was willing to “begin anew” in his relations with the United States, while Nikita Khrushchev, general secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and the chairman of the Council of Ministers, hoped for a “radical improvement” in the two countries’ relations. As Kennedy stood there on this day in which the sun could not heat the earth, he seemed to be promising warmth where there was cold, and light where men lived in darkness.

On the ride up the broad expanses of Pennsylvania Avenue, Kennedy insisted that he and Jackie ride in an open car so that people could see their new president in the clear cold air of the winter afternoon. Kennedy was not only a leader but also a leading man, and thirty-one-year-old Jackie a stunning model of a first lady. She was a woman of certain mysteries that would not be easily unraveled. She smiled with coy grace and waved her gloved hand.

There was yet another reason why so many Americans greeted this new president and first lady with such joy and anticipation. Just two months before, on November 25, 1960, Jackie had given birth to a son, John F. Kennedy Jr., and for the first time since Theodore Roosevelt’s residency, the White House would be full of children’s shouts and laughter. Since the day of John Jr.’s birth, the Kennedys had been inundated with telegrams, flowers, booties, sweaters, and a zoo of stuffed animals, the start of an immense fascination with the president’s namesake, as well as a delighted interest in his sister, Caroline. It added to the president’s aura of youthful vitality that his parents were still alive and healthy, and with so many brothers and sisters, nieces and nephews, uncles and aunts, he seemed to belong not to a family but to a clan.

The presidential limousine finally reached the reviewing stand in front of the White House. There sat Kennedy family members, esteemed officials, and close friends. As the president drove by, Joe rose up out of his seat to salute his son. The Kennedy patriarch had been his children’s great enthusiast, but no matter what honors they merited, what race they won, he had never stood to pay tribute to their achievements. But today he stood, saluting the son whom he had always called “Jack” but who now, in public or among outsiders, would be “Mr. President.” Joe’s simple gesture was not only a profound act of deference and respect for the office of the presidency, but equally a symbol of the passing of the generations. Kennedy looked up at the reviewing stand and saw his father standing there saluting him. The new president took off his hat and tipped it to his father.

While the president’s greatest destiny was just beginning, Joe’s was nearing its end. He had achieved what few men do, his transcendent dream embodied in this president bearing his name, but in doing so he had lost part of his son. “Jack doesn’t belong anymore to just a family,” he reflected. “He belongs to the country. That’s probably the saddest thing about all this. The family can be there, but there is not much they can do for the President of the United States.”

During the campaign, Joe had bragged that while he would keep quiet until election day, afterward he would have his say. “I assure you that I will do it after that, and that it will be something worthwhile,” he boasted to Newsweek. “People may even see a flash of my old-time form.” Once the election was over, however, Joe seemed not to be concerned anymore with embroiling himself in all the minutiae of politics, and he never made the statement he had so vociferously promised. When the president-elect asked his father to suggest candidates for secretary of the Treasury, Joe replied: “I can t.

Joe cared primarily about his sons’ futures now, and he had just one request to make of his son: that he name Bobby as his attorney general. As much as Kennedy wanted to reward Bobby for his endless work in the campaign, he would no more have made his brother attorney general than name an intern as America’s surgeon general. It was unthinkable to make the nation’s premier attorney a man who had never practiced law. Kennedy’s critics would argue that thirty-five-year-old Bobby was too young, too brash, too ambitious, and too rude.

Kennedy did not dare confront his father with these truths; instead, at the swimming pool at the Palm Beach mansion, he deputized Smathers to suggest gently to Joe that Bobby would make a formidable assistant secretary of Defense. Joe would not even listen to such drivel. “Goddamn it, Jack, I want to tell you once and for all. Don’t be sending these emissaries to me. Bobby spilled his blood for you. He’s worked for you. And goddamn it, he wants to be attorney general, and I want him to be attorney general, and that’s it.”

As ambitious as he was, Bobby had his own doubts about the political wisdom of becoming his brother’s attorney general. Unlike the presidentelect, Bobby had not cordoned off his inner emotions from the world. One of those who had become privy to Bobby’s thinking and feeling was John Seigenthaler, a reporter for the Nashville Tennessean. Seigenthaler had first covered Bobby during the McClellan hearings. Like Charles Bartlett and Ben Bradlee and a few other reporters, Seigenthaler had incomparable access to the Kennedys and got stories many of his colleagues could never get. Yet as the months went by more and more of what he heard and saw never made its way into his journalism.

Seigenthaler was sitting with Bobby after he had spent a long, discouraging day running around Washington talking to various people about whether he should become attorney general. That was the Kennedy way. Seek out the most knowledgeable people, get their best judgments, and then make up your own mind. In this instance, everyone from Supreme Court Justice Douglas to Senator McClellan had shaken his head in dismay at this harebrained idea. Only Hoover, who at the FBI would be working most intimately with Bobby, said that he should accept the appointment.

Bobby called his brother to tell him that he had decided against it. “We’ll go over in the morning,” Bobby said as he set down the telephone. “This will kill my father.”

Early the next day, Bobby and Seigenthaler drove over to the presidentelect’s home in Georgetown. Over breakfast, the three men discussed the appointment. Bobby detailed the reasons why he had to turn it down, and his brother told him that he had to say yes.

“You want some more coffee?” Kennedy asked.

“Look, there’re some more points I need to make with him,” Bobby told Seigenthaler as his brother walked into the kitchen.

“I think the points have all been made,” Seigenthaler said.

When Kennedy returned, Bobby set off again. The president-elect would not have put up with this endless palaver from most men. He had heard everything he needed to hear, and he had heard it tenfold. It was time to get on with things and walk outside into the cold morning and tell the waiting reporters what would become the most important appointment of his administration. “That’s it, general,” Kennedy said, cutting his brother off and calling him by his new title. “Let’s grab our balls and go.”

As Kennedy walked into the White House as president for the first time, he believed that he had surrounded himself with loyal strong men richly prepared to carry out his mandate. He had kept the obvious holdovers from the campaign, including Sorensen as special counsel in charge of domestic policy and speechwriting. Sorensen used words as the vehicle of policy. He not only wrote almost every important speech the president gave but often handed the address to the president only minutes before he spoke. Sorensen’s deputy, Mike Feldman, wrote most of the other speeches and dealt with Israel, regulatory policy, and whatever other matters came his way. Feldman may have been only half the writer that Sorensen was, but he was twice the attorney, and he became the de facto legal counsel.

Kenny O’Donnell, the appointments secretary, was the gatekeeper to the presidential person, along with Evelyn Lincoln, the president’s personal secretary. Larry O’Brien was in charge of congressional relations, yet another critical post. O’Donnell and O’Brien were the leaders of a small group in the White House that became known as the Irish Mafia; their ranks included Ted Reardon, Dick Donohue, and Dave Powers. These Irish-Americans shared two faiths, Catholicism and politics. Sorensen may have provided the eloquent public voice of the administration, but these tough-minded men fed the belly, and there was a natural, understated tension between the two groups.

As his chief foreign policy adviser in the White House, Kennedy brought in McGeorge Bundy as special assistant for national security affairs. The Harvard dean had arrived by bicycle for his first meeting with the president-elect at Arthur Schlesinger’s Cambridge house, but there was nothing casual about either Bundy’s manner or his mind. Bundy had a crucial mandate. Kennedy believed that he could not make innovative foreign policy employing the rigid, militarylike structure that Eisenhower had created with the National Security Council. The president thought the only thing to do was to pull the structure largely down, and Bundy was his engine for doing so.

Kennedy could not run his own foreign policy if he had a powerful secretary of State such as Adlai Stevenson, who lobbied for the position and was shuttled to the United Nations ambassadorship. Instead, Kennedy chose Dean Rusk, the head of the Rockefeller Foundation and a former assistant secretary of State, who willingly wore the shackles of subordination.

There was one man whom all the pundits thought would have inordinate power in the White House, and that was the president’s own father. “I want to help, but I don’t want to be a nuisance,” Joe confessed to Steve Smith, his son-in-law. “Can you tell me: do they want me or don’t they want me?”

Steve told Bobby what his father had said, and Bobby thanked his brother-in-law and said nothing. A few days later, seventy-two-year-old Joe sailed for Europe, and that entire year visited the White House only once.

Kennedy’s closest White House aides had a fierce, loving loyalty to the president they served and comradely joy in what they were doing. “We had this confidence about ourselves that seems lost from the world of power now,” reflected Feldman. “We thought we could do anything. We wrote over a hundred messages to Congress in our first hundred days. Those days were filled with so much excitement and such a feeling of euphoria because we achieved our goal and now we were doing what we looked forward to and you have a superhuman ability when you feel that way.” The working atmosphere was one of nonchalance and wit. Sorensen occasionally sent serious memos to Feldman in rhymed couplets, and Feldman, not to be bested, replied in kind.

The humor often had a serrated edge, however, that left its mark. When Kennedy decided to find a place in the White House for his young Boston mistress who had graduated from Radcliffe, he placed her in the office of her former dean. “Kennedy put the knife into Bundy by putting her on the staff,” recalled Marcus Raskin, who was only twenty-six years old when he entered the White House to serve as the resident liberal gadfly on Bundy’s staff. “And since I was the junior-most person on the staff, she was put to work for me, and Bundy said to me, ‘Well, I have a present for you.’ I knew something was going on because the president called my office a couple times not to speak to me but to speak to her. So even I figured it out at that point. And eventually she personally told me about it.”

The Kennedy humor featured put-downs in which the victim proved his mettle by quickly attacking with an even ruder counterblow. In such matters Kennedy and his friends had decorous limits that Bobby and his friends did not observe. What daring, taunting irreverence was it that allowed Claude Hooton to cable the new attorney general to remind him of the time during the campaign when he and Teddy had salted Bobby’s luggage with ladies’ underwear (I AM SURE THAT THE ATTORNEY GENERAL HAS NO RETROACTIVE POWERS CONCERNING PERFUMED UNDERGARMENTS INSERTED IN SOMEONE ELSES BAGGAGE). And what of Bobby, who did not fancy himself too powerful or too important to reply in kind: “There is some talk that I might turn the...