The Kennedy Half-Century (71 page)

Like Kennedy, Reagan was a member of the World War II generation, though unlike JFK, he had only served domestically, mainly in a special Hollywood filmmaking military unit.
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Yet Reagan’s global views were shaped in part by the events of the 1930s and ’40s, just as Kennedy’s were. Reagan again found reason to make common cause with JFK by touting Kennedy’s 1940 book,
Why England Slept:

Even after war broke out in Asia and in Europe, our own country was slow to take the steps necessary to defend itself. Warning us of the impending crisis, a young Harvard student, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, wrote a book titled
Why England Slept
. His thoughtful study holds as true now, forty-two years later, as when it was first published. After describing how a dictatorship with a controlled press and the power to silence political opposition can carry on a vigorous arms program, he noted, “In contrast, in a democracy, the cry of warmonger would discourage any politician who advocates a vigorous arms policy. This leaves armaments with few supporters. Among the reasons for England’s failure to rearm in time,” Kennedy wrote, “probably the most important was a firm and widely held conviction that armaments were one of the primary causes of war.” Well, the Western democracies didn’t wake up till it was too late. It took Pearl Harbor to shake Americans from their complacency.

Today, in this era of much more dangerous weapons, it is even more important to remember that vigilance, not complacency, is the key to peace.
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In using Kennedy to compare 1980s Communism with 1930s Fascism, Reagan cleverly linked bipartisan lessons learned by the World War II generation to the modern struggle with “the Evil Empire,” Reagan’s term for the Soviet Union and its allies.

In Reagan’s view, the Communist threat still resembled the one from Cuba and Vietnam, an international conspiracy to extend its influence and take over nation-states that would fall, one by one, like dominoes. In our own hemisphere, Reagan fought the Communists in Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Grenada with arms and rhetorical ferocity that often included references to JFK. For example, in a televised address to the nation on May 9, 1984, about his policies in Central America, Reagan made Kennedy the star attraction:

We’re in the midst of what President John F. Kennedy called “a long twilight struggle” to defend freedom in the world. He understood the problem of Central America. He understood Castro. And he understood the long-term goals of the Soviet Union in this region.

Twenty-three years ago, President Kennedy warned against the threat of Communist penetration in our hemisphere. He said, “I want it clearly understood that this government will not hesitate in meeting its primary obligations which are to the security of our nation.” And the House and Senate supported him overwhelmingly by passing a law calling on the United States to prevent Cuba from extending its aggressive or subversive activities to any part of this hemisphere. Were John Kennedy alive today, I think he would be appalled by the gullibility of some who invoke his name.
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President Reagan’s second term placed a special emphasis on defeating the Communist-friendly Sandinistas in Nicaragua, an effort that led his administration into the infamous Iran-Contra scandal.
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In the midst of his efforts to secure congressional funding and marshal public opinion for the anticommunist Nicaraguan “Contras,” Reagan addressed the nation and told an anecdote about President Kennedy that defined Reagan’s own fundamental mission in international affairs, the containment and eventual elimination of Communism:

You know, recently one of our most distinguished Americans, Clare Boothe Luce,
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had this to say about the coming vote: “In considering this crisis,” Mrs. Luce said, “my mind goes back to a similar moment in our history—back to the first years after Cuba had fallen to Fidel. One day during those years, I had lunch at the White House with a man I had known since he was a boy, John F. Kennedy. ‘Mr. President,’ I said, ‘no matter how exalted or great a man may be, history will have time to give him no more than one sentence. George Washington, he founded our country. Abraham Lincoln, he freed the slaves and preserved the Union. Winston Churchill, he saved Europe.’ ‘And what, Clare,’ John Kennedy said, ‘do you believe my sentence will be?’ ‘Mr. President,’ she answered, ‘your sentence will be that you stopped the Communists—or that you did not.’ ”

Well, tragically, John Kennedy never had the chance to decide which that would be. Now leaders of our own time must do so. My fellow Americans, you know where I stand. The Soviets and the Sandinistas must not be permitted to crush freedom in Central America and threaten our own security on our own doorstep. Now the Congress must decide where it stands. Mrs. Luce ended by saying: “Only this is certain. Through all time to come, this, the 99th Congress of the United States, will be remembered as that body of men and women that either stopped the Communists before it was too late—or did not.”
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Reagan’s recurrent summoning of JFK’s spirit to back ideas not favored by contemporary Democrats provoked a reaction, and from time to time, Senator Edward Kennedy would take umbrage. Perhaps he remembered that Reagan had been a severe critic of JFK in the early 1960s and had backed Nixon enthusiastically. However, the Kennedys were remarkably chummy with the Reagans during the 1980s, and at some level, the family must have been pleased that JFK was mentioned so frequently and prominently by an Oval Office successor, even a conservative Republican.

The keepers of a legacy often try to sand down the rough edges of history, and even rewrite a few chapters to keep a departed statesman relevant to current events he could scarcely have imagined. The truth in this instance is that John Kennedy was conservative (in today’s terms) on both economic policy and foreign affairs. The same holds for social policies. Feminism, gun control, gay rights, abortion rights, and environmentalism were fringe advocacy concerns in JFK’s day. That is not his modern image, as cultivated and refined by the Kennedy family and Democratic Party leaders, but President Reagan actually hit closer to the mark in reviving the John F. Kennedy who ran for and served as president. It is another inconvenient truth of history.

On the other hand, President Reagan’s selective invocation of Kennedy’s words and programs was sometimes misleading. Reagan and Kennedy were diametrically opposed on a wide range of matters, not least civil rights for African Americans—which Kennedy finally supported and Reagan mainly
opposed.
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Yet the presidency set both men on somewhat the same course to achieve peace and prosperity in their time. That tax cuts were the centerpiece of both men’s economic strategy is revealing. So too is the fact that both gradually moved from confrontation to negotiation with the Soviets. Kennedy secured the 1963 test ban treaty and clearly wanted to go much further with Khrushchev in a second term. After complaining that Soviet leaders kept “dying on me”—two of them, Premiers Yuri Andropov and Konstantin Chernenko, served brief tenures during Reagan’s first term—Reagan found a willing partner in Mikhail Gorbachev, and substantial arms reduction progress was made in his second term.
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Ted Kennedy privately urged Reagan in 1985 to seek accommodation with the Soviets by reminding him of his brother’s “proudest achievement”: “As you know I am off to Geneva this weekend as part of the Senate observer group for the negotiations on arms control [and] want to add my hopes for your success in the forthcoming arms negotiations. Jack always felt that the Partial Test Ban Treaty of 1963, coming as it did on the heels of the Cuban Missile Crisis, was the proudest achievement of his presidency. You above all are in a unique position to be blessed as the peacemaker of the century and the prayers of all of us in Congress and the country are with you in this historic undertaking.”
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Arms control was in the interests of both East and West in the 1960s and 1980s. But on the central issue of the Soviet system itself, Presidents Kennedy and Reagan were actually close together, and on the right side of history. That was demonstrated dramatically on several days separated by five U.S. administrations, in events happening at the tense crossroads of East and West, the city of Berlin. Divided since the end of World War II with its German families separated by a military-enforced wall built in 1961, Berlin became the flashpoint for Cold War intrigue, and the site of two great presidential speeches. President Kennedy’s “Ich bin ein Berliner” declaration of June 1963 underlined the harsh reality of Communist tactics. Ronald Reagan, as a private citizen, had fumed that President Kennedy did nothing to stop the wall’s construction. Not long before he began his 1980 campaign, Reagan was still unhappy, complaining about “the lost opportunity in Berlin, when we could have knocked down and prevented the completion of the wall with no hostilities following.”
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But by the time Reagan first came to Berlin as president, in June 1982, he was citing Kennedy’s “stirring words” to which he added, “We in America and the West are still Berliners … and always will be.”
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On his final presidential trip to Berlin, in June 1987, Reagan delivered an address that was the equal of Kennedy’s. Reminding his audience of JFK’s speech and others by American presidents, Reagan explained that, “We come to Berlin … because it’s our duty to speak in the place of freedom.” Then Reagan made perhaps the most famous challenge of his time in office: “General Secretary
Gorbachev, if you seek peace … come here to this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!”
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In two years’ time, as a result of solidarity among nine presidential administrations and constant pressure by the United States and its allies, not to mention enormous sacrifice in lives and dollars, the Berlin wall came tumbling down at last.

In the case of Berlin and hundreds of others, presidents depend on the precedents set by earlier chief executives. Some precedents are followed easily, especially when administrations are of the same party and twinned by the accidents of history, such as FDR and Truman, or JFK and LBJ. Never in modern times, though, has a president of one party utilized the words and policies of a president of the other party as much as Reagan did with Kennedy. It is a circumstance that demonstrates the long-term power and bipartisan appeal of John Kennedy, both his image and his reality.

Of the eight years Ronald Reagan served as president, none produced more Kennedy references than 1984, not coincidentally, Reagan’s reelection year.
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By then the Republican had well learned the power JFK’s words had to catch the attention of Democrats and Independents.

Democrats had a spirited contest for their party’s presidential nomination that featured, among others, two candidates with Kennedy credentials—one who was a national hero and personal favorite of JFK, former astronaut and Ohio senator John Glenn, and another who consciously fashioned himself after John Kennedy, Colorado senator Gary Hart.

Before these contenders could come to the fore, Ted Kennedy had made an early decision not to run, announced on December 1, 1982. He had been thought likely to try again after his defeat in 1980, but he probably realized that the odds were not favorable for victory. Moreover, Kennedy was in the midst of a divorce from his wife, Joan, guaranteeing lots of journalistic inquiries about his often-wild personal life.
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A third factor may have been crucial: His family actively dissuaded him from a second campaign out of fear for his safety.
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Ted had been lucky throughout his 1980 effort, but the nearly successful Reagan assassination attempt surely reminded the Kennedys that two brothers lost to bullets were enough. Some family loyalists talked hopefully of a future quest, once Chappaquiddick had supposedly faded completely from the public’s mind, but others began to realize that Ted Kennedy’s home would always be the Senate. It was left to a retired president, whose obsession with Edward Kennedy had helped to bring about his own downfall, to offer a postmortem. “The train has left the station” and Kennedy’s presidential moment was gone, said Richard Nixon.
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As a five-time national candidate, the canny Nixon knew that other ambitious Democratic
politicians had already deferred for years to Ted and would now insist on their turn.

John Glenn moved quickly to seize the Kennedy mantle. He appeared in the Senate press gallery on the day Kennedy withdrew as a possible candidate to suggest that he was the natural heir. Glenn’s haste was not appreciated by Ted Kennedy, who had never been as close to Glenn as his brothers had.
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In any event, Glenn was never able to achieve much of a liftoff for his campaign; the quietly spoken moderate could fire his space rockets but not political crowds. After finishing a poor third in New Hampshire, he never won a single primary and dropped out on March 16, 1984.

Though Gary Hart had no strong Kennedy connections like Glenn, he fit the JFK mold better, at least superficially. Hart said he became interested in politics after hearing JFK at a 1960 rally, and by 1972 he had managed George McGovern’s presidential campaign. This was Hart’s springboard to a Senate seat from Colorado in 1974. Ruggedly handsome, polished, and articulate, the forty-seven-year-old Hart proclaimed himself the man of “new ideas” who could rescue the Democratic Party from its post-Carter doldrums. His main opponent, considered the heavy front-runner at the start, was Carter’s vice president, Walter Mondale of Minnesota. Burdened with defending the Carter record, Mondale was also a Great Society liberal closely associated with Hubert Humphrey, whose Senate seat he had taken when Humphrey was elevated to the vice presidency in 1965. Hart was something of a loner in D.C., while Mondale was well liked in political circles. Yet there was no comparison on the stump between the unexciting, bland Mondale and the energetic, charismatic Hart.