Kennedy

by Ted Sorensen

  More immediate problems were on his mind as well. He was to have lunch back home on Sunday with Ambassador Lodge to discuss his most vexing worry, Vietnam. On his last full day in Washington, November 20, at breakfast with the legislative leaders, he had reviewed progress on the tax, civil rights and education bills, and spoken out strongly against attempts to curb his foreign aid funds and wheat sales to the Soviet Union. A host of Kennedy bills—on conservation, mass transit, youth employment and other priorities—clogged the legislative calendars and committees. The leaders were optimistic that all would pass that Congress, if not that session; and the President said they could stay all year, if necessary. “I am looking forward to the end of this Congress,” he had told his last news conference like a prospective parent,

  but…this is going to be an eighteenth-month delivery…. By the time this Congress goes home…next summer—in the fields of education, mental health, taxes, civil rights—this is going to be a record…. However dark it looks now, I think that “Westward, look, the land is bright.”

  It looked bright in Dallas. The controversial nature of his program did not seem to have dimmed the enthusiasm of his reception—and Dallas had voted more strongly against Kennedy in 1960 than any other big city. Perhaps that encouraged him to think, as he rode through the streets, about his new proposals for 1964. He had started us working on that program more than a month earlier; and foremost among the new items was a comprehensive, coordinated attack on poverty.

  More likely he was thinking of 1964 in terms of the campaign, for this was a barely disguised campaign trip. There was no doubting the fact that he would be a candidate for re-election, despite his smiling evasions of the question in public. And there was no doubt in his own mind that he would win, despite defections over the issue of civil rights. He expected to carry at least all the states he had carried when religion was a handicap in 1960—with the possible exception of a few more Southern states—and to carry as well California, Ohio, Wisconsin and others. In his two state-wide races in Massachusetts, he had moved from a squeaker to a landslide, and he hoped to duplicate that pattern nationally. The growing urban majorities, the civil rights movement and his new “peace” commitment might even have led to a fundamental realignment of political forces and a new and stronger majority party.

  But he was taking no state for granted. He thought most states would be “a hard, close fight.” On November 13 he had devoted the longest (three and a half hours) meeting of 1963 to preliminary planning with his political team of the 1964 convention and campaign. He favored a reapportionment of convention delegates to reflect actual Democratic strength, a liberalizing influence comparable in importance and timing to Roosevelt’s abolition of the two-thirds rule in 1936. We reviewed at that same meeting plans for convention films, loyalty pledges and state campaign organizations.

  He had already flatly committed himself to a restaging of the televised debates with his opponent and was looking forward to them. He cautioned us not to talk to the press regarding prospective Republican nominees, fearful that our indication of a favorite might encourage the Republicans to turn elsewhere. Within the confines of the White House he predicted—and fervently hoped—that Barry Goldwater would be nominated. For Rockefeller to be named, he said, “would be too good to be true—but he doesn’t have a chance.” Romney or some dark horse, he felt, had a chance and would be tougher to beat than Gold-water, whom he liked personally but who stood diametrically opposed to him on every major issue. “This campaign,” said the President with relish, “may be among the most interesting as well as pleasurable campaigns that have taken place in a long time.” Defeating Goldwater, he thought, would halt the growth of the radical right and provide him with a renewed and more powerful mandate.

  He expected his second term, like that of Theodore Roosevelt, to be more productive of domestic legislation than the first, with a more responsive, responsible Congress and a less distracting, distressing foreign scene. He did not deliberately defer controversial proposals until that term—with the exception of a few in need of more study, such as new patent and pension fund regulations, new tax treatment for foundations and the adoption of the metric system of measurement. But he believed that the second term would see far-reaching breakthroughs to meet the modern problems of automation, transportation, urbanization, cultural opportunity and economic growth. He anticipated that an increased stabilization of the arms race and an easing of East-West tensions would enable him to devote a larger share of expenditure increases to domestic and particularly urban needs. This trend was already reflected in his forward Budget planning for 1964.

  Even more important were his long-range goals in foreign affairs—a Decade of Development to put the poorer nations on their feet, an Atlantic Partnership with Western Europe as an equal and increasingly more intimate partner, a United Nations made stronger as national sovereignty became weaker and, most importantly, an evolving detente with the Soviet Union and the eventual reunification of Europe. He had learned so much from the first and second Cuban crises, from his travels and talks with foreign leaders, from his successes and failures. He knew better than he had even a year earlier how to stay out of traps, how not to antagonize Germans, and how to stay on top of international nuclear politics. He expected, before the end of his second term, to be dealing with new leaders in England, France, Russia and China, and to be dealing with a world in which no nation or bloc of nations could maintain a meaningful nuclear superiority or retain a camera-free secrecy. New arms limitations, new science and space cooperation, new approaches on Berlin, and increased trade and contacts with Eastern Europe were all on the future agenda. And the one major foreign policy issue deliberately postponed to the second term was, as earlier mentioned, Red China.

  After the second term…well, I do not believe he was thinking about that in Dallas that day. I do not believe he thought about it much at all. Certainly he would not have permitted any constitutional movement to enable him to seek a third term. As a Congressman he had supported the two-term limitation—the only specific restriction on the Presidency, to my knowledge, for which he ever voted. He had supported it, he once told me, not out of fear of dictatorship or as a reflection on Roosevelt, but out of the conviction which he retained in the White House that no President should be expected to extend his political and physical reserves beyond an eight-year period. “I think eight years are enough for any man,” he repeated as President, adding that he saw no reason why the second term had to be any less influential than the first.

  After the second term, what? I have an idea he would have groomed his own successor as Democratic standard-bearer, but I have no idea whom he would have picked, and I don’t think he did either. He would have remained active and influential in the party—ex-Presidents, he said, in some ways have more influence than they did when they were Presidents. He would have written his memoirs. He would have spent time at his library.

  But none of these outlets would have been sufficient for a man of his exceptional energies at the age of fifty-one. Occasionally he speculated about what it would be like, jokingly asking a former President of the UN General Assembly how it felt to be an ex-President, discussing with Truman his altered role, remarking on inauguration night what an adjustment it must have been for Eisenhower to wake that morning as President and leave that afternoon a private citizen. But he did not worry about it, and he told his wife not to worry about it. “Those things have a way of taking care of themselves when the time comes,” he said.

  Citing John Quincy Adams’ role in the House after leaving the White House, he commented on the implausibility of saying “that at fifty-one there would not be something left to do.” He might have purchased, published or edited a newspaper, as he once contemplated when still in the Senate, or become a syndicated columnist. He might have been Secretary of State in some subsequent Democratic administration. He might have been president of a university. When I told him that Bundy had been mentioned as a possible n
ew president of Yale (but said he wasn’t interested), Kennedy dead-panned: “I wish somebody would offer me the presidency of Yale!”

  Necessarily on the list of possibilities was a return to his first love, the United States Senate. His wife, remembering his contentment in that body, once asked Ted Kennedy at dinner whether he would give back Jack’s seat when the time came, and Teddy loyally said that of course he would. But the President was upset, and sternly told Jacqueline later never to do that to Teddy and not to worry about his future.

  On November 22 his future merged with his past, and we will never know what might have been. His own inner drive, as well as the swift pace of our times, had enabled him to do more in the White House in three years than many had done in eight—to live a fuller life in forty-six years than most men do in eighty. But that only makes all the greater our loss of the years he was denied.

  How, then, will history judge him? It is too early to say. I am too close to say. But history will surely record that his achievements exceeded his years. In an eloquent letter to President Kennedy on nuclear testing, Prime Minister Macmillan once wrote: “It is not the things one did in one’s life that one regrets, but rather the opportunities missed.” It can be said of John Kennedy that he missed very few opportunities.

  In less than three years he presided over a new era in American race relations, a new era in American-Soviet relations, a new era in our Latin-American relations, a new era in fiscal and economic policy and a new era in space exploration. His Presidency helped launch the longest and strongest period of economic expansion in our peacetime history, the largest and swiftest build-up of our defensive strength in peacetime history, and new and enlarged roles for the Federal Government in higher education, mental affliction, civil rights and the conservation of human and natural resources.

  Some moves were dramatic, such as the Cuban missile crisis and the Test Ban Treaty and the Peace Corps and the Alliance for Progress. Some were small day-by-day efforts on Berlin or Southeast Asia, where no real progress could be claimed, or on school dropouts or National Parks. Some were simply holding our own—no nation slipped into the Communist orbit, no nuclear war raised havoc on our planet, no new recession set back our economy. But generally Kennedy was not content to hold his own. His efforts were devoted to turning the country around, starting it in new directions, getting it moving again. “He believed,” said his wife, “that one man can make a difference and that every man should try.” He left the nation a whole new set of basic premises—on freedom now instead of someday for the American Negro —on dampening down instead of “winning” the cold war—on the unthinkability instead of the inevitability of nuclear war—on cutting taxes in times of deficit—on battling poverty in times of prosperity—on trade, transportation and a host of other subjects.

  For the most part, on November 22, these problems had not been solved and these projects had not been completed. Even most of those completed will impress historians a generation from now only if this generation makes the most of them.

  But I suspect that history will remember John Kennedy for what he started as well as for what he completed. The forces he released in this world will be felt for generations to come. The standards he set, the goals he outlined and the talented men he attracted to politics and public service will influence his country’s course for at least a decade.

  People will remember not only what he did but what he stood for—and this, too, may help the historians assess his Presidency. He stood for excellence in an era of indifference—for hope in an era of doubt—for placing public service ahead of private interests—for reconciliation between East and West, black and white, labor and management. He had confidence in man and gave men confidence in the future.

  The public complacency plaguing his efforts was partly due to a sense of hopelessness—that wars and recessions and poverty and political mediocrity could not be avoided, and that all the problems of the modern world were too complex to be understood, let alone unraveled. I believe that John Kennedy believed that his role as President was to initiate an era of hope—hope for a life of decency and equality, hope for a world of reason and peace, hope for the American destiny.

  It will not be easy for historians to compare John Kennedy with his predecessors and successors, for he was unique in his imprint upon the office: the first to be elected at so young an age, the first from the Catholic faith, the first to take office in an age of mutual nuclear capabilities, the first to reach literally for the moon and beyond, the first to prevent a new recession or inflation in modern peacetime, the first to pronounce that all racial segregation and discrimination must be abolished as a matter of right, the first to meet our adversaries in a potentially nuclear confrontation, the first to take a solid step toward nuclear arms control—and the first to die at so young an age.

  He was not the first President to take on Big Steel, nor was he the first to send a controversial treaty to the Senate, nor was he the first to meet state defiance with Federal forces, nor was he the first to seek reform in a coordinate branch of government. But he may well have been the first to win all those encounters. Indeed, all his life he was a winner until November, 1963. In battle he became a hero. In literature he won a Pulitzer Prize. In politics he reached the Presidency. His Inaugural, his wife, his children, his policies, his conduct of crises, all reflected his pursuit of excellence.

  History and posterity must decide. Customarily they reserve the mantle of greatness for those who win great wars, not those who prevent them. But in my unobjective view I think it will be difficult to measure John Kennedy by any ordinary historical yardstick. For he was an extraordinary man, an extraordinary politician and an extraordinary President. Just as no chart on the history of weapons could accurately reflect the advent of the atom, so it is my belief that no scale of good and bad Presidents can rate John Fitzgerald Kennedy. A mind so free of fear and myth and prejudice, so opposed to cant and clichés, so unwilling to feign or be fooled, to accept or reflect mediocrity, is rare in our world—and even rarer in American politics. Without demeaning any of the great men who have held the Presidency in this century, I do not see how John Kennedy could be ranked below any one of them.

  His untimely and violent death will affect the judgment of historians, and the danger is that it will relegate his greatness to legend. Even though he was himself almost a legendary figure in life, Kennedy was a constant critic of the myth. It would be an ironic twist of fate if his martyrdom should now make a myth of the mortal man.

  In my view, the man was greater than the legend. His life, not his death, created his greatness. In November, 1963, some saw it for the first time. Others realized that they had too casually accepted it. Others mourned that they had not previously admitted it to themselves. But the greatness was there, and it may well loom even larger as the passage of years lends perspective.

  One of the doctors at the Parkland Hospital in Dallas, observing John Kennedy’s six-foot frame on the operating table, was later heard to remark: “I had never seen the President before. He was a big man, bigger than I thought.”

  He was a big man—much bigger than anyone thought—and all of us are better for having lived in the days of Kennedy.

  APPENDIX A

  Selective Legislative Accomplishments of

  the Eighty-sixth and Eighty-seventh Congresses

  The Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (required Senate approval only)

  The Civil Rights Act

  The Tax Reduction Act

  The Trade Expansion Act

  The Peace Corps

  The Mental Health and Mental Retardation Acts

  The Higher Education and Medical Education Acts

  The depressed communities Area Redevelopment Act

  The Manpower Development and Retraining Act

  The authority and funds for

  A full-scale outer space effort, focused on a manned moon landing in the 1960’s

  The largest and fastest military build-up in our pea
cetime history

  New tools for foreign policy: the Disarmament Administration, a revamped Foreign Aid Agency, an independent Food-for-Peace program and a UN bond issue

  The Alliance for Progress with Latin America

  More assistance to health, education and conservation than had been voted by any two Congresses in history

  A redoubled effort to find an economical means of converting salt water to fresh

  The world’s largest atomic power plant at Hanford, Washington

  Modernization of New Deal-Fair Deal measures:

  The most comprehensive housing and urban renewal program in history, including the first major provisions for middle-income housing, private low-income housing, public mass transit and protection of urban open spaces

  The first major increase in minimum wage coverage since the original 1938 act, raising it to $1.25 an hour

  The most far-reaching revision of the public welfare laws since the original 1935 act, a $300 million modernization which emphasized rehabilitation instead of relief

  A revival of Food Stamps for the needy, plus increased food distribution to the impoverished and expanded school lunch and school milk distribution