The Highest Calling, page 28
DR: In the early part of the administration, Kennedy agrees to support the Bay of Pigs invasion by some Cuban refugees. Why did he do that? Did he not realize that there was no chance for those refugees to win?
FL: I think he was skeptical that the Bay of Pigs invasion would work from the beginning. There’s ample evidence that he thought this thing was pretty half-baked at best.
It’s a plan that had originated under Eisenhower. Kennedy feels new to the office, untested. “The military, CIA, and the outgoing administration are all saying to me, ‘You’ve got to do this. We have got to get rid of Castro, or at least destabilize his government. This is a plan that will work.’ ” So he feels pressure. He seeks input from his own advisors. And I give him credit for this, because he wanted input even from people he knew opposed this.
At the eleventh hour, he’s still saying he’s not sure that this is going to work. But he pursued it anyway. And of course it ended up being a disaster.
DR: Then he does something that all politicians with big failures have done since then, with similar results. He goes on television and says, “I take the blame. It’s my fault. The buck stops here.” And suddenly, his popularity goes up. Why does it go up after that failure?
FL: This is something I wonder about. Maybe we’re all reluctant to admit mistakes. Politicians, time and again, underestimate the maturity of their voters to handle this kind of an admission. In other words, they should learn from John F. Kennedy. Maybe we all should. Kennedy basically said, “I blew it on this. This is my mistake.” And voters gave him credit for this. It’s something we see all too rarely from our leaders.
DR: A lot of politicians will say, “I made a mistake, but actually I didn’t make a mistake.” They want to get the benefit that Kennedy got, but they also don’t want to be blamed.
So Kennedy has to deal with the Soviet leader, Nikita Khrushchev. He goes to Vienna for the first head-to-head meeting between the two of them. How does that go?
FL: It does not go well from John F. Kennedy’s perspective. It’s an increasingly tense time in the Cold War. The issue of Berlin, which has been a festering problem between East and West, between Moscow and Washington, is becoming more of one, for various reasons.
Kennedy is prepared for this summit meeting. Some people suggest, “He probably didn’t know what was coming.” No, he really prepared for this. He really boned up. He knew that Khrushchev had this tendency to be, shall we say, dogmatic and tough, and not give a person a chance to speak.
So it’s not as though he was unprepared for a difficult meeting. And yet he was still taken aback by the bluster, the aggressiveness of the Soviet leader. It is a very tense meeting from start to finish.
DR: He tells people it didn’t go well. He tells his friends it didn’t go well, including some journalists. Khrushchev, I guess, sizes up Kennedy and says, “He’s not that tough, so I can put nuclear missiles into Cuba, and Kennedy won’t do anything about it.” Is that what led Khrushchev to put those missiles into Cuba?
FL: That’s one of the reasons. This is now about a year later when the process begins. He does not think Kennedy will respond aggressively, particularly if everything can be in place before the Americans take notice. He’s also wanting to right the strategic balance, or imbalance, that he perceives, especially in terms of nuclear capability. He wants to show Castro that he’s supportive of the revolution. He’s also competing with China for supremacy among revolutionaries in the developing world. So Khrushchev has several motives in trying this scheme.
DR: There were no spy satellites in those days. How did we find out that there were nuclear missiles in Cuba?
FL: Through photographs taken during U-2 overflights by the United States, they are able to see that these installations are underway. That’s what launches us into the Cuban Missile Crisis.
DR: Kennedy decides to bring together some of his cabinet, some of his senior advisors. The most important one turned out to be Robert Kennedy. And what does President Kennedy decide to do? Many generals are telling him to bomb, to invade. Why does he not do either of those?
FL: He comes into this, partly because of his own experience in World War II, skeptical about the utility of military solutions to problems of this nature. President Kennedy is already thinking that this could get out of hand easily. He’s also indicated to various people that in the nuclear age, we cannot have the two superpowers go too far down the road toward nuclear conflagration. Those two concerns condition him, from a fairly early point in the crisis, to look for some kind of political solution.
And so, against the advice of virtually everybody on the Executive Committee, the so-called EXCOMM—including, by the way, his brother, who was more hawkish early in the crisis than he would subsequently claim, including in his book Thirteen Days—John F. Kennedy determines that they must pursue some kind of political solution to the crisis.
And what’s interesting about it is he says, in so many words, “We’ve got to put ourselves in Khrushchev’s shoes, see it from his perspective.” So you see here an example of John F. Kennedy showing a kind of empathetic understanding that is ultimately critical to the resolution of the crisis. It’s the closest we’ve come to a nuclear war.
DR: There was a quarantine. And ultimately, as Dean Rusk would say, “The Russians blinked,” and they didn’t ship more missile parts in. But we have a secret deal with the Russians. This always is surprising to me. We say to the Russians, “We will move our missiles out of Turkey. You want them out of Turkey. But don’t tell anybody.” We didn’t tell the American people, “We’re going to move the missiles out of Turkey.” But we told the Russians, and we wanted them to keep it a secret. Is that surprising?
FL: It’s surprising in one way. There is this secret deal, as you say, and it’s very important in terms of this crisis being resolved. Kennedy insists on this being kept secret, and it remains secret for 25 years. The explanation is in part that there is a midterm election coming up just a few days after the crisis. He does not want to give Republicans an opportunity to say, “Wait, you made a deal with communists? You showed weakness with the Kremlin at this hour of tremendous tension?” Also, in the back of his mind is his own reelection, which is two years away. So it’s in part for domestic political and careerist reasons that he insists that this not be publicized.
DR: Let’s talk about civil rights for a moment. The Brown v. Board decision in 1954 said, “With all deliberate speed, we’re going to desegregate.” But there wasn’t so much deliberate speed. And there wasn’t really any significant civil rights legislation. There had been some in’57, but nothing of any consequence. Why didn’t John Kennedy, in the beginning of his administration, go ahead and, as many of the progressives wanted in his party, propose civil rights legislation, or try to get it through the Congress?
FL: That’s a very good question. And I would say, not merely in hindsight but in the context of his own time, he should have done that. His civil rights record in the House and in the Senate was quite good, in terms of voting for or against legislation. He believed in Black equality. But the plight of African Americans, the discrimination they endured on a daily basis, was not an issue that moved him particularly. It was not an issue in the forefront of his mind in this period. Even though some of his statements about civil rights during the 1960 campaign were pointed and powerful, he moved cautiously on the issue, afraid of alienating white Southern voters and leaders whose backing he needed in November.
The real question, though, is why didn’t he move with greater dispatch once he became president? I think it’s partly the same concern. In essence: “I need to be on good terms with Senate Democrats in particular. They control the key committees in the Senate, these Southern segregationists. So if I’m going to have any hope of getting legislation passed, my own re-election will be conditioned in part by how I handle this.”
What he does do, however, is come around later in’62, and especially in’63, to a very different position.
DR: But he was against the March on Washington in’63. He was invited to speak there and chose not to. He was very worried it would lead to riots. He did greet Martin Luther King Jr. and some of the other speakers afterward. Was he afraid that the South wouldn’t remain Democratic if he did more for civil rights?
FL: Yes, it’s not his finest hour. He still worried, probably up until he takes that fateful trip to Dallas in November, about the consequences for him politically.
But we should note that in his famous June 11 speech from the White House, which is an extraordinary address, he makes civil rights a moral issue, really for the first time, addressed by a president from the Oval Office. We shouldn’t underestimate the importance of that moment.
DR: So he makes a famous speech in Berlin: “Ich bin ein Berliner.” Why did he make that speech? Was he really thinking it was going to make a difference in the way Khrushchev was going to conduct himself?
FL: After the Cuban Missile Crisis, I really think he does want to reconceptualize the Cold War in a fundamental way.
One of the “what-if” questions, if Kennedy had come back from Dallas alive, is what might have been the results for the Soviet-American relationship? Can we imagine that the Cold War ends? In Berlin, he’s taking steps to make that happen, as is Khrushchev. They both take these steps to improve the relationship.
In Berlin, he nevertheless wants to speak for the West, speak on behalf of Western values, and it’s arguably a fairly aggressive speech. Much of it is extemporaneous. This shows how far he’s come as an orator.
He has a draft that you can see at the Kennedy Library and then you can compare to what he actually delivers. Much of it is his own words, in complete paragraphs. And of course he has a rapturous response from the people in Berlin. Nobody knows that this president in six months will be gunned down.
DR: President Kennedy would have said, before Dallas, “My most significant accomplishment is the Test Ban Treaty,” which limited aboveground nuclear testing. Why was it so important to him to get that?
FL: He felt deeply that nuclear war must be avoided at all costs: We must make sure, those of us who are in positions of leadership, that we never take steps that get us anywhere closer to nuclear war. It certainly can’t be won. It must never be waged.
This is part of an effort that he feels more strongly about after the Cuban Missile Crisis—that we, along with the Soviets, must take steps. We begin by limiting the testing, then we can maybe move to more aggressive measures.
DR: Let’s talk about his personal life. He had a very complicated personal life as president. Jackie Kennedy said that her relationship with him got better because he was home more. How would you describe his personal life, and the fact that some people would say he was doing things that might be considered dangerous?
FL: I do think that their marriage got better in the final year, especially maybe in the final months. The death of their son Patrick, soon after birth, in some ways drew them closer together.
But you ask a very large question. How can a man who was quite cautious as a policymaker, including in his policymaking, often with good effect, someone pragmatic in his pursuit in his policy goals, careful in how he waged his campaigns, act so differently in this regard?
It’s a question I’m still trying to sort out as I work on this volume. I don’t think it’s enough to say, “This is the Mad Men age. This is how men behaved.” Not all men behaved this way. Nor can we say that it’s because his father did this, although that’s true. His father was, if anything, worse in this regard.
DR: Let’s talk about the final trip to Dallas. It is widely thought that he needs to win Dallas. He needs Texas. Jackie Kennedy goes with him. That, I think, is the first time she went west of the Mississippi during his presidency, and the first time she went on a political trip with him?
FL: I don’t know if it’s the first time west of the Mississippi, but she certainly had not been traveling with him on these kinds of trips of late.
DR: She’s never really been on a political trip with him?
FL: She had traveled with him in the’52 campaign for the Senate, in his reelection campaign in 1958, and on many occasions in 1960, especially in the primaries. She made a few appearances late in the fall, though she was heavily pregnant.
DR: But not when he was president.
FL: As president, that is correct.
DR: Why did they need to go to Dallas?
FL: In part because of a dispute within the Texas Democratic Party, factions in the party. Lyndon Johnson and others want the president to come and maybe help smooth things over, help improve those relations.
He’s also gearing up for a reelection campaign. He’s pretty sure that he will have Barry Goldwater as an opponent, and he thinks he can beat him. But Jack Kennedy being Jack Kennedy, he’s taking no chances, so this is an opportunity to lay groundwork in a state he wants to retain a year hence.
So though there are aides who have concerns about the security situation in Dallas and about him going, he of course defies them. And they go.
DR: So on November 22nd, it was supposed to be raining in Dallas. And when it rained in those days, the Secret Service had a bubble it put on the presidential limousine. Kenny O’Donnell, in effect the chief of staff, said to the Secret Service, “No, the president wants to be seen. Don’t put the bubble on.” In hindsight that was obviously a terrible decision. But why did they publish the route that the president was going to go on? And do you have any doubt that Lee Harvey Oswald was the sole assassin?
FL: When you think about the “what-ifs” of that day, it’s dizzying: What if, as you say, the weather had been what they thought? What if the motorcade hadn’t slowed down when it turned the corner right underneath the Texas School Book Depository? What if Lee Harvey Oswald hadn’t been working on that particular day? What if they had not published the route in the paper, which was fairly standard in those days? It was a more innocent age, needless to say. So many of these decisions had this extraordinary effect on the country and on the world. I’m still researching the developments of that terrible day, but yes, the forensic evidence is powerful that Oswald was the only gunman.
DR: When Kennedy was hit with the last shot, there was no chance that he could survive that shot?
FL: No. But another “what-if” is this: What if he hadn’t been wearing the back brace that prevented him from going over on the first shot.
DR: Which went through the neck. And had he not had the back brace, he would have presumably leaned over, and the second shot wouldn’t have hit him.
FL: That’s right.
13 EVAN THOMAS
on Richard M. Nixon
(1913–1994; president from 1969 to 1974)
If only Shakespeare had been around to write about Richard Nixon. What an unforgettable tragedy he could have written.
Born in modest circumstances, unable to afford the elite school education for which his brainpower would have otherwise qualified him; elected vice president of the United States at 39; lost the presidency by a whisker eight years later to his once good friend John Kennedy; wandered in the political wilderness for eight years (including losing an election for governor of his home state of California); defeated the patrician Nelson Rockefeller for the Republican presidential nomination; was elected president at 55; opened China to Western civilization; achieved détente with the Soviet Union; enacted the country’s most significant environmental legislation in history; presided over the first successful manned moon landing; was reelected with a 49-state blowout victory; then not long thereafter felled by his desire to pursue his “enemies” and forced to resign the presidency—which had never happened in the country’s history—because of words on tapes that he had voluntarily recorded.
Had Nixon destroyed the tapes when it was still legal to do so, his image might have been what he had once hoped. His political opponents—who never forgave his early-career red-baiting and his pugnacious personality—would not have had the political power to force a resignation or achieve a Senate conviction after a House impeachment, if one would have even occurred. And in the fullness of time, Richard Nixon could well have gone down in history as one of the country’s most “historic” and successful presidents.
I did not know Richard Nixon. I only met him once, at a retirement party I hosted for the “Father of the Nuclear Navy,” Admiral Hyman Rickover, whom Nixon greatly admired. But like so many in my Baby Boomer generation, I felt that I “knew” Nixon reasonably well. His decisions on the Vietnam War obviously affected many young men in my generation. (I had a standard student deferment through most of college; when those deferments were ending and Nixon imposed a lottery system, I drew a high number and was never called for enlistment.)
But my generation, and those older as well, came to know Nixon intimately through Watergate, with the Washington Post’s seemingly unbelievable daily revelations, the televised hearings, and the trials and convictions of his closest advisors. The intense and almost hourly press coverage was something the country had never seen. Not until Donald Trump came into office, and investigations of him began, did the country see and learn so much about a president.
After Watergate there followed a flurry of books about it and really about Richard Nixon. Everyone in the administration seemed to write a book. Most were published within a decade or so of his administration. But few have been written in recent years, with a bit more perspective to the achievements and failures of Richard Nixon.
