An Unfinished Life: John F. Kennedy 1917-1963 (119 page)

Vietnam, which became America’s worst foreign policy nightmare in the twelve years after Kennedy’s death, is a source of sharp debate between critics and admirers of Kennedy’s leadership. His increase in military advisers from hundreds to over sixteen thousand and his agreement to the Vietnamese coup, which led to Diem’s unsanctioned assassination, are described as setting the course for America’s later large-scale involvement in the Vietnam War. Johnson continually justified his escalation of America’s role in the conflict by emphasizing that he was simply following Kennedy’s lead.

A close reading of the record suggests that Kennedy had every wish to keep Vietnam out of the Soviet-Chinese communist orbit. But he was unwilling to pay any price or bear any burden for the freedom of Saigon from communist control. His skepticism about South Vietnam’s commitment to preserving its freedom by rallying the country around popular policies and leaders fueled his reluctance to involve the United States more deeply in the conflict. His fears of turning the war into a struggle on a scale with the Korean fighting and of getting trapped in a war that demanded ever more U.S. resources became reasons in 1963 for him to plan reductions of U.S. military personnel in South Vietnam. His eagerness to mute press criticism of America’s failure to defeat communism in Southeast Asia also rested on his resistance to escalating U.S. involvement in the struggle. Press attacks on administration policies seemed likely to produce not demands for an American retreat from the fighting but rather pressure for escalation, which would lead, at a minimum, to political problems in a 1964 presidential campaign against a militant Republican like Goldwater.

No one can prove, of course, what Kennedy would have done about Vietnam between 1964 and 1968. His actions and statements, however, are suggestive of a carefully managed stand-down from the sort of involvement that occurred under LBJ. Johnson’s decision to launch “Rolling Thunder” in March 1965, the sustained bombing campaign against North Vietnam, was nothing Kennedy had signed on to. Nor did Kennedy ever consent to sending one hundred thousand combat troops to Vietnam, as Johnson did in July. With no presidential track record to speak of in foreign affairs during 1964-1965, Johnson had a more difficult time limiting U.S. involvement in a tottering Vietnam than Kennedy would have had. By November 1963, Kennedy had established himself as a strong foreign policy leader. After facing down Khrushchev in the missile crisis and overcoming Soviet and U.S. military and Senate resistance to a test ban treaty, Kennedy had much greater credibility as a defender of the national security than Johnson had. It gave Kennedy more freedom to convince people at home and abroad that staying clear of large-scale military intervention in Vietnam was in the best interests of the United States.

Kennedy’s greatest achievements as president were his management of Soviet-American relations and his effectiveness in discouraging a U.S. military mind-set that accepted the possibility—indeed, even likelihood—of a nuclear war with Moscow. Kennedy came to the presidency after his experiences in World War II with a negative bias toward the military that was only strengthened by Eisenhower’s January 17, 1961, warning about “the military-industrial complex” and his own experiences with Laos, the Bay of Pigs, the Cuban missile crisis, and Vietnam. Kennedy’s abiding conviction that a nuclear war was a last, horrible resort made him an effective partner in negotiations with Khrushchev and the Soviets, who feared the consequences of a nuclear exchange as much as, if not even more than, Kennedy. The crises over Berlin and Cuba tested the resolve of both sides to avoid a nuclear holocaust. As important, they opened the way to a notable test ban treaty that reduced dangerous radiation fallout and increased confidence in the possibility of a Soviet-American détente. As with Cuba and Vietnam, no one can say with any certainty that two full Kennedy terms would have eased the Cold War between the United States and the USSR. But it is certainly imaginable.

The sudden end to Kennedy’s life and presidency has left us with tantalizing “might have been’s.” Yet even setting these aside and acknowledging some missed opportunities and false steps, it must be acknowledged that the Kennedy thousand days spoke to the country’s better angels, inspired visions of a less divisive nation and world, and demonstrated that America was still the last best hope of mankind.

Acknowledgments

The research and writing of this book extended over five years and profited from the support of a number of institutions and people. The numerous books and articles on John F. Kennedy, which are reflected in my notes, are an indispensable starting point for a biographer. These works are particularly valuable for the authors’ interviews with friends and associates of JFK, many of whom have since died or whose memories would now be made less precise by the passage of so much time.

The staffs of the various libraries and archives cited in the notes were uniformly helpful, but none was more essential to the study of Kennedy’s personal life and public record than the exquisitely located John F. Kennedy Library at Columbia Point, overlooking Boston Harbor. The staff was consistently helpful, but I am particularly grateful to Megan Desnoyers, who worked so diligently to arrange my access to Joseph P. Kennedy’s papers and, most important, the Janet Travell collection of medical records that had been unavailable to biographers until the donor committee agreed to open them to me in 2002.

I also wish to thank Kai Bird for access to Averell Harriman correspondence; the Clark Clifford executors for access to his oral history; Adam Clymer for sharing his interviews with Senator Edward M. Kennedy; George Eliades for providing transcripts of difficult to understand JFK tape recordings; Paul Fay for access to his papers and oral history; Barbara Gamarekian for opening previously closed pages in her oral history; Elizabeth Hadley and Geri Dallek for photo research; Nigel Hamilton for making the large collection of materials he assembled for his book
JFK: Reckless Youth,
available at the Massachusetts Historical Society; Maxwell Kennedy for opening Robert Kennedy’s confidential files (and to Ted Widmer, who helped arrange this); Robert Kennedy Jr. for providing access to additional LeMoyne Billings letters supplementing those in the Hamilton collection; Christopher Matthews for use of taped interviews; Race Matthews for giving me a copy of Bruce Grant’s book; Paul H. Nitze for his oral history; Kenneth O’Donnell Jr. for letting me listen to his father’s taped recollections; and Abraham Ribicoff’s executors for permitting me to read his Columbia University oral history.

Sven Dubie and Chissy Kopp, graduate students studying for Ph.D.’s, helped by making copies of documents I identified in my research at the JFK Library. Chrissy also helped by checking some of my notes and by selecting photos for the book from the collection of visual materials at the library.

The many people who spoke with me about Kennedy have been cited at relevant points in the notes to the book, but I am particularly grateful to Elias P. Demetracopoulos, Philip J. Kaiser, and Marianne Means for sharing information with me, and to Peter Kovler for lending an ear and offering wise comments on my ideas.

Wayne Callaway, Robert Morantz, Judith Nowak, and David Schurman lent their medical expertise to the analysis of JFK’s many health problems. No one, however, was more instrumental in helping me understand and formulate conclusions about Kennedy’s ailments than Jeffrey Kelman. It is no exaggeration to say that I could not have made sense of JFK’s complicated medical history without him. He read the Travell files with me at the JFK Library and checked my descriptions of Kennedy’s medical woes to assure their accuracy. His contributions to this historical reconstruction were given as an act of friendship, for which I am most grateful.

Sheldon Stern, who served at the John F. Kennedy Library for twenty-three years, gave me the benefit of his expertise by reading the entire manuscript. He not only saved me from a number of errors, he also made excellent suggestions for additions and revisions, which significantly improved the manuscript.

Geoffrey Shandler at Little, Brown is as fine an editor as an author could hope to have. My hopes for the kind of thoughtful editing Geoff provided sank after the first two editors on the book moved on to other positions. But Geoff more than made up for their departure with two careful readings of the manuscript that confirmed me in the conviction that an author’s best friend is a devoted editor insistent on making writers push to outdo themselves. Elizabeth Nagle, his assistant, also read the full manuscript and made several excellent suggestions, for which I am grateful. Peggy Leith Anderson, Peggy Freudenthal, Steve Lamont, Pamela Marshall, and Betsy Uhrig added greatly to the readability of the book with their super copyediting skills.

My agent, John W. Wright, has been an indispensable supporter of this book from its inception. He helped me formulate the proposal, arranged for publication, encouraged me along the way, read the entire manuscript, and made excellent suggestions for its improvement. He has been a wise adviser and friend. His courage and strength in response to the tragic loss of his son on September 11, 2001, have been an inspiration to everyone who knows him.

Matthew Dallek, Rebecca Dallek, and Michael Bender, my son, daughter, and son-in-law, cheered me on with words of encouragement and critical reviews of what I said and wrote. They helped me understand what young people born in the years after 1963 need to learn about Kennedy if his life and times are to have special meaning to them.

As with all my work over the last forty years, no one has been more instrumental in making this book a reality than my wife, Geraldine Dallek. She is my toughest, most constructive critic and my best friend. Her insistence on clearer, more felicitous prose and fuller explanations of events now obscured to general readers by the passage of time were essential in making this book comprehensible to that elusive character, “the general reader.” She also suggested the title of the book. I cannot imagine writing anything produced for public consumption without her sensible judgments on my always imperfect drafts.

It goes without saying, but I’ll say it anyway, any errors in this book are my sole responsibility.

Sources

The sources for the quotes and facts presented in the text rest on numerous manuscript collections, tape recordings, oral histories, interviews, conversations, and newspaper and magazine articles cited in the endnotes. Much of this material is housed in the John F. Kennedy Library in Boston, but several other libraries and archives contain essential documents for the study of Kennedy’s life and presidency. Some of this material has not been available to earlier biographers and helped provide a fuller, more accurate picture of the man and his times. Additional materials will become available in the future and will attract other biographers to build upon the work in this book, as I have built on the invaluable research of predecessors who have told the Kennedy story during the last fifty years. Books I have drawn upon are cited in the notes by the author’s name, and full publication details for these are provided in the Bibliography, which follows the notes. All the oral histories cited in the notes are from the John F. Kennedy Library unless otherwise indicated.

Notes

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