An Unfinished Life: John F. Kennedy 1917-1963 (51 page)

In any case, the outgoing vice president was basically irrelevant; relations with Eisenhower, however, were crucial to the transition and coming assumption of power. Though election as the youngest president and service as the oldest separated Kennedy and Eisenhower, the two were among the most attractive personalities ever to occupy the White House. Ike’s famous grin and reassuring manner and JFK’s charm and wit made them almost universally likable. The “almost” certainly applied here: The two men did not have high regard for each other. Kennedy viewed Ike as something of an old fuddy-duddy, a sort of seventy-year-old fossil who was a “non-president” more interested in running the White House by organizational charts than by using executive powers. In private, he was not above making fun of Ike, mimicking him and calling him “that old asshole.” Eisenhower privately reciprocated the contempt, sometimes intentionally mispronouncing Kennedy’s name and referring to the forty-three-year-old as “Little Boy Blue” and “that young whippersnapper.” Ike saw the Kennedys as arrivistes and Jack as more celebrity than serious public servant, someone who had done little more than spend his father’s money to win political office, where, in the House and Senate, he had served without distinction.

Truman and Ike, whose differences in the 1952 campaign had carried over into the postelection transfer of power, had only one twenty-minute meeting at the White House, which was formal and unfriendly. Kennedy was eager to avoid a comparable exchange, so he seized upon an invitation to consult with Eisenhower at the White House in December. “I was anxious to see E[isenhower],” Kennedy recorded. “Because it would serve a specific purpose in reassuring the public as to the harmony of the transition. Therefore strengthening our hands.”

At an initial meeting on December 6, Kennedy wanted to discuss organizational matters, “the present national security setup, organization within the White House . . . [and] Pentagon organization.” Kennedy also listed as topics for discussion: “Berlin—Far East (Communist China, Formosa)—Cuba, [and] De Gaulle, Adenauer and MacMillan: President Eisenhower’s opinion and evaluation of these men.” Above all, Kennedy wanted “to avoid direct involvement in action taken by the outgoing Administration.” Yet despite his reluctance to enter into policy discussions, he prepared for the meeting by reading extensively on seven foreign policy issues Ike had suggested they review: “NATO Nuclear Sharing, Laos, The Congo, Algeria, Disarmament [and] Nuclear test suspension negotiations, Cuba and Latin America, U.S. balance of payments and the gold outflow.” Only one domestic topic made Eisenhower’s list: “The need for a balanced budget.”

The meeting began with an outward display of cordiality by both men at the north portico of the White House, where the president greeted his successor before press photographers and the marine band played “The Stars and Stripes Forever.” Kennedy, eager to use his youth and vigor to rekindle public hope, stepped from his car before it had come to a full stop and rushed forward alone to shake hands before the president could remove his hat or extend his hand. It perfectly symbolized the changing of the guard.

During the meeting, which lasted over an hour, longer than anticipated, Eisenhower did most of the talking. It was by far the most time Kennedy had ever spent with Eisenhower. Jack found much of Ike’s discourse unenlightening, later describing the president to Bobby as ponderous and poorly informed about subjects he should have mastered. He did not appreciate Ike’s advice that he “avoid any reorganization before he himself could become well acquainted with the problem.” But he also came away from the meeting with a heightened appreciation of Ike’s appeal and a more intimate realization that Eisenhower’s political success rested on the force and effectiveness of his personality.

Eisenhower was more impressed with Kennedy. He saw greater substance to the man than he had formerly. Kennedy convinced him that he was “a serious, earnest seeker for information and the implication was that he will give full consideration to the facts and suggestions we presented.” (Jack had obviously done an effective job of masking his limited regard for the president’s presentation of issues.) Eisenhower had some reservations: He believed that Kennedy was a bit naive in thinking that he could master issues by simply putting the right men in place around him. Despite this concern, Ike sent word to Washington attorney Clark Clifford, the head of Kennedy’s transition team, that he had been “misinformed and mistaken about this young man. He’s one of the ablest, brightest minds I’ve ever come across.”

Ten weeks after his election, Kennedy had a clearer idea of priorities, and he requested another meeting with Eisenhower. His principal worries, he said, in order of importance, were Laos, the Congo, Cuba and the Dominican Republic, Berlin, nuclear test talks and disarmament, Algeria, “an appraisal of limited war requirements vs. limited war capabilities,” and “basic economic, fiscal, and monetary policies.” Eisenhower declared himself ready to discuss any of these topics in a “larger meeting,” but he wanted to talk with Kennedy alone about presidential actions in a defense emergency, particularly authorization of the use of atomic weapons, and covert or “special operations, including intelligence activities.”

In their private meeting, which lasted forty-five minutes, Ike, who looked “very fit, pink cheeked,” and seemed “unharassed,” reviewed the emergency procedures for response to “an immediate attack.” It was one expression of current fears about a Soviet nuclear assault, even if, as Eisenhower knew, Moscow lacked the wherewithal to strike successfully against the United States. The prevailing wisdom, after the horrors of World War II and Soviet repression in the USSR and Eastern Europe, was that fanatical communists were capable of terrifying acts, especially against Western Europe, which Western political leaders would be irresponsible to ignore.

Kennedy marveled at Eisenhower’s sangfroid in discussing nuclear conflict. Ike assured Kennedy that the United States enjoyed an invulnerable advantage over Moscow in nuclear submarines armed with Polaris missiles, which could reach the Soviet Union from undetectable positions in various oceans. He seemed to take special pleasure in showing Kennedy how quickly a helicopter could whisk him to safety from the White House in case of a nuclear attack. With evident glee at a president’s military mastery, Ike said, “Watch this,” and instructed a military aide on the telephone: “Opal Drill Three.” The marine helicopter that landed almost at once on the White House lawn brought a smile of approval to JFK’s face as well.

But Kennedy’s main focus remained on Laos. A three-sided civil war between Pathet Lao communists, pro-Western royalists, and neutralists presented the possibility of communist control in Laos and, by extension, the loss of all Southeast Asia. As Kennedy noted in a later memo, “I was anxious to get some commitment from the outgoing administration as to how they would deal with Laos, which they were handing to us. I thought particularly it would be helpful to have some idea as to how prepared they were for military intervention.”

Speaking for the president, Eisenhower’s secretaries of state and defense urged a commitment to block communist control of Laos. They saw the Soviet bloc testing the unity and strength of Western intentions. They believed that the communists would avoid a major war in the region but that they would “continue to make trouble right up to that point.” They described Laos as “the cork in the bottle. If Laos fell, then Thailand, the Philippines,” and even Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalist regime on Formosa would go. Eisenhower himself favored unilateral intervention if America’s allies would not follow its lead, predicting that Cambodia and South Vietnam would also be victims unless the United States countered communist aggression in Southeast Asia. He also advised against a coalition government in Laos: “Any time you permit Communists to have a part in the government of such a nation, they end up in control.” Kennedy was not happy at the prospect of having to send American forces into Laos as the first major action of his term. “Whatever’s going to happen in Laos,” he had said to Sorensen before the January meeting, “an American invasion, a Communist victory or whatever, I wish it would happen before we take over and get blamed for it.” Despite his bold talk, Eisenhower was reluctant to intervene, and there was no chance he would act in the closing days of his term.

By contrast with Laos, Cuba barely registered as an immediate worry. Eisenhower advised Kennedy that he was helping anti-Castro guerrilla forces to the utmost and that the United States was currently training such a group in Guatemala. “In the long run the United States cannot allow the Castro Government to continue to exist in Cuba,” Eisenhower said. None of this, however, was news to Kennedy. Bobby Kennedy had received a memo as early as August 1960, which Jack’s friend Florida senator George Smathers warmly endorsed, recommending that the U.S. government encourage formation of “a respectable government-in-exile” to replace Castro. Moreover, by October, Bobby knew that Cuban exiles in Miami were describing “an invasion fever in Guatemala” but that they felt themselves “being rushed into it and that they are not yet equipped for it.” Bobby was also advised that “this invasion story is in the open.” The fact, however, that no action seemed imminent put the Castro problem lower on Kennedy’s list of worries than Laos, and in his memo of the conversation with the president, Jack made no mention of Cuba.

In preparing for power, Kennedy wanted to ensure that he not be the captive of any group or individual. As the youngest man ever elected to the presidency, he anticipated dealing with more experienced Washington hands who would see his youth as a reason to assert their authority over him. He did not view potential appointees and advisers as intent on maliciously weakening his control but as forceful men accustomed to leading and eager to help an untested Chief Executive burdened with unprecedented responsibilities. His concern to ensure his authority registered clearly on Schlesinger, to whom he spoke repeatedly about Franklin Roosevelt’s “capacity to dominate a sprawling government filled with strong men eager to go into business on their own.”

Kennedy’s determination to maintain control of organizational, procedural, and substantive matters was evident even before he was elected. In August, he had asked Clark Clifford to prepare transition briefs. “If I am elected,” he said, “I don’t want to wake up on the morning of November 9 and have to ask myself, ‘What in the world do I do now?’”

Clifford was the consummate Washington insider. Tall, handsome, silver haired, he looked more like a matinee idol than a savvy attorney who had learned the inner workings of the White House as an aide to Truman. Clifford had made political control into a fine art: He greeted visitors to his office with a minute of silence and seeming indifference to their presence while he searched through papers on his desk. The visitor’s relief at being recognized gave Clifford the upper hand he considered useful in a world of power brokers intent on gaining any and every edge. For all his usefulness to Kennedy as someone who could instruct the president-elect about the executive bureaucracy and how to prepare for the takeover, Clifford also posed a threat as someone who might leak stories to the press about his dominant role in shaping the new administration. Jack joked that Clifford wanted nothing for his services “except the right to advertise the Clifford law firm on the back of the one-dollar bill.” Clifford did, however, blunt some of Kennedy’s concerns by declaring himself unavailable for any appointment in the administration.

At the same time Kennedy invited Clifford to set an agenda for the transition, he asked Richard Neustadt, a Columbia political scientist who had recently published a widely praised book on presidential power, to take on the same assignment. On September 15, when Neustadt presented Kennedy with his memo on “Organizing the Transition,” Jack took an instant liking to the tone and substance of Neustadt’s advice: He counseled Kennedy against trying to repeat FDR’s Hundred Days, which had little parallel with the circumstances of 1961, and to settle instead on a presidential style that suited his particular needs. Kennedy disliked Clifford’s recommendation that he “see Congressmen all day long. ‘I can’t stand that,’” he told Neustadt. “Do I have to do that? What a waste of time.” Neustadt replied: “‘Now, look, you cannot start off with the feeling that the job must run you; that you have to do it this way because this is the way Truman did it. We’ll just have to think of devices to spare you as much of this as you don’t like. . . . We’ll have to use our ingenuity.’ He seemed relieved to be told what I am sure he hoped to hear,” Neustadt recalled. Kennedy asked him to elaborate in additional memos on a list of problems Neustadt expected to arise during the transition. Kennedy instructed him “‘to get the material directly back to me. I don’t want you to send it to anybody else.’ ‘How do you want me to relate to Clark Clifford?’” Neustadt asked. “I don’t want you to relate to Clark Clifford,” Kennedy answered. “I can’t afford to confine myself to one set of advisers. If I did that, I would be on
their
leading strings.”

BECAUSE KENNEDY THOUGHT
in terms of people rather than structure or organization, his highest priority during the transition was to find the right men—no women were considered for top positions—to join his administration. Selecting a White House staff was little problem. Since he intended to be his own chief of staff who issued marching orders to subordinates, this eliminated the issue of elevating one close aide over others and making some of them unhappy. It was obvious to Kennedy that the men who had worked with him so long and so hard to build his Senate career and make him president—Sorensen, O’Brien, O’Donnell, Powers, and Salinger—were to become the White House insiders. Their occupancy of West Wing offices near the president’s Oval Office and their access to Kennedy without formal appointments signaled their importance in the administration. “The President was remarkably accessible,” Sorensen recalls. “O’Donnell and Salinger—and usually [McGeorge] Bundy [special assistant to the president for national security affairs], O’Brien and myself were in and out of the Oval Office several times a day.” Each member of the Kennedy team had particular responsibilities—O’Brien as legislative liaison, O’Donnell as appointments secretary, Powers as a political man Friday, Salinger as press secretary, and Sorensen as special assistant for programs and policies—but none operated within narrow bounds, working instead on anything and everything.