Hugh Brogan - Kennedy

First published 1996 by Pearson Education Limited

Published 2013 by Routledge

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Hugh Brogan 1996

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ISBN 13: 978-0-582-43749-4 (pbk)

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This book has been so long in the making that my first thanks are surely due to my patient publishers, and to the editor of Profiles in Power , Professor Keith Robbins. They have not only been patient, but encouraging, and every author knows how important that is.

I have also received encouragement, advice and assistance from many others, whom it is difficult to list equitably. At least there can be no doubt that pride of place goes to Richard E. Neustadt, who both at Harvard and at Essex has been immensely kind and, in his discourse, illuminating; and to Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., who has been equally helpful at our meetings in London and New York. I may add that this book has also benefited hugely from their sage and voluminous writings, as I hope the notes make clear.

The book could not have been written without labour at the John Fitzgerald Kennedy Library. I spent two agreeable months there in the autumn of 1990 and am grateful to the staff who made work so pleasant, particularly Maura Porter and June Payne. I am also indebted to the Charles Warren Center at Harvard, which appointed me a Fellow, gave me a warm welcome, and was useful to my researches in all sorts of ways, not least in the loan of a typewriter. My warm thanks to Bernard Bailyn, who made it all happen. But I must also pay tribute to the Fulbright Commission, which not only paid for my air-travel to the United States, but laid on some useful meetings at Harvard, from which I profited greatly. No one can understand John F. Kennedy without knowledge of Boston, and such knowledge as I have I owe to the Commissions patronage.

I also profited at various times and places from conversations with Donald Balmer, D J.R. Bruckner, J.K. Galbraith, Nigel Hamilton, Anthony Lewis, David Nyhan, Eugene V. Rostow, Virginia Sapiro, William Sutton, Mark J. White and Graham K. Wilson. I am also grateful to Mike Gillette, of the National Archives, for his help, and to Don Bacon for introducing us. I was also helped by colleagues at the University of Essex, namely, Tim Hatton, Colin Samson and Eric Smith. Dr Smith read part of the book, and Anthony J. Badger, Sir Michael Howard, Hugh Tulloch and Ann Tusa read other bits, and between them saved me from many blunders (any that remain will be laid at my door). My heartfelt thanks to everyone.

I am also grateful to Eileen Fraser for permission to quote the poem Instead of an Elegy.

And finally, thanks to the University of Essex, both for its excellent library and for its civilised arrangements for study-leave, without which this book would still be unfinished.

Hugh Brogan
Wivenhoe
22 May 1996

DD = The Pentagon Papers: The Defense Department History of United States Decisionmaking on Vietnam (Senator Gravel edn, Boston: Beacon Press 1971)

KOH = Kennedy Memorial Library, Oral Histories

LTW = John F. Kennedy, Let the Word Go Forth: the speeches, statements, and writings of John F. Kennedy, 1947 to 1963 , edited by Theodore Sorensen (New York: Delacorte 1988)

PC = John F. Kennedy, Profiles in Courage (New York: Pocket edn 1961)

PP = Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: John F. Kennedy , 3 vols (Washington, DC 196264)

RK, Words = Edwin O. Guthman and Jeffrey Shulman (eds) Robert Kennedy in his Own Words (New York: Bantam 1988)

Schlesinger, RK= Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr, Robert Kennedy and his Times (London: Andr Deutsch 1978)

Schlesinger, TD = Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr, A Thousand Days: John F. Kennedy in the White House (New York: Fawcett Premier edn 1971)

SP = John F. Kennedy, The Strategy of Peace , edited by Allan Nevins (New York: Harper 1960)

WES = John F. Kennedy, Why England Slept (London: Sidgwick & Jackson 1962)

Profiles in Power. Irresistibly (for all I know, intentionally) the title of this series calls to mind Profiles in Courage , the book for which John Fitzgerald Kennedy was awarded a Pulitzer Prize in 1957. The echo suggests his unquestionable entitlement to a place in a catalogue which also includes Elizabeth I, Cardinal Richelieu and David Lloyd George; but in fact it is far from self-evident. As President of the United States Kennedy undoubtedly wielded great power, as much as the modern world can give to anybody, perhaps as much as anybody has exercised in all history; but it was his so briefly! Only two years and ten months separated his inauguration as President of the United States from his murder; as Theodore Sorensen said bitterly on hearing the dreadful news, they wouldnt even give him three years. Of the forty presidents, only six have served shorter terms than Kennedys; only two in the twentieth century have done so (Harding and Ford: not names with which Kennedy would care to be associated). At his inauguration he said, Let us begin; his successor, on inheriting his office, said, Let us continue; but while it is clear that Kennedy finished little, it is not obvious that he started much. The great affairs of his time, it might be urged, were well advanced before he came to power. He passed his years in the presidency learning his job and mastering the issues, but was cut down before he could prove what he had learned or put it to use. I do not accept this view, but I have tried to face it.

A profile can only be a sketch. Short though Kennedys life was, it was crammed with incident and great events, many of which I have had to leave out entirely. Readers wanting a full account will have to look elsewhere. But it has been my purpose to provide enough information to justify the contention that Kennedys was indeed a highly significant presidency, in which decisions were taken and choices made that, for good and ill, changed the course of history and still make themselves felt; that it was a lens through which the United States and the US presidency can effectively be studied; and that, because of the Kennedy personality and the fantastic circumstances of his death and its aftermath it was, so to say, a magical episode, the investigation of which carries the normally pedestrian politicai historian very far indeed from corridors of power and air-conditioned archives. Kennedy, in short, was important. (It does not need to be argued that he was interesting: the ever-growing library of books about him makes the point for me.)