John Kennedy

by Burns, James MacGregor;

  Mixed in with this worry is concern over Kennedy’s age. Party leaders, like other careerists, work their way up the organizational ladder and usually come into their own by their fifties and sixties. When they look at a man a whole generation behind them, they wonder if, intentionally or not, he will shunt them aside and bring into power and recognition a host of his contemporaries. It is all very well for the Democratic orators to proclaim that America must make its own “leap forward” by changing from the tired Republican administration of men in their sixties to a vigorous government by younger men. Those leapt over have their misgivings.

  Most Democrats care little about such party problems. To them only one question is important: Is Kennedy a liberal in the Wilson-Roosevelt-Truman tradition?

  This question often is raised about Kennedy, partly because of his mixed voting record in the past, partly because he dislikes labels and hence cannot be easily typed. Moreover, he believes that much of the liberalism of the New Deal and the Fair Deal either has become properly entrenched in our way of life, and hence no longer a disputed political issue, or in a few cases has become outmoded or irrelevant. Liberalism itself, Kennedy feels, must be rethought and renewed—for example, in farm and business policy. In such a program of liberal renovation he believes that he could effectively take leadership as an “idealist without illusions,” as his wife likes to call him.

  “What we need now in this nation most of all is a constant flow of new ideas,” he has said. “… We cannot obtain new ideas until we have a government and a public opinion which respect new ideas and the people who have them.… Our country has surmounted great crises in the past, not because of our wealth, not because of our rhetoric, not because we had longer cars and whiter ice boxes and bigger television screens than anyone else, but because our ideas were more compelling, and more penetrating, and more wise and more enduring.” He has recognized the new challenges to liberalism, and hence its changing content, by dwelling in many speeches on the “ten peaceful revolutions” that “are rocking our nation and our world, reshaping our lives and remaking our destinies. These are the revolutions in our cities, on the farm, in the birth rate, in life expectancy, in technology (especially automation), in energy, in our standard of living, in weapons development, in the underdeveloped nations, and in nationalism.”

  Since none of the usual labels seems to fit Kennedy, his friends have gone to some trouble to devise a new one. One has come up with the term “humanism,” meaning, in its nonphilosophical sense, a group of policies emphasizing social welfare and economic security and centering in the family—higher minimum wages, expanded health services, better housing, more protection for the aged, perhaps family benefits like those adopted in Canada.

  But a new term is not necessary. Scrutiny of Kennedy’s positions in the last several years shows that he does stand in the center of the Wilson-Roosevelt-Truman tradition, defined as embracing both economic welfare and civil liberties. Some contended that this was a shift mainly for political expediency as he came nearer to a national campaign. Possibly, but it seemed more likely that his shift went deeper, to a change in the pressures within him, and not merely those upon him. These pressures were reflected in the nature of Kennedy’s political associates; he was working more closely than ever with men like Paul Douglas, Joseph S. Clark, John Sherman Cooper, Pat McNamara, Henry Jackson, and other liberal senators. At the same time, his father was saying, uncomplainingly, “Fifty per cent of what Jack thinks these days I am opposed to—and that’s true entirely of foreign policy. We discuss it—but I don’t expect to convert him.” It was significant that by 1958 and 1959 Kennedy was consistently supporting the liberal Democratic party position both on welfare issues and on civil liberties and civil rights. He backed comprehensive housing legislation; introduced a ten-point “bill of rights” for improved living conditions for older people; introduced the first Senate bill to outlaw the bombing of homes, churches, schools, and community centers; continued to advocate statehood for Alaska and Hawaii (considered a civil-rights matter by many Southerners); worked for an antilynching bill and an anti-poll-tax bill. It was also significant that the two pieces of legislation he worked on hardest in 1959, aside from labor reform, were an increase of the federal minimum wage to $1.25 and the repeal of the federal defense education act requiring students to sign loyalty oaths if they wanted loans. He still strongly opposed the noncommunist affidavit requirement in the Taft-Hartley Act. Kennedy had come to grasp firmly the cardinal fact that the liberal Democratic tradition calls for both groceries and liberty. As he said in May 1959:

  “It is the enduring faith of the American tradition that there is no real conflict between freedom and security—between liberty and abundance. Through centuries of crises, the American tradition has demonstrated, on the contrary, that freedom is the ally of security—that liberty is the architect of abundance—and that the truth will make us free.”

  What Sort of President?

  “I am no Whig!” Kennedy says when asked about his conception of presidential power. He believes, unlike the Whigs in the early days of the Republic, whose distrust of the people led them to distrust presidential power, that the presidency must be the energizing and unifying force to make our divided governmental system work. Under him, the White House could be expected to generate a steady flow of policies and directives to the sprawling federal bureaucracy. Kennedy would agree that the American presidency’s supreme role is to provide the “steady focus of leadership.” His attitude has changed since his earlier days in the House of Representatives, when he himself seemed to distrust presidential power.

  His would probably be a no-nonsense type of administration, run by men young, dedicated, tough-minded, hard-working, informed, alert, and passionless. The place would be quiet, taut, efficient—sometimes, perhaps, even dull. There would be little of the automatic delegation of power and responsibility to inter-departmental committees, as in Eisenhower’s time, little of the boisterous relaxation of Truman’s incumbency, or of the genial, creative disarray of Roosevelt’s. The men with dreams—but no discernible plan—who could get in to see FDR, would not get past the White House door to see Kennedy, but those with an outline for a program would be welcomed, and the men in the White House would have no difficulty in deciding which visitor was which. But even the ablest man with the most ingenious ideas might find Kennedy a hard customer.

  Such an administration would be composed of talented and expert people. Kennedy would look for men—regardless of whether they were labeled Democrats or Republicans, businessmen or professors or labor leaders, liberals, or conservatives—who were most likely to carry out his policies in a forceful, competent manner. He would make his Cabinet a “ministry of all the talents,” composed of moderate men “a little left of center.” Administering foreign policy would be men of the caliber, perhaps, of Adlai Stevenson and Chester Bowles; on the domestic side, of the background and temper of Abraham Ribicoff and Albert Gore. (These names are merely suggestive and do not represent any statements made by Kennedy or his assistants. This is also true of the ensuing discussion of likely policies, except where Senator Kennedy is directly quoted.)

  The administration would be unusually sensitive to criticism. Newspaper editorials, Republican speeches, congressional attacks would bring quick answers from the White House or from someone down the line. There would be a never-ending process of self-appraisal. Incompetents would probably be politely but firmly replaced.

  What would such an administration do? In some respects, its policies would not represent an abrupt break with those of the outgoing Republican administration. The sharpest immediate shift would come in federal social-welfare policies. Depending on the degree of congressional co-operation, minimum wages would be raised and exemptions narrowed, social security extended, the new labor policy of 1959 revised where in practice it unduly hurt democratic and honest trade unionism, federal housing and urban renewal subsidies expanded, big federal aid to school const
ruction passed. The most striking change might be in the field of family allowances, with a small federal allotment to families for each child, and in medical care, perhaps in the direction of the successful British health program.

  The budget would probably be balanced, at least in a time of full employment, not by cutting federal spending—an impossibility under the likely policies of a Kennedy administration—but by raising taxes, especially income and corporation taxes, and by plugging tax loopholes. Getting such a tax program through Congress would be the hardest legislative test of such a new administration.

  “If you were elected President, what kind of foreign policies would you pursue? Can you offer any new approaches? Would you try, while maintaining the nation’s military and economic security, to set in motion forces that in the long run, at least, might ease East-West hostility and end the cold war? What hope can you hold out of breaking through the current impasse—or at least of releasing forces that might do so over the next decade or two?”

  These questions were asked the Senator not long ago during a rare moment of relaxation between legislative activities and campaign tours. The occasion was a tranquil one; campaigns and cold wars seemed far away. Attired in shorts and sun glasses, Kennedy was lying back on a beach chair in the hot sun on the front porch of his Hyannisport home, a daub of sunburn lotion on his nose. His wife sat by reading; his daughter, Caroline, teetered up and down the porch steps.

  “Well, in the first place,” he said, “it takes two to make peace. I think it would be misleading to suggest that there are some magic formulas hitherto untried which would ease the relations between the free world and the communistic world, or which would shift the balance of power in our favor. When Khrushchev talks of peaceful coexistence, he makes it quite clear that he means to ‘bury’ us by means other than war. If our military power remains paramount—and I would include the traditional weapons as well as the nuclear weapons, for brush-fire wars remain our great military problem—then it might be possible to encourage the Russians and the Chinese to say a farewell to arms. We can then expect the competition would shift to nonmilitary spheres. It will then be a struggle between the two systems, then a test as to which system travels better, which system of political, economic, and social organization can more effectively transform the lives of the people in the newly emerging countries.

  “There are many things we must do to win this struggle. We must recognize that free Africa will hold a balance of power in the General Assembly and in the world and will control some twenty-five per cent of the votes in the General Assembly. These are new countries with staggering problems which need assistance from the West both economically and educationally, and perhaps most importantly a sympathetic hand.

  “A new Democratic administration, as the legatee of Franklin Roosevelt, would have a great opportunity to rebuild close relations with Latin America, if it supports a common market, the stabilization of raw materials, et cetera, demonstrating in other ways recognition of the real interdependence of North and South America, and supporting freedom as the goal of all countries North and South.

  “We have a great opportunity also in India, which contains within its borders nearly forty per cent of all the people in the underdeveloped world and which has had the advantage of highly skilled economic planning. If India’s third five-year plan fails, then India and Asia fail. It’s for that reason that Senator John Cooper and I have been interested for the last two years in sending a high-level Western economic mission to India and surrounding countries in order to let both Europe and the United States—acting together—participate in reaching an economic break-through there. If China succeeds and India fails, the economic-development balance of power will shift against us.

  “We should also take advantage of the present potential thaw to develop more intimate relations with Poland and those countries behind the Iron Curtain. It is because I believe that this represents the Achilles’ heel of the Soviet Empire that I have been attempting (with George Aiken) to change the Battle Act to permit a freer flow of trade in many areas between these countries and ours. Also, George Kennan suggested an opportunity a year or so ago in Germany for discussing some kind of disengagement. The opportunity today has passed, but it might come again.

  “We must rethink all of our policies in the Middle East—the Baghdad Pact, the Eisenhower Doctrine, the refusal to go ahead with the Aswan Dam—all mistakes. They were all based on concepts of the Middle East that were no longer valid.

  “We should make decisions now about vacating Quemoy and Matsu, which are indefensible and which provide a needless irritant that could drag us into a struggle with Red China, a struggle in which we would be isolated by world opinion. If we are going to have difficulty with the Chinese, and we well may, then we should make sure that it involves basic principles of national independence and survival so that we may expect the good will of our allies and the neutrals. While the Red Chinese do not now indicate their willingness to relax their external and internal pressures in order to meet the standards which should precede our recognition and their admission to the United Nations, nevertheless we should indicate our willingness to talk with them when they desire to do so, and to set forth conditions of recognition which seem responsible to a watching world.

  “In the final analysis, our foreign policy, our relations with other countries, will be most affected by what we do here in the United States. If we have a strong and well-distributed military strength, if our productivity is moving ahead, if we are devoting a reasonable share of our resources to assist the underdeveloped areas to make their economic break-throughs, if we are first in scientific achievements—in making fresh water out of salt water at a competitive rate, for example—if our educational system is being strengthened, and there is equality of opportunity for all Americans—then we will have demonstrated that freedom rather than Communism represents the wave of the future. It was Franklin Roosevelt’s compassionate actions here at home that built his great reputation abroad. What we are speaks much louder than what we say.”

  “But is all this enough? Obviously as President you would try to be effective and resourceful in strengthening the unity of the Free World and maintaining a durable power balance against the communists. But in the long run balances of power have a tendency to topple, do they not?”

  Kennedy answered: “In the long run there are many changes in power ratios. But I believe if we can hold out for the long run there will be sufficient evolutionary changes in the communistic system in Russia as well as in China to give us some hope of success. The ‘magic power’ on our side is the desire of every person to be free, of every nation to be independent. That is the really strong force on our side. That is the weapon and elementary principle for the destruction of the Communist Empire in eastern Europe. It is because I believe our system is more in keeping with the fundamentals of human nature that I believe we are ultimately going to be successful, provided we have sufficient self-discipline and perseverance to maintain our own strength through a long testing period.”

  “Since at least Polk’s time not one of the great presidential leaders, Wilson possibly excepted, gave clear evidence before entering the White House of a capacity to shape a program, arouse public opinion behind it, control Congress, and dominate the bureaucracy. Today the presidential office holds vast legal power and moral influence, but how that power and influence are marshalled and focused depends on the occupant and the nature of the times. What is your estimate of the job of the President during the next decade?”

  “The 1960’s will be a terribly difficult time. I think Eisenhower is going to get home relatively free—at the end of his term there will probably be full employment, a level price index, the drop in food prices may equal any increase in industrial costs, there will probably be a deal on Berlin for eighteen months or so, and the now-independent countries will have survived.

  “But it will be like Calvin Coolidge giving way to Herbert Hoover—all the pigeons comin
g home to roost will be circling over the head of the man coming in. In 1961 or ’62 all the problems—changes in weapons’ structure, changes in NATO, desperate inflation and economic problems in the southern half of the globe—will be coming to a head. The job of the next President will be the hardest since Roosevelt, and I think Roosevelt had the hardest of all except Lincoln and perhaps Washington. The job will be tremendous, and a great responsibility will center on the President. The real dilemma we face is whether a free society in which each of us follows our own self-interest can compete over a long period of time with a totalitarian society in which both the carrot and the stick are used to force all human and material resources into the service of the state.

  “There are many short-term advantages which a totalitarian possesses in that kind of competition. The struggle between Sparta and Athens furnishes a classic case. The responsibility of the President, therefore, is especially great. He must serve as a catalyst, an energizer, the defender of the public good and the public interest against all the narrow private interests which operate in our society. Only the President can do this, and only a President who recognizes the true nature of this hard challenge can fulfill this historic function.”

  “In the Senate, you have been something of a traditionalist. You have opposed bypassing the Eastland committee; you have favored the seniority system for choosing committee chairmen, or at least seen no hopeful alternative; you have defended the American system of divided power seemingly down to the last check and balance. How does this position fit in with your concept of presidential leadership?”