JFK

by Fredrik Logevall

  22. McKeesport Daily News, April 25, 1947. Fifteen years later, on October 13, 1962, President John F. Kennedy returned to McKeesport, mere days before the onset of the Cuban Missile Crisis. His remarks on that occasion began as follows: “The first time I came to this city was in 1947, when Mr. Richard Nixon and I engaged in our first debate. He won that one, and we went on to other things. We came here on that occasion to debate the Taft-Hartley law, which he was for and which I was against. Since 1947, which was the first year of the 80th Congress, I have had an opportunity to examine with some care and some interest the record of the Republican Party, and I can tell you, in case you don’t know it, that it is opposed, year in, year out, in the administration of Harry Truman in 1947, in the administration of Franklin Roosevelt in the 1930’s, in the administration—in my administration.” Remarks at City Hall, McKeesport, Pennsylvania, October 13, 1962, American Presidency Project, www.presidency.ucsb.edu/​ws/​index.php?pid=8951.

  23. Stokes, Capitol Limited.

  24. Nixon, RN, 42–43; Thomas, Being Nixon, 40; Farrell, Richard Nixon, 84. A more detailed account is in Matthews, Kennedy and Nixon, chap. 2.

  25. William O. Douglas OH, JFKL; O’Neill, Man of the House, 85.

  26. Washington Star, July 29, 1947, as cited in Perrett, Jack, 145. At the start of the year, Jack had been named one of the “nation’s 10 outstanding young men of the year” by the U.S. Junior Chamber of Commerce. Others making the list included historian Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., age thirty, who had won the Pulitzer Prize the previous year for his Age of Jackson; and Joe Louis, who, at age thirty-three, had been the heavyweight boxing champion for a decade. Boston Herald, January 20, 1947.

  27. Craig and Logevall, America’s Cold War, 76–80.

  28. Nasaw, Patriarch, 607–8.

  29. Craig and Logevall, America’s Cold War, 82–83; BP, April 23, 1947, quoted in Perrett, Jack, 144.

  30. On the Marshall Plan and its legacy, see Steil, Marshall Plan. That same June, Jack was elected a director at large of the Harvard Alumni Association. New York Herald Tribune, June 6, 1947.

  31. Fredrik Logevall, “Bernath Lecture: A Critique of Containment,” Diplomatic History 28, no. 4 (September 2004): 473–99. An important work, depicting a flexible Stalin open to a political settlement, is Naimark, Stalin and the Fate.

  32. JPK to T. J. White, October 9, 1947, printed in Smith, Hostage to Fortune, 634. To his daughter Kick, Joe was equally gloomy. Truman’s popularity had peaked and was sliding fast, he told her, and the U.S. economic outlook was poor. “We can produce so much more in this country than we can consume and there is no way that we can dispose of that surplus if all the world is going to be Communist dominated.” JPK to KK, June 10, 1947, box 3, JPKP.

  33. Parmet, Jack, 177–78; U.S. Congress, House, Hearings, 80th Cong., 1st sess., Vol. 1, 3585.

  34. Anthony Eden to KK, January 10, 1948, quoted in Goodwin, Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys, 730; KK to JPK, September 4, 1947, box 21, JPKP; KK to JPK, September 18, 1947, box 21, JPKP. On Kick’s relationship with Eden, see Leaming, Kick, 233–35.

  35. JFK to James MacGregor Burns, August 25, 1959, box 129, JFKPOF, JFKL; Tubridy, JFK in Ireland, 30–31.

  36. Byrne, Kick, 273–74; McTaggart, Kathleen Kennedy, 219.

  37. Blair and Blair, Search for JFK, 640–41.

  38. Barbara Ward OH, JFKL; Perrett, Jack, 147.

  39. BP, February 1, 1948.

  40. Leaming, Jack Kennedy: Education, 192.

  41. Bailey, Black Diamonds, 420–25.

  42. Sutton interview, WGBH; BG, May 14, 1948; Goodwin, Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys, 738–39. Sutton recalled the scene: “So they said, ‘Well, we have no confirmation right now, but we’ll call you back.’ So he continued to talk about Ella Logan, what a great voice. Then when the news came that the fatal accident happened, he, you know, his eyes filled up with tears. And, you know, when they say that the Kennedys never cry, don’t believe that. They do. I saw him.”

  43. Leaming, Jack Kennedy: Education, 193; Alastair Forbes OH, JFKL.

  44. KLB OH, JFKL; O’Brien, John F. Kennedy, 228; Burns, John Kennedy, 54. Among the letters of condolence that Jack received was a touching one from his future Senate opponent, Henry Cabot Lodge. See Lodge to JFK, May 14, 1948, reel 8, HCLP II.

  45. Collier and Horowitz, Kennedys, 171–72.

  46. Collier and Horowitz, Kennedys, 172; Leaming, Jack Kennedy: Education, 203.

  47. Blair and Blair, Search for JFK, 624. Now and then, he’d also come up during the week. In 1947 he made a guest appearance in his former professor Arthur Holcombe’s graduate seminar on American politics, and enjoyed the experience so much that it became an annual thing—he would come back to Harvard every year until he entered the White House. On another occasion he debated socialist leader Norman Thomas at Harvard Law School, on the question “How Far Should Our Government Go in Regulating Our Economy?” Thomas was known far and wide as a skilled debater, but according to observers Kennedy held his own. THC, March 19, 1949; Dalton interview, WGBH.

  48. Blair and Blair, Search for JFK, 625. In the Boston press, too, there occurred much speculation in the fall of 1947 about a possible gubernatorial run the following year. See, e.g., Boston American, October 19, 1947; and Boston Herald, November 23, 1947. In June 1948 the rumors began anew.

  49. Manchester, Portrait of a President, 189–90; O’Brien, John F. Kennedy, 364.

  50. Bryant, Bystander, 25–26.

  51. Asch and Musgrove, Chocolate City, chap. 10; Levingston, Kennedy and King, 11.

  52. Bryant, Bystander, 27–28.

  53. Washington Daily News, March 6, 1949; Bryant, Bystander, 28–29.

  54. JFK to Stuart Symington, August 13, 1948, box 8, JFKPP.

  55. Leaming, Jack Kennedy: Education, 197–98; Churchill; Gathering Storm.

  56. Sandford, Union Jack, 127.

  57. Craig and Logevall, America’s Cold War, 91–95; Hitchcock, Struggle, 93–96.

  58. Craig and Logevall, America’s Cold War, 98–99; Kamensky et al., People and a Nation, 705.

  59. Burns, John Kennedy, 93.

  60. Quoted in Burns, John Kennedy, 80.

  61. Speech transcript, January 30, 1949, box 95, JFK Pre-Pres. The speech was inserted into the Congressional Record on February 21, 1949. See also JFK, Statements and Speeches, 971–72; Shaw, JFK in the Senate, 25.

  62. Goodwin, Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys, 745.

  CHAPTER 17: RED SCARE

  1. Only in the United States, among the Western powers, Eric Hobsbawm has written, was the “communist world conspiracy” a major aspect of domestic politics. Hobsbawm, Age of Extremes, 234, 236–37. On this point, see also Sam Tanenhaus, “The Red Scare,” New York Review of Books, January 14, 1999.

  2. Logevall, “Critique of Containment”; Storrs, Second Red Scare; Patterson, Grand Expectations, 204.

  3. Oshinsky, Conspiracy So Immense, 49; Patterson, Mr. Republican, 446–47; Anthony Badger, “Republican Rule in the 80th Congress,” in McSweeney and Owens, eds., Republican Takeover, 168.

  4. Halberstam, Best and the Brightest, 108–9. See also Freeland, Truman Doctrine.

  5. Halberstam, Coldest Winter, 173–74.

  6. Halberstam, Coldest Winter, 212–13; Karabell, Last Campaign; McCullough, Truman, 710–19.

  7. Taft quoted in Halberstam, Fifties, 57.

  8. Acheson, Present at the Creation, 355–56; Halberstam, Fifties, 66.

  9. Gaddis, Strategies, 87–106; Thompson, Hawk and Dove, chaps. 6, 7; May, American Cold War Strategy.

  10. Thomas and Isaacson, Wise Men, 547. On Acheson, a standard biography is Beisner, Dean Acheson. But see also Hopkins, Dean Acheson; and Smith, Dean Acheson.

  11. Tanenhaus, Whittaker Chambers, 224ff; Ambrose, Nixon, 205–6; Gr
eenberg, Nixon’s Shadow, 28–29. On the question of Hiss’s guilt, see also Weinstein, Perjury; and White, Alger Hiss’s Looking-Glass Wars.

  12. McClellan, Dean Acheson, 221; Goldman, Crucial Decade, 134–35.

  13. Quoted in Patterson, Grand Expectations, 195.

  14. Two excellent biographies are Oshinsky, Conspiracy So Immense; and Tye, Demagogue. Though a draft of the Wheeling speech survives, it is not known whether McCarthy gave precisely this version, as there exists no record of the Wheeling speech. See also Doherty, Cold War, Cool Medium, 14.

  15. Reedy quoted in Bayley, Joe McCarthy and the Press, 68. See also Schrecker, Many Are the Crimes, 242.

  16. In Peter Viereck’s marvelous words, “McCarthyism is the revenge of the noses that for twenty years of fancy parties were pressed against the outside window pane.” Bell, Radical Right, 163. I thank David Greenberg for drawing this quote to my attention. See also Hofstadter, Anti-Intellectualism.

  17. Richard Rovere’s assessment from more than six decades ago retains power: McCarthy, he wrote, was “a great sophisticate in human relationships, as every demagogue must be. He knew a good deal about people’s fears and anxieties, and he was a superb juggler of them. But he was himself numb to the sensation he produced in others. He could not comprehend true outrage, true indignation, true anything.” Rovere, Senator Joe McCarthy, 60.

  18. Oshinsky, Conspiracy So Immense, 185–90.

  19. Bayley, Joe McCarthy and the Press, 68.

  20. Halberstam, Fifties, 55.

  21. The literature is large. See, e.g., Wells, Fearing the Worst; Cumings, Korean War; Stueck, Rethinking; Halberstam, Coldest Winter; Chen Jian, “Far Short of a Glorious Victory: Revisiting China’s Changing Strategies to Manage the Korean War,” Chinese Historical Review 25 (Spring 2018): 1–22.

  22. Fried, Men Against McCarthy, 53–58; Barnet, Rockets’ Red Glare, 309; Patterson, Mr. Republican, 445–46; Burns, Crosswinds of Freedom, 245.

  23. The text of Smith’s speech can be found at Teaching American History, teachingamericanhistory.org/​library/​document/​declaration-of-conscience/, accessed October 27, 2019.

  24. Oshinsky, Conspiracy So Immense, 163–65. See also Rebecca Onion, “We’re Never Going to Get Our ‘Have You No Decency?’ Moment,” Slate, July 26, 2018.

  25. John P. Mallan, “Massachusetts: Liberal and Corrupt,” New Republic, October 13, 1952.

  26. RK to RFK and Ethel Kennedy, July 13, 1950, printed in Smith, Hostage to Fortune, 643–44; Damore, Cape Cod Years, 103; Parmet, Jack, 173–75.

  27. Nasaw, Patriarch, 667; New York Post, January 9, 1961, quoted in Whalen, Founding Father, 427.

  28. Halberstam, Fifties, 56; Mitchell, Tricky Dick, 170; Greenberg, Nixon’s Shadow, 29–30; Farrell, Richard Nixon, 150–55.

  29. He won 82.3 percent of the vote, against Republican Vincent J. Celeste’s 17.2 percent.

  30. Beatty, Rascal King, 501–5; Goodwin, Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys, 745–46.

  31. “There’s no question,” Ted later wrote of his grandfather, “that I inherited this joy of people from him. I inherited the whole way I approach politics.” Kennedy, True Compass, 78–79.

  32. Kennedy and Billings quoted in Goodwin, Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys, 748.

  33. Schlesinger, Thousand Days, 91; O’Brien, No Final Victories, 17.

  34. Said Mark Dalton later, “I felt at the time that it would be bad for John to clash with Governor Dever because Dever was very well liked in the Democratic party and I thought that even if John were to defeat him that the wounds would be very great after a campaign like that.” Dalton OH, JFKL.

  35. Joseph DeGuglielmo OH, JFKL.

  36. JPK, University of Virginia Law School Student Forum speech, December 12, 1950, box 256, JPKP. The folder includes the original draft of the speech as well as various research notes.

  37. Nasaw, Patriarch, 637. “There is indeed a rising tide of isolationism in this country,” Lippmann wrote. “It could carry with it a withdrawal that could take us very far, perhaps as far as Mr. Joseph P. Kennedy proposes—that is to say, to the positions we occupied in 1939.” WP, December 19, 1950.

  38. Schlesinger, Robert Kennedy, 69–71; Lind, American Way, 57.

  39. JFK travel journal, box 11, JFKPP. Following the meeting, Jack summarized the discussion in a press conference in Belgrade. See New York Herald Tribune, January 26, 1951. See also JFK to JPK and RK, n.d. (January 1951), box 4, JPKP; and the U.S. embassy’s summary in Belgrade telegram to DC, January 26, 1951, FRUS, 1951, Vol. IV, Part 2: 1701–1702.

  40. JFK travel journal, box 11, JFKPP; Perrett, Jack, 163.

  41. JFK travel journal, box 11, JFKPP; Leamer, Kennedy Men, 283.

  42. JFK, Nationally Broadcast Speech on Radio Station WOR, February 6, 1951, box 95, JFK Pre-Pres; New York Herald Tribune, February 7, 1951. The entire transcript of the speech is in New York Daily News, February 7, 1951.

  43. JFK testimony before SFRC, February 22, 1951, box 94, JFK Pre-Pres; BG, February 23, 1951. Two weeks prior, after Jack’s radio address, the Boston Traveler had editorialized in favor of his assessment over the “gloomy defeatism” of his father. Boston Traveler, February 8, 1951.

  44. Boston’s Political Times, March 17, 1951, cited in Parmet, Jack, 220.

  45. JFK speech, April 21, 1951, box 95, JFK Pre-Pres.

  46. Matthews, Bobby Kennedy, 88.

  47. When he took a trip to Latin America in late 1946, he annoyed his travel companion Lem Billings by never touching alcohol and showing scant interest in the local nightlife. Schlesinger, Robert Kennedy, 65.

  48. Emerson Spies to Paul Murphy, June 7, 1948, box 11, JPKP.

  49. Thomas, Robert Kennedy, 55.

  50. Tye, Bobby Kennedy, 21–22.

  51. Travel Journal Book 2, box 11, JFKL. Subsequent diary entries are from this source.

  52. See the astute analysis in Leamer, Kennedy Men, 287.

  53. Patricia Kennedy to RK, October 13, 1951, box 4, JPKP.

  54. Pat, too, remarked on Nehru’s penchant for speaking in generalities. “He was so very general or also said ‘That is a very difficult question.’ ” Patricia Kennedy to RK, October 13, 1951, box 4, JPKP. Though Jack’s diary speaks sympathetically of Nehru, Bobby’s later recollection was that his brother disliked the Indian leader. See Guthman and Shulman, Robert Kennedy, 437.

  55. He wrote upon his return to the United States: “When I visited a tin mine five miles outside Kuala Lumpur, the capital of Malaya at dusk, with the American manager, we were accompanied by an armoured car and a truck load of Malayan guards.” Undated speech fragment (late 1951), box 96, JFK Pre-Pres.

  56. JFK to JPK, October 26, 1951, box 4, JPKP.

  57. Logevall, Embers, xi–xiv.

  58. Logevall, Embers, xi–xiv.

  59. 1951 Trips, Mid and Far East, travel diary, box 24, RFK Pre-Administration Personal Files, JFKL.

  60. Jack at this point barely knew Gullion, but that did not keep him from being frank about his plans. As Gullion later related, “I asked him what he was going to do, what his plans were, and he said, ‘Oh, I expect to go back and run for governor or for Senator.’…If you were out in Indochina and there was this extremely young man before you and he makes a statement of this sort and it certainly makes you think, Well, has he really got it in him. I thought he had great things in him.” Edmund Gullion OH, JFKL. See also Topping, On the Front Lines, chap. 17.

  61. Of the dinner, which had “flags, spotlights, bands,” and was attended also by Emperor Bao Dai, Patricia wrote to her mother, “I must say it was most impressive.” Patricia Kennedy to RK, October 24, 1951, box 4, JPKP.

  62. Speech excerpt, n.d. (early 1952), box 96, JFK Pre-Pres.

  63. RFK to JPK, October 24, 1951, box 4, JPKP.

  64. It’s of
ten claimed that Jack received last rites on Okinawa, but I have found no evidence to that effect.

  65. Guthman and Shulman, Robert Kennedy, 438.

  66. Transcript of MBN radio address, November 14, 1951, box 94, JFK Pre-Pres.

  67. Speech transcript, November 19, 1951, box 102, JFK Pre-Pres.

  68. Meet the Press, December 3, 1951, transcript available at catalog.archives.gov/​id/​193106. The four panelists were Ernest Lindley, May Craig, James Reston, and Lawrence Spivak. Martha Rountree served as moderator. The twenty-one-minute video of the program, which shows a calmly confident and engaging lawmaker who already knows how to use the new medium of television, could be seen at view.yahoo.com/​show/​meet-the-presidents/​clip/​5682840/​john-f-kennedy-december-2-1951 as of early 2020.

  69. The Boston Post praised the performance: “He remained ahead of his questioners throughout the program, showed a balanced viewpoint, ready wit, and a keen sense of fair play.” BP, December 3, 1951.

  70. BG, November 20, 1951.

  71. Quoted in Schlesinger, Robert Kennedy, 93.

  72. Oshinsky, Conspiracy, 194–202; Patterson, Grand Expectations, 198.

  73. “Weighed in the Balance,” Time, October 22, 1951; Brinkley, The Publisher, 360–61.

  74. Swanberg, Luce, 302.

  75. Patterson, Grand Expectations, 202–3; Kabaservice, Rule and Ruin, 10; Hamby, Man of the People, 531–32.

  76. In a speech before three hundred leaders of the Salvation Army at the end of November, Jack warned that American rearmament needed to be stepped up substantially, and that in Korea in particular the United States needed more airpower. BP, November 30, 1951.

  CHAPTER 18: TWO BRAHMINS

  1. Thomas “Tip” O’Neill OH, TOP.

  2. Joseph Healey OH, JFKL; BG, April 7, 1952; O’Brien, John F. Kennedy, 239; O’Brien, No Final Victories, 26.

  3. JPK to Cornelius Fitzgerald, October 22, 1951, box 220, JPKP.

  4. John F. Royal to JPK, December 4, 1951, box 22, JPKP; JPK to Spivak, January 4, 1952, box 235, JPKP.