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Mr. and Mrs.President

See How They Ran

Ernest R. May and Philip D. Zelikow, eds. The Kennedy Tapes: Inside the White House During the Cuban Missile Crisis. Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1997. xv + 728 pp. Illustrations, notes, and index. $35.00.

The Kennedy Obsession is an apt title for a book. Sixty years after newspapers praised Ambassador Joseph P. Kennedy's brood as "America's best known large family" ¹ and almost forty years after Joe's second son became president of the United States, Americans remain fixated on their "royal family." As 1998 began, the President's widow was the subject of a Broadway farce, "Jackie"; the President's son was editing a magazine called George which should have been called "John-John"; the latest fallen Kennedy, Bobby's son Michael, was eulogized on the cover of Newsweek; and yet another scandalography chronicling "The Dark Side of Camelot" was a bestseller.

Amid the many questions swirling about the Kennedy family and the Kennedy presidency, two in particular stand out: why are Americans so obsessed with this particular family and what, if anything, did John F. Kennedy accomplish during his "Thousand Days"? Fortunately, two new books help answer these questions. The Kennedy Obsession is a slim yet illuminating volume that assesses "the popular hero 'John F. Kennedy'" (p. x), a legendary figure in whom "Americans saw the ideals of American mythology incarnated" (p. ix). The Kennedy Tapes is a massive yet gripping volume that belies the caricature of John Kennedy as a testosterone-crazed warmonger.

It is fitting that these additions to the Kennedy literature are not conventional historical monographs, for John Kennedy's historical reputation continues to be shaped by assorted authors using all kinds of media. One book is a literary analysis by an English professor, and the second is, primarily, a collection of tape transcripts superbly edited by two historians. Still, these [End Page 630] two scholarly endeavors help counter the many crass entries into the Kennedy historical sweepstakes.

Jacqueline Kennedy, among others, understood that her husband's reputation needed nurturing. That is why, only days after the assassination, she deputized Theodore White to rescue Jack from "those bitter old men" who write history. ² Showing that she had learned from her husband how to market their image, the widow Kennedy offered "Camelot" as the defining image for the Kennedy era. Two years later, when Arthur Schlesinger finished A Thousand Days (1965), his ode to this fallen leader, Mrs. Kennedy exulted: "Now no one will ever be able to hurt Jack because your book is a testament against them--and for all that he could not finish." ³

Ten years after the assassination, President and Mrs. Kennedy's Camelot still sparkled. In a 1973 documentary commemorating the sad anniversary, CBS praised the Kennedys for giving America "a touch of royalty." Amid moving footage of the eternally young president and his family, with Judy Garland singing "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" in the background, the narrator intoned: "Some day somebody may separate John Kennedy's wit from his wisdom, his sense of style from the substance. What his generation remembers is the mixture." ⁴

Still, revisionism was spreading. The Chappaquidick drowning, along with the convulsions of the 1960s and 1970s, led some to reexamine the Kennedy mythmaking machine. In 1975 the combined effect of First Lady Betty Ford's candor about her family's personal life and the discovery by Frank Church's Senate Select Committee on Intelligence that a "close friend" of President Kennedy had ties to mob boss Sam Giancana helped break reporters' "gentleman's code of silence." ⁵ The next year, The Search for JFK by Joan and Clay Blair (1976) "cut through the cotton candy" to show how "major events and episodes in Jack's life" had been "left out" of "the standard accounts" (pp. 9-10).

As the United States prepared to celebrate its Bicentennial, its citizens witnessed the primal scene of presidential politics. Americans peeked into the presidential bedroom, invited by Betty Ford and justified by what they could learn about Kennedy's trysts, Richard Nixon's demons, and other indiscretions. For the next twenty years, they would continue scrutinizing the most private reaches of every public figure's life, until Seymour Hersh's scandalography, The Dark Side of Camelot (1997), cataloguing outrageous tales of presidential orgies, mob payoffs, and CIA plots, could be dismissed by many as containing nothing new.

To John Hellmann, this "Tabloid JFK" (p. 162) marks the latest chapter in Americans' romance with "the greatest movie star of the twentieth century," John Kennedy (p. 91). A literary scholar, Hellmann analyzes the "narrative[s]" [End Page 631] that defined "the Kennedy mystique" (p. 147). With a fascinating prologue followed by six punchy chapters, Hellmann offers a "biography" (p. 6) of Kennedy the literary "character" (p. 88) and examines the key "texts" in Kennedy's political life to understand how Kennedy and his advisors "script[ed] a public character" (p. 3) whose "carefully produced image . . . presented him as a liminal figure, a youth undergoing a series of passages" (p. 88), culminating with the presidency.

Short enough, well-written enough, and methodologically controversial enough to keep undergraduates engaged, this could be an excellent classroom text. Hellmann's prologue sets the scene and typifies his method. Interpreting a discarded draft of Profiles in Courage in which Kennedy, while recovering from back surgery, imagines a visit from four of his predecessors as U.S. senator from Massachusetts, Hellmann shows how "John Kennedy's actual situation [was] being worked through a mythological formula into an archetypal hero tale" (p. 4). The dream sequence reveals Kennedy's desire to transcend his weakened physical state and discover what the draft called a "common clue of greatness" (p. 2). While "trite in form and too intimate in content" to be published, the draft shows "how Kennedy and his collaborators were intent on making Kennedy the man over into a universal image, the transcultural figure of the young hero" (p. 6).

The ensuing chapters cover familiar material based on popular Kennedy authors such as Doris Kearns Goodwin and Nigel Hamilton. But Hellmann's use of scholars such as Richard Slotkin, Mircea Eliade, and Roland Barthes often yields fresh insights about Kennedy and his adoring public. Hellmann links Kennedy's maturation with England's awakening during World War II when he calls the Harvard undergraduate thesis-turned-bestseller, Why England Slept, "Kennedy's disguised autobiography of the 'gradual change' in psychology from self-absorbed, lazy, and pleasure-seeking boy during the 1930s to intensely diligent and energized author ready to meet the next decade" (p. 23). Similarly, Hellmann treats John Hersey's account of Kennedy's PT-109 heroics, "Survival," as a story about Kennedy's and America's emergence into heroism. Hellmann argues that Hersey's Kennedy functions as a "familiar mythic figure" undergoing, along with the reader, "a transcultural pattern of initiation and transformation" (pp. 38-39).

Sometimes, Hellmann goes overboard with his psychologizing and theorizing, speculating, for example, that Hersey's description of PT-109's sinking "register[s] in the reader's 'depth of memory' as a nightmarish reenactment of the birth experience" (p. 46). Still, Hellmann more than compensates for these missteps with delightful insights about how both Ernest Hemingway's persona as heroic "Old Man" and John Kennedy's star turn as the "boy" (p. 79), helped point Americans in the 1950s "away from 'feminine' values of [End Page 632] domesticity and community toward 'masculine' risk-taking and autonomy" (p. 82); how John Kennedy, movie star, "fused the aristocratic traits of [Cary] Grant and the democratic traits of [Jimmy] Stewart" (p. 94); and how in his showdown with Harry Truman at the 1960 Democratic Convention, Kennedy combined Henry Fonda's "western" persona and James Dean's "sensitive young rebel" stance to project a beguiling blend of "legitimate authority and misunderstood boy" (pp. 104-5).

Hellmann's cursory treatment of the Kennedy administration in his chapter "The Erotics of a Presidency," relies too much on "both psychoanalytic film theory and psychoanalytic theories of romantic love" (p. 115). Describing the thirty-fifth president of the United States as acting like "a romantic lover," who "self-consciously performed according to his perception of the yearnings of the beloved (his public) and according to his own desires" (p. 134), is only somewhat useful. Thomas Brown's JFK: History of an Image (1988) offers a better explanation of the Kennedy image as a political force which mirrored changing attitudes toward liberalism, the presidency, and the country.

Still, Hellmann agrees with those historians who have noted that "crisis was the Kennedy method" and explains that the crises created "dramatic narratives in which Kennedy played the role of heroic protagonist" (p. 135). Thus, "Camelot" was "a narrative spectacle made up of a series of vivid episodes" (p. 136). This argument helps explain the enduring impact of Kennedy's image which outweighs his particular achievements.

Herein lies the great strength of the book. Hellmann understands that politics in our popular culture-drenched world is about mythmaking. He recognizes that Americans increasingly draw on "sources . . . outside politics" to learn about their politicians (p. 88). This book implicitly chides historians for underestimating the power of these carefully produced narratives while implicitly warning journalists not to be so easily seduced by a compelling storyline. Thus, in defining Kennedy's "power" as "the power of storytelling and self-dramatization" (p. 72), Hellmann enriches our understanding of the Kennedy saga as a popular phenomenon.

The Cuban missile crisis--especially as reconstructed so expertly by the Harvard historians Ernest May and Philip D. Zelikow--shows the other, neglected side of the Kennedy saga. The John Kennedy who emerges in The Kennedy Tapes is neither John Hellmann's mythmaker nor Seymour Hersh's sybarite. This Kennedy, remarkably, is closer to the cool statesman conjured up by the Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., Theodore Sorensen, and Robert F. Kennedy hagiographies. ⁶

If Hellmann focuses on JFK's style, The Kennedy Tapes testifies to his substance. The president always appears in command, even when groping for more information or wondering "why would the Soviets permit nuclear war [End Page 633] to begin under that sort of half-assed way?" (p. 70). Kennedy balanced practical concerns such as "how long would it be before Khrushchev's answer could get back to us, just by communication" (p. 136), with broader strategic concerns. He refused to be cowed but never underestimated the Soviets, marveling when the Russians demanded that the United States "evacuate its analogous weapons from Turkey" (p. 506): "Let's not kid ourselves. They've got a very good proposal" (p. 512). In fact, again and again, when advisers meandered, deluded themselves, or postured, the president cut to the chase, noting, for instance that "the object is not to stop offensive weapons, because the offensive weapons are already there [in Cuba], as much as it is to have a showdown with the Russians of one kind or another" (p. 424).

These deliberations combine the authentic sloppiness of any given meeting with the tension of a Hollywood thriller. The participants stammer, end sentences in the middle, repeat themselves, even contradict themselves. Yet all 701 pages command attention.

Although selective and somewhat misleading because the president could turn his tape recorder on and off at will, the transcripts are sickeningly accurate. The talk about how "to take out the missile sites" (p. 70), about being "very vulnerable to conventional bombing attack . . . in the Florida area" (p. 88), illustrates how close the world came to Armageddon. Most striking about these transcripts, then, is John Kennedy's emergence as the moderating force, the man who refused to plunge the world into war while also refusing to cave.

Kennedy and his advisors considered the Cold War a three-dimensional chess game. From the start, they viewed the Cuban missiles in global terms. On Day 4, Kennedy told the Joint Chiefs of Staff gathered in the Cabinet Room: "You know, as I say, the problem is not really so much war against Cuba. But the problem is part of the worldwide struggle with the Soviet Communists, particularly, as I say, over Berlin" (p. 183). The President also recognized that, "after all, this is a political struggle as much as military" (p. 91). He even admitted that his own posturing boxed him in, noting: "Last month I said we weren't going to [allow missiles in Cuba]. Last month I should have said that we don't care. But when we said we're not going to, and then they go ahead and do it, and then we do nothing, then I would think that our risks increase" (p. 92). Awareness of these dimensions only intensified the president's resolve.

As they pondered the unthinkable, Kennedy and his men did not jettison their principles. The deliberations demonstrate a characteristically American mix of ruthlessness, idealism, and self-righteousness. Many of these World War II veterans rejected a surprise attack against Cuba because of what Robert Kennedy called the "Pearl Harbor thing" (p. 234). Kennedy's men saw [End Page 634] themselves as the good guys in this cold, and often times abstract, war. They were determined to maintain their standing in the world and their own sense of virtue.

While the transcripts illuminate Kennedy's relationships with many of his advisers, the most fascinating relationship emerges between the young president and his wily adversary thousands of miles away. The transcripts--and the accompanying historical interpretation--suggest that Nikita Khrushchev made three blunders. First, he never should have placed missiles in Cuba. Next, he should not have sent two contradictory messages in the space of twenty-four hours. Finally, by "blinking" during the showdown over the "quarantine," he undermined his standing with the United States and in the Kremlin. Kennedy, meanwhile, had three coups--waiting rather than "taking out" the missiles immediately; pushing for the quarantine, which fulfilled his promise to "act" against the missiles but contained the crisis; and giving Khrushchev "some out" with the secret deal to remove "some of our Turkey missiles" (p. 142).

The transcripts, supplemented by other primary sources and well-integrated commentary, partially recreate twenty-one meetings during the two nerve-wracking weeks from October 16 to October 29. May and Zelikow also set the scene with a forty-three page introduction, while their thirty-eight page conclusion provides historical and historiographical context. After highlighting the central findings of the tapes, the conclusion adds some welcome insight into the dynamics of balancing details, ideology, and broader concerns in decision-making that further enhances the value of this landmark book.

By now, the Cuban missile crisis has been so well studied that this book will not revolutionize historians' understanding, even as it supplants previous works. The Kennedy Tapes, however, along with other substantive books, such as Richard Reeves' President Kennedy (1993), will help dilute the sludge that continues to course through discussions of the Kennedy presidency. Especially in the wake of Bill Clinton's sex-scandal-marred administration, it will be ever harder to see John Kennedy as a president who actually governed rather than one who spent most of his time entertaining the country or being entertained.

Herein lies the central challenge for modern presidential historians. The power of the modern president is not just "to persuade" as Richard Neustadt argued ⁷ but to entertain. Historians must transcend the false polarities between policy and personality, between the roles of commander-in-chief and celebrity-in-chief. Scholars must more fully understand presidents as policy-makers, as popular figures, and as complex human beings. Only then can we appreciate John Kennedy's accomplishments, despite his flaws. How ironic, then, that Jackie Kennedy, ultimately, was wrong. Now, more than ever, the [End Page 635] only salvation for John Kennedy's historical reputation lies with those "bitter old men"--and women--who write history.

Gil Troy, Chairman of the Department of History, McGill University, Montreal, Canada, is the author of Affairs of State: The Rise and Rejection of the Presidential Couple Since World War II (1997).

Notes

1. New York World Telegram, Dec. 7, 1940.

2. Theodore H. White, In Search of History (1978), 523.

3. Jacqueline B. Kennedy to Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., Nov. 23, 1965, box W-7, Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. Papers (John F. Kennedy Presidential Library, Boston, Massachusetts).

4. "JFK: One Thousand Days and Ten Years," Nov. 11, 1973 (videotape), WHCA VTR 6657, Audiovisual Collection (National Archives, College Park, Maryland).

5. New York Times, Dec. 16, 1975; Newsweek, Dec. 27, 1975.

6. Schlesinger, Thousand Days; Theodore C. Sorensen, Kennedy (1965); Robert F. Kennedy, Thirteen Days (1969).

7. Richard Neustadt, Presidential Power (1960), 23.

http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/reviews_in_american_history/v026/26.3troy.html.