The Kennedy Half-Century (128 page)

84
. Edward M. Kennedy to Ronald Reagan, October 24, 1985, Presidential Handwriting File, Series II: Presidential Records, 5/29/85–10/31/85, Box 3, Folder 207, Ronald Reagan Library.

85
. Lois Romano, “Family, Friends Pay Tribute to Kennedy at Mass Here,”
Washington Post
, November 23, 1983.

86
. Ronald Reagan, “Statement on the 20th Anniversary of the Death of President John
F. Kennedy,” November 22, 1983, Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley,
The American Presidency Project
,
http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=40800
 [accessed February 14, 2012].

87
. Letter from Caroline B. Kennedy and John F. Kennedy, Jr., to Ronald Reagan, March 10, 1985, ID#297993, FE008, WHORM: Subject File, Ronald Reagan Library.

88
. Ronald Reagan, “Remarks at a Fund-raising Reception for the John F. Kennedy Library Foundation,” June 24, 1985, Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley,
The American Presidency Project
,
http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=38816
 [accessed December 28, 2011].

89
. Letter from John F. Kennedy, Jr., to Ronald Reagan, March 12, 1985, ID#297993 (1), FE 008, WHORM: Subject File, Ronald Reagan Library.

90
. Telephone interview with Ron Reagan, Jr., March 8, 2012.

91
. Two letters written after the airport meeting are indicative of the men’s cordial relationship. Johnson wrote: “Please know that I value your friendship, as I did your father’s … ” When asked why he had broken away from GOP celebrations to see off Johnson, Bush told Joe Frantz, director of the LBJ Oral History project at the University of Texas, at the airport on January 20, 1969: “He has been a fine president and invariably courteous and fair to me and my people, and I thought that I belonged here to show in a small way how much I have appreciated him.” E-mail from Liza Talbot, LBJ Library, May 16, 2012.

92
. Timothy Naftali,
George H. W. Bush
(New York: Times Books, 2007), 20.

93
. Sabato,
Feeding Frenzy
, 148–51.

94
. Biden would run for president again in 2008, doing poorly and dropping out early—until Barack Obama put him on his winning ticket for vice president.

95
. Representative Richard Gephardt (D-MO) made this quip during a roast for Senator Bill Bradley (D-NJ) that was attended by Biden and other Democratic presidential aspirants. See Robin Toner, “Far Trumpet Is Heard Anew As Candidates Invoke J.F.K.,”
New York Times
, July 5, 1987.

96
. Ibid.

97
. The idea behind the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), or “Star Wars” program, was for the Pentagon to launch laser-powered satellites into space that could shoot down enemy missiles before they reached U.S shores. See Frances Fitzgerald,
Way Out There in the Blue: Reagan, Star Wars and the End of the Cold War
(New York: Touchstone, 2000).

98
. “Echoes of Kennedy,”
New York Times
, July 5, 1987.

99
. Peter Goldman, Tom Mathews, and the Newsweek Special Election Team,
The Quest for the Presidency 1988
(New York: Touchstone, 1989), 248.

100
. However, Robertson’s father had been a U.S. senator from Virginia, Democrat A. Willis Robertson, who served from 1946 to 1966, and the younger Robertson had long been involved in politics.

101
. Goldman et al.,
Quest for the Presidency 1988
, 383.

102
. This is an excerpt of a longer exchange. The complete transcript is available here: Presidential Candidates Debates: “Vice-Presidential Debate in Omaha, Nebraska,” October 5, 1988, Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley,
The American Presidency Project
,
http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=29424
 [accessed January 6, 2012].

103
. Lee Atwater, who was George H. W. Bush’s campaign manager in 1988, said Dan Quayle cost Bush 2 to 3 percentage points. Roger Simon, “McCain Camp Trying to Scapegoat
Palin,”
Politico
, October 30, 2008,
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1008/15073.html
 [accessed May 2, 2012]. See also Roger Simon, “Would the Dream Ticket Be a Nightmare?”
Politico
, June 4, 2008,
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0608/10856.html
 [accessed May 2, 2012]; and Martin P. Wattenberg, “The Role of Vice Presidential Candidate Ratings in Presidential Voting Behavior,”
American Politics Quarterly
23, no. 4 (October 1995): 504–14.

104
. For a list of some of Quayle’s other gaffes, see the “Wisdom of Dan Quayle” website,
http://www.ssqq.com/archive/vinlin03.htm
 [accessed April 3, 2012]. See also Sabato,
Feeding Frenzy
, 113.

105
. Letter from Prescott Bush to Clover Dulles, April 1969, Allen Dulles Papers, Box 10, Folder 11, “Bush, Prescott, 1952–69,” Mudd Manuscript Library, Princeton University.

106
. Herbert S. Parmet,
George Bush: The Life of a Lone Star Yankee
(New York: Scribner, 1997), 363.

107
. George Bush, “Proclamation 6159—Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy Family Appreciation Day, 1990,” July 18, 1990, Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley,
The American Presidency Project
,
http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=23750
 [accessed January 6, 2012].

108
. Bush was president of the Zapata Off-shore Drilling Co. at the time and he phoned FBI Agent Graham Kitchel at 1:45 P.M. CST on 11/22/63 to pass on a rumor Bush had heard about a college student named James Parrott. Supposedly, Parrott had threatened to kill JFK. Memorandum from SA Graham W. Kitchel to SAC, Houston, November 22, 1963, “JFK Murder Solved,”
http://jfkmurdersolved.com/bush.htm
 [accessed April 5, 2012]. The FBI put two agents, William Schmidt and Kenneth Jackson, on Bush’s Parrott tip. Nothing came of it. Parrott was able to confirm his whereabouts on 11/22. Parrott’s mother and one of his friends insisted that he had been at his home in Houston that day. The documents are available at
http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?docId=62280&rel-Pageld=12
 [accessed May 22, 2012].

109
. The “Bush did it” theory is mainly linked to two documents. The first is a memo dated 11/29/63 from J. Edgar Hoover to the Director of Intelligence and Research at the State Department which contains the following curious sentence: “The substance of the foregoing information [Cuban ex-patriots’ reactions to the assassination] was orally furnished by Mr. George Bush of the Central Intelligence Agency …” When a reporter asked about this document during the 1980s, a spokesperson for Vice President Bush said that Bush had worked for an oil drilling company in 1963, not the CIA. A man named George William Bush did work for the CIA in 1963, but he denied that he was the person cited in Hoover’s memo (George William Bush’s sworn affidavit is available at
http://www.aarclibrary.org/notices/Affidavit_of_George_William_Bush_880921.pdf
). Thus, the Bush reference in Hoover’s memo has never been satisfactorily explained. Perhaps Hoover had confused the CIA’s Bush with another CIA agent who had briefed him. There was also an Army Major General George Bush found in the calendar of former CIA director Allen Dulles by the Assassinations Records Review Board (“Final Report of the AARB,” p. 108). The other document that raises eyebrows—Kitchel’s memo on G.H.W. Bush’s call to the FBI—is available here:
http://jfkmurdersolved.com/bush.htm
. Tom Flocco and other conspiracy investigators believe that G.H.W. Bush worked for the CIA in 1963 and is untruthful about his whereabouts on 11/22. Flocco has even posted a photo that supposedly shows Bush in front of the Texas School Book Depository on the day of the assassination. The photo, which shows a man with
some resemblance to Bush but—to my eye, at least—younger than Bush at the time, is available at
http://tomflocco.com/fs/FbiMemoPhotoLinkBushJfk.htm
 [accessed November 7, 2012].

110
. George Bush, “Statement on Signing the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records and Collection Act of 1992,” October 26, 1992, Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley,
The American Presidency Project
,
http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=21673
 [accessed January 6, 2012].

111
. Personal interview with Oliver Stone during the Virginia Film Festival, November 4, 2011, Charlottesville, Virginia.

112
. The bill had been passed unanimously by the Senate—one indication of its uncon-troversial nature. No doubt, members of Congress were well aware of the public’s cynicism about the government’s handling of the assassination’s aftermath. One poll in this general time frame asked respondents, “Do you think that the American people have or have not been told the whole truth about the assassination of President John Kennedy?” Have been told the truth: 16%, Have not been told the truth: 72%, Not sure: 12%. Survey by Time and CNN. Methodology: Conducted by Yankelovich Clancy Shulman, December 17–December 22, 1991, and based on 1,500 telephone interviews with adults. [USYANKCS.91DEC2.R26] Time/CNN/Yankelovich Clancy Shulman Poll, Dec, 1991, iPOLL Databank, Roper Center for Public Opinion Research, University of Connecticut,
http://www.ropercenter.uconn.edu/data_access/ipoll/ipoll.html
 [accessed May 2, 2012].

18. CLINTON GRABS KENNEDY’S TORCH

1
. Michael Takiff,
A Complicated Man: The Life of Bill Clinton as Told by Those Who Know Him
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 2010), 31; Bill Clinton,
My Life
(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2004), 35, 43–44; Jim Moore with Rick Ihde,
Clinton: Young Man in a Hurry
(Fort Worth: Summit Group, 1992), 23.

2
. Clinton,
My Life
, 62.

3
. Ibid., 65.

4
. David Maraniss,
First in His Class: A Biography of Bill Clinton
(New York: Simon and Schuster, 1995), 53–55.

5
. Telephone interview with Tommy Caplan, June 14, 2012.

6
. See, for example, Clinton’s speech before the Connecticut Democratic Convention, July 18, 1980, in Stephen A. Smith, ed.,
Preface to the Presidency: Selected Speeches of Bill Clinton, 1974–92
(Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 1996), 22.

7
. Maraniss,
First in His Class
, 381.

8
. From Clinton’s autobiography: “In the spring of 1980, Fidel Castro deported 120,000 political prisoners and other ‘undesirables,’ many of them with criminal records or mental problems, to the United States … I knew immediately that the White House might want to send some of the Cubans to Fort Chaffee, a large installation near Fort Smith, because it had been used as a relocation center in the mid-seventies for Vietnamese refugees … By May 20, there were nearly twenty thousand Cubans at Fort Chaffee.” Clinton,
My Life
, 274–75.

9
. Besides the car tax (actually, an increase in license tag fees) and the Cuban immigrant issue, several other factors contributed to Clinton’s 1980 defeat, including his proposals for greater regulation of the timber industry and Republican campaign ads linking Clinton to Carter.

10
. Clinton,
My Life
, 266.

11
. Charles F. Allen and Jonathan Portis,
The Comeback Kid: The Life and Career of Bill Clinton
(New York: Birch Lane Press, 1992), 71, 104.

12
. Two well-known Democratic governors, who both supported Clinton’s presidential bids, separately shared this anecdote with me on background. Stories of this sort about Bill Clinton are legion. Diane A. Wade, “Bill Clinton TV Biography on PBS: How the Former President Broke the News of Lewinsky Affair to His Aide,”
Belle News
, February 21, 2012,
http://www.bellenews.com/2012/02/13/world/us-news/bill-clinton-tv-biography-on-pbs-how-the-former-president-broke-the-news-of-lewinsky-affair-to-his-aide/
 [accessed February 21, 2012]; Audie Cornish interview with Barak Goodman, February 20, 2012,
All Things Considered
, NPR News,
http://www.npr.org/2012/02/20/147164890/clinton-documentary-turns-lens-on-former-president
 [accessed February 21, 2012].

13
. Larry J. Sabato,
Feeding Frenzy: How Attack Journalism Has Transformed American Politics
(New York: Free Press, 1991), 117.

14
. Maraniss,
First in His Class
, 443.

15
. Smith,
Selected Speeches of Bill Clinton
, 68.

16
. Clinton’s longtime friends Harry and Linda Thomason came up with the idea. Harry was an Arkansas-born TV and film producer who used his contacts to get Clinton on
The Tonight Show
. Here’s his version of the story: “We were very upset, you know, that it [the convention speech] didn’t go well. And we knew the press was gonna make mincemeat out of him and people would be making fun of him. So we stew[ed] about it all night, this is a Thursday you know. Sometime in the wee hours Linda wakes me up after a troubled sleep and she said look, he’s got to go on the Carson show to make this right and I said, okay, in the morning I’d work on it.” See “Clinton’s Carson Appearance,” PBS
American Experience
,
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/bonus-video/clinton-carson/
 [accessed July 24, 2012].