Camelot's Court: Inside the Kennedy White House (53 page)

After he left the government, Bundy served as president of the Ford Foundation for thirteen years, until 1979, when he became a professor of history at New York University, where he taught for ten years, followed by six years as a scholar-in-residence at the Carnegie Corporation. He died in 1996. In 1988, although he would publish
Danger and Survival: Choices About the Bomb in the First Fifty Years
, reflections on nuclear weapons, it was the failed Vietnam War that cast a constant shadow over his historical reputation. As Gordon Goldstein made clear in his 1998 book,
Lessons in Disaster
, a cooperative study with Bundy, Bundy struggled to make sense of the terrible misjudgments that led to the failed conflict. Although he knew it would seem self-serving, Bundy believed that the war was principally the result not of what the Kennedy and Johnson advisers, including the military chiefs, told them, but of what Kennedy and Johnson chose to do. It is perhaps more accurate to say that a close reading of the records shows Kennedy’s responsibility to have been less the product of active commitments to fight a large war in Vietnam than his ambivalence: his eagerness to prevent a communist victory in Vietnam matched by his reluctance, indeed refusal, to turn the conflict into America’s war, which risked Saigon’s collapse. His unwillingness to come down decisively on one side or the other of these competing policies opened the way to Johnson’s unequivocal determination to use U.S. power to preserve South Vietnam’s autonomy, arguing that this is what Kennedy would have done.

In his pursuit of this goal, Rusk, McNamara, and Rostow aided and abetted Johnson. Rusk’s nondescript posture under Kennedy, “his Buddha-like face and half-smile,” Schlesinger called it, joined to “a montage of platitudes” in a soft-spoken Georgia drawl, made him something of a nonentity in Kennedy’s circle of high-powered opinionated advisers like McNamara, Harriman, Rostow, and LeMay. His deference to Kennedy annoyed the president, who complained that Rusk “never gives me anything to chew on. . . . You never know what he is thinking.” Rusk’s courtly manner and deferential regard for higher authority perfectly suited Johnson. Regular foreign policy briefings for the vice president, in which they shared an enthusiasm for the Cold War clichés of the day like the defense of “the free world,” gave Rusk an immediate place at the center of Johnson’s administration. It did not hurt that they were both southerners who agreed on the compelling need for a civil rights revolution that would end segregation and disarm African American anger by giving blacks the chance to vote and compete on level ground with whites for a better life.

Rusk’s determination not to allow communist control of South Vietnam, which he feared would lead to other acts of aggression and touch off a new round of recrimination against loyal public officials, echoed Johnson’s openly stated pronouncement to Rusk, McNamara, Bundy, McCone, and Lodge on the third day of his presidency: “I am not going to lose Vietnam.” Through all the turmoil over the next five years—the bombing of North Vietnam punctuated by pauses in hopes of inducing peace talks, the dispatch of more than 500,000 U.S. troops, with the deaths of more than 30,000 by 1968, and the eruption of antiwar protests that moved a French travel agent to advertise, “See America while it lasts”—Rusk backed Johnson’s escalation and direction of the conflict at every turn, believing that a communist victory would be an impermissible blow to U.S. national security.

Like his many years in government, Rusk’s post–State Department career was publicly muted. A professor of international law at the University of Georgia from 1970 to 1984, he did not publish a memoir,
As I Saw It
, until 1990, four years before he died at the age of eighty-five. It was an uncontroversial account with few recriminations, leaving it to history to render an independent verdict on his career. Unfortunately for Rusk, like Johnson he is doomed to be remembered not for any great advances in foreign affairs but as one of the principal architects of America’s disastrous losing war in Vietnam.

Robert McNamara’s historical reputation bears an even heavier share of the burden. Staying on as secretary of defense until February 1968, McNamara was even more instrumental than Rusk in encouraging first Kennedy and then Johnson to fight and win the war. Although he made an impressive mark as an industrial leader on the Ford Motor Company before becoming defense secretary; won plaudits for proposing Kennedy’s quarantine of Cuba, which contributed so much to the peaceful resolution of the missile crisis; wisely backed the test ban treaty and, subsequently, nuclear disarmament; and provided well-regarded leadership at the World Bank between 1968 and 1981, he is largely remembered for his unyielding support of the decisions on bombing and troop deployments that went so wrong in Vietnam.

By 1968, McNamara understood how mistaken he, Johnson, Rusk, and the Joint Chiefs had been in their assumptions about Vietnam. He became overtly morose about the war and began pressing Johnson to do whatever possible to end the conflict as soon as possible. After leaving the government, he remained largely silent about the war until publishing a mea culpa in 1995,
In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam
. The book was a confession of sorts that brought him more criticism than praise for having finally owned up to the terrible miscalculations he did so much to produce. McNamara was no more successful in disarming critics when he sat for a series of interviews for a 2003 documentary,
Fog of War
. It was another attempt to win forgiveness for his unforgivable errors in Vietnam. McNamara passed away in 2009 at the age of ninety-three. His reputation as the longest-serving secretary of defense in U.S. history will be part of an endless argument about the triumphs and defeats of the Kennedy and Johnson presidencies.

Walt W. Rostow was the most unrepentant of all the Kennedy-Johnson architects of the war. In 1966, when Bundy resigned, Johnson made Rostow his national security adviser. As with Kennedy, Rostow urged Johnson to expand U.S. involvement in Vietnam to prevent a communist victory. He never regretted that advice or, unlike McNamara and Bundy, saw any reason to apologize for it. On the contrary, to the end of his life in 2003, at the age of eighty-six, he argued that the war may not have saved South Vietnam from communism but it gave the rest of Southeast Asia time to build its defenses. Like General William Westmoreland, who served as Johnson’s top commander in Vietnam, Rostow believed that the United States did not lose the war but gave up the fight because of public weariness over the conflict. He asserted that those who lost loved ones in the war could take satisfaction from knowing that the United States stopped the dominoes from falling.

John McCone and Maxwell Taylor, two other administration hawks, did not stay on for very long with Johnson. McCone left in April 1964, and Taylor resigned as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in July 1964, when he became ambassador to Saigon for a year. It is doubtful that either one would have remained through a second Kennedy term. By November 1963, Kennedy had lost confidence in their respective judgments. Both had been hawkish during the missile crisis and much more committed to military interventions in Cuba and Vietnam than Kennedy. As for other members of the Joint Chiefs, they quietly retired in time, except for LeMay, who was forced to step down in February 1965. He remained in the public eye for more than three years after, declaring that the United States should bomb North Vietnam back to the Stone Age or at least, as he claimed he said, America had the capability to do it. The remark haunted him in 1968 when he agreed to become Alabama governor George Wallace’s vice presidential running mate on the failed American Independent Party ticket. Unfairly identified with Wallace’s segregationist views, LeMay retreated into private life, living in relative obscurity for twenty-two years before his death in 1990.

Paul Volcker, the chairman of the Federal Reserve Board from 1979 to 1987, believes that a president without advisers “is crippled in developing, defending and administering his policies.” Kennedy’s experience suggests a more complicated result. Through his thousand days in the White House he learned that even the brightest and most well meaning of advisers misjudge a situation and offer poor counsel. De Gaulle’s guidance about gathering a variety of opinions on big policy questions and then following your own judgment resonated forcefully with Kennedy after two years as president. By November 1963, seeing how limited the expertise of the so-called experts was had made him a wiser decision-maker. While there would have been stumbles and reassessments during a second term, it is impossible to say exactly how the experience of his first four years would have played after his likely reelection. The initial hard lessons of his first term undoubtedly would have made him a more effective president in a second go-round. His tragic assassination in Dallas, however, deprived us of the chance to judge a second-term performance. It is easy nonetheless to believe that his premature death opened the way to events—the expanded Vietnam War, Nixon’s election, Watergate—that changed America and the world for the worse.

Kennedy’s death leaves us with unanswered questions: Would he have won reelection in 1964? And assuming that he did, would his health have held out in a second term? Would his womanizing have caught up with him and jeopardized his presidency? Would he have persuaded Congress to pass his four major legislative initiatives? Would he have reestablished relations with Cuba and found a way out of Vietnam? Would he have moved toward détente with the Soviet Union and possibly China?

Had Kennedy had a chance to write about his administration, he undoubtedly would have reflected on the cloud of uncertainty that hovered over everything they did and might have done in a second term. His time in the White House underscored for him that there are no experts in public policy—only men and women, with the best of intentions, guessing at what would work. The principal lesson of any presidential term, he would surely have acknowledged, is the anguish of choosing between imperfect options and having to take responsibility for lives lost and money wasted when fallible advisers and chiefs take wrong turns.

Whatever the outcome of a second Kennedy term might have been, speculation about it as better than what Johnson gave the country serves Kennedy’s historical reputation, which remains extraordinarily high. The affection for him generated by his persona and the tragedy of his assassination have encouraged positive assessments of his leadership. Fifty years after his death, there is no sign that Kennedy’s hold on Americans is anywhere in retreat.

Notes

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Chapter 1: John F. Kennedy: Prelude to a Presidency

    1  
Small wonder:
Schlesinger related his conversation to me in 2001. Also see, Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.,
Robert Kennedy and His Times
(Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1978), 228.

    2  
Immediately after:
For JFK’s medical history, see the Dr. Janet Travell medical records at the John F. Kennedy Library (JFKL). Also, Janet Travell Oral History at the JFKL. For LBJ’s attack on JFK, see Robert Dallek,
Lone Star Rising: Lyndon Johnson and His Times, 1908–1960
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), 571–73. The medical bag is discussed in Abraham Ribicoff Oral History (all oral histories hereafter abbreviated OH), Columbia Universirty. On Nixon and the break-ins, see Robert Dallek,
An Unfinished Life: John F. Kennedy, 1917–1963
(New York: Little, Brown, 2003), 286, and the note on 755; also 299–300 on post-election questions about JFK’s health; Theodore C. Sorensen,
Kennedy
(New York: Bantam Books, 1966), 268.

    3  
Kennedy echoed:
Kenneth P. O’Donnell and David F. Powers,
Johnny, We Hardly Knew Ye
(Boston: Little, Brown, 1970), 234.

    3  
Kennedy’s route
: Dallek,
Unfinished Life,
6–13, 19, 157–58.

    6  
No one, however, contributed more:
Ibid., 14–25, 53, 112. Also Doris Kearns Goodwin,
The Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys: An American Saga
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 1987), 446–48, 498–99.

    7  
Joe’s reach:
Robert Dallek,
Franklin D. Roosevelt
and American Foreign Policy, 1932–1945
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), 164; Michael R. Beschloss,
Kennedy and Roosevelt: The Uneasy Alliance
(New York: Norton, 1980), 123–28, and chap. 6; Dallek,
Unfinished Life
, 53–54.

    9  
The fall in public:
Goodwin,
The Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys
, 600–04, 621–23.

    9  
Joe’s hopes for:
John H. Davis,
The Kennedys: Dynasty and Disaster, 1848–1983
(New York: McGraw-Hill, 1984), 104–06; U.S. Air Force Report, Aug. 14, 1944, JFKL; William G. Penny to JFKL, Aug. 14, 2001, JFKL.

  10  
But not for long:
Dallek,
Unfinished Life
, 27, 33–35, 73–75.

  11  
His medical ordeal:
Ibid., 76–77.

  11  
Kennedy’s medical issues:
Ibid., 51–68, 111–17.

  12  
In 1945–46:
JFK Tape Recording 39, October 1960, JFKL; Joan and Clay Blair, Jr.,
The Search for JFK
(New York: Berkley, 1974), 356.

  13  
Once committed:
James McGregor Burns,
John Kennedy
(New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1959), 99; Twain quote is in Anthony Jay, ed.,
The Oxford Dictionary of Political Quotations
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), 372; Charles Spaulding, OH, JFKL; JFK interview with James McGregor Burns, March 22, 1959, JFKL; Victor Lasky,
J.F.K.
(New York: Macmillan, 1963), 117.

  14  
The Senate was:
Dallek,
Unfinished Life,
chap. 6, especially 177–78, 189–92, 226; Ted Widmer,
Listening In: The Secret White House Recordings of John F. Kennedy
(New York: Hyperion, 2012), 30–31.

  15  
Journalists and party leaders:
William V. Shannon,
New York Post
, Nov. 11, 1957; James Reston,
New York Times
, Oct. 10, Nov. 10, 1958; Peter Lisagor, OH, JFKL; Widmer,
Listening In
, 287.

  15  
Many in the Democratic Party:
Newton Minow, OH; William Attwood, OH; William Benton, OH; and William McCormick Blair, Jr., OH, Columbia University; Peter Collier and David Horowitz,
The Kennedys: An American Drama
(New York: Summit Books, 1984), 294.

  16  
In running for:
Harris Wofford,
Of Kennedys and Kings
(New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1980), 36–37.

  17  “
I
claim not”:
Quoted in David Donald,
Lincoln Reconsidered
(New York: Vintage Books, 1961), 138.

  17  
His fight for:
Dallek,
Unfinished Life
, 252–58.

  18  
The question shadowed:
O’Donnell and Powers,
Johnny, We Hardly Knew Ye
, 205–208; Sept. 12, 1960, speech, Box 1061, Pre-Presidential Papers (PPP), JFKL.

  19  
It did not:
On the vote, see Louis Harris to Joseph Alsop, Nov. 16, 1960, “An Analysis of the 1960 Election for President,” Joseph and Stewart Alsop Papers, Library of Congress (LOC); Theodore H. White,
The Making of the President, 1960
(New York: Atheneum, 1961), 350–65; JFK’s New Frontier speech, July 15, 1960, Box 1027, PPP; and John Kenneth Galbraith,
Letters to Kennedy
, ed. James Goodman (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998), 10.

  19  
Kennedy and his advisers:
On Nixon, see Robert Dallek,
Nixon and Kissinger: Partners in Power
(New York: HarperCollins, 2007), chap. 1.

  20  
The importance of:
White,
Making of the President, 1960
, 286–94; Galbraith,
Letters to Kennedy
, 14.

  21  
Kennedy won:
White,
Making of the President, 1960
, 350–65; Sorensen,
Kennedy
, 238–51; O’Donnell and Powers,
Johnny, We Hardly Knew Ye
, 229; Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.,
A Thousand Days: John F. Kennedy in the White House
(Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1965), 125.

  22  
The same week:
See
New York Times
, Nov. 15, 1960; O’Donnell and Powers,
Johnny, We Hardly Knew Ye
, 229.

  22  
Two meetings with:
Robert F. Kennedy, OH; Charles Spaulding, OH, JFKL; for the Dec. 5, 1960, and Jan. 19, 1961, meetings with Eisenhower, see the documents in Box 29A, President’s Office Files (POF), JFKL, which list the topics for discussion.

  24  
Kennedy, however, had no:
Clark Clifford,
Counsel to the President: A Memoir
(New York: Random House, 1991), 319–20.

  24  
At the same time, Kennedy:
Richard Neustadt, “Organizing the Transition,” Sept. 15, 1960, POF, JFKL; Richard Neustadt, OH, Columbia University; Schlesinger,
A Thousand Days
, 122–23.

  25  
Neither Clifford nor:
The quote is in Carl M. Brauer,
Presidential Transitions: Eisenhower Through Reagan
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), 64.

  26  
Kennedy saw:
The Adams and Wilson quotes are in Robert Dallek, “Presidential ‘Disability’: An American Dilemma,” University Lecture, Boston University, 1999. For the Eisenhower comment, see Stephen E. Ambrose,
Eisenhower: The President
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 1984), 599–600.

  26  
As the former Senate
: Dallek,
Lone Star Rising
on LBJ’s pre–vice presidential career; Robert Dallek,
Flawed Giant: Lyndon Johnson and His Times, 1961–1973
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), 8–9; Jacqueline Kennedy,
Historic Conversations on Life with John F. Kennedy
(New York: Hyperion, 2011), 56; Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.,
The Age of Roosevelt
(Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1957–1960); Brauer,
Presidential Transitions
, 65–66.

  28  
But whatever Kennedy
: George F. Kennan, OH, JFKL.

  29  
Yet however wise:
Interview with Priscilla Johnson; Dallek,
Unfinished Life
, 151–52, 192–95.

  31  
Kennedy’s affinity for:
Mimi Alford,
Once Upon a Secret: My Affair with President John F. Kennedy and Its Aftermath
(New York: Random House, 2012), see esp. 82–83, 101–105, 109, 124–25, 127.

Chapter 2: Robert Kennedy: Adviser-in-Chief

  35  
As Kennedy searched:
The Parnell quote is in Antony Jay, ed.,
The Oxford Dictionary of Political Quotations
(New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), 284.

  35  
Kennedy saw:
See my discussion of Joe Kennedy’s views on his family in Dallek,
Unfinished Life
.

  35  
When Jack first entered:
Ibid., 118–19, 121–26.

  37  
Whatever Jack’s limitations:
Widmer,
Listening In
, 32; Ralph G. Martin and Ed Plaut,
Front Runner, Dark Horse
(Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1960), 133; Collier and Horowitz,
The Kennedys
, 183; Blair and Blair, Jr.,
The Search for JFK
, 478–79, 495.

  38  
Once in office:
Arthur Krock, OH, JFKL; Lasky,
J.F.K.
, 117.

  38  
The alternative:
Schlesinger,
Robert Kennedy,
42–66. Also see James W. Hilty,
Robert Kennedy: Brother Protector
(Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1998), chaps. 1–3.

  40  
While Jack served:
Dallek,
Unfinished Life
, 67–81.

  41  
In the fall:
Schlesinger,
Robert Kennedy
, 60–93; RFK Diary in Folder “Trips 1951, Mid & Far East,” Box 24, RFK Papers, JFKL.

  42  
The moment came in 1952
: Thomas J. Whalen, “Evening the Score: John F. Kennedy, Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr., and the 1952 Massachusetts Senate Race,” Ph.D. Dissertation, History Department, Boston College, 1998, 243–55, 285; Martin and Plaut,
Front Runner, Dark Horse
, 164; Schlesinger,
Robert Kennedy
, 94–98; Dallek,
Unfinished Life,
168–76.

  44  
In January 1953
: Schlesinger,
Robert Kennedy
, 99–109.

  45  
Perhaps Bobby’s:
Ibid., 109–29. Also Dallek,
Lone Star Rising
, 451–59.

  46  
In 1956:
Schlesinger,
Robert Kennedy
, 130–33; Dallek,
Lone Star Rising
, 489–91, 502–504; Dallek,
Unfinished Life
, 203–208. “Hi, sonny” is in Evan Thomas,
Robert Kennedy: His Life
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 2000), 96.

  49  
Despite his assessment:
Schlesinger,
Robert Kennedy
, 133–36; for JFK’s speeches between September and November 1956, see Compilation of Speeches, JFKL; Herbert Parmet,
Jack: The Struggles of John F. Kennedy
(New York: Dial Press, 1980), 384–86; Goodwin,
Fitzgeralds and Kennedys
, 791–92.

  50  
The 1956 ventures:
Schlesinger,
Robert Kennedy
, chaps. 8–9; Goodwin,
Fitzgeralds and Kennedys
, 787–88.

  51  
By October:
Sorensen,
Kennedy
, 35, 117; Handwritten Notes: “Oct. 28, 1959—RFK House—Hyannis Port,” JFKL; Paul B. Fay, Jr.,
The Pleasure of His Company
(New York: Harper & Row, 1966), 76–77.

  51  
Bobby’s initial field assignment:
Dallek,
Lone Star
, 559; Jeff Shesol,
Mutual Contempt: Lyndon Johnson, Robert Kennedy, and the Feud that Defined a Decade
(New York: Norton, 1997), 10–11.

  53  
And for Bobby Kennedy:
Schlesinger,
Robert Kennedy
, 194–97; Dallek,
Unfinished Life
, 239–51.

  54  
West Virginia:
White,
Making of the President, 1960
, 96–114; Hubert H. Humphrey,
The Education of a Public Man
(Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1976), 208, 216–17, 475; Schlesinger,
Robert Kennedy
, 198–204; Thomas,
Robert Kennedy
, 93–96; Dallek,
Unfinished Life
, 252–58.

  56  
Jack and Bobby
: Schlesinger,
Robert Kennedy,
204–206; Dallek,
Lone Star Rising,
569–73; Earl Mazo, OH, Columbia University; Bobby Baker,
Wheeling and Dealing: Confessions of a Capitol Hill Operator
(New York: Norton, 1978), 118.

  57  
It was an empty
: Schlesinger,
Robert Kennedy,
206–11; Dallek,
Unfinished Life
, 267–74.

  58  
Once Jack had
: Schlesinger,
Robert Kennedy
, 211–19; Thomas,
Robert Kennedy
, 100–08; Earl Mazo, OH, Columbia University; Abraham Ribicoff, OH, Columbia University; Parmet,
Jack
, 34; Eleanor Roosevelt to JFK, Aug. 16, 1960; Eleanor Roosevelt to Mary Lasker, Aug. 15, 1960, Box 32, POF.

  61  
With Jack exhausted
:
Newsweek
, Nov. 21, 1960;
New York Times
, Nov. 23, 1960; Schlesinger,
Robert Kennedy
, 228–36; Thomas,
Robert Kennedy
, 109–11; John Seigenthaler, OH, JFKL; RFK to Drew Pearson, Dec. 15, 1960, Box 23, RFK Papers, JFKL; Dallek,
Unfinished Life
, 316–20.

  65  
Bobby’s appointment:
C. Douglas Dillon, OH, JFKL.

Chapter 3: “A Ministry of Talent”

  67  
The day after
: Richard Reeves,
President Kennedy: Profile of Power
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 1993), 25.

  68  
Compounding Kennedy’s worries
: Dallek,
Unfinished Life,
92–94.