An Unfinished Life: John F. Kennedy 1917-1963 by Robert Dallek
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, 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 Nobel Laureates at the White House, Kennedy told them that this was the greatest array of brainpower assembled 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.”
Fourteen years in Washington 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 amusement 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. “Bullshit, 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 K
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 assured 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 passage 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 assurances 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 assignment 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 ambassador 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 passage 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 assistant 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 Constitution and then was ushered into the Oval Office. Kennedy made it clear that Wofford would become a special assistant 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 action.
In the first hundred days, the economy was Kennedy’s biggest domestic worry. The 1960 recession that had helped elect him continued into 1961. In his State of the Union Message on January 30, he made economic expansion his primary domestic goal. “We take office,” he declared, “in the wake of seven months of recession, three and one half years of slack, seven years of diminished economic growth, and nine years of falling farm income.” With five and a half million unemployed—nearly 7 percent of the workforce—and business bankruptcies at their highest level since the Great Depression, Kennedy justifiably described the economy as “in trouble. The most resourceful industrialized country on earth ranks among the last in the rate of economic growth,” he said.
But, as with civil rights, Kennedy felt he had limited capacity to force immediate change. He had already ruled out a tax cut as politically unacceptable when he was asking people to sacrifice for the good of the country. Nor did he believe that he could force a big economic program through Congress that included spending a lot of money on public works programs. When one liberal economist proposed a 60 percent increase in the federal deficit in order to help with unem
So once again, he relied on executive action. A special message to Congress on February 2 cautioned against expecting “to make good in a day or even a year the accumulated deficiencies of several years.” It was better to be “realistic” about what they could achieve in 1961: reverse the downward trend, narrow the gap of unused potential, “abate the waste and misery of unemployment,” and maintain reasonable price stability. Then, in 1962-63, they could hope to expand “American productive capacity at a rate that shows the world the vigor and vitality of a free economy.” Kennedy announced more rapid federal spending on building highways and post offices; speedier payment of tax refunds, veteran benefits, and farm subsidies; and stepped-up efforts to implement urban renewal programs. Wherever possible, federal purchasing would be channeled into areas of high unemployment. State and local governments were also urged to spend federal allocations for public programs as fast as possible. Recognizing that these proposals might not promptly “restore momentum to the American economy,” Kennedy promised that “if these measures prove to be inadequate to the task, I shall submit further proposals to the Congress within the next 75 days.”