Part 10 (2/2)

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 G.o.d,” 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 leaders.h.i.+p.” ”He looked like such a new, fresh man,” Lincoln said, ”someone in whom we could have confidence.” One Was.h.i.+ngton 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 compet.i.tion with me?”

Kennedy a.s.sumed 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 leaders.h.i.+p, Frost composed a new poem for the occasion, t.i.tled ”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 s.h.i.+eld 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 princ.i.p.al 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 cliches 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 partisans.h.i.+p. ”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 a.s.serted 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 hards.h.i.+p, support any friend, oppose any foe to a.s.sure the survival and success of liberty.”

To the Third World, the developing nations ”struggling to break the bonds of ma.s.s misery,” he pledged ”our best efforts to help them help themselves ... not because the communists may be doing it ... but because it is right. If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich.” And ”to our sister republics south of our border, we offer a special pledge-to convert our good words into good deeds-in a new alliance for progress.” Lest anyone believe that he was a sentimental crusader oblivious to the harsh realities of international compet.i.tion, Kennedy laid down a warning to Castro's Cuba and its Soviet ally: ”Let all our neighbors know that we shall join with them to oppose aggression or subversion anywhere in the Americas. And let every other power know that this Hemisphere intends to remain the master of its own house.”

Kennedy did not want Moscow to see his administration as intent on an apocalyptic showdown between East and West. To the contrary, much of the rest of his speech was an invitation to find common ground against a devastating nuclear war. He would not tempt America's adversaries with weakness, he said, ”For only when our arms are sufficient beyond doubt can we be certain beyond doubt that they will never be employed... . Let us never negotiate out of fear,” he advised. ”But let us never fear to negotiate... . And if a beachhead of cooperation may push back the jungle of suspicion, let both sides join in creating a new endeavor, not a new balance of power, but a new world of law, where the strong are just and the weak secure and the peace preserved.”

Concerned not to appear naive or overly optimistic about negotiations, and eager to separate himself from FDR and excessive expectations of quick advance, Kennedy predicted, ”All this will not be finished in the first one hundred days. Nor will it be finished in the first one thousand days, nor in the life of this Administration, nor even perhaps in our lifetime on this planet. But let us begin.”

The closing paragraphs were a call to national commitment and sacrifice. ”Now the trumpet summons us again-not as a call to bear arms, though arms we need-not as a call to battle, though embattled we are-but a call to bear the burden of a long twilight struggle, year in and year out ... a struggle against the common enemies of man: tyranny, poverty, disease and war itself... . And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you-ask what you can do for your country.” The sentence joined FDR's ”nothing to fear but fear itself” as the most remembered language in any twentieth-century inaugural.

Kennedy's rhetoric thrilled the crowd of twenty thousand dignitaries and ordinary citizens gathered in twenty-degree temperature in temporary wooden grandstands on the east front of the Capitol. President Eisenhower declared the speech ”fine, very fine,” and Republican minority leader Senator Everett Dirksen called it ”inspiring, a very compact message of hope.” Eisenhower's speechwriter Emmet John Hughes told Kennedy, ”You have truly inspired the excitement of the people... . You have struck sparks with splendid swiftness.” Democratic senator Mike Monroney of Oklahoma was as effusive, describing the address as the best of the twelve inaugurals he had heard, starting with Woodrow Wilson's second in 1917. Stevenson saw it as ”eloquent, inspiring-a great speech,” and Truman believed, ”It was just what the people should hear and live up to.” Arthur Krock told Kennedy over dinner the night of the Inauguration that the address was the best political speech anyone had given in America since Wilson. (Eager to encourage views of a new administration likely to rival the best in the country's history, Kennedy hoped Krock would make his judgment of the speech public, which he did.) But while the positive response to his speech delighted Kennedy, it was not enough to quiet his inner doubts about its quality and effectiveness. A critical editorial by Max Ascoli of The Reporter, The Reporter, who said that he was neither ”impressed [n]or stirred by it,” ”disturbed” the new president. Kennedy told Jackie that he did not think his speech was as good as Jefferson's. who said that he was neither ”impressed [n]or stirred by it,” ”disturbed” the new president. Kennedy told Jackie that he did not think his speech was as good as Jefferson's.

Jefferson and his unmatched brilliance were indeed the mark against which Kennedy intended to measure himself. When James MacGregor Burns told Jack during the interregnum that he hoped he would be the Jefferson of the twentieth century, Kennedy, who was preceding him down the stairs of his Georgetown house, turned and looked at him with a smile that suggested both skepticism and satisfaction. During a dinner for n.o.bel Laureates at the White House, Kennedy told them that this was the greatest array of brainpower a.s.sembled in the mansion since Jefferson had dined there alone. He then quoted the description of Jefferson as ”a gentleman of thirty-two who could calculate an eclipse, survey an estate, tie an artery, plan an edifice, try a cause, break a horse, dance a minuet, and play the violin.”

After Kennedy's speech, almost three quarters of Americans approved of their new president. The numbers indicated that Kennedy had effectively managed the transition. But he had no illusion that he could maintain public support for long without following through on the commitment to get the country moving again. The problems of leading the nation onto higher ground, however, were more daunting than he ever imagined.

CHAPTER 10

The Schooling of a President

I claim not to have controlled events, but confess plainly that events have controlled me.

- Abraham Lincoln, April 4, 1864

Though the President is Commander-in-Chief, Congress is his commander.

- Thaddeus Stevens, January 3, 1867

ALTHOUGH KENNEDY DISCOURAGED the belief that his first hundred days would produce major achievements, he understood that to sustain the momentum created by his inaugural he would need quickly to demonstrate a mastery of some issues. He doubted that he could do it in domestic affairs. At his first press conference five days after becoming president, a reporter asked him why his inaugural speech had dealt only with international problems. ”Well,” Kennedy replied, ”because the issue of war and peace is involved, and the survival of perhaps the planet, possibly our system.” He also explained that the views of his administration on domestic affairs were already well known to the American people and would become better known in the next month. By contrast, he said, ”we are new ... on the world scene, and therefore I felt there would be some use in informing countries around the world of our general view on the questions which ... divide the world.” the belief that his first hundred days would produce major achievements, he understood that to sustain the momentum created by his inaugural he would need quickly to demonstrate a mastery of some issues. He doubted that he could do it in domestic affairs. At his first press conference five days after becoming president, a reporter asked him why his inaugural speech had dealt only with international problems. ”Well,” Kennedy replied, ”because the issue of war and peace is involved, and the survival of perhaps the planet, possibly our system.” He also explained that the views of his administration on domestic affairs were already well known to the American people and would become better known in the next month. By contrast, he said, ”we are new ... on the world scene, and therefore I felt there would be some use in informing countries around the world of our general view on the questions which ... divide the world.”

Fourteen years in Was.h.i.+ngton had taught Kennedy that presidents had greater control over foreign than domestic policy and had a better chance of promoting national unity with foreign initiatives than domestic ones, which were certain to provoke acrimonious political divisions. Yet he also understood that he could not shelve domestic issues, despite a conviction that Congress would not agree to bold reforms. The House promised to be a particular problem. Although the Democrats held an 89-seat advantage, 262 to 173, 101 of the Democrats were from the Old South, and a majority of them seemed certain to side with conservative Republicans on domestic issues. Worse, conservative southerners Howard Smith of Virginia and William Colmer of Mississippi dominated the twelve-member House Rules Committee, which decided whether a bill would reach the House floor for a vote. Smith and Colmer invariably joined the four Republicans on the committee in turning back reform proposals. To give his administration a better chance of eventually winning House support for economic, education, health, and civil rights reforms, and to signal his determination to fight for these gains, Kennedy joined Speaker Sam Rayburn in trying to expand the committee to fifteen members, including two more progressive Democrats.

The fight on the Rules Committee was a formidable first test of Kennedy's political skills. When a reporter asked him at his January 25 news conference whether he was living up to his commitment to be in the thick of the political battle, Kennedy voiced his support for Rayburn's proposed change, saying that the whole House should have the opportunity to vote on the many controversial measures that his administration would present and that a small group of men should not prevent the majority of members from ”letting their judgments be known.” At the same time, however, he declared his commitment to allowing the House ”to settle this matter in its own way” and pledged not to ”infringe upon that responsibility. I merely give my view as an interested citizen,” he concluded with a broad smile and to the amus.e.m.e.nt of the press corps, which erupted in laughter. The fight, which lasted eleven days, was touch and go, and moved Bobby at one uncertain moment to phone Richard Bolling of Missouri, who was a leading reform advocate, to complain that he was destroying his brother by getting him into a battle he was going to lose. ”Bulls.h.i.+t, buddy,” Bolling told him. ”It's a tough fight and we're going to win it.” Which they did, on January 31, by a 217 to 212 vote.

Bolling acknowledged later that the victory over Smith and the other conservatives on the Rules Committee actually guaranteed nothing, since the composition of the House made it difficult for Kennedy to exploit the change in the committee. Because Kennedy antic.i.p.ated such a problem and because he wished to create some sense of forward movement on domestic problems, he began his administration with executive actions that signaled his determination to get things done with or without the Congress.

As one of his first Executive Orders, Kennedy directed the Agriculture Department to increase food distributions to the unemployed, which would ensure that they received a more varied diet. The press wanted to know how Kennedy could do something that Ezra Taft Benson, Eisenhower's agriculture secretary, said he lacked legislative authority for. Kennedy refused to comment on Benson's inaction, but a.s.sured the journalists that he had the power to act and emphasized instead that the diet provided to the unemployed was ”still inadequate.” It was smart politics and bolstered him with liberals: Let's not quibble over fine points of the law, he was saying, when the fundamental right to an adequate diet is at stake.

Civil rights reform was more difficult to manage. Kennedy's only mention of racial justice in his inaugural address was a sentence describing America as committed to human rights at home and around the world. He understood that a southern-dominated Congress was unlikely to advance black equality by legislative action, despite pa.s.sage in 1957 of the first civil rights law since 1875. To win approval of more progressive measures would have meant investing much of his political capital in a potentially losing fight. Consequently, he intended to rely on executive authority in behalf of racial equality to satisfy liberals and encourage blacks to expect more and bolder steps in the future.

As an opening move, Kennedy appointed Robert C. Weaver, a black expert on housing, as administrator of the Housing and Home Finance Agency (HHFA). In a meeting with JFK, Weaver asked for a.s.surances that Kennedy would make him secretary of a housing and urban affairs department, should Congress create one, but Kennedy would not commit himself; persuading Alabama, Mississippi, and Virginia senators to confirm Weaver as head of HHFA was challenge enough. Although complaining that Weaver was ”pro-Communist,” southern Democrats, reluctant to undermine their party's new president, grudgingly agreed to accept Kennedy's recommendation.

Kennedy also established a Committee on Equal Employment Opportunity (CEEO) to eliminate discrimination in hiring federal employees, help expand the number of black government workers, and deny federal contracts to businesses refusing equal opportunity to blacks. Kennedy asked Lyndon Johnson to chair the committee. Johnson was reluctant to take on an a.s.signment that could antagonize southern congressmen and senators and undermine his chances of ever running for president. But Kennedy, who believed that Johnson could help blunt southern opposition to civil rights advances, was insistent, and Johnson, who had led the 1957 civil rights bill through Congress and sincerely believed in equal justice, accepted the challenge.

Kennedy's strategy on civil rights became public immediately after he took office. As he watched coast guard marchers troop by during the inaugural parade, he noted the absence of blacks in their ranks and instructed his treasury secretary, who had jurisdiction over the coast guard, to bring them into that branch of the service. Similarly, at his first cabinet meeting, he asked each cabinet secretary to expand opportunities for blacks in his department. He took special note of the foreign service, where he felt an absence of blacks hurt America's image abroad. He appointed Clifford R. Wharton as amba.s.sador to Norway, the first African American to become the top U.S. diplomat in a predominantly white country.

By the middle of February, Kennedy's dealings with the Congress had confirmed his judgment that he could not secure pa.s.sage of a significant civil rights bill in the current session. Winning a cloture vote to halt a filibuster by southerners was clearly out of reach. But he did not want anyone to think that he was abandoning civil rights reform. On February 16, he told White House aide Mike Feldman to maintain close contact with Pennsylvania senator Joe Clark and Brooklyn congressman Emanuel Celler, whom he had asked to implement the civil rights commitments of the platform. ”It may be proper for them to hold hearings this year on various legislative proposals and then have the fight next year,” Kennedy wrote Feldman, ”but I don't want statements to be issued that we have withdrawn our support of this matter.” The announcement on April 7, 1961, that pursuant to Executive Order 10925, issued by Kennedy on March 6, the CEEO would begin its work heartened some of those disappointed at the new administration's failure to ask Congress for a major civil rights law guaranteeing equal treatment in places of public accommodation and the right to vote.

Kennedy gained additional standing with civil rights advocates by opposing the slated expiration in the fall of the Civil Rights Commission, a six-member agency mandated to keep watch on the state of civil rights around the country. As a signal that he would not let the commission die, Kennedy asked sitting commissioners John Hannah and Father Theodore Hesburgh to continue to serve. Although willing, they doubted that Kennedy would take bold initiatives. When Hesburgh emphasized the urgency of action by citing statistics about the absence of blacks in southern state universities and in the Alabama National Guard, Kennedy replied, ”Look, Father, I may have to send the Alabama National Guard to Berlin tomorrow and I don't want to do it in the middle of a revolution at home.” It was a clear signal of Kennedy's priorities.

Understanding the constraints on Kennedy, Hannah and Hesburgh wanted the commission to exert counterpressure by having special access to the White House through a liaison. Kennedy said that Harris Wofford, whom he had made a full-time special a.s.sistant on civil rights, was already on the job, which was false. But Hannah and Hesburgh responded that Wofford was taking an office at the administration's new Peace Corps. Kennedy replied, ”That's only temporary.” As soon as they had left, a Kennedy aide called Wofford to come to the White House at once. There, ”a solemn-looking man in a dark suit, carrying a book,” approached Wofford. The man said that the president had ordered him to swear Wofford in, although neither he nor Wofford knew to what position. Wofford swore to uphold the Const.i.tution and then was ushered into the Oval Office. Kennedy made it clear that Wofford would become a special a.s.sistant to the president on civil rights and would devote himself to making sure that civil rights advocates were ”not too unhappy, and beyond that [Kennedy] wanted to make substantial headway against what he considered the nonsense of racial discrimination.” The strategy for 1961, he told Wofford, was ”minimum civil rights legislation, maximum executive action.” In March, when two conservative Civil Rights Commission members resigned, Kennedy appointed antisegregationists, who won Senate approval over the objections of southerners. At the same time, however, Kennedy hesitated to make a direct request to Congress to extend the life of the commission. Reluctant to risk losing ground on civil rights by a possible negative vote in Congress, he kept the agency alive by executive actio

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