As idyllic and dreamy as "Camelot" may have seemed, and indeed, the nation as a whole seemed almost to epitomize success during those days, there were some failures, even glaring failures, that we need to confront.
Perhaps also, before going too far into the Kennedy Presidency, we might want to take a moment to contemplate what a celebrity President meant at the time. We have grown rather used to it since, especially with a President who was outright a movie star in Ronald Reagan, and then a politician that I once heard described as the "most well put together politician" since John F. Kennedy, and finally, the present, sitting President, who became a celebrity in 2004, when he gave the keynote speech for Democratic candidate John F. Kerry at the Democratic National Convention. But JFK was the first, and the nation, and indeed, the world, had not seen anything quite like it before. It was a gamble, but Joseph Kennedy was sure it was going to work. And he was right. It worked like a charm. So successful was it, that I believe this is what people most associate and think of when they think of John F. Kennedy, and even his Presidency (with the possible exception of the assassination itself).
We should wonder whether this celebrity status that he rode a high wave of success on, with "Camelot" and the sunny, youthful image hiding what were far less idyllic realities from the public eye, at least until the truth has come out little bit by bit. Yet, as I finish writing this now, watching the 50th anniversary ceremonies of the assassination from Dallas, the city where the assassination took place, of course, they have mentioned how Kennedy receives the highest approval ratings of any President in the last half century, with 90% approval ratings!
Let me say that again: 90% approval ratings! Imagine how divided the nation is today, between red states and blue states, Republicans and Democrats, different races, rich and poor, maybe northern and southern states, maybe Midwest versus west coast, men and women, perhaps even. No matter what may separate us from one another, this one man, and I might argue the impression from the celebrity status of success that he embodied, still is enough to gain the approval of not just a majority, but a vast majority of Americans.
Also, I remember hearing that Kennedy ushered in a more relaxed, informal style. A style that has been abused since, and not just in the White House. Perhaps Kennedy's style is responsible for that, and I think that it is a mixed bag, at best. Sometimes, this more relaxed approach is refreshing. But frankly, there are times when it feels like it has gone just too far. Do we have Kennedy to thank for that? Perhaps, But my focus today will be on his actual days in highest office, and what he did, how he handled things. Not on speculation over his style, including with women, and his legendary affairs with women.
The fact of the matter is that Kennedy was not perhaps as successful as we would like to believe with some things. I remember reading Stephen King's "11/22/63" last year, and he made mention, albeit almost in passing, that Kennedy was rather weak on civil rights. And you have to remember that it was right around that time, in the early to mid-sixties, when the whole civil rights movement was coming to a head. Yet, indeed, if anything, Kennedy seems to have been indecisive, uncertain about the political profitability of fully supporting the civil rights movement - at least before the 1964 election. His successor, Lyndon B. Johnson, was not so reserved, and forced some important reforms that changed the political landscape, even though Johnson knew that it would cost him and his party dearly. But he did it because he felt it was what was best for America, something that Kennedy was unwilling, or unable, to do.
When someone of the stature of Seymour Hersh begins to investigate, and finds a hell of a lot of material that would likely compromise what most people believe of the Kennedy presidency, then I think we have to listen. Hersh is the man that first broke the story of the My Lai massacre in Vietnam, and he also broke the story of Abu Ghraib in Iraq, nearly thirty five years later. He is a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist who wrote a book, "The Dark Side of Camelot", all about the darker side of John F. Kennedy and his presidency.
Frankly, I am not going to get too much into the numerous love affairs that Kennedy is well known for. To be clear, I am not going to condone his personal behavior. But nor will I indulge on what is sensationalism, and has nothing really to do with his actual service as President, other than possibly serving as an illustration of the man's tremendously inflated sense of entitlement. Otherwise, these personal transgressions should more or less remain that - personal - between him, his wife, and the women that he allegedly had these affairs with. Those kinds of stories did not interest me when they happened with another President - Clinton - in my own lifetime, so I hardly can be expected to really care very much about the affairs of a President before my time, can I?
I mean, it has more than a little bit of trashiness, this focus on these things, does it not? And also, in the case of Kennedy, there were some huge events - from the Bay of Pigs, to the Berlin Wall being built, to the Cuban Missile Crisis - that had enormous ramifications. I believe that history will judge him based on his handling (or mishandling) of these events, and not so much on gossip about his love life.
There is plenty there with which to judge the man that held the highest office during some of the most crucial days of the Cold War. Hersh elaborates quite a bit on this, as well, and mentions how seemingly reckless Kennedy was in the stand off, which was the closest that the world has been to a nuclear war. Kennedy did not back down, because he wanted to look tough, and deflect domestic criticism from political opponents that he was "soft". The missiles in Cuba did not matter all that much, and Kennedy knew it. A deal was made in secret, so as to make it looked like Kennedy had held firm, staring down the big, bad, Soviets, and they had blinked first. That Kennedy played politics, and put his political interests first, while dealing with a crisis of that magnitude, and potential outbreak of a world war, is more of a serious charge that can be leveled at him in his role as President.
One charge that Hersh levels at Kennedy as well is that he was obsessed with Fidel Castro. Specifically, with killing Fidel Castro. The problem is that killing a world leader - indeed, killing anyone - is illegal. It is overstepping your boundaries, even if you are President of the United States. Yet, he kept trying, and fixating on Castro. There is some irony, then, in the man that approved the assassination of a foreign leader himself being assassinated, with some afterwards trying to pin the blame on the man that the assassinated President was trying to assassinate in the first place.
Also, lest we forget, it was Kennedy who stepped up American involvement in Vietnam to a great degree. He stepped up American military involvement quite a bit. And although he did seem to have some reservations, Hersh points out that, once again, Kennedy put politics before people, essentially not willing to pull out of Vietnam until after the 1964 election, as that move would have exposed him to charges that he was "soft" or weak on Communism. Of course, he was assassinated, and so was never reelected. LBJ was elected and remained in the White House as President, a role he had taken over following the assassination, and what Johnson is best remembered for is the Vietnam War, which turned out to be a disaster by almost any measure for the United States.
Hersh has pieced it together with interviews of Washington insiders, declassified F.B.I. and C.I.A. files, what lay behind contemporary news accounts and a final, revealing quotation from Ben Bradlee's 1975 memoir, ''Conversations With Kennedy.''
"The Sins of a President: A reporter catalogues John F. Kennedy's every offense against women, America and apple pie." by Thomas Powers of the New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/books/97/11/30/reviews/971130.30powerst.html
The Dark Side of Camelot, Summary - Typepad
http://bztv.typepad.com/Winter/DarkSideSummary.pdf
Here are a couple of quotes that I included, because they really make you think about his approach to his Presidency, and what it was, in general, that he might have stood for. The first seems more of an approving statement, the second is quite a bit less so.
"Kennedy was the only member of his administration who didn't want to send in a massive ground force [to Vietnam]. […] Kennedy was also making very friendly overtures to the Soviet Union and calling for a real Detente in the Cold War, and was even reconsidering developing normal relationships with Cuba."
~ Michael Parenti
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/John_F._Kennedy
"[The] premise is that Kennedy was a very good president, and might have been a great one if he’d lived. Few serious historians take this view ... In reality, the kindest interpretation of Kennedy’s presidency is that he was a mediocrity whose death left his final grade as “incomplete.” The harsher view would deem him a near disaster — ineffective in domestic policy, evasive on civil rights and a serial blunderer in foreign policy, who barely avoided a nuclear war that his own brinksmanship had pushed us toward ... We confuse charisma with competence, rhetoric with results, celebrity with genuine achievement."
~Ross Douthat The Enduring Cult of Kennedy, , New York Times, November 26, 2011
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/John_F._Kennedy
John F. Kennedy and Vietnam:
http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/kennedy_vietnam.htm
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