by James Philip
The British had been pulling out of Africa before the war, and the October War had turned that semi-orderly pull out into a shambolic flight; in the subsequent fire sale American conglomerates had fallen on the region like wolves upon the fold. Initially, the British, the French and the Portuguese had been powerless to stop the – probably – illegal cut price sequestering of many of the remaining jewels in their colonial crowns from Nigeria all the way down to Namibia. The march of the all-conquering dollar had only been halted at the northern borders of Southern Rhodesia and South Africa, the two remaining bastions of White Supremacy in the African continent. In both those lands the ruling elites had already got their hands deep into the honey pot well ahead of the fleet-footed and nimble-fingered acquisition departments of the big banks, oil companies and mining consortiums; and had rejected the Kennedy Administration’s squeals of protest at their local ‘bully boy tactics’ and fundamentally ‘unhelpful’ entrenched antipathy to the ‘legitimate commercial activities of US-based companies and combines’, with undisguised contempt.
Lately, it was becoming clear that the ruthless tactics of the Wall Street banking fraternity and several of the biggest American corporations had so incensed the Australian Government that it was actively considering trade sanctions across the board – as opposed to the limited measures already in place – including sanctions against the United States and the nationalisation, without compensation, of ‘assets illegally seized’ by American companies from both Australian and other Commonwealth former owners.
The real problem was that the ‘peace dividend’ fiasco was just the latest, most public symptom of the creeping malaise at the heart of the Union. Yes, the bombed cities had been deluged with federal support – not very well co-ordinated, planned or effective support admittedly – and powers had been devolved to selected State Governors to keep the peace but, and it was a big but, the Administration’s response to the aftermath of the October War had been essentially piecemeal, reactive, somewhat in the manner of a concussed boxer swinging his arms in a futile attempt to defend himself from further punishment twenty seconds after the fight ought to have been stopped.
In the last year there had been no real leadership from the White House. The President could have spent most of the last year hiding in a bunker for all the good he had done. From the evidence of the Vice-President’s regular perambulations around the country an apolitical observer might easily have gained the impression that Lyndon Baines Johnson was the President. Insiders knew this was not the case; LBJ had always been outside the walls of Camelot but in JFK’s continuing absence all across America people were making up their own minds what it meant. This time next year there were supposed to be Presidential elections; nobody even knew if Jack Kennedy was going to run for a second term!
None of which made a heap of difference to Pat Brown’s domestic political woes, or to the ongoing Federal funding freeze on all major State initiated infrastructure projects like the bridging of San Diego Bay.
In comparison with the Germans, the French, the British and the Japanese, the United States of America ought to have been celebrating its blessings. The latest estimates spoke of populations in Germany and Austria reduced by 85%, in France and the Low Countries reduced by over 50%, in the United Kingdom reduced by around 25%, and in Japan there had been a reduction of at least 20% in comparison to pre-war levels. In North America the Department of the Interior estimated a total casualty – rather than mortality - rate ‘including dead, seriously injured and lightly injured’ attributable to the war of 5.3%, of whom 2.78% had probably died during the war.
America’s principle European allies had been devastated; whereas of the fifty states in the Union forty-one had suffered no nuclear strike or near miss, and of those forty-one, only Montana, Wisconsin and Connecticut had experienced, albeit briefly, dangerously high levels of radioactive fallout which had locked down the citizenry in some areas for a period of between one and three weeks after the war. Given the economic might and the continental resources of the Union it ought not to have been beyond the wit of the men in Washington to ensure that, one; massive and urgent assistance was delivered to the areas hardest hit, and two; that reconstruction and regeneration ought to have become the great engine of national revival. Unfortunately, neither had happened. Instead, for want of leadership the country had retreated into mourning, and an increasingly disconnected elite in Washington DC had turned to quick fixes, snake oil economics, and the politics of pork-belly isolationism. America First was a slogan, not a policy.
California had suffered neither a direct strike, nor significant fallout issues and yet over a year after the war cities like San Diego, heavily reliant on the military dollar, were as a direct result of the Federal Government policy, in steep recession at exactly the same time the Administration in Washington was demanding the State take in a still higher quota of displaced persons from the ‘National Refugee Register’.
No matter how cock-eyed the perspective from the White House, West Coast observers had already drawn their conclusions about the state of the Union and very few of those conclusions boded well for the continuing health and sustenance of that Union.
It was undeniable that the war had been terrible; however, it had not been a crushing or in any way complete national catastrophe. Historians and academics were already drawing rough and ready analogies with experience of the Civil War, in which an approximately similar proportion of the population had perished – albeit over the course of four years and not six or seven hours – and in which the economy of some parts of the country had been effectively extinguished.
Academics liked to point out that in the wake of the Civil War the Union had prospered, economic growth had roared ahead like a steam train going downhill with the brake off. The argument ran something like: in adversity there was also a tranche of new opportunities; despite the October War America remained great and would, inevitably, be greater in the years to come. Once, that was, the foundations had been built for the recovery.
After the night of the October War there should have been a great coming together of the American nation, and there might have been had the Administration put its shoulder to the wheel and appealed to the greatness of the American spirit. Just after the war there had been an upwelling of compassion and millions, perhaps billions of dollars pledged for the relief of the devastated cities and regions. And then the unity had begun to ebb away as the realisation dawned that help from the Federal Government was not going to be immediate, nor necessarily massive, and even when it arrived it was going to be hedged around with Byzantine caveats and provisos as to who might and might not be permitted to bid, procure, manage and account for whatever largesse was eventually doled out not by the Administration, but by a Congress which had already sunk its claws into the ‘relief funds’ like the rusty teeth of a bear trap into an unwary Grizzly’s hind left leg. The situation called for a George Washington, or a Thomas Jefferson, or a Roosevelt – Teddy or FDR would have known what to do – but all they had had was Jack Kennedy in mourning, Richard Nixon heckling from the sidelines, and old soldiers like Dwight Eisenhower grumbling to his friends that ‘somebody needs to get a grip’. Inevitably, State Governors and big city Mayors had started making up the rules as they went along.
“Has the President started talking yet?” Pat Brown asked as his entourage swept out of the cool fall morning sunshine into the dark, somewhat dilapidated lobby of the magnificent old Hotel del Coronado. Larry Lawrence had bought the Hotel del Coronado planning to knock it down and to build condominiums on the land around it. He had gambled and lost; real estate prices had continued to tumble when everybody said they ought to be on the rise and rise. Now he badly needed backers if he was going to stay in the hotel business; the sort of backers whose doors could only be opened this side of Hell freezing over by the enthusiastic high profile endorsements of people like the Governor of America’s most populous state.
“Not yet, sir,” one of his inter
ns, the tall, pretty blond daughter of his old friend the B-movie actor, Ben Sullivan, informed him brightly. The kid – she was just twenty-three – had only been working in his office in Sacramento a month but already she was an indispensible member of Pat Brown’s travelling entourage.
The wires had been humming last night.
The President was going to make a major announcement at William Marsh Rice University in Houston. The Party needed to be up to speed, on message.
These days the people in DC lived on another planet!
A television had been set up in a first floor room.
The Governor was pleasantly surprised to be offered a cup of fresh coffee as he took his seat.
Walking through the old hotel he had been struck by the notion that the parlous condition of the Hotel del Coronado was an unkind, but rather apt metaphor for the state of the Union; its former glory sorely tarnished by complacency, neglect and miss-management.
The dark screen of the television in the middle of the room brightened and the camera closed up on the handsome, somewhat careworn features of John Fitzgerald Kennedy standing at a lectern. Behind him several ranks of seats were packed with freshly scrubbed, appropriately awed young people, each bright-eyed and optimistic, each hanging on their President’s every word as if he had just come down from the mountain bearing tablets of stone upon which the sublime collected wisdom of the gods was chiselled.
“My fellow Americans,” the President began. His was a relaxed, purposeful voice; a melodic, striking voice that reached out into homes and resonated about hearths, attempting to speak to the hopes and fears of every generation. It was a voice that divided and yet retained the power to beguile, the most familiar voice in the world, hated and despised, positively loathed – if the polls were to be believed – by more Americans than any other President in living memory. “My fellow Americans,” the President of the United States of America said again, “and to this great nation’s friends, wherever they may be, near and far,” the voice was stilled for an instant for dramatic effect, “may God be with you in this time of trial.”
The Governor of California accepted the cup of coffee the tall blond girl pressed into his hands. The young woman gave him a tight-lipped smile and stepped back into the ranks of his travelling staff. The kid kept on making good impressions; she did not attempt to make anything of her parents’ long association and friendship with Pat Brown, she just got on with and did everything she was asked to do, and more.
Going ahead to reconnoitre and organise this event had been her first ‘out of Sacramento’ solo project; Larry Lawrence’s people had complained about her ‘nit-picking’ and accused her of ‘pissing off people at the hotel’ which meant she had been doing her job. Larry Lawrence and his prospective backers got a public endorsement from the Governor; what they did not get and what they were never going to get was to look like they owned any part of Pat Brown’s Administration. Miranda Sullivan had got that without anybody having to tell her first. For a kid her age that was impressive. What was even more impressive was that the Governor could tell by the aroma of fresh roasted ground beans that the kid had made damned sure somebody had made his coffee exactly the way he liked it.
“We have lived through the fire,” the President declared. “We have emerged from the valley of the shadow of death...”
Pat Brown decided that he would concentrate on enjoying his coffee, suspecting that there was going to be little or no joy in listening to what Jack Kennedy was likely to say. New initiatives, new announcements or whatever, the President clearly intended to rehash the old narrative yet again before he got to the punch line. If Ted Sorenson was still writing his speeches he would never have let his old friend make the same old mistake, time and time again...
“Already we are rebuilding our cities in memory of our immortal dead. Already our factories are running again at full capacity. Already our brave soldiers and sailors and airmen are carrying aid and succour to our loyal allies.” The pitch of the voice fell, as if he was speaking personally to every member of the audience in the big hall at Rice University. “I know there are people in this great American continent who say that ‘we have problems of our own’. They say ‘we are as yet too damaged to be able to spare our scarce food, our scarce fuels, our precious manufactured goods, and that we should not risk our irreplaceable soldiers and sailors and airmen in harm’s way’. And I hear you. I hear you all. But I say to you that we cannot stand by and do nothing because that is not the American way. Would you stand by idly while your neighbour’s house burned to the ground? Would you do nothing to prevent his child starving to death? Would you have your local sheriff do nothing while outlaws loot and rape at will? I tell you that it is our Christian duty to carry American values, American good sense, and American charity into the lands of our so sorely injured friends and allies.”
Pat Brown was not alone among senior Democrats in thinking that running guns and grain to fascist dictatorships in South America and trying to destabilize former European colonies in the Carribean by liberally handing out weapons to anybody who claimed to be anti-communist, was the same as delivering ‘American charity into the lands of our so sorely injured friends and allies.’ Actually, he thought it was just plain dumb and stirring up trouble for the future, especially when the people who really needed American help were its real friends in Europe, whom the Administration seemed determined to treat as lepers.
The Governor risked a look around the room at the faces of his staffers knowing that the self-justifying, self-exculpatory well trodden narrative that the Administration had tried so hard to sell to the American people was wearing wafer thin even within the dwindling ranks of the Party faithful with its constant retelling. The people in Washington did not seem to understand that constant repetition only allowed one’s enemies to gnaw at the carcass of whatever the real truth of the events of that day in late October last year was, or more importantly, was not. The reasons why mattered little to the refugees and dispossessed from the wrecked cities, or to a country locked – after a brief post-war false boom when everybody spent money suspecting that within months their savings would be worthless - into a cycle of economic stagnation and decline. Thirteen months ago America had been the intellectual, industrial and economic powerhouse of the World. That was then, this was now. The booming, rebuilt post-1945 European economies which had sucked in American industrial and commercial wares no longer existed, and elsewhere previously friendly governments had recoiled in horror at the devastation across much of the Northern Hemisphere. Now the still largely intact US industrial behemoth, robbed of its wealthiest overseas clients and with most of its big banks effectively bankrupted by the obliteration of its overseas clientele, was grubbing along the bottom of a recession that threatened in many parts of the country to become a new Great Depression.
“Today, I speak to you from Houston,” the Commander-in-Chief called, pausing to brush what might have been a tear from his eye, “from the great wounded state of Texas...”
There was a break while his audience – or perhaps, his technicians – filled the airways with rapturous applause.
“I speak to you today from the great wounded state of Texas. Yesterday, I walked down streets seared by the terrible flame of a war that this nation neither sought nor would have fought but for the monstrous actions of our enemies. Let it never be forgotten that this great, peace loving American nation desiring only to co-exist in peace with its neighbours and the peoples of the World was attacked not once, but twice. First at sea, then, without warning on land. Our ships going about their lawful business in international waters were the victims of a cowardly, dishonourable act of unprovoked aggression. Hours later the illegal, barbaric, puppet regime in Havana - almost certainly at the prompting of the Kremlin – launched a pre-meditated, cold-blooded, dastardly first strike at cities in the continental United States. Two unprovoked attacks. Two attacks without warning. What great nation in the history of the world has ever turned it
s cheek once, let alone twice before accepting that war cannot be averted. Even then we stayed our hand. Knowing that we faced unimaginable risks we stayed our hand several more hours. Hoping, praying that our enemies would repent, recant their evil ways and step back from the brink.” The preacher’s voice was slowly rising towards an inevitable crescendo. “We asked only that they stand down their offensive weapons. We asked only that they agree, in principle, to withdraw all their forces from Cuba.” The voice was pleading, demanding. It was not the voice of one of God’s lesser children, but of a man who sat at His right hand. “We only asked that they return to the status quo before the revolution in that sad island. That they hand over Castro and his henchmen. Hand him over to us so that he might face justice for his heinous war crimes against the American people...”
Again the applause overwhelmed the microphones.
Thirty seconds ticked by.
“What did our enemies do?” The voice asked, sadly, as if JFK was both disappointed and a little bemused. “What did they do? I’ll tell you what they did, my fellow Americans! They readied their engines of war! They scrambled their bombers! They moved their missiles onto their launching pads! And they said nothing to us! Nothing, my friends!”