The Kennedy Imprisonment

by Garry Wills

  1. Charismatic leadership is “the product of crisis and enthusiasm”; it has an “emergency character.” The pressure of danger makes followers look to the single hero who is fearless and can save them. Accounts by New Frontiersmen make it sound as if the Kennedy presidency was just one crisis-meeting after another. Some of these crises were undoubtedly posed by circumstances beyond the team’s control. But there was a tendency to court new crises (e.g., the U.S. Steel confrontation) or sharpen them once they occurred (e.g., the imposition of a deadline for removing the Cuban missiles). Kennedy tried to instill a sense of crisis during his campaign by exaggerating the slim (and, it turned out, erroneous) evidence of a “missile gap” that put America in imminent danger of destruction.

  Sorensen’s account of the administration is gleefully crisis-oriented. He admiringly counts sixteen of them in Kennedy’s first eight months as President. The atmosphere is perfectly caught by Halberstam: Kennedy bequeathed to Johnson “crisis-mentality men, men who delighted in the great international crisis because it centered the action right there in the White House—the meetings, the decisions, the tensions, the power, they were movers and activists, and this was what they had come to Washington for, to meet these challenges.” Kennedy had come to office sounding the alarm over a missile-gap crisis—as he had sounded the alarm in 1940 over England’s airplane-gap crisis at the beginning of World War II. (A. J. P. Taylor has demonstrated that the first gap was no more real than the later one.) In his inaugural address he asked the nation to welcome “the role of defending freedom at its maximum hour of danger.” In his first State of the Union address he said: “Before my term has ended we shall have to test again whether a nation organized and governed such as ours can endure. The outcome is by no means certain.” To convey a sense of crisis over Cuba, he risked alerting Castro to the Bay of Pigs invasion by saying, in a TV interview just before the landing: “If we don’t move now, Mr. Castro may become a much greater danger than he is now.” He tried to “jolt the democracy” (as his 1940 book recommended) by calling up the spectre of a civil-defense gap. Sorensen admits that Kennedy was just trying to lend urgency to the Berlin crisis: “The President’s aim was to bestir a still slumbering public; and he succeeded beyond his own expectations and desire.” Debate over who would be saved in the bomb shelters became hysterical, with talk of shooting neighbors who tried to crowd in. “The confusion and panic were aggravated by the Kennedy administration’s lack of a comprehensive shelter program, a clear-cut shelter policy or even an authoritative voice placing the whole program in perspective.” Kennedy meant to frighten people a little so they would flock toward him. Since the charismatic leader’s special powers grow from special dangers, the two feed on each other. For some crises to be overcome, they must first be created.

  2. “The charismatic leader is always a radical who challenges established practice by going to ‘the root of the matter.’ He dominates men by virtue of qualities inaccessible to others and incompatible with the rules of thought and action that govern everyday life.” Many people have noticed the way Kennedy, without being radical himself, seemed to inspire a wave of radical action, from the freedom rides to the Free Speech movement. He sent out young people in the Peace Corps to be missionaries for American values; but many seemed to catch the values of the countries they went to. This was not his intent; but the very act of sending them out was radicalizing—it was adventurous, and it reflected the contemptuous attitude Kennedy’s people had for older means of diplomatic suasion and propaganda. Insofar as the charismatic leader asserts an entirely personal authority, he delegitimates the traditional and legal authorities. Attempting to prop up the Saigon regime, Kennedy’s Vietnamese ambassadors and advisers actually called its slim claims further into question. And the same was true, in less degree, of the bureaus and agencies at home. While deferring to the FBI himself, Robert Kennedy made clear to others that it could not be relied on in the protection of civil rights workers. While expressing formal regard for “Secretary Rusk” (never, even in private, was it “Dean”), the President made clear his slight regard for the State Department. By relying on a few “generalists” Kennedy signaled the lack of authority in most branches of his own administration.

  Charismatic authority is constructive only when it builds order from chaos. When it tries to supersede continuing forms of authority, it destabilizes despite itself. The more insistent became Kennedy’s personal call to follow him, the less compelling was any order that did not issue directly from him. The nontransferability of such personal authority was evident in the refusal of many Kennedy followers to treat President Johnson as fully legitimate. Johnson’s authority came from procedures and legal precedent, not from the personal charisma of his predecessor.

  3. Charismatic leadership works through “a loose organizational structure.” Criticism of Eisenhower’s “structures” was endlessly repeated among Kennedy’s followers. When authority flows from a person, that authority cannot be delegated. The magic touch must be bestowed by the ruler himself. He must go out among the people, lead the action. Everything must be referred to him, decided by him, must bear his mark, embody his style. He must be in constant touch with everything that goes on. As Hugh Sidey wrote of Kennedy: “He wanted all the lines to lead to the White House, he wanted to be the single nerve center.” And when he cannot act personally, he must do so through a personal emissary created ad hoc, not through official, impersonal machinery.

  4. Thus, though the organizational structure of charismatic leadership is loose, it calls up “disciples, chosen for their qualifications, who constitute a charismatic artistocracy within the wider group of followers.” The power of these aristocrats does not come from their office but from their proximity to the person of the ruler. Members of his family are especially valued carriers of the charisma. The creation of “honorary Kennedys” was thus an instrument of rule, not only in the Justice Department but in the White House itself. In order to speak for the “graced” ruler one must, in some measure, be the ruler, be merged in his auriole. Sorensen rejoiced in being thought of as Kennedy’s alter ego or second self, and many other people tried to win that distinction.

  5. In economic as in other ways, charismatic leadership does not rest on settled modes, but prefers “risky financial transactions.… Such economic activities are worlds apart from the methodical management of a large-scale corporation, in which success depends upon professional competence and an everyday steadiness in the conduct of affairs that is incompatible with the indispensability of any individual and the sporadic character of very risky transactions.” Though the nation’s economy was less porous to Kennedy’s guerrilla raids than was the bureaucracy, his model for political action was the jolly piratical creed of his predator father. When the Cubans captured at the Bay of Pigs needed ransom money, the Attorney General went outside governmental channels, used family charisma for remedial action. He did the same thing, as Senator, in setting up his own social program for Bedford Stuyvesant. These “raids” for political action and advantage were privately financed—like the Kennedy campaign itself, for which the elder Kennedy bought his son his very own airplane, the Caroline. And once in office, that son’s foreign moves took on “the sporadic character of very risky transactions.”

  When John Kennedy reached the White House, his father retired gracefully into the background. Schlesinger and others saw in this a demonstration that all fears of his father’s influence were groundless. But the father did not have to speak or be present to have an effect on the President. Joseph Kennedy had labored to create a separate world for his family, an aristocracy floating free of lesser ties, where image and power would be controllable, resources ipstantly mobilizable for the family’s advantage. John Kennedy, by his personalization of the authority of the President, simply drew up the United States government—or as much of it as could be lifted—into that encapsulated world of charmed Kennedy power, of charisma.

  14

  Enjoy! Enjo
y!

  [Theodore White observes] his rule that there is something improper about disliking a politician.

  —MURRAY KEMPTON

  The presidency of Dwight Eisenhower was such an ordeal for American liberals because they had been excited by the prospect of having Adlai Stevenson in office. Stevenson first promised intellectuals the sense of belonging that they came to experience, at last, with Kennedy. In fact, it was a profound mystery to most intellectuals that the American people had been able to reject their hero in 1952. This so disillusioned Murray Kempton that he swore never to vote again in a presidential election. The idea that the “best man” could win in that forum was dashed forever in the anguish of Adlai’s loss. John Kenneth Galbraith writes of that election: “It would be hard for the young to understand not only our surprise but our shock at the outcome … we learned that the natural order had come to an end.”

  Richard Neustadt felt the shock, and noticed the even greater scandal—that some intellectuals supported Eisenhower:

  The striking thing about our national elections in the Fifties was not Eisenhower’s personal popularity; it was the genuine approval of his candidacy by informed Americans whom [sic] one might have supposed would know better.… To place him in the White House without losing him as hero seems both reasonable and prudent on the part of average citizens, no matter what their general view of politics or Presidents. The same thing can be said of the Republican professionals who managed Eisenhower’s nomination in 1952; their action appears reasonable and prudent in their terms. They twice had tried a leading politician [Dewey] as their candidate; this time they wanted most of all to win. But when it comes to journalists, and government officials, and business leaders, and professors, who joined in the parade or urged it on, one deals with a phenomenon decidedly less reasonable.… When one finds attitudes of this sort in the circle of articulate observers one wonders at the meaning for American society.

  For such people, the choice of Eisenhower over Stevenson was an affront to reason sufficient to shake one’s faith in democracy. If the people could be so manifestly wrong, maybe they were incapable of self-government after all. McCarthyism had been scary enough—for a while the Senator from Wisconsin had commanded majority support in the polls. But the passing sway of a demagogue could be weathered. Eisenhower posed a more serious problem. He was not a demagogue, in the Neustadt view of things; just a dope. But dopes, if they last in government, may be even more serious threats to democratic values than impassioned fanatics who quickly burn themselves out. Dopes not only have personal durability; under their prolonged sway the nation can lapse into narcolepsy, let all its problems breed in the darkness, storing up trouble.

  For John Kennedy, who had taken his view of democracy from John Buchan, the choice of Eisenhower was no mystery. He knew, and had written in Why England Slept, that democracies like to take the easy way, to avoid looking at problems until it is too late. That is why they need strong leaders, willing to administer timely jolts to the people as a form of therapy. But this did not fit well with an older American liberalism, which feared power and trusted the people—the liberalism for which Adlai Stevenson spoke when he asked that the “cup” of power pass him by. Friends of Kennedy laughed at the mere idea of his asking to be spared the cup of power.

  What Neustadt’s book signified was the willingness of American liberals to confess that the older liberalism could not cope, it must be jettisoned. There should be an “end of ideology” in the name of “existential” leaders—Schlesinger instanced Hemingway and Camus—for whom “authenticity” in action was the test, a sense of one’s own will to deal with life. Neustadt’s Roosevelt was seen through such postwar filters of existential leadership. He was a manipulative man, a tough pragmatist experimenting, one who did not go by the rules but imposed his will. There would be no more talk of fearing power. The brave man must take up power as a joyful encounter with reality. The failure to do that was, in fact, Eisenhower’s greatest flaw:

  Eisenhower also lacked Roosevelt’s enjoyment. At least until his seventh year the politics of power in the Presidency never was his sport; not recreation for him; certainly not fun.… What kept experience from sharpening his sense of power and his taste for it?… He wanted to be arbiter, not master. His love was not for power but for duty.

  The mood of the time can be seen in the fact that the very terms Neustadt uses to criticize Eisenhower would once have been terms of praise. And that fact becomes more interesting when we realize that every criticism directed at Eisenhower could be doubled upon Adlai Stevenson. Stevenson was even less the jolly warrior, the master manipulator, the seizer and user of power. Truman had called him a “Hamlet.” The Kennedy people learned to despise him for wanting things he would not openly work to win. They mistreated him and he came back for more. In moving from Stevenson to Kennedy, liberals had not—as Eleanor Roosevelt feared—given up their principles; they had finally seen the solution to the Eisenhower problem. They had gone back to the true sense of power exemplified by Mrs. Roosevelt’s husband.

  Neustadt’s was just the first in a series of books that told Presidents they must, above all else, love power and seek it with unbounded gusto. The theme of them all was “Enjoy! Enjoy!” Neustadt led off:

  Roosevelt’s methods were the product of his insights, his incentive and his confidence. No President in this century has had a sharper sense of personal power, a sense of what it is and where it comes from; none has had more hunger for it, few have had more use for it, and only one or two could match his faith in his own competence to use it. Perception and desire and self-confidence, combined, produced their own reward. No modern President has been more nearly master in the White House. Roosevelt had a love affair with power in that place. It was an early romance and it lasted all his life.… For Roosevelt, this was fun.

  From now on, having fun in the White House would be a presidential task. It was his duty not to be merely dutiful. Lack of enjoyment was of itself a disqualification for office. Vigor can emanate only from the President’s own appetite for the life of power: “The more determinedly a President seeks power, the more he will be likely to bring vigor to his clerkship. As he does so he contributes to the energy of government.” A long literature of common sense had taught men to suspect power and the men who thirst for it. Now that literature would be turned on its head. The man who is suspect is the one who shows any suspicion over power and its uses. The old view had been discredited in the deadening Eisenhower days: “His virtue was supposed to be that he was above politics, and disenchantment with him rarely seems a disenchantment with this odd criterion. Instead it is all Eisenhower’s fault that he is not what temperament and training never equipped him to be.”

  Theodore White, in his first Making of the President volume, took up the theme of power as a beneficial intoxicant:

  [Theodore and Franklin Roosevelt] not only understood the use of power; they knew the enjoyment of power, too. And that is the important thing. Whether a man is burned by power or enjoys power, whether he is trapped by responsibility or made free by it; whether he is moved by other people and outer forces or moves them—this is the essence of leadership. John F. Kennedy had known much of the quality of leadership in American life long before he became President in 1960—the legends, delights, songs, deals and reach of power.

  Needless to say, the official Kennedy literature is drearily joyful in repeating how much fun Kennedy had being President. Schlesinger sang along: “Not since Franklin Roosevelt had there been a President who so plainly delighted in innovation and leadership.” Sorensen too: “John F. Kennedy was a happy president.… He liked the job, he thrived on its pressures.

  Since it was a President’s duty to seek all the power he could get, and our duty to choose men with this appetite, it was clearly our duty to relinquish the power—to be as glad that he seized it as he was in the act of seizure. He ennobled us by instilling awe for his office. Sorensen put this creation of awe among the great h
uman achievements of all time:

  One of John Kennedy’s most important contributions to the human spirit was his concept of the office of the Presidency. His philosophy of government was keyed to power, not as a matter of personal ambition but of national obligation; the primacy of the White House within the Executive Branch and of the Executive Branch within the Federal Government, the leadership of the Federal Government within the United States and of the United States within the community of nations.

  The founders of this nation would have been surprised to hear that executive supremacy is a noble cause; and other nations might wonder at the elevation of American power over all other countries as a contribution to the human spirit. But I suppose we are lucky Sorensen did not make his pyramid of power—America over all, the executive over America, the President over the executive—culminate in the title he celebrated while writing Kennedy’s campaign speeches: the Commander-in-Chief. During the Watergate days, Alexander Haig was mocked for telling William Ruckelshaus, in the Special Prosecutor’s office, that his Commander-in-Chief had given him an order. The President is the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces, not of the citizenry at large. But in his 1960 campaign Kennedy assured us that the American people yearn for leadership: “They want to know what is needed—they want to be led by the Commander-in-Chief.” And the President was not only the Commander-in-Chief of all American people but of the whole free world—he must be “a man capable of acting as the Commander-in-Chief of the grand alliance.” Hugh Sidey significantly called his chapter on counterinsurgent warfare in other people’s countries “Commander in Chief.” Needless to say, the Constitution did not set up military titles for foreigners to obey. But Kennedy-Sorensen was convinced that all the world’s free people yearned for a leader who enjoyed the widest powers he could lay claim to. Thus was “the human spirit” itself vindicated.