by Ted Sorensen
CONTACTS WITH OTHER WORLD LEADERS
Pearson was not the only opposition leader with whom the President had friendly contacts. He was particularly fond of Britain’s Hugh Gaitskell and West Germany’s Willy Brandt. With all chief executives and opposition leaders he could talk politics, theirs and his. He privately weighed and analyzed these men as he had his fellow American politicians in the 1960 quest for the nomination, sometimes even comparing a foreign chief to some similar Democratic leader. He understood, as few do, the fact that not only geography but domestic political pressures often accounted for the differences in foreign policy expressed by other nations’ leaders. With few exceptions, foreign politicians soon recognized the impact of his popularity on their own elections. A visit to the White House had long been considered a necessity by the leaders of both parties in many a country. Now the younger politicians in particular imitated Kennedy’s style, analyzed his campaign techniques or permitted their publicists to call them “another Kennedy.”
At an average of more than one a week in his first year in office, and frequently thereafter, Kennedy met personally with his fellow heads of state and chief executives, visiting eleven in their countries and receiving more than fifty presidents, prime ministers and royal leaders in the White House. He prepared for each of those meetings—whether it was the President of France or Togo—with a searching inquiry into all available facts about the other country, its politics, its problems and its personalities. Citing their local statistics from memory, quoting from their writings or their history without notes, he left his hosts and visitors both pleased and impressed. (West Berlin’s Mayor Willy Brandt, for example, could not get over Kennedy’s knowledge of East Berlin’s Mayor: “He asked me whether Ebert’s other son was also a Communist. Ebert’s other son! I didn’t even know he had another son!”)
With his own travels limited, Kennedy maintained a voluminous correspondence with other national chiefs—met separately with an even greater number of foreign secretaries, finance ministers and other officials —sent his wife, his brother Robert, the Vice President and others on foreign visits—encouraged State Department officials to deal with their counterparts firsthand on special crises instead of through letters and ambassadors—and improved our relations with Japan through annual joint Cabinet sessions. The principal effort in this unprecedented concern for the care and feeding of foreign egos was the White House visit. Each visiting dignitary was brought upstairs to the Kennedys’ private quarters (JFK picking up Caroline from her nap, for example, to show her to King Saud of Saudi Arabia) and shown the Indian paintings and the French furniture in which both Kennedys took pride. Noticing the deplorable condition of the limousine to which he escorted one prime minister, he found it had been rented from a funeral parlor and promptly ordered new arrangements. Impressed by the honor guard lining the avenues in Paris, he installed a similar plan for state dinners at the White House. Convinced that Andrews Air Force Base was a dreary place to begin an official visit, he instituted arrivals by helicopter south of the White House.
The unprecedented flood of high-ranking dignitaries to Washington required less use of the three-day “state visits,” with all the frills and fixings, and more use of one-day “working visits,” with merely a lunch at the White House, as well as more two-day compromises under either label. Nearly always more interested in these talks than in small talk with many Congressmen, he usually kept his foreign visitors overtime, even when other crises pressed. His interest in their problems and politics, his broad knowledge of their needs and views, his wit and charm, and the uniquely hospitable treatment lavished by both Kennedys—glittering White House dinners with menus personally reviewed by the President, dazzling artistic performances and gifts tailored to the recipient’s interests—all helped establish warm ties between Kennedy and his fellow leaders.
This was particularly true and important with the leaders of the new and developing nations, especially in Africa. They liked his efforts on immigration, disarmament, foreign aid, the Congo, Laos and especially civil rights. (Kennedy, in fact, took special pains to send his civil rights address with a personal letter to every African head of government.) They particularly liked his personal grasp of their aspirations and anxieties. Even Ghana’s Nkrumah, who blamed the United States for the assassination of former Congolese Premier Lumumba and the subsequent collapse of Nkrumah’s vision of Pan-African power, was delighted with the American President. To the President of the Sudan Kennedy presented a specially made hunting rifle, and was told with a grateful smile: “In my country there are thirteen million people and a hundred million wild animals.” Accepting Haile Selassie’s plaudits on civil rights, he steered him to meetings with Roy Wilkins and the Attorney General. Of newly independent Tanganyika’s Julius Nyerere, one of his fellow leaders he most liked, he inquired with a smile, “Tell me, how does it feel to be the first Catholic President of a great country?”
He was particularly interested in those figures already living in the history they helped to write—De Gaulle, Adenauer, Haile Selassie and India’s Jawaharlal Nehru. Kennedy and Nehru, for all their differences in age, culture and policy, shared much in common: an intellectual bent, a wry sense of humor, a preference for clear disagreements instead of diplomatic generalities and an affection for Kennedy’s Ambassador, J. Kenneth Galbraith (“Although,” said the lanky professor to the President, “I don’t see how you trust me to deal with the Prime Minister of India when you wouldn’t consider me competent to handle political problems in Dorchester, Massachusetts”). Greeting Nehru at Newport in the fall of 1961, Kennedy and Galbraith drove him by the enormous homes in that wealthy resort, the President remarking, “I wanted you to see how the average American lives”—to which Nehru, equally dead-pan, replied, “Yes, I’ ve heard of your ‘affluent society’” (the title of a Galbraith book).
Kennedy persuaded Nehru on that occasion to recognize in their communiqué the need for Western access to Berlin. But otherwise that meeting convinced him that Nehru would never be a strong reed on which to rely and that India’s potential role in world affairs had been overestimated by its admirers. The Prime Minister seemed to him overtired, requiring a great effort to interest himself deeply in any problem. Astonished when Nehru later chose to visit Disneyland, he decided that he had accepted too readily the Prime Minister’s request for a “private” visit with no pretentious ceremony or crowds. The intimacy of upstairs in the Mansion (where a furiously smoking fireplace nearly drove them out) had been a little too private for a major world figure.
Whatever their differences, the President liked Nehru. At a news conference shortly after the Prime Minister’s departure, annoyed by a question on whether he had found “pro-Communist” tendencies in the Indian leader, Kennedy said he knew of “no rational man…who holds that view”; and he went on to defend Nehru’s commitment to individual liberty and to national independence.
He was critical of Nehru’s use of the Western-hating Krishna Menon and his blatant seizure of the tiny Portuguese enclave of Goa in late 1961. But the following year, when Nehru’s daughter paused briefly in Washington on an unofficial lecture tour, she was astonished to receive a personal call from the President. He warned her that newspaper interviewers across the country would try to pit her against the Congress, which was then considering a slash in Indian aid funds because of the Goa incident. Introducing her to his own technique of preparing for press conferences, he proceeded to fire at her the toughest questions she might be asked on her tour.
Kennedy’s own press conference answers and public statements when traveling outside his own country—and those statements and speeches at home which affected foreign countries—were beamed not only to government leaders but also to their constituents. “He talked,” said Averell Harriman, “over the heads of government to the hearts of people.” He particularly enjoyed talking on several occasions to foreign students on the White House lawn; and he sounded more pleased than miffed when he retur
ned from one such encounter to tell me that his tie clasp and handkerchief had been lost when the crowd swarmed around him. (The two Indonesian students who had taken them returned them the next day.)
His trip to Western Europe in the summer of 1963 was criticized by Washington columnists on the grounds that his host governments in Germany, England and Italy were all in a stage of transition which made negotiations difficult. But Kennedy’s primary purpose was not to negotiate with governments but to talk to their publics in the wake of De Gaulle’s charges against the U.S. His trip was concerned, he said, with “the relationship between the United States and Western Europe…. This is a matter of the greatest importance to us and, I hope, to the people [of Europe].”
He returned from that trip exhilarated by the feeling that he had reached the general public, particularly the younger generation. He realized that he had enjoyed on that trip several advantages unrelated to the force of his foreign policy ideas: the contrast between his youthful vitality and the weary pessimism of most older leaders—the adoption of all the old Kennedy campaign techniques, including advance men, motorcades, outdoor rallies, local humor and maximum television coverage—the combined appeal of his own victory over religious intolerance and his fight against racial injustice—and an identification with the kind of cultural and intellectual excellence which appealed to European traditions.
He took satisfaction nevertheless in the belief that his tour had gained increased respect for the nation as well as the man. He did not feel that “world opinion” was either an identifiable fact or a reliable force. Nor was he willing
to base those decisions which affect the long-run state of the common security on the short-term state of our popularity in the various capitals of Europe…. We are going to have disagreements…. But… whenever the United States has a disagreement with a foreign country, it is a mistake always to assume that the United States is wrong, and that—by being disagreeable to the United States—it is always possible to compel the United States to succumb….
I think too often in the past we have defined our leadership as an attempt to be rather well regarded in all these countries. The fact is you can’t possibly carry out any policy without causing major frictions…. What we have to do is to be ready to accept a good deal more expression of newspaper and governmental opposition to the U.S. in order to get something done. I don’t expect that the U.S. will be more beloved, but I would hope that we could get more done.
America’s role as world leader, he observed, often involved it in disputes between its friends and allies. Our support—and occasionally our services as a mediator—were sought by both sides; and the likelihood of both being pleased with our stand was remote. In the Middle East and on the Indian subcontinent, his efforts to restore harmony were diligent, often suspect on both sides and largely unsuccessful. But a temporary success of sorts was registered in 1962 in the territory of West New Guinea, the subject of a bitter dispute between the Netherlands and Indonesia. To avoid a war which the Dutch had no desire to fight and which the Indonesians had every intention of winning with massive Soviet backing—and to strengthen the position of the Indonesian moderates, the only hope against an ultimate Communist takeover in that country—Kennedy made available the brilliant diplomatic services of Ambassador Ellsworth Bunker as a UN mediator. Some American diplomats, more concerned with complaints from the Dutch and Australians than with the resultant rise in our standing with some of the Asian neutrals, did not support this effort with any enthusiasm. But “our only interest,” said the President, “is…a peaceful solution which we think is in the long-range interests of [all concerned]. The role of the mediator is not a happy one; [but] we are prepared to have everybody mad if it makes some progress.”
Despite this refusal to give priority to America’s popularity in world opinion, he never discounted the practical effect of popular respect for American ideals on the cooperation of other leaders, on the maintenance of our overseas installations and on resolutions in the UN and OAS. The competition with the Soviets was not on the material and military level only, and even military actions required the support of other peoples. While America’s interests were more important than her image, at times they were affected by it. Thus, in the developing world in particular—and aided by a greatly improved USIA program under Murrow, by a more active and attractive UN posture under Stevenson and by a growing, energetic Peace Corps under Shriver—Kennedy set out to change “the stereotype view of the United States…—about fifty years old…Marxist oriented…[and unaware of] the tremendous changes which have taken place in the United States…the cultural efforts…the intellectual efforts.”
He succeeded beyond his own expectations in dispelling the notion that the United States was unconcerned, conservative and committed to the status quo. USIA surveys in Western Europe in 1963—on the heels of the Skybolt controversy and De Gaulle’s attacks—showed a higher proportion of approval for American foreign policy, even in France, than at any time in the eight-year history of these surveys. A poll by Asia Magazine found him well ahead of Nehru as “the most admired world figure today.” The reports of Peace Corps men in Africa and the mail he received from Eastern Europe all indicated a personal breakthrough of international significance in those areas. His receptions in Latin America were particularly unforgettable (as was his anger upon discovering that the White House social officer was sending down the Presidential china for his every meal). The exuberance of the crowds yelling “Viva!” soon caused him to join in. At first the notion of men embracing him with the traditional Latin-American abrazo embarrassed him, and his visits began with a stiff handshake at the airport. But by the time he departed from that same airport he was exchanging abrazos with as much gusto as his hosts. Those Latin-American trips were also aided by the expert work of State Department interpreter Donald Barnes, for elsewhere Kennedy had constant problems with lifeless translations of his rhetoric, requiring him on his 1963 German trip to borrow Adenauer’s interpreter for his important Frankfurt and Berlin speeches.
I have many vivid memories of those Kennedy overseas trips-—the smiles and tears on the faces of West Berliners, the crowds running up to our motorcades in Naples and San Jose, the dazzling effect of Jacqueline Kennedy on presidents and peasants, her husband’s stealthy gaze at the magnificent Cologne Cathedral dome in the midst of a prolonged prayer, the laughter among West Germans understanding his quips before they were translated, the regal splendor of the state dinners at Schönbrunn and Versailles and his ornate quarters at the Quai d’ Orsay Palace in Paris. (As I reported to him on my findings, he suggested I speak softly in the middle of the room, adding: “Or don’t you think our oldest and closest ally could be capable of ‘bugging’ my bedroom?”)
“One of the most moving experiences” of his life, in his words, was his 1963 journey to Ireland. Although he had privately kept an eye on Ireland’s hopes for a U.S. sugar quota from the Congress, his earlier interest in the land of his forebears was largely literary and political. His companions on a youthful visit there to his sister Kathleen, his mother told me, were mostly English or “Anglo-Irish.”
But in 1963 he discovered in full measure the joys of the country and its people. The first outsider ever to address a joint assembly of both houses of the Irish Parliament (holding its first session on television), he delivered a major foreign policy address on the role of the little nations; and it filled that island with pride.11
To his third cousin, Mary Kennedy Ryan, he expressed gratitude for the hot tea, the delicious salmon (asking if it had been illegally poached), the blazing fire and the fact that “some of the Kennedys missed the boat and didn’t all go to Washington.” At Cork he introduced all the Irish aides traveling with him, claiming that Dave Powers’ local cousins looked less Irish than Dave. Simultaneously awarded honorary degrees by the rival National University of Ireland and Dublin’s Trinity College (an institution less favored by the Irish Catholic hierarchy), he said he felt equally
part of both, “and if they ever have a game of Gaelic football or hurling, I shall cheer for Trinity and pray for National.” Wholly fascinated by his talk with the aged wife of Ireland’s President De Valera, he quoted in his farewell talk at Shannon airport a poem she had taught him, promising like the poet “to come back and see old Shannon’s face again.”
He was so pleased with the specially designed O’ Kennedy coat of arms, with an added strong arm holding both an olive branch and arrows, that his wife had it made into a seal ring for him. Not much of a ring wearer, he kept it in his desk, but one day he told her with a mischievous smile: “I used my Irish seal on a letter today—-to the Queen of England!”
1 He had previously decided against the flights anyway on the grounds that the results were no longer worth the risk. He was genuinely disturbed on the four occasions during his term when mechanical or other failures caused accidental penetration of Soviet air space, and he instigated the adoption of more rigid safeguards.
2 Earlier he had joked about what an insult it was to Soviet Foreign Minister Gromyko to say he looked like Nixon.
3 The President resisted the temptation, he later told me, to cite at this point Khrushchev’s “precedent” in Hungary.
4 At this point Gromyko corrected the interpreter, possibly for policy reasons, saying that the Chairman had not mentioned manufacture—but Khrushchev said he had.
5 During a long dinner he accepted in good grace all the anti-Communist jokes I had heard, and supplied a few of his own from their “Armenian Radio”; and the following day, when we flew together on a Presidential staff plane, he responded to my suggestion that he was now in the hands of the U.S. Air Force with the smiling reply: “I know they will not deliberately crash the plane with Kennedy’s Assistant aboard!”