Roosevelt had understood that the Depression-battered American people longed for “freedom from want.” At the Yellowstone County Fairgrounds, Kennedy learned that they wanted freedom from the fear of a nuclear war. Montanans living in the shadow of the Cuban missile crisis and surrounded by Minuteman launching pads, prime Soviet targets, were not interested in hearing him pontificate about dams, conservation, and the joys of the outdoors, subjects they understood better than he did. They wanted to hear about peace.
He concluded his Billings speech with a reference to the high court of history, saying, “I am confident that when the role of national effort in the 1960s is written, when a judgment is rendered whether this generation of Americans took those steps . . . to make it possible for those who came after us to live in greater security and prosperity, I am confident that history will write that in the 1960s, we did our part.”
On the flight to Jackson Hole he told Secretary of the Interior Stewart Udall that he was looking forward to running against Goldwater, whose opposition to the test ban treaty was at odds with the concerns of voters like those in Billings. It would be “quite a campaign,” he said.
The Jackson Lake Lodge had magnificent views of the Grand Tetons’ spiky peaks, but his only concession to one of the West’s great wonders was to train his binoculars on a distant moose while standing behind his cabin’s picture window. While flying to Great Falls the next morning he decided to ditch his prepared speech, a dull recitation of his “nine-point program” for resource development, and talk about peace and education. He scribbled down some ideas and facts, writing, “12 million boys and girls under 18 live in families whose total income is $3,000 a year or less.”
An Indian chief welcomed him at the airport. Each had dressed in a traditional costume: the chief in skins and feathers, Kennedy in his city-slicker regalia of white shirt with French cuffs, dark tailored two-button business suit (chosen in part because it masked the outline of his back brace better than a three-button model), white handkerchief in his breast pocket, polished handmade shoes, and a sober tie anchored by a PT 109 clasp. Politicians crossing the Continental Divide usually abandoned or loosened their ties, but Kennedy never dressed down. He had explained his reasoning to Charlie Bartlett as they were leaving Washington to fly to Wisconsin and campaign in its 1960 primary. Pointing to several overcoats, he asked which one he should wear. Bartlett recommended the tweed one because it looked “more like Wisconsin.” He disagreed. “I’ve got to take the black one because that’s the coat I always wear,” he said, “and the most important thing when you are in one of these things is always to be yourself.”
Before embarking on the conservation tour he had told Jerry Bruno that while he was in Great Falls he wanted to visit Mike Mansfield’s father, who was in failing health. Mansfield was almost moved to tears when Bruno informed him of this. “Did the President really say that?” he asked. “Would you thank him for me? Tell him I really appreciate that.” On his way into town, Kennedy stopped at Patrick Mansfield’s small wood-frame bungalow and met the nineteen Mansfield relatives who had gathered to greet him. They included Mike Mansfield’s brother Joe, a captain in the Great Falls Fire Department. After leaving the house, Kennedy said, “I wonder how many majority leaders in the U.S. Senate have had a brother working in the hometown fire department. And that fellow wouldn’t take a job in Washington for any amount of money.”
Instead of reading his prepared speech at the Great Falls High School Memorial Stadium and saying, “I am delighted to be in Great Falls, the heart of the first fully operational wing in the country consisting of one hundred and fifty Minuteman missiles,” he spoke about the dangers those missiles posed. He reminded the audience that their state had “concentrated within its borders some of the most powerful nuclear systems in the world,” making it impossible to ignore “how close Montana lives to the firing line.” In distance, they were “many thousands of miles from the Soviet Union,” but “in a very real sense . . . [they were] only thirty minutes away.” His job, he said, was “to make sure that those over one hundred Minuteman missiles which ring this city and this state remain where they are.” He praised the test ban treaty as “a step toward peace and a step toward security . . . that gives us an additional chance that all of the weapons of Montana will never be fired,” and concluded by speaking of human resources instead of natural ones, decrying the fact that children growing up in poor homes were less likely to complete high school or attend college. In his opinion, the nation should concern itself “with this phase of our resource development, our children.”
At an afternoon groundbreaking for the nation’s largest nuclear power plant, in Hanford, Washington, he said that he had strongly supported the test ban treaty, and “it may well be that man recognizes now that war is so destructive, so annihilating, so incendiary, that it may be possible . . . for us to find a more peaceful world. That’s my intention.”
Salt Lake City had voted overwhelmingly for Nixon in 1960. Its mayor had endorsed the right-wing John Birch Society, and its most prominent political leader, former secretary of agriculture Ezra Taft Benson, was an elder in the Mormon Church and a confirmed Birchite. Kennedy was presumed to be so unpopular that his decision to speak in the Mormon Tabernacle to a largely Mormon audience was being compared to his appearance at a 1960 convention of Protestant ministers in Houston, during which he had explained why his Catholic faith should not disqualify him from the presidency. Yet the largest and most enthusiastic crowd of his trip cheered him as he rode through downtown Salt Lake City at dusk in an open limousine, and eight thousand people had filled the Tabernacle to capacity and a similar number had packed a nearby hall and the Temple grounds, where loudspeakers would broadcast his speech.
He received a five-minute standing ovation when he took the podium. Instead of pandering to this conservative audience, he delivered a blistering attack on Goldwater’s simplistic foreign policy, receiving sustained applause when he criticized his “black-and-white choice of good and evil.” He urged these conservative Mormons to recognize “that we cannot remake the world simply by our own command,” and asserted that “every nation had its own traditions, its own values, its own aspirations. . . . We cannot enact their laws, nor can we operate their governments or dictate our policies.”
The applause was even louder when he proclaimed that the test ban treaty meant a “chance to end the radiation and the possibility of burning.” He mentioned that he had just flown over the Little Big Horn, where Indians had killed General Custer and several hundred of his men. After calling it “an event which has lived in history,” he reminded them that in the case of a nuclear war, “We are talking about two hundred million men and women in twenty-four hours,” adding, “I think it is wise to take just a first step and lessen the possibility of that happening.”
Among those applauding had to be people who had heard him deliver a hawkish cold war speech here in 1960, during which he had called Khrushchev “the enemy” and excoriated the Communists for seeking “world domination.” Tonight, he quoted Brigham Young’s commandment to his followers to “go as pioneers to a land of peace.” When he finished, the Mormon Tabernacle Choir burst into the “Battle Hymn of the Republic,” thunderous applause shook the hall, and the cheers were the loudest Bruno had ever heard him receive. While he was still on the stage, the United Press International correspondent Merriman Smith rushed up and said, “That was a great speech, Mr. President.” Peter Lisagor overheard Smith and thought his praise was unseemly and unethical, but admitted feeling the same way.
Like Billings and Great Falls, Salt Lake City had demonstrated that the test ban treaty had support across the political spectrum, and that peace could be a powerful issue in 1964. Bruno thought that the best political advisers in the world could not have persuaded him any better to run on a peace-and-disarmament platform. Vanocur concluded, “If JFK had any doubts about his reelection—and I think he had none—they
were dispelled by this trip.”
He was ebullient throughout the rest of the tour. At an airport ceremony requiring him to push a button activating a generator at a dam 150 miles away, he joked, “I never know when I press these whether I’m going to blow up Massachusetts or start the project.” While waiting for a disembodied voice to announce over the loudspeakers that the generator had engaged, he said, “If we don’t hear from him it’s back to the drawing boards.” When the announcement finally came, he deadpanned, “This gives you an idea of how difficult it is to be president.” He arrived at the lodge in Lassen National Park in such a good mood that he allowed himself to be photographed feeding a tame deer—the kind of staged scene he usually avoided—and gave the deer so much of the bread in his cabin that there was no toast the next morning. After a speaker introducing him in Tacoma praised Mount Rainier, he invited everyone to travel east and marvel at “the Blue Hills of Boston, stretching three hundred feet up, covered in snow.” He told another audience, “I do not think that these trips do very much for people who come and listen . . . but I can tell you that they are the best educational three or four days for anyone who holds high office in the United States.”
During a 1949 debate over federal funding of low-cost housing for veterans, he had shocked his fellow congressmen by denouncing the American Legion for opposing the measure because it wanted to curry favor with real estate and construction interests, declaring on the floor of the House, “The leadership of the American Legion has not had a constructive thought for the benefit of this country since 1918.” His staff and friends had urged him to apologize and retract the statement. Instead, he attacked the powerful Legion again. After veterans and even Legion members rallied around him, he told Powers that the experience had taught him that “more often than not, the right thing to do is also the right thing politically.” His Western tour had taught him that ending the cold war might also be the right thing politically.
He spent Sunday in Palm Springs relaxing at the singer Bing Crosby’s ranch. He swam, watched football, and probably also watched an interview with Everett Dirksen on ABC’s Issues and Answers. Asked what issue was most likely to “sink” the president in the election, Dirksen named the budget, specifically “a recurring deficit” and “public debt.”
While rehashing the trip with his advisers around Crosby’s pool, he asked Bruno how he had turned out such big crowds. “It’s because they really like you, Mr. President,” Bruno said. (After Bruno returned to Washington, he asked Lincoln if Salt Lake City had pleased him. She replied, “Jerry, he is very, very happy.” When Mansfield returned he told his secretary, “Thank God, he got out of the state without being harmed.”)
The darkest immediate cloud on Kennedy’s horizon was Jackie’s cruise. Angry letters were deluging the White House, attacking her for vacationing so soon after Patrick’s death, feeling well enough to travel but not to resume her duties as First Lady, and not choosing to holiday in the United States. While at Crosby’s ranch, Kennedy drafted a press release that portrayed the cruise as a wholesome family excursion, writing, “W.H. announced that Mrs. Kennedy would join Prince and Princess Radziwill, her sister, on a cruise in the Mediterranean. Mrs. Kennedy will be accompanied by her son John—and the Radziwills by their two children. They will travel on the _______ owned by Mr. Onassis which has been secured by Prince Radziwill.” Very little in his draft was or would prove to be true. She was not bringing John, nor were the Radziwills planning to include their children. Saying that Prince Radziwill had “secured” the yacht implied that he had chartered it and that Onassis would remain behind.
Back in Washington the next morning he edited the release so that Salinger could deliver it at a noon briefing. When he finished, it read (with the passages he had crossed out in brackets, and his handwritten additions in italics) “while Mrs. Kennedy is visiting Greece she will accompany her sister and brother-in-law Prince and Princess Radziwill on a [ten day] cruise in the Eastern Mediterranean aboard the yacht Christina. [Mrs. Kennedy will be accompanied by her son, John Jr., and the Radziwills by their children.] The yacht has been secured by Prince Radziwill for this cruise from her owner, Aristotle Onassis. [The cruise will begin October 1st.] Mrs. Kennedy plans to depart tomorrow evening at 10.”
It was more accurate than his first effort but still gave the impression that the cruise was a Radziwill production, with Onassis merely supplying his yacht. Pamela Turnure joined Salinger at the briefing and said it was “possible some people will join the cruise,” but because the list had not been finalized she would not be announcing their names. Asked if Onassis would be on board, she replied, “Not to my knowledge.”
That morning Kennedy scribbled the kind of to-do list that people compile after being away. Underneath a reminder to tell Lincoln to “get moccasins darkened,” he wrote, “Study of Cuba—previous administration,” evidence that he was monitoring the conversations between Attwood and Lechuga.
He ran into Arthur Schlesinger as he was heading upstairs with Jackie and the children for lunch. After Caroline curtsied, John copied her, leading Jackie to say, “I think there’s something ominous about John curtsying,” and John to protest indignantly, “Mummy, I wasn’t curtsying, I was bowing.” Kennedy generously praised Schlesinger’s Salt Lake City speech even though he had discarded most of it. Later that day, Schlesinger handed him a memorandum describing a proposed agreement with Harvard University for his presidential library. Kennedy objected to its stipulation that Harvard would turn over the land whenever “the President” requested it. Despite his successful Western trip he was taking nothing for granted. “What if I’m no longer president?” he asked Schlesinger. “We’ve been assuming this would be a two-term proposition. What if it isn’t?” Schlesinger assured him that Harvard would turn over the land even if he served only a single term, but he still insisted on changing the language so it read whenever “President Kennedy” requested it.
PART FOUR
October 1–31, 1963
DAYS 53–23
Tuesday, October 1–Sunday, October 6
WASHINGTON, ARKANSAS, AND CAMP DAVID
Jackie had canceled her official engagements until January, but she decided to make an exception for Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia and welcome him when he arrived at Union Station on Tuesday by chartered train from Philadelphia. The hairdresser Kenneth Battelle had flown from New York that morning and given her a sophisticated cut and style more suited to a jet-set cruise than to a First Lady who was in mourning and preparing to greet an emperor who traced his lineage back to King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba, and whose subjects approached him on their hands and knees. After seeing what Battelle had done, Kennedy summoned him back upstairs and asked, perhaps in jest, “What are you trying to do, ruin my career?” Battelle combed out her hair and gave her a pageboy. Kennedy also vetoed her hat as too flashy, and a photograph of them welcoming the emperor shows her wearing a black woolen suit and black pillbox hat.
He usually walked several paces ahead at ceremonial events, but at Union Station a reporter noted that “he gently guided her ahead of him . . . and if she dropped her yellow gloved hand from his arm, he placed his hand on her arm.” A military band played, cannons boomed, and she presented the emperor and his granddaughter Ruth Desta with a bouquet of roses and informed them that she had broken mourning to greet them. The president hailed Selassie as “a man whose place in history is already assured,” an honor never far from his mind.
They rode to the White House in an open limousine. The five-foot-tall emperor wore a field marshal’s uniform plastered with ribbons and medals and stood erect in the backseat. Kennedy remained seated to avoid towering over him. Jackie and Ruth Desta followed in a bubbletop limousine. After discovering they were both keen horsewomen and painters, Jackie invited her and the emperor to tea in the family quarters. Haile Selassie used the occasion to present her with a full-length leopard-skin coat, perhaps chosen to t
rump the one she had received from his archenemy, President Aden Daar of Somalia. She slipped it on and, because they were speaking French, said, “Je suis comblée [I am overcome].” She hurried downstairs and found her husband in the Rose Garden. “See, Jack, he brought it to me!” she exclaimed. “He brought it to me!”
“I was wondering why you were wearing a fur coat in the garden,” he said dryly.
Before leaving for Athens, she handed Chief Usher J. B. West a stack of prewritten postcards addressed to John and Caroline (she did not trust the foreign mails), and gave Evelyn Lincoln a letter in a sealed envelope with instructions to deliver it to her husband the following day.
• • •
DURING A WEDNESDAY MORNING meeting in the Cabinet Room, McNamara and Taylor reported on their mission to South Vietnam. General Krulak had overseen the drafting of their official report, consulting at every step with Bobby, who had in turn briefed the president. Bobby then relayed the president’s comments back to Krulak, a process guaranteeing that the final report would be written to his specifications and include an optimistic assessment of the military situation, one justifying the withdrawal of some U.S. advisers. McNamara had made it clear to the aides accompanying him on the trip that this was the goal, leading McGeorge Bundy’s older brother, Assistant Secretary of Defense William Bundy, to write, “All through the Saigon briefings and in the field, the question at the top of McNamara’s mind . . . [was]: Could the U.S. look forward to a reduction in its military advisors by the end of 1965?”
McNamara and Taylor affirmed in their report that “the military campaign has made great progress and continues to progress.” They acknowledged “serious political tensions in Saigon,” but found “no solid evidence of the possibility of a successful coup . . . although assassination of Diem or Nhu is always a possibility.” They were guardedly optimistic, writing, “The military program in Vietnam has made progress and is sound in principle.” The political situation remained “deeply serious,” but had “not yet significantly affected the military effort, but could do so at some time in the future.” They recommended that “a program be established to train Vietnamese so that essential functions now performed by U.S. military personnel can be carried out by Vietnamese by the end of 1965.”
JFK's Last Hundred Days: The Transformation of a Man and the Emergence of a Great President Page 25