JFK's Last Hundred Days: The Transformation of a Man and the Emergence of a Great President (43 page)

James MacGregor Burns called the memorials
and grief “something that goes beyond rational calculation.” Burns had been the only author to write an authorized Kennedy biography. Kennedy had expected a book like his acclaimed
Roosevelt: The Lion and the Fox
,
and gave him access to his Senate files and submitted to hours of interviews.
His 1960 biography was admiring but suggested
that Kennedy lacked moral passion, listening too much to his intellect and too little to his heart.
*
Faced with explaining why a man he had criticized for lacking passion had excited such passionate grief, Burns said, “
Was it a fabrication
? Was it that he was handsome, and his wife and kids—one statesmen who had cute kids? You don’t find that many.” He concluded that it had to be “something that transcends all this.”

The transcendent reason was that Kennedy was being mourned for his promise as well as for his accomplishments, a promise that had become increasingly evident during his last hundred days. This is why Albert Schweitzer praised him as a man “
who could have been the savior
of the world,”
William Attwood believed the next five years
of his presidency would have “ushered in a kind of American renaissance at home and abroad,” Ted Sorensen called his death “
an incalculable loss of the future
,” the diplomat Chip Bohlen thought that when he was killed and Johnson sworn in, it represented “
the future giving way to the present
or the past,” and the Israeli statesman Abba Eban, after defining tragedy as “
the difference between what is
and what might have been,” called his assassination “one of the most authentically tragic events in the history of nations.”

“What might have been” is speculation, but what Kennedy intended to do is not.

David Ormsby-Gore wrote in his condolence letter to Jackie, “
He had great things to do
and would have done them.” Anyone wishing to wager against him doing these great things, and becoming a great president, should consider what he had already done.

He had been determined to see combat and demonstrate his courage during the war despite his poor health. After failing his military physicals, he had followed a strict regimen of physical conditioning and been accepted by the Navy, then pulled strings to be transferred from Intelligence to PT boats, and through willpower, courage, physical stamina, and luck had survived the sinking of
PT 109
and been decorated for heroism. He had run for Congress at the age of twenty-nine, and despite being gravely ill he had beaten more seasoned opponents. He had challenged Lodge for the Senate in 1952, and confounded the professionals by beating him decisively in a year when Republicans handily won the White House and Eisenhower carried Massachusetts. He had been determined to win a Pulitzer Prize, and he had. He had told Margaret Coit that he would become president, and seven years later, despite his youth and religion, he had done that, too. He had wanted to deliver the greatest speech by a president since the Gettysburg Address, and his inaugural address had been just that.

He had told Henry Brandon
that to win the presidency he had to be a cold warrior, but to win a second term he had to be seen as searching for a peaceful end to the cold war. Days before leaving for Dallas
he told Averell Harriman that he planned
to make improved relations with the Soviet Union and a comprehensive test ban treaty, one including underground testing, the “principal thrust” of his second term. He also intended to travel to Moscow for a summit meeting with Khrushchev; launch a secret dialogue with Castro; explore the possibility of establishing a relationship with China; withdraw a thousand advisers from Vietnam by the end of 1963 and remove more during 1964; settle the cold war; end the threat of a nuclear war; launch an attack on poverty; pass his tax cut, civil rights, and immigration bills; preside over the most robust, full-employment economy in American history; and continue marrying poetry to power and inspiring the young.

What he intended to do is easier to discern than
why
he intended to do it. His remark during his dispute with the American Legion that “
more often than not
, the right thing to do is the right thing politically” shows that he realized that morality and political success were not exclusive, but raises the question of how much he wanted to accomplish these things because he considered them moral imperatives, or because they had engaged his emotions, or because he saw them as hurdles he needed to jump if he was to be judged a great man. Emotions, morals, and ambition were so tightly woven in him that unbraiding them would have been difficult enough had he served two terms, written his own memoirs, and been the subject of books by advisers like Schlesinger and Sorensen that were not composed under the shadow of Dallas. What
is
clear is that just as ambition and realpolitik had characterized his congressional career and early White House years, morality and emotion tempered his ambitions during his last hundred days.

Nor is it speculation to contrast what he intended to do with what happened.

Lincoln noted in her diary
on November 23 that “Bobby asked me to take all of the tapes (telephone and recordings of cabinet room meetings) home for safe keeping”—presumably to prevent them from falling into Johnson’s hands. Bobby kept their existence secret from Sorensen and Schlesinger, who were both writing accounts of the administration, and gave them to the Kennedy Library. Kennedy never had the chance to write his memoirs and plead his case before the high court of history, but it is inconceivable that someone who admired history and the written word as much as he did, had dictated the most moving and memorable passages in his inaugural address, and had won a Pulitzer Prize would not have written one of the most literate, honest, and engrossing presidential memoirs of all time.

Johnson asked Kennedy’s aides to stay on but forbade them to wear their
PT 109
tie clasps in the White House. Many of those who had been closest to Kennedy resigned in 1964, including O’Donnell, Powers, Schlesinger, Salinger, Sorensen, and Bobby. Most of his foreign policy team, including Rusk, McNamara, and Bundy, stayed on.
Johnson kept Hoover at the FBI
beyond retirement age and urged him and Richard Katzenbach, who had replaced Robert Kennedy as attorney general, to reopen the sex angle of the Bobby Baker scandal, perhaps hoping it might blacken his predecessor’s reputation.
The
Evening Star
reported
in March 1965 that Rometsch had asked the State Department for permission to return to the United States so she could marry “a staff member of an important congressional committee” (presumably La Verne Duffy), and had admitted belonging to two Communist youth organizations before moving to West Germany. The paper also reported that Republicans on the Senate Rules Committee wanted to explore the party-girl aspects of the Baker case, and that one of Baker’s girls was claiming that her clients had included “some members of the executive branch.”

Congress passed Kennedy’s immigration bill, the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965. It made immigration easier for residents of the Far East and Asian Subcontinent, and with the exception of the Civil Rights Act has probably done more to transform American society than any legislation in the last half century.

The “Great Society,” Johnson’s domestic legislative program, was largely a compendium of Kennedy’s bills and initiatives. Medicare had been gaining traction before Dallas, and according to a
New York Times
editorial published on November 22, “
The most forgotten of all
the great forgotten issues of 1963, medical care for the aged, is finally getting a modicum of attention on Capitol Hill” and “the chances for sound action have been improved by the recommendations of a 12-member private advisory group.” Johnson pushed Kennedy’s tax-cut bill through Congress, but Kennedy had been on track to achieve this. The House had approved his bill in September, and when Bradlee needled him about not getting it passed before the end of the year, he had said, “
God, what does it matter, Ben
? We’re going to get the tax bill. It’s going to come in February. O.K., it’s not this year but it’s two months later.” On November 23,
Walter Heller asked Johnson
if he wanted him to continue pursuing the antipoverty program that Kennedy had planned to launch in 1964. Johnson said yes, but suggested calling it “The War on Poverty.” After Johnson escalated U.S. participation in the Vietnam War in 1965 without raising taxes, Heller resigned in protest from the Council of Economic Advisers.

Kennedy had persuaded Halleck and Dirksen to support his civil rights bill, and the House Judiciary Committee had reported out a strengthened bill including a provision prohibiting racial discrimination in employment. Congress enacted the Civil Rights Act in July 1964. Kennedy would have succeeded in getting a civil rights bill through Congress, but perhaps not until after the election. On the one-year anniversary of Dallas,
Look
magazine published an article by the reporter Richard Wilson titled, “
What Happened to the Kennedy Program
.” Wilson interviewed Democratic and Republican congressional leaders and found them unanimous in concluding, that the Kennedy program “would have been adopted had he lived, just as it was adopted when he was dead.” Senate Majority Leader Mansfield said, “The assassination made no real difference. Adoption of the tax bill and civil rights bill might have taken a little longer, but they would have been adopted.” Senate Minority Leader Dirksen said, “The program was on its way before November 22, 1963. Its time had come.” According to House Majority Leader Carl Albert, “The pressure behind this program had become so great that it would have been adopted in essentially the same form whether Kennedy lived or died,” and House Minority Leader Halleck said, “The assassination made no difference. The program was already made.” They had to have known that their opinions would upset the notoriously touchy Johnson, but they made them anyway. There was no political gain in voicing them and considerable risk, since all four men would have to work with Johnson during the next four years, making their statements all the more impressive and credible.

Goldwater lost to Johnson in a landslide, running so poorly that almost forty conservative GOP House members lost their seats. Kennedy would have won a resounding victory, too, although with fewer votes in the South, and he would not have benefited from the assassination factor. But like Johnson, he would have had a liberal majority in Congress that would have made it easier to pass his legislative agenda.

First Deputy Premier Anastas Mikoyan led the official Soviet delegation to Kennedy’s funeral. Jackie took his hand and said, “
Tell Mr. Khrushchev
from me that my husband and Mr. Khrushchev would have brought peace to the world by working together. Now, Mr. Khrushchev will have to do it alone,” a comment that speaks volumes about her low regard for Johnson. Ambassador Dobrynin believed that if Kennedy had lived, relations between the United States and the Soviet Union would have improved after a second summit between Kennedy and Khrushchev, because “
Khrushchev did not want a repetition
of the painful and damaging 1961 meeting in Vienna.”

Jean Daniel had been with Castro when they were interrupted by news of the assassination. A stunned Castro said, “
This is bad news
. This is a serious matter, an extremely serious matter. There is the end of your mission of peace.”
On November 25, Chase sent Bundy a memorandum
about what he called “Bill Attwood’s Cuban exercise,” writing that “the events of November 22 would appear to make accommodation with Castro an even more doubtful issue than it was.” He continued, “While I think that President Kennedy could have accommodated with Castro and gotten away with it with a minimum of domestic heat, I’m not sure about President Johnson.”
When Lechuga ran into Attwood
in the UN Delegates’ Lounge on December 2, he informed him that he had received a letter from Cuba (Castro himself had written it) authorizing him to discuss a specific agenda for secret talks. In a memorandum to Bundy, Chase said that Attwood did not know if the letter had been written before or after November 22, but added, “In any event, Lechuga has apparently received no stop order since the assassination. One might assume, therefore, that the assassination has not changed Castro’s mind about talking to the U.S.” He reported that Attwood thought the new administration should listen to what Castro was proposing, and that “it would be very interesting to know what is in the letter.”

During a December 19 National Security Council meeting on the Cuban situation,
Bundy described the recent contacts
with Castro, and said that the initiative had been on Castro’s part “and we are essentially faced with a decision as to whether or not we are prepared to listen to what Castro has to say.” President Johnson decided not to listen.
Chase wrote in a memorandum
that his reaction to continuing the talks was “somewhere between lukewarm and cool.”
In January, Chase told Attwood
that Johnson would not be pursuing the opening to Castro in an election year.

Bobby Kennedy sent a memorandum to Dean Rusk
in early December 1963 urging him to rescind the regulations prohibiting U.S. citizens from traveling to Cuba. He argued that the travel ban, which had been imposed by Eisenhower in the final days of his presidency, was “inconsistent with traditional American liberties” and lifting it would be “more consistent with our views as a free society and would contrast with such things as the Berlin Wall and Communist controls on such travel.” His proposal was vetoed at a State Department meeting that he was not invited to attend.

Johnson met with Lodge on November 24
and, instead of discussing a timetable for the phased withdrawal of U.S. advisers, told him, “I am not going to lose Vietnam. I am not going to be the president who saw Southeast Asia go the way China went.” Two days later, he approved a National Security Memorandum containing just the sort of language that Mansfield had cautioned Kennedy against using. It stated, “
It remains the central object of the United States
in South Vietnam to assist the people and Government of that country to win their contest against the externally directed and supported Communist conspiracy.” Although it also said that the “objectives” of the withdrawal of U.S. military personnel remained, no U.S. advisers were withdrawn before the end of the year.