Kennedy and Reagan

by Scott Farris

  216and a dozen university presidents: Meisler, When the World Calls, pp. x–xi

  217Bring me only bad news; good news weakens me: Dallek, An Unfinished Life, p. 339.

  217they felt guilty and ashamed: Hoffman, All You Need Is Love, p. 9.

  217self-examination to determine why they have not: Nye, This Almost Chosen People, p. 204.

  Chapter 15: Crises and Charisma

  218a unique, magical power: Bendix, Max Weber, p. 299.

  218Journalists picked up and popularized the term: Webster’s Word Histories, p. 103.

  218or groups for the good of the community: McBrien, Encyclopedia of Catholicism, pp. 299–300.

  218and from his disciples’ faith in that power: Bendix, Max Weber, p. 301.

  218they surrender themselves to a heroic leader: Bendix, Max Weber, p. 300.

  219charismatic leadership is inherently transitory: Bendix, Max Weber, p. 301.

  219–20the Freedom Riders, and a dozen more: Wills, The Kennedy Imprisonment, p. 171.

  220a wartime speech without a war: Reeves, President Kennedy, p. 56.

  220it is very frightening: Reeves, President Reagan, p. 110.

  221a holy war mentality: Reeves, President Reagan, p. 141.

  221ask what you can do for your country: Clarke, Ask Not, p. 206.

  221assure the survival and success of liberty: Clarke, Ask Not, pp. xiii–xvi

  221full of “extravagant rhetoric”: Clarke, Ask Not, p. 33.

  221clarion calls in the manner of Henry V at Agincourt: www.nytimes.com/2011/06/28/opinion/28brooks.html?_r=2&ref=davidbrooks&.

  221during his 1960 campaign: Wills, The Kennedy Imprisonment, p. 179.

  222turn away from the established rules: Bendix, Max Weber, p. 300.

  222about change and freedom: Reeves, President Kennedy, p. 123.

  222You’re lifting the horizons of Negroes: Reeves, President Kennedy, p. 357.

  222nobody ever asked me to. Kennedy asked: Clarke, Ask Not, p. 6.

  222words are usually more important than deeds: Reeves, President Reagan, p. 7.

  222all the power of the President amounts to: Neustadt, Presidential Power and the Modern Presidents, pp. 10–11.

  223the safety of our homeland would be put in jeopardy: Reeves, President Reagan, pp. 157–58.

  223won [only] because it could not be lost: Wills, Reagan’s America, p. 356.

  224and nineteen U.S. servicemen were killed: Morris, Dutch, p. 504.

  224bombing had occurred less than forty-eight hours before: Reeves, President Reagan, p. 187.

  224public’s short patience with uncertainties: Wills, Reagan’s America, p. 357.

  224succeeded beyond his own expectations and desire: Sorensen, Kennedy, p. 615.

  224the level of near-hysteria: Sorensen, Kennedy, p. 615.

  225live like a worm in a hole in the ground: Reeves, President Kennedy, pp. 271–72.

  225and kiss your ass good-bye: Dallek, An Unfinished Life, p. 391.

  226fraction of the size enjoyed by Kennedy and Reagan: www.presidency.ucsb.edu/data/newsconferences.php.

  226“couldn’t do it without TV,” he told aides: Reeves, President Kennedy, p. 326.

  226coverage is limited to the cable networks: Chase and Lerman, Kennedy and the Press, p. x.

  227and the law says they cannot strike: Reeves, President Reagan, p. 79.

  227I certainly take no joy out of this: Cannon, President Reagan, p. 437.

  228when Reagan broke the controllers’ strike: Johnson, Sleepwalking Through History, pp. 153–54.

  228Reagan took as president to control inflation: Troy, Morning in America, p. 78.

  228steel that showed: Morris, Dutch, p. 793n.

  228most important foreign policy decision Ronald Reagan ever made: Noonan, When Character Was King, p. 226.

  228that I meant what I said: Reagan, An American Life, p. 283

  229We’ve got to try to fuck them: O’Brien, Rethinking Kennedy, p. 147.

  230In the last twenty-four hours we had their answer: Chase and Lerman, Kennedy and the Press, pp. 223–24.

  230like a national emergency: Perret, Jack, p. 360.

  230“the weekly wives’ bridge group out at the Country Club,” he said: Reeves, President Kennedy, p. 302.

  230Khrushchev praising Kennedy’s “style: Reeves, President Kennedy, p. 303.

  230this was the way Hitler took over: Reeves, President Kennedy, p. 297.

  230decisiveness in the executive: Sorensen, Kennedy, p. 458.

  231no prosperity without profit: Reeves, President Kennedy, p. 303.

  231the quintessential corporate liberal: Matusow, The Unraveling of America, p. 33.

  231decisively, and usually, very wisely: Reeves, President Reagan,, p. 61.

  231coolly and unemotionally: Fay., The Pleasure of His Company, pp.188–89.

  232without midnight phone calls and tapped telephones: Noonan, When Character Was King, p. 223.

  232come to Washington for, to meet these challenges: Wills, The Kennedy Imprisonment, p. 171.

  232Neustadt observed—and not in a complimentary way: Wills, The Kennedy Imprisonment, p. 177.

  232Eisenhower ladled out to his cabinet officers: Wills, The Kennedy Imprisonment, p. 167.

  233“to answer a simple yes or no,” Kennedy complained: Wills, The Kennedy Imprisonment, p. 222.

  233anti-Washington counterinsurgency that Kennedy began: Wills, The Kennedy Imprisonment, pp. 197–98.

  233in our whole scheme of government: Dallek, An Unfinished Life, p. 315.

  233his own authority into programs and institutions: Wills, The Kennedy Imprisonment, p. 201.

  235promising to last throughout eternity: Clarke, Ask Not, p. 5.

  Chapter 16: To the Brink—And Back

  237“We win. They lose.”: Reeves, President Reagan, p. xiv.

  238“And we call ourselves the human race.”: Dallek, An Unfinished Life, p. 346.

  238debated and discarded during the 1960s: Ftizgerald, Way Out There in the Blue, p. 20.

  239Eisenhower had warned against in his farewell address: Several interesting graphs comparing U.S. defense spending over the past fifty years can be found at www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/01/07/everything-chuck-hagel-needs-to-know-about-the-defense-budget-in-charts.

  240easier to obtain than unity for peace: Dallek, An Unfinished Life, p. 116.

  240resources be lavished on the armed forces: Bacevich, Washington Rules, pp. 12–13.

  240preserve American access rights to West Berlin: O’Brien, Rethinking Kennedy, p. 131.

  240I squeeze on Berlin: Reeves, President Kennedy, p. 186.

  241treated him “like a little boy”: Reeves, President Kennedy, p. 166.

  241talked so big and acted so little: Dallek, An Unfinished Life, p. 419.

  242didn’t give a damn if it came to that: Dallek, An Unfinished Life, p. 347.

  242wall is a hell of a lot better than a war: O’Brien, Rethinking Kennedy, p. 131.

  243favored a policy of “peaceful coexistence”: Gaddis, The Cold War, p. 70.

  243I exaggerated a little: Gaddis, The Cold War, p. 69.

  243a little of their own medicine: Stern, The Cuban Missile Crisis in American Memory, p. 2.

  244The logical answer was missiles: Gaddis, The Cold War, pp. 76–77.

  244slightly demented on the subject: Stern, The Cuban Missile Crisis in American Memory, p. 16.

  244military always screws up everything: Stern, The Cuban Missile Crisis in American Memory, pp. 12–13.

  244nothing is so self-blinding: Stern, The Cuban Missile Crisis in American Memory, p. 15.

  245recordings made during the Cuban m
issile crisis: Stern, The Cuban Missile Crisis in American Memory, p. 16.

  246almost as bad as the appeasement at Munich: Stern, The Cuban Missile Crisis in American Memory, p. 22.

  246advantage of having a closed mind: Stern, The Cuban Missile Crisis in American Memory, p. 16.

  247pioneered in handling nuclear confrontations: Neustadt, Presidential Power and the Modern Presidents, pp. 173, 175, 179.

  248wrong lessons learned from the Cuban missile crisis, Wills states: Wills, The Kennedy Imprisonment, pp. 273–74.

  249or the security of the slave: Dallek, An Unfinished Life, p. 619.

  249quarrels would not escalate to war: Dallek, An Unfinished Life, p. 620.

  250the Soviet Union has used to pursue its own aims: Morris, Dutch, p. 456.

  250farmer has with his turkey—until Thanksgiving Day: Gaddis, The Cold War, p. 217.

  250could see big changes in the Soviet Union: D’Souza, Ronald Reagan, p. 1.

  250intended a nuclear first strike against their country: Anderson and Anderson, Reagan’s Secret War, p. 136.

  250You should expect anything from him: Gaddis, The Cold War, p. 227.

  251pressure on a presumably faltering Soviet economy: Hersch, The Target Is Destroyed, pp. 22–23.

  251the focus of evil in the modern world: Anderson and Anderson, Reagan’s Secret War, p. 122.

  251preamble to attacking or blackmailing the Soviets: Anderson and Anderson, Reagan’s Secret War, p. 136.

  251such as the stockpiling of food or blood: Schaller, Reckoning with Reagan, pp. 119–20.

  252suddenly reappearing near Soviet waters: Hersch, The Target Is Destroyed, pp. 23–26.

  252The target is destroyed: Hersch, The Target Is Destroyed, p. 40.

  253depressurized cabin without oxygen and frightfully cold: Hersch, The Target Is Destroyed, p. 41.

  253knowingly shot down an airliner: Hersch, The Target Is Destroyed, p. 119.

  253see no excuse whatsoever for this appalling act: Hersch, The Target Is Destroyed, p. 143.

  253to the Cuban missile crisis of 1962: Cannon, President Reagan, p. 275.

  253the Soviet occupation of their country: Hersch, The Target Is Destroyed, pp. 173–74.

  254and we intend to keep it that way: Morris, Dutch, pp. 493–94.

  254speaking loudly and carrying a very small stick: Morris, Dutch, p. 494.

  254when Roosevelt formally recognized the USSR: Hersch, The Target Is Destroyed, p. 174.

  254resembles Jimmy Carter more than anyone conceived possible: Wills, Reagan’s America, p. 354.

  255might well have occurred eight years earlier: Gaddis, The Cold War, p. 221.

  255“with the Russians if they keep dying on me?” Reagan said: Gaddis, The Cold War, p. 228.

  255Soviet leaders I’d met until then: Gaddis, The Cold War, p. 229.

  256the sickness of our system: Gaddis, The Cold War, p. 231.

  257and it should know no exceptions: Gaddis, The Cold War, p. 236.

  257Soviet Union would have collapsed sooner or later: Gaddis, The Cold War, p. 236.

  257the collapse of the Soviet Union: Reeves, President Reagan, p. xv.

  257going to happen. No small thing: Reeves, President Reagan, p. xv.

  258Reagan . . . definitely did not: Gaddis, The Cold War, p. 222.

  258ideological arrogance, and of the cold war’s dangers: Reeves, President Reagan, p. xv.

  258cold war would surely have dragged on: Arquilla, The Reagan Imprint, p. 65.

  Chapter 17: The Will Rogers of Covert Operations

  259never met a covert operation he didn’t like: Goldberg, Barry Goldwater, p. 319.

  259hero to both Kennedy and Reagan: Powers, Intelligence Wars, p. 357.

  259I was a Democrat and brother: Schlesinger, Robert Kennedy and His Times, p. 459.

  259such expansion in the agency’s history: Goldberg, Barry Goldwater, p. 318.

  260bedeviled presidential studies for years to come: Neustadt, Presidential Power and the Modern Presidents, p. 270.

  261with the OSS, a real guy with a dagger: Goldberg, Barry Goldwater, p. 319.

  261would make a great movie someday: Schaller, Reckoning with Reagan, p. 165.

  262better motives for all the trouble he caused: Reeves, President Kennedy, pp. 46–47.

  263easy then and it’ll be easy now: Halberstam, The Fifties, p. 726.

  264another black hole of Calcutta: Halberstam, The Fifties, p. 727.

  264to stand up to Khrushchev?” Kennedy said: Halberstam, The Fifties, p. 729.

  264At Secret Guatemalan Base: Reeves, President Kennedy, p. 70.

  265reduce the noise level of this thing,” he told the CIA: Reeves, President Kennedy, p. 70.

  265nearly seventy times during the previous one hundred years: Reeves, President Reagan, p. 152.

  266aren’t as good as twenty-five thousand: Dallek, An Unfinished Life, p. 361.

  266one of those rare events in history—a perfect failure: Dallek, An Unfinished Life, p. 363.

  266Well, they had me figured all wrong: Dallek, An Unfinished Life, p. 365.

  267commit the flag, you commit to win: Halberstam, The Fifties, p. 376.

  267something about those CIA bastards,” he fumed: Reeves, President Kennedy, p. 103.

  267How could I have been so stupid: Dallek, An Unfinished Life, p. 367.

  267annual budget of more than $50 million: Stern, The Cuban Missile Crisis, p. 41.

  267operating a damn Murder, Inc., in the Caribbean: Caro, Passage of Power, p. 585.

  268the time of the Bay of Pigs and thereafter: Dallek, An Unfinished Life, p. 439.

  268and files on Cuba than on the Soviet Union and Vietnam combined: Dallek, An Unfinished Life, p. 340.

  268he doesn’t even take his boots off: Clarke, Ask Not, p. 60.

  268dagger pointing at the heart of Antarctica: Dallek, An Unfinished Life, p. 342.

  268we lose in Geneva and every place else: Reeves, President Reagan, p. 152.

  268than in all of the Atlantic Ocean,” Reagan said: Morris, Dutch, p. 483.

  268into our outstretched hands like overripe fruit: Reeves, President Reagan, p. 154.

  269guerillas bent on robbing them of freedom: Reagan, An American Life, p. 479.

  269during a civil war that killed 200,000 people: Reeves, President Reagan, p. 154.

  269Nick-a-wog-wah [as Casey pronounced it] is that place: Schaller, Reckoning with Reagan, p. 152.

  270in a letter, “I am pissed off.”: Goldberg, Barry Goldwater, p. 321.

  270we’ll all be hanging by our thumbs in front of the White House: Schaller, Reckoning with Reagan, p. 153.

  270beer logo on the tail of one of their airplanes: Schaller, Reckoning with Reagan, p. 155.

  271Israeli leaders halt offensive operations in Lebanon: Morris, Dutch, p. 465.

  271already served my time in Lebanon: Morris, Dutch, p 487.

  271polling did not support this belief: Neustadt, Presidential Power and the Modern Presidents, p. 289.

  272raise as much as $20 million for the Contras: Schaller, Reckoning With Reagan, p. 164.

  27267 percent at the beginning of November to 46 percent in December: Schaller, Reckoning With Reagan, p. 165.

  273his countrymen to see him arming Iran: Neustadt, Presidential Power and the Modern Presidents, p. 284.

  273President Reagan knew everything: Schaller, Reckoning with Reagan, p. 167.

  273however much you spend in men and money: Reeves, President Kennedy, p. 149.

  274and pulling out of Laos, and I can’t accept a third: Reeves, President Kennedy, 176.

  274Vietnam is the place: Reeves, President Kennedy, p. 112.

  274a
one-word answer: “Yes.”: Guthman and Shulman, Robert Kennedy in His Own Words, p. 395.

  275the assassinations of Trujillo and Diem: Caro, Passage of Power, p. 585.

  275Robert Kennedy said, “and they hadn’t.”: Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., Robert Kennedy and His Times, p. 616.

  Chapter 18: Tax Cuts and Deficits

  277when he heard I was elected,” Kennedy said: Reeves, President Kennedy, p. 54.

  278“to raise the grade from 93 to 96?”: Matusow, The Unraveling of America, p. 45.

  278should pay in more than you spend: Matusow, The Unraveling of America, p. 53.

  279go on carrying a deficit every year: Dallek, An Unfinished Life, p.143.

  279at the beginning of a recovery would be disastrous: Reeves, President Kennedy, p. 198.

  280government and business are necessary allies: Matusow, The Unraveling of America, p. 33.

  280or $1.25 in comparison to something like this: Dallek, An Unfinished Life, p. 370.

  280of nearly 10 percent, or $2.5 billion: Matusow, The Unraveling of America, p. 35.

  280$30 billion in economic activity that he had promised: Matusow, The Unraveling of America, p. 46.

  281incentives for personal effort, investment, and risk-taking: Matusow, The Unraveling of America, p. 51.

  281economy would otherwise surely produce: Matusow, The Unraveling of America, p. 50.

  281‘supply-side economics,’ but that’s exactly what it was,” Heller said: Heller, “Kennedy’s Supply-Side Economics,” p. 16.

  282to cut the revenue loss very significantly: Heller, “Kennedy’s Supply-Side Economics,” p. 17.

  282propose an antipoverty program in 1964: Heller, “Kennedy’s Supply-Side Economics,” pp. 17–18.

  283a little too conservative to suit my taste: Caro, Passage of Power, p. 397.

  283before you let him have his tax cut,” Johnson told Byrd: Caro, Passage of Power, p. 588.

  283allowed federal spending to increase by 13.5 percent: Heller, “Kennedy’s Supply-Side Economics,” pp. 17–18.

  283Time magazine headlined a story, We Are All Keynesians Now: Matusow, The Unraveling of America, p. 57.

  283months before the tax cuts were approved: Matusow, The Unraveling of America, p. 58.