It’s really sad that the first thing that came to mind when I heard that the new X-men movie (First Class) was about the Cuban Missile Crisis was “Aha! Research!” You know that I love to dovetail my penchant for movies into alignment with whatever president I happen to be reading at that moment. For example, now that I’m on President #35, I immediately watched Thirteen Days (also about the Cuban Missile Crisis) and JFK by Oliver Stone. I even grew rather grumpy when my mom told me that the movie, PT-109, had played that very morning on TCM and she forgot to tape it. I didn’t even know that they had made a movie about Kennedy’s World War II role but now that I knew they had (and that I had missed it) was incredibly galling. And soon—soon, I tell you—I’ll head out to see X-Men: First Class. I’d like you to think that I’m going to watch it because it’s about Kennedy’s administration but honestly, I just love X-Men movies.
Trying to find a biography on JFK that fulfilled all my requirements was not easy. Again, I started at Amazon because I’m able to see a complete listing of all books written on JFK and also I love to read the reviews. It’s funny because someone recommended the book, An Unfinished Life, as being a good bio on Kennedy. However, when I looked it up I realized that old Robert Dallek was the author. Please remember that Dallek authored the book that I intensely disliked about Truman so I decided right then and there not to read An Unfinished Life. Besides the reviews, while favorable, mentioned that Dallek mainly concentrated on Kennedy’s physical ailments and did not go into much detail about his personal life. Well that book was out. So I turned to a 900-page tome that seemed to cover every breath Kennedy took. Ahhhh….that’s the one. I read John F Kennedy: A Biography by Michael O’Brien (Simon and Schuster: New York, 1990).
[Sidenote: OMG! I just saw that a miniseries, called The Kennedys, came out this past April!!!! Greg Kinear is JFK and Katie Holmes is Jackie. I’m soooo excited! Where can I get it??? Check it out: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1567215/]
John Fitzgerald Kennedy was the first president to be born in the twentieth century on May 29, 1917. He came from politicians on both sides of his family tree. His father, though, was a businessman, pure and simple, and he made millions through his various business practices (ethical and unethical), including the movie business and the stock market. The Kennedy children grew up literally in the lap of luxury with houses in New York, Hyannis Port, and Palm Beach. There were eventually 9 of them: Joe Jr, John, Rosemary, Kathleen, Eunice, Patricia, Robert, Jean, and Edward. On a side note, they were Catholic (this will be important later).
Jack was a sickly child. At 2 years old, he contracted scarlet fever and after that, there were many other illnesses and blood issues. He was sent to a private school, Dexter School, and then in 1927, when the family moved to New York City, he attended Riverdale Country Day School. “At Riverdale Jack’s teachers described him as bright, confident, and personable; friends remembered him as popular, athletic and girl crazy”(p. 29). As he grew older, he temporarily attended Canterbury, a Catholic school, but soon finished out the rest of his high school years at a prestigious boy’s school in Connecticut, Choate. He wasn’t a great student but he had lots of friends and did well in sports. His mother described him thus. “’Or let us say, lack of ‘fight’ in trying to do well in those subjects that didn’t happen to interest him” (p. 58.). Despite his average grades, Jack was admitted to Princeton but was too sick to attend. Instead he went to Harvard but took some time off to recuperate as a ranch hand out West and to visit his family in Europe. He would eventually graduate cum laude from Harvard in 1940.
Jack’s father, Joe, played a major role in his children’s lives. He was a dynamic personality but not of strong moral convictions. Most people were aware that the origins of his fortune were not upstanding and the fact that he was a blatant lecher disgusted others. In fact, he never really hid his adulterous affairs but Rose, his wife, said not a thing. When he was big into the movie business, he would often bring his girlfriend, Gloria Swanson, home on trips. Later on, he had an ongoing affair with his secretary who spent most of her time with the Kennedys. In 1938, FDR appointed Joe Kennedy as Ambassador to Great Britain and so the whole family moved to London. Joe made headlines for sympathizing with the Nazis and being quite outspoken about it. Jack, who made the trip with the family, was able to witness pre-World War II Europe and he used this experience later to write his thesis (and later a book), Why England Slept.
After graduating, Jack audited classes at Stanford, toured some of South America, and even worked as a journalist. His days of leisure were numbered however. With the situation around the globe deteriorating, Jack knew that it was time to get involved.
He pressured his father to find him a place in the military and despite his numerous physical ailments, in October 1941, he was assigned to Naval Intelligence. By March, 1943, Jack had done so well that he was transferred to the Pacific as a lieutenant to command PT-109. While out doing maneuvers on his patrol torpedo boat in August, they were hit by a Japanese submarine and sunk. Over the next few days, Jack did his
utmost to save his remaining crew members (two died in the sinking) and in the process, became an American hero. Jack and the crew were rescued and instead of heading home to recuperate, he insisted that he stay. So they transferred him to PT-59. “Kennedy emerged from the war wiser, mentally tougher and with self-respect for having done his duty. During his extraordinary adventure, he had mingled and worked with men from different classes, backgrounds, regions and religions, and he enjoyed the camaraderie” (p. 165).Kennedy had hurt his back while playing football in school and he already experienced quite a bit of pain. After the incident in the Pacific, Jack returned home to a serious back operation. In fact, the post-war years were not kind to the Kennedy clan. Back in 1941, Rosemary (who was mentally retarded) was given a frontal lobotomy and placed in an institution the rest of her life. In 1944, Joe Jr. was blown up in his plane over Germany. Four years later, Kathleen, Jack’s favorite sister, was killed in a plane crash in England.
Joe Kennedy never liked his fellow businessmen and since he already had quite a fortune, he steered his children into public service instead. Thus in 1946, when Jack decided to run for office, Joe opened the coffers wide to back his boy. With all the money in the world and excellent organizational skills, Jack was elected to the US House of Representatives for Massachusetts and spent the next six years there. “One thing is certain: His victory transformed him into a major force in Massachusetts politics” (p. 206). While in Congress, Kennedy primarily focused on social welfare issues. He also traveled to Ireland to visit his relatives and discovered that he had Addison’s disease. With all the rules of seniority in the House, Jack rapidly became bored and so in 1952, he announced that he would run for the Senate instead. This position he won also.
Jack had always been sexually promiscuous but with his new position, his father pressed him to marry. He had met Jacqueline Bouvier in 1951 at a party in which the hostess tried to fix them up. Unlike Jack’s other women, Jackie was a Catholic and had an impeccable family lineage—it just seemed right to make it official. Thus on September 12, 1953, they married. However, Jack’s marriage never stopped him from seeing other women. Lots of other women. “The marriage of Jack and Jackie was loving, but distant and sometimes strained” (p. 292).
As a Senator, Jack, opposite to his fellow New England co-workers, supported the St Lawrence Seaway. He also created the New England Conference of Senators as a means to unite legislation in aiding the New England area. “The conference pushed legislative projects on the price of wool, a minimum wage in the woolen industry, a lower tariff on raw wool imports, wage studies of southern textile manufacturing, shipbuilding contracts at the Fore River Shipyard in Quincy, funds to rehabilitate the Boston Army Base Pier, and a longshoremen safety bill” (p. 273).
It was during this time that Jack needed to have even more invasive spinal surgery because he was still in too much pain. While recovering, he decided to write a book on courageous politicians who had seemed to buck the system. His book, Profiles in Courage, won a Pulitzer Prize for biography. “The book proved more popular and politically valuable than Kennedy could ever have imagined. It boosted his stature considerably within the Democratic Party, making him the spokesman for the politics of integrity and enhanced his image as an insightful student of American history and democratic theory. He became the unofficial historian of the Senate, placed in charge of a subcommittee to honor five outstanding senators from history” (p. 289). He was publicly accused of not writing Profiles; many believed that the book was ghostwritten by Ted Sorenson, his phenomenal speechwriter. This accusation was hotly denied by all parties involved.
In 1956, JFK decided to run for vice president but lost to Kefauver. Actually it was fortuitous that Jack missed out because the Democratic ticket of Stevenson/Kefauver then went down in defeat to Eisenhower. Jack went back to his seat in the Senate, looking really good politically, and was placed on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. JFK and RFK were even placed on a Committee on Labor where they dealt with the Teamsters in the Rackets Commission. Jack, handily, won reelection to the Senate in 1958 and was perfectly poised to capture the Democratic Nomination in 1960. “Jack’s handsome features, personality, charm and intelligence all contributed to his success. But his dogged, unrelenting effort was the heart of his long campaign” (p. 464). The Democrats tacked Lyndon Johnson onto the ticket to offset Kennedy’s New England roots.
Kennedy/Johnson went up against Republicans Richard Nixon and his running mate, Henry Cabot Lodge Jr in the 1960 presidential race. Most people remember the debates between Nixon and Kennedy and the impact that they had on the voting millions. For the first debate, Nixon was sick. He refused makeup and he wore a grey suit that blended into the grey background on the set. Not only that, but he was not as comfortable and articulate during the debate, laughing at odd moments and sweating profusely. Many observers believed that Kennedy came out the winner of the debates spanning from September 26, 1960 to October 21. Kennedy also became friends with Martin Luther King Jr during the campaign and came up with his innovative and popular idea—the Peace Corps. In the end, JFK scraped by with the win to become the 35th President of the United States. “No single factor explained Kennedy’s victory. Winning the first debate was important. So were his personal attractiveness, effective campaign style, and phone call to Mrs. King. President Eisenhower’s tepid efforts on behalf of his vice president hurt Nixon’s campaign. Lyndon Johnson’s presence on the ticket probably inched Texas into the Democratic column” (p. 495).
“On the day after the election, Kennedy was amazed at what had to be accomplished in the short span of time until his inauguration—only seventy-two days. Not much time, Sorensen later noted, ‘to form an administration, staff the White House, fill some seventy-five key Cabinet and policy posts, name six hundred other major nominees, decide which incumbents to carry over, distribute patronage to the faithful and fix personnel policies for the future.’ Kennedy also had to liaise with Eisenhower, prepare for the inauguration, shape his domestic and foreign policies, and plan his legislative program” (p. 498-99). Speaking of the Cabinet positions, Kennedy went very bi-partisan when filling this august board, even including his own brother, Bobby, as Attorney General (he was under direct pressure from his father in this matter). There was quite a ruckus when JFK nominated Bobby but he was prepared for that. “When Ben Bradlee of Newsweek asked John Kennedy how he planned to announce the appointment, the President-elect said, ‘Well, I think I’ll open the front door of the Georgetown house some morning about 2:00 a.m., look up and down the street, and, if there’s no one there, I’ll whisper, ‘It’s Bobby.’” (p. 507).
Unfortunately, the first thing that JFK had to deal with upon assuming office was Eisenhower’s plan to depose Castro by sending CIA-trained Cubans back into Cuba. Kennedy went along with the ill-planned idea, which culminated in the Bay of Pigs fiasco on April 17, 1961. “Almost everything went wrong for the invaders. Their landing craft floundered among the unanticipated coral reefs. When portable radios got wet, they didn’t function. Men landed at the wrong locations, several miles from comrades, and others reached shore without adequate supplies” (p. 530). Defeat was inevitable when Kennedy refused to order the accompanying air strikes; the resident Cubans didn’t arise in revolt once the invasion began; and Castro was better prepared than the Americans assumed. Afterwards, Kennedy fired Allan Dulles, head of the CIA and deputy director, Richard Bissell.
Thankfully, people forgot about the Bay of Pigs in all the other stuff going on. There was a summit in Vienna between JFK and Khrushchev. The Berlin Wall was started. Kennedy began a major legislative program that dealt with education, the minimum wage, Medicare, the space program, conservation, mental retardation, and the Equal Pay Act. Civil Rights was a major issue in which Kennedy was quite interested. “Kennedy invited more African-Americans to White House meetings and social functions than any previous President” (p. 592). Kennedy had to deal with the Meredith crisis which occurred when James Meredith, an African-American, tried to enroll at the uber-white University of Mississippi. In the end, Kennedy had to call out the National Guard to quell the riots on the university campus.
In the foreign policy arena, Kennedy was faced with issues in Laos and Vietnam. “Off the record he had serious reservations about fighting there, and hoped to find a way of holding South Vietnam with the minimal use of American troops” (p. 616). Kennedy was still annoyed by what happened in Cuba and so ordered Operation Mongoose which was a secret operation to kill Castro. “The CIA quickly spent from fifty to one hundred million dollars on Mongoose. With its huge nerve center on the campus of the University of Miami, and with four hundred CIA officers, Mongoose was the agency’s largest operation in the world outside its Langley, Virginia, headquarters. The officers controlled thousands of Cuban agents, purchased exotic weapons, and ran a secret fleet of ships and aircraft” (p. 650). There are rumors that this operation included use of the Mafia.
For thirteen days in October, 1962, the United States was beset by the threat of nuclear weapons in Cuba, provided by the Soviet Union. Through skillful negotiation, a naval blockade and the use of diplomatic backchannels and the UN, Kennedy was able to avert a crisis. If Russia would remove all nuclear weapons from Cuba, then the United States would promise never to invade that island and in six months, would remove the Jupiter missiles currently residing in Turkey. The negotiations worked and the threat of nuclear war subsided momentarily.
Kennedy was also interested in an Alliance for Progress with the Latin American nations, which would include US aid to those countries. It never really worked however. Kennedy was also very supportive of independence for African countries and sustained them against their European aggressors. In regards to Vietnam, JFK okayed a coup of the corrupt Diem but was horrified when the generals there assassinated Diem in early November, 1963.
To start gearing up for the next presidential election in ’64, Kennedy undertook a series of tours. The first one was a European trip that included West Germany,
Ireland (for strictly personal reasons), and England. Afterwards, he decided on a domestic tour that would consist of 11 states (most of which did not vote for him in the last election), including Florida and Texas. In late November, he flew to San Antonio, Houston, and Fort Worth. On the morning of November 22, JFK and Jackie flew from Fort Worth to Dallas where they embarked on an open-car parade. While riding down Elm St, Jack was killed by a bullet to the brain and was pronounced dead at 1pm CST. Lee Harvey Oswald was announced as the killer but was killed himself several days later by Jack Ruby.
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