Homage to Daniel Shays

by Gore Vidal

  One of the most fascinating aspects of politician-watching is trying to determine to what extent any politician believes what he says. Most of course never do, regarding public statements as necessary noises to soothe the electorate or deflect the wrath of the passionate, who are forever mucking things up for the man who wants decently and normally to rise. Yet there are cases of politicians who have swayed themselves by their own speeches. Take a man of conservative disposition and force him to give liberal speeches for a few years in order to be elected and he will, often as not, come to believe himself. There is evidence that JFK often spellbound himself. Bobby is something else again. Andrew Kopkind in the New Republic once described Bobby’s career as a series of “happenings”: the McCarthy friend and fellow traveler of one year emerges as an intense New York liberal in another, and between these two happenings there is no thread at all to give a clue as to what the man actually thinks or who he really is. That consistency which liberals so furiously demanded of the hapless Nixon need not apply to any Kennedy.

  After all, as the recent gospels point out, JFK himself was slow to become a liberal, to the extent he ever was one (in our society no working politician can be radical). As JFK said to James MacGregor Burns, “Some people have their liberalism ‘made’ by the time they reach their late twenties. I didn’t. I was caught in crosscurrents and eddies. It was only later that I got into the stream of things.” His comment made liberalism sound rather like something run up by a tailor, a necessary garment which he regrets that he never had time in his youth to be fitted for. Elsewhere (in William Manchester’s Portrait of a President) he explains those “currents and eddies.” Of his somewhat reactionary career in the House of Representatives he said, “I’d just come out of my father’s house at the time, and these were the things I knew.” It is of course a truism that character is formed in one’s father’s house. Ideas may change but the attitude toward others does not. A father who teaches his sons that the only thing that matters is to be first, not second, not third, is obviously (should his example be followed) going to be rewarded with energetic sons. Yet it is hardly surprising that to date one cannot determine where the junior Senator from New York stands on such a straightforward issue (morally if not politically) as the American adventure in Vietnam. Differing with the President as to which cities ought to be bombed in the North does not constitute an alternative policy. His sophisticated liberal admirers, however, do not seem in the least distressed by his lack of a position; instead they delight in the uses to which he has put the war in Vietnam in order to embarrass the usurper in the White House.

  The cold-blooded jauntiness of the Kennedys in politics has a remarkable appeal for those who also want to rise and who find annoying—to the extent they are aware of it at all—the moral sense. Also, the success of the three Kennedy brothers nicely makes hash of the old American belief that by working hard and being good one will deserve (and if fortunate, receive) promotion. A mediocre Representative, an absentee Senator, through wealth and family connections, becomes the president while his youngest brother inherits the Senate seat. Now Bobby is about to become RFK because he is Bobby. It is as if the United States had suddenly reverted to the eighteenth century, when the politics of many states were family affairs. In those days, if one wanted a political career in New York one had best be born a Livingston, a Clinton, or a Schuyler; failing that, one must marry into the family, as Alexander Hamilton did, or go to work for them. In a way, the whole Kennedy episode is a fascinating throwback to an earlier phase of civilization. Because the Irish maintained the ancient village sense of the family longer than most places in the West and to the extent that the sons of Joe Kennedy reflect those values and prejudices, they are an anachronism in an urbanized non-family-minded society. Yet the fact that they are so plainly not of this time makes them fascinating; their family story is a glamorous continuing soap opera whose appeal few can resist, including the liberals, who, though they may suspect that the Kennedys are not with them at heart, believe that the two boys are educable. At this very moment beside the river Charles a thousand Aristotles dream of their young Alexanders, and the coming heady conquest of the earth.

  Meanwhile, the source of the holy family’s power is the legend of the dead brother, who did not much resemble the hero of the books under review. Yet the myth that JFK was a philosopher-king will continue as long as the Kennedys remain in politics. And much of the power they exert over the national imagination is a direct result of the ghastliness of what happened at Dallas. But though the world’s grief and shock were genuine, they were not entirely for JFK himself. The death of a young leader necessarily strikes an atavistic chord. For thousands of years the man-god was sacrificed to ensure with blood the harvest, and there is always an element of ecstasy as well as of awe in our collective grief. Also, Jack Kennedy was a television star, more seen by most people than their friends or relatives. His death in public was all the more stunning because he was not an abstraction called The President, but a man the people thought they knew. At the risk of lèse-divinité, however, the assassination of President Nixon at, let us say, Cambridge by what at first was thought to be a member of the ADA but later turned out to be a dotty Bircher would have occasioned quite as much national horror, mourning, and even hagiography. But in time the terrible deed would have been forgotten, for there are no Nixon heirs.

  Beyond what one thinks of the Kennedys themselves, there remains the large question: What sort of men ought we to be governed by in the coming years? With the high cost of politics and image-making, it is plain that only the very wealthy or those allied with the very wealthy can afford the top prizes. And among the rich, only those who are able to please the people on television are presidential. With the decline of the religions, the moral sense has become confused, to say the least, and intellectual or political commitments that go beyond the merely expedient are regarded with cheerful contempt not only by the great operators themselves but also by their admirers and, perhaps, by the electorate itself. Also, to be fair, politicians working within a system like ours can never be much more than what the system will allow. Hypocrisy and self-deception are the traditional characteristics of the middle class in any place and time, and the United States today is the paradigmatic middle-class society. Therefore we can hardly blame our political gamesmen for being, literally, representative. Any public man has every right to try and trick us, not only for his own good but, if he is honorable, for ours as well. However, if he himself is not aware of what he is doing or to what end he is playing the game, then to entrust him with the first magistracy of what may be the last empire on earth is to endanger us all. One does not necessarily demand of our leaders passion (Hitler supplied the age with quite enough for this century) or reforming zeal (Mao Tse-tung is incomparable), but one does insist that they possess a sense of community larger than simply personal power for its own sake, being first because it’s fun. Finally, in an age of supercommunications, one must have a clear sense of the way things are, as opposed to the way they have been made to seem. Since the politics of the Kennedys are so often the work of publicists, it is necessary to keep trying to find out just who they are and what they really mean. If only because should they be confused as to the realities of Cuba, say, or Vietnam, then the world’s end is at hand.

  At one time in the United States, the popular wisdom maintained that there was no better work for a man to do than to set in motion some idea whose time had not yet arrived, even at the risk of becoming as unpopular as those politicians JFK so much admired in print and so little emulated in life. It may well be that it is now impossible for such men to rise to the top in our present system. If so, this is a tragedy. Meanwhile, in their unimaginative fierce way, the Kennedys continue to play successfully the game as they found it. They create illusions and call them facts, and between what they are said to be and what they are falls the shadow of all the useful words not spoken, of all the actual deeds not done. But if it is tr
ue that in a rough way nations deserve the leadership they get, then a frivolous and apathetic electorate combined with a vain and greedy intellectual establishment will most certainly restore to power the illusion-making Kennedys. Holy family and bedazzled nation, in their faults at least, are well matched. In any case, the age of the commune in which we have lived since the time of Jackson is drawing to a close and if historical analogies are at all relevant, the rise of the signori is about to begin, and we may soon find ourselves enjoying a strange new era in which all our lives and dreams are presided over by smiling, interchangeable, initialed gods.

  Esquire, April 1967

  THE MANCHESTER BOOK

  At any given moment only a handful of people are known to almost everyone in the world. Mr. and Mrs. Richard Burton, the Kennedys…and the list is already near its end. There are of course those who enjoy reading about Sir Winston Churchill and General de Gaulle, but their fans are relatively few. Interest in Lyndon Johnson the Man (as opposed to the Warrior) is alarmingly slight; in fact, of the world’s chiefs of state, only the enigmatic Mao Tse-tung can be said to intrigue the masses. There is something perversely gratifying in the fact that in an age of intense gossip and global publicity so few people are known to both the alert Malaysian and the average American. Things were different of course in the small world of Europe’s Middle Ages. Numerous heroes were much sung about, while everyone was imbued with the Christian ethos. As a result, painters had a subject, scholars had something to argue about, poets had a point of departure. But the idea of Christendom died in Darwin’s study, and now perhaps the only thing that we may all be said to hold in common is Bobby and Teddy and Jackie, and the memory of the dead President. Is it enough?

  William Manchester thinks so, and his testament, The Death of a President, is very much a work of love, even passion. As we learned in the course of his notorious agony last year, the sun set for him when John Kennedy died. Happily, the sun has since risen and Mr. Manchester can now take satisfaction in knowing that he too is part of history, a permanent footnote to an administration which is beginning to look as if it may itself be simply a glamorous footnote to that voluminous text the Age of Johnson. But whether or not Camelot will continue to exert its spell (and perhaps, like Brigadoon, rematerialize), Mr. Manchester has written a book hard to resist reading, despite its inordinate length. The narrative is compelling even though one knows in advance everything that is going to happen. Breakfast in Fort Worth. Flight to Dallas. Governor Connally. The roses. The sun. The friendly crowds. The Governor’s wife: “Well, you can’t say Dallas doesn’t love you, Mr. President.” And then one hopes that for once the story will be different—the car swerves, the bullets miss, and the splendid progress continues. But each time, like a recurrent nightmare, the handsome head is shattered. It is probably the only story that everyone in the world knows by heart. Therefore it is, in the truest sense, legend, and like all legends it can bear much repetition and reinterpretation. In classical times, every Greek playgoer knew that sooner or later Electra would recognize Orestes, but the manner of recognition varied significantly from teller to teller.

  Mr. Manchester’s final telling of the death of Kennedy is most moving; it is also less controversial than one had been led to believe by those who read the original manuscript and found the portrait of President Johnson unflattering. According to the current text, Johnson seems a bit inadequate but hardly villainous. The Kennedys, on the other hand, blaze with light; the author’s love is apparent on every page. That love, however, did his writing little service, for the prose of the book is not good—the result, no doubt, of the strain under which the author was compelled to work. Certainly the style shows none of the ease which marked his first book on Kennedy, nor is there any trace of that elegance with which he once portrayed H. L. Mencken. Yet the crowded, overwritten narrative holds. Mr. Manchester is perhaps too haughty in his dismissal of the plot theory, and altogether too confident in analyzing Oswald’s character (“In fact, he was going mad”). Nevertheless, if the best the detractors of the book can come up with is a photograph proving that, contrary to what Mr. Manchester has written, a number of Kennedy courtiers did indeed attend the swearing-in of the new President, then it is safe to assume that he has apparently accomplished what he set out to do: describe accurately what happened at Dallas, and immediately after.

  Apparently. For there is a certain mystery about the origins of the book. It is known that the Kennedys approached Mr. Manchester and asked him to write the “official” version of the assassination. But in this age of image-making, politicians are never motivated simply. Whatever the moment’s purpose, everything must serve it. Certainly nothing must get out of hand, as the Kennedys know better than anyone, for they were stung once before by a writer. Preparing for 1960, they gave Professor James MacGregor Burns a free hand to write what, in effect, was to be a campaign biography of John Kennedy. The result was a work of some candor which still remains the best analysis of the thirty-fifth President’s character, but the candor which gave the book its distinction did not at all please its subject or his family. References to Joe Kennedy’s exuberant anti-Semitic outbursts combined with a shrewd analysis of John Kennedy’s ambivalent attitude toward McCarthy caused irritation. Therefore the next writer must be tractable. The starry-eyed Mr. Manchester seemed made to order: he was willing to swear loyalty; more important, he was willing to sign agreements. With some confidence, Launcelot and Guinevere confided to him the task of celebrating the fallen hero.

  The comedy began. Right off, there was the matter of President Johnson. Whatever Mr. Manchester’s original feelings about Johnson, he could not have spent all those hours communing with members of the exiled court and not get the sense of what a disaster it was for the country to have that vulgar, inept boor in Jack’s place. The Kennedys have always been particularly cruel about Johnson, and their personal disdain is reflected and magnified by those around them, particularly their literary apologists, of whom Mr. Manchester was now one. When at last he submitted his work to the family, they proved too great and too sensitve actually to read it. Instead friends were chosen to vet the contents of the book. The friends found the anti-Johnson tone dangerous in the political context of the moment. They said so, and Mr. Manchester obediently made changes.

  But Mr. Manchester’s true ordeal did not begin until Richard Goodwin, a former aide to President Johnson, read the manuscript and found fault. He alarmed Mrs. Kennedy with tales of how what she had said looked in cold print. As a result, she threatened to sue if large cuts were not made. Some were made. Some were not. At last the publishers grew weary: the text could not be further altered. To their amazement, Mrs. Kennedy brought suit against them; meanwhile, in communicating her displeasure to Mr. Manchester, she reminded him that so secure was she in the pantheon of American heroines, no one could hope to cross her and survive—“unless I run off with Eddie Fisher,” she added drolly. Needless to say, Mrs. Kennedy had her way, as the world knows.

  It is now reasonable to assume that Mr. Manchester is not the same man he was before he got involved with the Kennedys. But though one’s sympathy is with him, one must examine the matter from the Kennedy point of view. They are playing a great and dangerous game: they want the presidency of the United States and they will do quite a lot to obtain it. By reflecting accurately their view of Johnson, Mr. Manchester placed in jeopardy their immediate political future. Put simply, they do not want, in 1967, to split fatally the Democratic Party. Unhappily for them, Mr. Manchester’s sense of history did not accommodate this necessary fact; nevertheless, since he was, in their eyes, a “hired” writer, he must tell the story their way or not at all. As it turned out, he did pretty much what they wanted him to do. But, in the process of publicly strong-arming Mr. Manchester and the various publishers involved, the Kennedys gave some substance to those “vicious” rumors (so often resorted to by polemicists) that they are ruthless and perhaps not very lovable after
all. As a result, Mr. Manchester’s contribution to history may prove not to be the writing of this book so much as being the unwitting agent who allowed the innocent millions an unexpected glimpse of a preternaturally ambitious family furiously at work manipulating history in order that they might rise.

  It was inevitable that sooner or later popular opinion would go against this remarkable family. In nature there is no raising up without a throwing down. It does not take a particularly astute political observer to detect the public’s change of mood toward the Kennedys. Overt ambition has always caused unease in the Republic, while excessive busyness makes for fatigue. Since our electorate is as easily alarmed as it is bored, political ascent has always been hazardous, and the way strewn with discarded idols. Mrs. Kennedy, in particular, is a victim of the public’s fickleness; undeserving of their love, she is equally undeserving of their dislike. But then it is a most terrible thing to live out a legend, and one wonders to what extent the Kennedys themselves understand just what was set in motion for them by their father’s will that they be great. Theirs is indeed the story of our time, and, if it did nothing else, the noisy quarrel with Mr. Manchester made vivid for everyone not only their arrogance but their poignancy. They are unique in our history, and the day they depart the public scene will be a sad one; for not only will we have lost a family as much our own as it is theirs, we shall have also lost one of the first shy hints since Christianity’s decline that there may indeed be such a thing as fate, and that tragedy is not merely a literary form of little relevance in the age of common men but a continuing fact of the human condition, requiring that the overreacher be struck down and in his fall, we, the chorus, experience awe, and some pity.