An Unfinished Life: John F. Kennedy 1917-1963 (54 page)

Other cabinet and subcabinet appointments came together almost randomly. Kennedy emphasized his eagerness for high-quality people rather than representatives of particular groups or factions. “Kennedy wanted a ministry of talent,” Sorensen said, but he was under constant pressure from private groups advocating one candidate or another. Governor Luther Hodges of North Carolina became secretary of commerce not only because he had proven his effectiveness as a public official but also because his reputation as a moderate would appeal to southerners and the business community. Arthur Goldberg and Stewart Udall were appointed labor secretary and interior secretary, respectively, not only because of their competence and ties to Kennedy but also because they satisfied special interest groups in the Democratic party like labor unions and conservationists.

Personal predilections also came into play. Ribicoff turned down Kennedy’s offer of the Justice Department out of concern that civil rights disputes would antagonize southerners, who would ultimately bar him from a high-court appointment. In addition, he did not think it a good idea for a Jewish attorney general to be forcing racial integration on white Protestants at the direction of a Catholic president. Ribicoff preferred and received appointment as secretary of health, education, and welfare, which meant that former governor G. Mennen Williams of Michigan, who wanted HEW, would have to become an assistant secretary of state for Africa. When Schlesinger advised Kennedy that liberals were discontented with their limited representation in the cabinet, he replied that the program was more important than the men. “We are going down the line on the program,” he said. Schlesinger interpreted this to mean that it would be an administration of “conservative men and liberal measures.” JFK agreed: “We’ll have to go along with this for a year or so. Then I would like to bring in some new people.” But then “he paused and added reflectively, ‘I suppose it may be hard to get rid of these people once they are in.’”

Still, Kennedy believed that a strong president with clear ideas of what he wanted to accomplish would be more important than the men who served under him or their cabinet discussions. One of the things that sold him on Dillon was his almost contemptuous description of Eisenhower’s cabinet meetings, with their “opening prayers, visual aids, and rehearsed presentations.” Although Kennedy invested considerable energy in finding the right people for his administration and even told Sorensen that their decisions on appointments “could make or break us all,” he had a healthy skepticism about whether people he brought into the government would have much impact on the issues he saw as of greatest importance. When he interviewed someone for Agriculture, for example, a department that was never at the forefront of his concerns, he found the man and the discussion so boring that he fell asleep. It was an indication of how little Kennedy intended to rely on cabinet meetings for important administration decisions.

Nevertheless, the cabinet was reflective of the tone and direction the new administration seemed likely to take. Just as Eisenhower’s selection of so many businessmen proved to be a clear signal of policies favoring less government regulation and influence, so Kennedy’s choice of so many highly intelligent, broad-minded men indicated that his presidency would be open to new ideas and inclined to break with conventional wisdom in search of more effective actions at home and abroad. It also promised to embody noblesse oblige—well-off Americans responsive to the suffering of the less fortunate in the United States and around the globe. Kennedy’s presidency, of course, would never be a perfect expression of these values, but if there was an indication of the New Frontier’s distinctive contours, it could be found in the men Kennedy appointed to his government’s highest positions.

Kennedy believed that what he said and the impression he made on the country at the start of his term were more important than who made temporary headlines as cabinet members. Nevertheless, he made every cabinet selection the occasion for a press conference at which he not only emphasized the virtues of the appointee but also his own attentiveness to and knowledge of the major issues facing them. He used the press in other ways, too. Having asked groups of experts to provide task force analyses on everything from relations with Africa to domestic taxes, Kennedy converted the reports during the transition into press releases on current understanding of how to meet various difficulties. The resulting image was one of vigorous engagement, somewhat in contrast to Kennedy’s less than daring cabinet selections. “There is no evidence in Palm Beach,” journalist Charles Bartlett told his readers at the end of November, “that the New Frontiersmen are being moved to temper their objectives for the nation by the close election. The objectives which the candidate enunciated in his campaign were measured statements of intent.” “Reporters are not your friends,” Joe had told his sons. But Jack, like every skillful politician since Theodore Roosevelt, saw how useful they could be in advancing his political goals.

KENNEDY BELIEVED
that no single element was more important in launching his administration than a compelling inaugural address. Remembering how brilliantly Franklin Roosevelt’s inaugural speech had initiated his presidency, Kennedy wished to use his address to inspire renewed national confidence and hope. True, the current challenge was not as great as that FDR had faced, but fears that communist aggression might force the U.S. into a nuclear war generated considerable anxiety. Pollster Lou Harris, who gave Kennedy periodic soundings on public mood, advised him to concentrate on two major themes rather than on “a plethora of specifics . . . : The spirit of inspired realism that will be the mood of this new Administration; [and] the nature of the challenge and the broad approaches that can bring about national fulfillment and peace for all peoples everywhere.” Kennedy wished to draw the strongest possible contrast between the “drift” of his predecessor and the promise of renewed mastery.

As one symbol of the change in Washington, Kennedy decreed that top hats were required dress at the Inauguration, a shift from the black homburgs Eisenhower had made part of the 1952 dress code. (When Kennedy spotted a newsman in a homburg outside his Georgetown home, he asked in mock horror, “Didn’t you get the word? Top hats are the rule this year.”) Yet during Inauguration Day, the
New York Times
reported, “Kennedy, who is usually hatless, seemed self-consciously uncomfortable in his topper. He wore it as briefly as possible in the trips back and forth from the White House to Capitol Hill.” Despite “a Siberian wind knifing down Pennsylvania Avenue . . . [that] turned majorettes’ legs blue, froze baton twirlers’ fingers and drove beauty queens to flannels and overcoats,” Kennedy stood bareheaded and without his overcoat while taking the oath, giving his address, and watching the three-and-a-half-hour inaugural parade along Pennsylvania Avenue. His only concession to the cold was an occasional sip of soup or coffee.

Nothing worried Kennedy more about his appearance than the effects of the cortisone he took to control his Addison’s disease. He was reluctant to take his pills, which made him look puffy faced and overweight. Evelyn Lincoln took responsibility for making sure that he adhered to the regime prescribed by his doctors, keeping daily account of whether he had taken his medicine. She recalled that on January 16, as he dictated a letter and paced the floor of his bedroom, he caught a view of himself in a mirror. “My God,” he said, “‘look at that fat face, if I don’t lose five pounds this week we might have to call off the Inauguration.’ I was so full of laughter I could hardly contain myself,” Lincoln recorded. Kennedy’s humor masked a concern that nothing detract from the view of him as in picture-perfect health. When newsmen asked about his medical condition two hours before his swearing in, two physicians announced that an examination earlier in January had shown the president-elect to be in continuing “excellent” health.

He need not have worried. His seeming imperviousness to the cold coupled with his bronzed appearance—attributed to his pre-inaugural holiday in the Florida sun—and his neatly brushed thick brown hair made him seem “the picture of health.” Despite only four hours of sleep following an inaugural concert and gala the previous night, Kennedy “seemed unaffected and unfrightened as he approached the responsibilities of leadership.” “He looked like such a new, fresh man,” Lincoln said, “someone in whom we could have confidence.” One Washington columnist compared him to a Hemingway hero who exhibits “grace under pressure. . . . He is one of the handsomest men in American political life,” she wrote without fear of exaggeration. “He was born rich and he has been lucky. He has conquered serious illness. He is as graceful as a greyhound and can be as beguiling as a sunny day.”

Using the Inauguration to help rebuild national hope required other symbols. His large family, including Jackie, who was still recovering from a difficult childbirth in November, joined him on the platform. To contrast Eisenhower’s inertia on civil rights and encourage liberals to see him as ready to move forward on equality for African Americans, he asked Marian Anderson to sing “The Star-Spangled Banner.” He also invited Robert Frost to read a poem at the Inauguration as a symbol of renewed regard for men of thought and imagination—another perceived deficiency of Eisenhower’s presidency. When Stewart Udall, a friend of Frost’s, had suggested the poet have a role, “Kennedy’s eyes brightened in approval, but he had quick second thoughts. ‘A great idea,’” he said, “but let’s not set up a situation like Lincoln had with Edward Everett in Gettysburg,” referring to the two-hour oration that initially put Lincoln’s brief address in its shadow. “Frost is a master with words,” Kennedy continued. “His remarks will detract from my inaugural address if we’re not careful. Why not have him read a poem—something that won’t put him in competition with me?”

Kennedy assumed that Frost would read the sixteen lines of his “national poem,” “The Gift Outright.” But, eager to celebrate the new generation’s rise to national leadership, Frost composed a new poem for the occasion, titled “Dedication,” in which he announced “The glory of a next Augustan age.” When he stepped to the podium, however, the bright sunlight and wind conspired to rob the eighty-six-year-old Frost of his sight, and despite Lyndon Johnson’s effort to shield the paper from the blinding sun with his top hat, Frost had to abandon his surprise poem and recite “The Gift Outright” from memory.

Jack had started thinking about his inaugural speech immediately after his election, and he had asked Sorensen to gather suggestions from everyone. He also asked Sorensen, the principal draftsman, to make the address as brief as possible and to focus it on foreign affairs. He believed that a laundry list of domestic goals would sound too much like a continuation of the campaign and would make the speech too long. “I don’t want people to think I’m a windbag,” he said. He also made it clear that he did not want partisan complaints about the immediate past or Cold War clichés about the communist menace that would add to Soviet-American tensions. Above all, he wanted language that would inspire hopes for peace and set an optimistic tone for a new era under a new generation of leaders.

Suggestions of what to say came from many sources and took many forms: “Pages, paragraphs and complete drafts had poured in,” Sorensen says, “solicited from [journalist Joseph] Kraft, Galbraith, Stevenson, Bowles and others, unsolicited from newsmen, friends and total strangers.” Clergymen provided lists of biblical quotes. Sorensen searched all past inaugural speeches for clues to what worked best and, at Kennedy’s suggestion, he studied “the secret of Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address.” Sorensen found that some of the “best eloquence” in past inaugurals had come from some of our worst presidents, and that the key to Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address was its brevity and use of as few multisyllable words as possible.

Yet for all the advice and numerous drafts produced by others, the final version came from Kennedy’s hand. He was tireless in working to make it an eloquent expression of his intentions, as well as the shortest twentieth-century inaugural speech. Though ultimately he could not be more concise than FDR, whose 1944 address was about half the length of Kennedy’s 1,355 words, compared with the previous forty-four inaugurals, which averaged 2,599 words, Kennedy’s was a model of succinctness. But it was not just the prose and length that concerned him; it was also his delivery: In the twenty-four hours before he gave the speech, he kept a reading copy next to him, so that “any spare moment could be used to familiarize himself with it.” On Inauguration morning, he sat in the bathtub reading his speech aloud, and at the breakfast table he kept “going over and over it” until he had gotten every word and inflection to his liking.

The speech itself was one of the two most memorable inaugurals of the twentieth century and was an indication of the premium Kennedy put on formal addresses to lead the nation. (There would be two other landmark speeches in the next thousand days.) Kennedy’s inaugural stands with Franklin Roosevelt’s great first address as an exemplar of inspirational language and a call to civic duty. It began, as Thomas Jefferson’s had in 1801, during the first transfer of power from one party to another, with a reminder of shared national values rather than partisanship. “We are all Federalists. We are all Republicans,” Jefferson had said. “We observe today not a victory of party but a celebration of freedom,” Kennedy declared. Though the world was now vastly different—“man holds in his mortal hands the power to abolish all forms of human poverty and all forms of human life”—Kennedy asserted that the “same revolutionary beliefs for which our forebears fought are still at issue around the globe. . . . Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and success of liberty.”