JFK assigned Kenny O’Donnell to be LBJ’s “handler.” O’Donnell kept in daily touch with Johnson’s staff, but he was sometimes high-handed with the Vice President. Once LBJ came into O’Donnell’s office to ask the status of a nomination he had submitted. “Oh that,” O’Donnell said, pulling open his file drawer an inch or so. “That’s where it is, right there.” After slamming the drawer shut, he snapped, “That’s where it’s going to stay, Lyndon.” Dumbstruck, Johnson stalked out.
The chilly indifference of Bobby Kennedy—who called Johnson’s vice presidency “gilded impotence”—was particularly obvious. “Bobby saw him as a manipulative force,” said William vanden Heuvel. “He dismissed LBJ as vice president, and LBJ knew it. But he would always have people watch Johnson, who he saw as a counterforce.” To his allies, Johnson called Bobby “that little shitass” who had supplanted him as Kennedy’s second in command. Their incompatibility “was a kind of chemical thing,” in Joe Alsop’s view.
Like her husband, Jackie flinched at Johnson’s crudity; she was shocked when she heard that LBJ described Stevenson as a man who “squats to piss.” But she was also tickled by Johnson’s colorful mannerisms and extravagant gestures, and touched by his contribution to her restoration project. Responding to her pleas, he cut red tape to arrange the transfer of a crystal chandelier from the Senate to the White House, where she installed it in the upstairs Treaty Room.
Jackie had fun with Johnson. Since her husband disliked dancing, she often took to the floor with LBJ. She also expressed compassion for the Vice President, as she did for Adlai Stevenson—two men whose power was diminished by the Kennedys. She told Johnson “the greatest act of a gentleman” was his willingness to relinquish his influential position to serve under her husband. Johnson would later say that Jackie “was always nicer to me than anybody in the Kennedy family. . . . She just made me feel like I was a human being.”
Jackie found little common ground with Lady Bird, a shrewd businesswoman who owned radio and television stations in Texas, critiqued her husband’s speeches, and offered political advice that was beyond Jackie’s ken. Yet the two women established a good rapport. Acknowledging the number of times she requested a stand-in for official events, Jackie told LBJ how much she appreciated Lady Bird’s “willingness to assume every burden—She assumed so many for me.”
With Johnson out of the mix, Kennedy adopted an incremental approach to domestic policy. “It was a disappointment to many liberals who had expected a fighting President who would appeal to the people over the head of a stuck-in-the-mud Congress,” wrote British diplomat David Gore. JFK relied heavily on Douglas Dillon to pursue what Gore called “the unadventurous path of waiting to see if the economy would recover without radical changes of policy.” Early on, for example, Dillon convinced JFK to reject Walter Heller’s proposal to spend $1 billion on a public works program as an anti-recession measure.
Behind the scenes, Kennedy and Dillon had quietly agreed on the need for reduced taxes to stimulate the economy. First would come a 10 percent investment tax credit to encourage business investment in plant and equipment. The second stage would be a cut in the personal income tax. Marginal rates in 1961 were 91 percent, which Dillon viewed as “one of the greatest obstacles to growth.” By dropping the rates to 77 percent, consumers would have more money to spend.
Both men were also willing to embrace Keynesian principles and run a deficit to stimulate the economy—a break from the Eisenhower administration’s commitment to balanced budgets. While Dillon believed in keeping a tight rein on federal expenditures (compared to Galbraith, who wanted to use spending, not reduced taxes, to prime the economy), the Treasury secretary could see the usefulness of a deficit when the economy was operating below capacity. Still, neither Kennedy nor Dillon wanted to risk defeat on Capitol Hill, so they decided to wait for a more favorable moment to introduce their tax policy.
Instead, Kennedy focused on more anodyne goals. He secured a modest increase in the federal minimum wage and an extension of unemployment benefits, but declined to take the lead on health insurance or, more pointedly, civil rights. Black voters had contributed significantly to Kennedy’s victory, but he had no appetite for taking a stand in Congress for desegregation against the dominant southerners of his party. Kennedy did introduce a bill providing federal aid to education, which Congress promptly defeated. “I think Kennedy is trapped,” longtime Democratic adviser James Rowe wrote to Teddy White that March. “He leads a country divided exactly in two, with horrible apathy on each side.”
Kennedy sought to create the impression of momentum with a pair of high-profile foreign policy initiatives that captured the progressive spirit of the New Frontier. In the Cold War, a major point of contention was whether recently decolonized countries in Africa, Asia, and Latin America would choose democracy or communism. “The Soviets were on the move,” said Walt Rostow, financing “wars of national liberation.” Castro’s victory in Cuba directed the spotlight to Latin America, where the United States was eager to prevent similar communist takeovers. Kennedy’s response, announced in March, was the Alliance for Progress, which sought to support democracy in Latin America through trade and financial assistance.
The Peace Corps, the most emblematic new program of the Kennedy administration, was unveiled the same month. In the last days of the campaign, Kennedy had floated a proposal to create a government agency employing young Americans to be “ambassadors of peace” to win hearts and minds in Third World countries. In its final form, the Peace Corps consisted of volunteers rather than paid employees, an idealistic cadre of fresh-faced men and women who tried to help poor people help themselves by living “at the same level as the citizens of the countries which they are sent to, doing the same work, eating the same food, speaking the same language.”
Kennedy named Robert Sargent Shriver, his forty-five-year-old brother-in-law, as the first director of the Peace Corps, and Shriver moved quickly to put his imprint on the program. “Jack never uttered more than thirty words to me about the Peace Corps,” Shriver recalled. “He delegated to me the organization.” It was Shriver who decided on unpaid volunteers, and who pushed to make the corps an independent agency within the State Department. His zealous advocacy also led to congressional approval of a budget by a large margin.
As with Bobby’s appointment as attorney general, JFK humorously deflected charges of nepotism, saying that if the Peace Corps failed, “it would be easier to fire a relative than a political friend.” While Shriver wasn’t as close to Kennedy as Steve Smith, he occupied a special position as the husband of thirty-nine-year-old Eunice, JFK’s kindred spirit among his sisters.
Eunice was the only sister with superior academic achievement—a Stanford degree in sociology that included a year at Radcliffe—along with professional ambitions. After the war she had worked in the Justice Department on juvenile delinquency and other problems of criminal justice, once spending several weeks inside a women’s penitentiary to immerse herself in the issues. Her great cause, prompted largely by her sister Rosemary’s affliction, was mental retardation, an interest that expanded during the Kennedy administration into promoting research and better care for the mentally ill.
Lanky and freckled, with a wide mouth and bright blue eyes partly obscured by a thick curtain of brown hair, “Eunie” had what Diana Cooper described as a “wild originality of countenance.” In her restless mannerisms—she would think nothing of standing up and wandering around in the middle of a conversation—taut style of speaking, inquisitive intellect, and ironic humor, Eunice closely resembled JFK. They shared an intense friendship with Lem Billings, and she was even diagnosed with a mild form of Addison’s disease. “Eunice and Jack were goddamn near duplicates in damn near every way, particularly in politics,” said Sarge Shriver.
George Smathers used to quote the Ambassador: “If that girl had been born with balls she would have been a hell of a politician.” Since JFK’s first congressional race in 1946
, Eunice had been an avid campaigner, delivering forceful speeches, helping with organization, and reviewing her brother’s performance. “Eunice can hardly wait to get on that platform and talk to the voters,” Rose reported to Jackie as the presidential campaign began. Eunice idolized JFK, but “she was direct with him about important things,” said her friend Deeda Blair. “Jack took Eunice seriously. She is perhaps the least frivolous person I know.” As Dave Powers observed, Eunice could “make Jack laugh” but “also bawl him out.”
It took Sarge seven years of what Charley Bartlett called a “fantastically dogged” courtship to win Eunice’s hand. “It was not an easy sales job,” said Shriver. The handsome scion of a socially prominent Catholic family from Maryland that had been hit hard by the Depression, he had been educated at Canterbury and Yale. After stints as a Wall Street lawyer and a journalist at Newsweek, he had run Joe Kennedy’s real estate enterprises with a combination of charm, efficiency, and reliability. Shriver considered “Mr. Kennedy” a genius, and he was smitten with Eunice from the start. Behind their bustling personalities, both Sarge and Eunice shielded themselves with opaque reserve. Probably their strongest bond was their devout faith; like Rose, they attended mass every morning.
Sarge and Eunice were married several months before Jack and Jackie in a wedding extravaganza at St. Patrick’s Cathedral. They moved to Chicago, where Sarge immersed himself in civil rights and school reform. Eunice continued her work with juvenile offenders and developed a reputation for chaotic domesticity—inviting friends for dinner and then showing up late for her own party. Sarge became the perfect foil for his hard-driving wife: earnest and idealistic (JFK called him a “boy scout”), a man of “unruffled courtesy” and “easy amiability,” in Schlesinger’s view, famous for his loyalty and honesty.
As head of the Peace Corps, Sarge was the poster boy for all the virtues the organization espoused. He threw himself into the job, building a successful program that would grow in two years from 500 volunteers to 5,000 in 46 countries. But while JFK admired Shriver’s executive ability, “you never get the feeling that Sarge is close in,” said Charley Bartlett. Nor was Shriver, by his own admission, “a person capable of penetrating Jackie’s domain.” Neither Sarge nor Eunice was privy to the secrets of the Kennedy White House, which suited them both. “I never saw Jack act very worried,” said Eunice. “He would just move on. When what was done was done, it was over, and on to the next.”
FIFTEEN
The public euphoria of Kennedy’s first hundred days masked concerns in the West Wing over communist encroachments in Southeast Asia and Cuba. The first flashpoint was tiny (population an estimated two million) Laos, which, according to Schlesinger, occupied more of Kennedy’s time than anything else during his first months in office. After the expulsion of French colonial forces from Southeast Asia by the communists in 1954, Laos had survived as a weak neutralist kingdom, bolstered by $300 million in American aid over five years. Now, with Pathet Lao guerrillas (backed by both the Soviet Union and North Vietnamese leader Ho Chi Minh, the victor over the French) poised to overrun the country, Kennedy was developing plans to intervene with the U.S. military.
Events in Laos also affected neighboring South Vietnam. Communist Viet Cong guerrillas, who relied on North Vietnam for men and materiel, would benefit greatly from unfettered supply routes through Laos. “The President was watching this thing,” recalled Walt Rostow. “He knew that he had inherited a disintegrating situation.” If the pro-Western governments in both Laos and South Vietnam fell, according to the prevailing “domino theory,” the communists could gain control of Southeast Asia before extending their reach to India and possibly the Middle East.
Among those Kennedy consulted in his deliberations was Sir William David Ormsby Gore, a man little known in Washington who would become a de facto member of JFK’s cabinet—a shadow counselor who had “a special relationship within a special relationship.” Bobby Kennedy believed that his brother would “rather have [David’s] judgment than almost anybody else’s.”
If Ted Sorensen was Kennedy’s intellectual alter ego, the President’s beau ideal was forty-two-year-old David Gore, later the 5th Baron Harlech. Tall and lean, with a bold nose and sharply receding hairline, Gore had qualities of aristocracy, public service, and intelligence that Kennedy found compelling. When Harold Macmillan spoke of Kennedy’s three lives—fashionable people, highbrows, and politicians—he also observed that “David belonged to all three.”
They had first met when Joe Kennedy was ambassador to Britain, and Jack and David were students at Harvard and Oxford. Not only was Gore’s father a baron, his mother, Lady Beatrice “Mima” Gascoyne Cecil, was the daughter of the 4th Marquess of Salisbury, a prominent Conservative politician. David’s first cousin was Billy Hartington, Kathleen Kennedy’s husband, and David’s sister Katie married Maurice Macmillan, Harold’s son. David Gore’s uncle David Cecil wrote one of JFK’s favorite books, the biography of Lord Melbourne. To complete the family circle, Billy Hartington was also the nephew of Harold Macmillan’s wife, Dorothy.
JFK admired Gore as an exemplar of what Schlesinger described as “English political society, with its casual combination of wit, knowledge and unconcern.” Like Kennedy, Gore started out as a rebellious playboy with a fondness for fast cars. (At Oxford, Gore lost all his teeth in an auto crash.) They shared a sense of the ridiculous, and an impatience with long-winded or self-important bores.
Both men were sons of dogmatic fathers, and were touched by the tragedy of losing a beloved older brother in his youth. Kennedy and Gore gave the appearance of being laid-back and unemotional in the stereotypical English manner. Recognizing aspects of himself in Kennedy, Gore observed, “I think he had deep emotions, but he very much disliked the display of them”—an echo of Ted Sorensen’s own self-reflective view of his boss.
Kennedy and Gore had traveled in the same London pack with Kathleen and Billy Hartington that included Gore’s future wife, Sylvia “Sissie” Lloyd Thomas. As they matured, the two friends recognized the extent of their political and intellectual compatibility. A member of Parliament since 1950, Gore was a Tory—but of the “wet” or liberal variety, an advocate of the sort of policies Kennedy supported.
In 1954, when Gore was in New York as part of a UN delegation, he and JFK began to see each other more frequently. As a diplomat Gore had become an expert in the technically intricate field of arms control. Kennedy liked to pick Gore’s brain on the subject, and at JFK’s request, Gore sent him a memo on nuclear test-ban negotiations and nuclear disarmament in the autumn of 1959 in preparation for the presidential campaign. “He took a very keen interest,” said Gore. “I know it did have some effect on his subsequent opinions.”
During the campaign, Gore attended events wearing his PT-109 tie clip. When Gore met with Kennedy late in 1960, the President-elect had a simple message for his friend, that he “must come to Washington as ambassador.” By that time Gore had become “Uncle Harold” Macmillan’s minister of state for foreign affairs. Macmillan readily agreed when Kennedy requested Gore’s transfer to Washington.
“David fitted exactly between Uncle Harold and Jack Kennedy,” said the Duchess of Devonshire. “They were all completely out of the same hat.” With such unusual access and insight, Gore was “ideally equipped to interpret or even predict” the reactions of Kennedy and Macmillan, noted Sorensen. Although the appointment would not take effect until the autumn of 1961, Gore made himself available whenever Kennedy called.
In that spirit, Gore and JFK had dinner in late February at the White House. “Speaking with the bluntness of an old friend,” wrote Schlesinger, Gore “offered a caustic picture of American policy in Laos.” The British government opposed military intervention, advocating instead a cease-fire negotiated by an international commission. But Kennedy leaned nevertheless toward using American troops to keep at least part of Laos in friendly hands.
A month later, in a state of “deepest anxiety,” K
ennedy sought advice directly from Harold Macmillan in a hastily convened meeting at Key West, Florida. With his trim mustache, smart bespoke suits, and silver hair, Macmillan had the appearance of a “languid Edwardian,” but he possessed “a sharp, disillusioned mind,” wrote Schlesinger, and “a vivid sense of history.” Kennedy had been impressed by the “elegance, information and style” in Macmillan’s letters to him.
At age sixty-six, Macmillan was close to Eisenhower, a contemporary whom he had known since World War II. He and Eisenhower had “common experiences,” Macmillan said at the time. “Now there is this young cocky Irishman. . . . How am I going to deal with him?” Macmillan disliked Joe Kennedy and feared the possibility of his malevolent influence. The British prime minister had also been alerted by Eisenhower’s ambassador to Britain, Jock Whitney, about JFK’s flaws. “Kennedy must be a strange character,” Macmillan wrote in his journal after Whitney’s post-election briefing. “Obstinate, sensitive, ruthless and highly sexed.”
Counteracting those misgivings was David Gore’s fondness for the Kennedys, along with Dorothy Macmillan’s kinship with Billy Hartington. When Kennedy and Macmillan met for the first time in Florida, “I ‘fell’ for him,” Macmillan later told Jackie. “But (much more inexplicably) he seemed to warm to me. . . . We seemed to be able (when alone) to talk freely and frankly to each other (as if we had been lifelong friends) and to laugh (a vital thing) at our advisers and ourselves.”
Not surprisingly, Kennedy and Macmillan admired each other’s intelligence, patrician bearing, and political instincts, but their shared irreverence provided a level of comfort neither man had anticipated. “They were astonished by each other although they were poles apart,” said the Duchess of Devonshire. “They were certainly dependent on each other.” Kennedy’s bond with Macmillan was his most important among America’s allies, and he would repeatedly tap the elder statesman’s judgment in international crises. They would meet seven times in three years.
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