Wild About Writing

A “virtual history” of the effects of President Kennedy’s two terms in office on the late 20^th century, up to his death in 1988.

By RAY ARGYLE

   We remember him best striding along the beach, splashing water as he went, as alert at 70 as when he was President, his hair now turning grey, his face a bit puffy perhaps, but smiling still, displaying all the charisma and character that had propelled him to the White House in 1960, saw him survive an attempt on his life in 1963, and returned him in 1964 for a second, memorable term as president of the United States.

   When he walked on the Florida beach tourists still crowded around him while the Secret Service eyed the crowd cautiously. Admirers called out, “How ‘ya doin’, Jack!” He didn’t often mix in public those days but he still relished the acclaim he had received for more than 40 years. He divided his time between the Kennedy compound at Hyannis Port, the Kennedy Presidential Library in Boston, and his town house in Washington. By 1988 he had become the unchallenged “elder statesman” of American public life.

   John F. Kennedy’s two terms in the White House put him at the apex of American life during one of the most triumphant and tragic decades in the nation’s history. He nurtured a civil rights revolution that brought millions of African-Americans into the political and economic mainstream. He supported the women’s movement (for all the rumors of his sexual peccadilloes) and sympathized with the spirit of the Woodstock generation even if he couldn’t join the restless young people who sang of a new approach to life at rock concerts and love-ins.

   President Kennedy was unable to save Vietnam from communism, but neither did he permit the U.S. to be drawn into a long, hopeless struggle which he knew could not be won. And he suffered the personal tragedy of losing a brother to an assassin’s bullet, just as he saw such historic figures as Martin Luther King Jr. die in the crucible of the social revolution that marked the 1960s.

   America and the world almost lost JFK that day in Dallas, back on November 22, 1963 when that crazy Lee Harvey Oswald shot at him from the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository. Oswald’s first bullet creased Kennedy’s scalp, but spared his life. The gunman’s second bullet took the life of the man who rode beside Kennedy and his wife Jackie on that otherwise pleasant late fall day, Texas Governor John Connolly.

   Another Texan, Lyndon Baines Johnson, was sworn in as acting president as JFK underwent critical but blessedly brief surgery that afternoon in Parkland Memorial Hospital. Johnson never had to carry out more than the most routine of presidential duties; JFK returned to the Oval Office early in 1964, his zest for life reinforced, if anything, by his Dallas experience. A centimeter’s difference in the trajectory of the bullet would have cost him his life.

   It was public knowledge that President Kennedy had always been fatalistic about the possibility of an assassination. Now that he had survived an attempt on his life, he was determined to move quickly on his major priorities: economic growth, a full measure of civil rights for all citizens, and a resolution of the Cold War through a halting of the nuclear arms race. He felt he had been given a second chance, and he wanted to build on the momentum that flowed from the outpouring of public support that followed the attempt on his life.

CIVIL RIGHTS ACT

   On July 12, 1964 President Kennedy signed into law a Civil Rights Act that among other things, guaranteed all citizens the legal right to vote. He saw the discrimination that Negroes (as they were still referred to) had to endure and judged correctly that until they became a voting force to reckon with, progress would be slight.

   The presidential election of 1964 was never in doubt. The Republicans nominated an Arizona Senator, Barry Goldwater, but on November 3 JFK and Vice-President Johnson carried all 50 states for the first time ever, winning a record 63.3 per cent of the popular vote.

   There remained one piece of unfinished business. On December 6, 1964, Lee Harvey Oswald was sentenced in a Dallas courtroom to die in the gas chamber for the killings of Gov. Connolly and Officer J.D. Tippitt. Before he could be executed, a crazed inmate overcame Oswald’s guards and knifed him to death. The inmate was shot by a guard. It has never been satisfactorily explained how this happened.

   Vietnam was already a divided country when John F. Kennedy took office in 1961. The old French colony of Indochina had been cut in half – communist and non-communist – at the Geneva peace conference of 1954.

   In a debate in the Senate that year, young Senator Kennedy set out the view that would guide his future presidency. It would be “dangerously futile and self-destructive,” he declared, “to pour money, materials and men into the jungles of Indochina without at least a remote prospect of victory.”

   Kennedy had learned from the Bay of Pigs fiasco that U.S. military intelligence could not always be relied on for either accuracy or sound judgment. He knew he would have to take personal responsibility for whatever decision he reached on Vietnam, just as he had taken personal responsibility for American handling of the Bay of Pigs and the Cuban

missile crisis.

SUSPECTS INTELLIGENCE

   His suspicion of the soundness of U.S. intelligence was put to the test early on that July morning in 1964 when North Vietnamese patrol boats were reported to have attacked the U.S. destroyer Maddox, just off the North Vietnamese coast. Many of the President’s advisors sought to use the occasion to justify a full-scale American retaliation.

   As Kennedy gathered his cabinet about him, Vice President Johnson emerged as the loudest voice for action. “Damn those Viet Nam Commies,” a later study of tape recordings revealed, “let’s get Congress to pass a resolution authorizing the use of American forces.” He was supported by the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

   Kennedy hesitated, ruling that no decision be made for 24 hours. He recalled his experience as a PT boat commander. Somehow, the official version of the Maddox incident didn’t ring true.

   The next day, when expanded reports of the encounter reached the White House situation room, the reality became clear: The North Vietnamese had mistaken the Maddox for South Vietnamese ships that were were engaged in a shelling and sabotage mission against North Vietnamese coastal towns. The North Vietnamese realized their error as they neared the Maddox, cut off their attack, and beat a hasty retreat. President Kennedy decided that no direct U.S. retaliation was warranted.

   Kennedy was determined to keep Vietnam out of the 1964 presidential campaign. He pledged that no American army would be sent there. But it was the growing dilemma over Vietnam that haunted Kennedy’s days and nights.

   The first U.S. bases in Vietnam were attacked by the Viet Cong within hours of the expiry of a brief New Year (Tet) cease fire in February 1965. A month later, the arrival of 3,500 Marines at Da Nang brought U.S. troop strength to 27,000. Gen. William C. Westmoreland, who had been named U.S. commander in Vietnam, reported that the military situation had become so desperate as to require the immediate commitment of a full American armored division. Kennedy made the fateful decision – in violation of his election promise – to send another 50,000 men to Southeast Asia.

   “No one can contend that South Vietnam is fighting for anything less than its very survival,” President Kennedy told the nation in a TV address on March 20, 1965.   
   Speaking with his familiar cadence, he told Americans: “The struggle raging across that embattled and ancient land stirs in our hearts the same mixture of sympathy and outrage that Americans felt when Nazi bombers dropped their lethal cargoes on a defenseless London 25 years ago. Only this time, we shall not wait for the enemy to come to our shores, as we waited a generation ago. We shall go to his.”

RATINGS SOAR

   President Kennedy’s ratings in public opinion polls soared in the days after his speech. But it was a speech he would always regret. The arrival of fresh American forces in South Vietnam raised morale there. But the presence of the U.S. Army in fact made no real difference to the military situation.

   The communists were steadily winning more territory and at home, the constituencies where President Kennedy had found his greatest support – young people and blacks – turned on the administration.

   His struggle to gain passage of a tougher Voting Rights Act in 1965 could not be won, Kennedy realized, if at the same time he made public his unease about America’s involvement in Vietnam. The most powerful conservative forces in the nation were already arrayed against him. Around the cabinet table, JFK and his brother Bobby found themselves increasingly isolated. Apart from Adlai Stevenson and George Ball, no high ranking Administration official was prepared to concede that Vietnam was lost. But as U.S. casualties mounted and attitudes on the campuses and in the ghettos hardened, Kennedy knew he had to act.

   JFK recalled for one cabinet meeting the words he had used when being interviewed by Walter Cronkite on September 2, 1963. “In the final analysis it’s their war,” he had told Cronkite. “They’re the ones who have to win it or lose it. We can help them, we can give them equipment, we can send our men out there as advisors but they have to win it. The people of Vietnam against the communists … I don’t think the war can be won unless the people support the effort …”

   Throughout 1965 and 1966, it became increasingly clear to Kennedy that the people of South Vietnam were not supporting their government and that the continued presence of U.S. troops would only ensure more death and desolation while further dividing public opinion at home.

   The first “anti-war” teach-in had been held at the University of Michigan on March 24, 1965. It was followed by a demonstration of 25,000 students in Washington. Soon, campuses across the country saw the burning of draft cards and in some cases, the waving of Viet Cong flags. The demonstrations both troubled and impressed Kennedy.

   Trying to deal with both the crisis in Southeast Asia and the threat of another “long hot summer” in the ghettos of America, the President turned increasingly to his brother Robert. It was at Bobby’s urging that JFK returned to the American University in Washington in May 1966 for his famous “generations divided” speech.

  “It has been written that old men make wars, but young men must fight them,” President Kennedy said. “We see in America today the spectacle of our generations divided, not over economic or racial issues, but over a vision for the future of our country. We cannot proceed securely into that future without bridging the chasm that today splits families and communities across America. We will benefit little if in the name of defending freedom abroad, we squelch the spirit of dissent at home.”

WITHDRAWAL FROM VIETNAM

   It would be March 1967 before President Kennedy would be able to make his momentous announcement of a “freeze” on the deployment of additional American forces, followed by an 18-month staged withdrawal. “The South Vietnamese must assume responsibility for their own defense,” he said. The U.S., Kennedy added, would continue to arm the Saigon government. Within six months, the communists would overrun the South, renaming the capital “Ho Chi Minh City,”

   On April 4, 1968 the 39-year-old civil rights leader Martin Luthur King was assassinated as he stood on a balcony outside his motel room in Memphis, Tennessee. The ghettos of American cities erupted in violence.

   King’s assassination touched Kennedy as had no other event in his lifetime. JFK led the mourning for King and appealed to blacks to control their outrage.

   “Our priority as a nation must be to achieve justice, tranquility and economic opportunity for all our people, without regard to the color of their skin or the homeland of their forefathers,” President Kennedy told Congress, in a message carried by satellite around the world.

   Kennedy added: “America cannot aspire to the leadership of the forces of freedom and justice around the world when it denies those rights to one in 10 of its citizens at home. I am today sending to Congress a message calling for the enactment of a Civil Rights Manifesto which future generations will rank with the Bill of Rights as a sacred document by which Americans measure their commitments to equality as well as their dedication to liberty.”

   President Kennedy also sought to erase the tensions of the arms race before he left office. He negotiated a “World Recovery Pact” with the Soviet leaders, Bulganin and Kosygin, before departing the White House in January 1969. The treaty, which called for a 10 per cent annual reduction in arms expenditures and diversion of funds into Third World development, was never ratified by the Congress because of disagreement over means to verify the proposed arms cutbacks.

   In 1968, with President Kennedy’s two terms having run their course, the U.S. faced the decision of choosing a new occupant for the White House. Despite the many achievements of the Kennedy years, the American withdrawal from Vietnam haunted the Democratic party, as the “loss” of China a generation earlier had been blamed on a Democratic administration.

   A maelstrom of controversies surrounded Kennedy’s final days in office. Lyndon Johnson was determined to win the Democratic nomination; Robert Kennedy was just as determined to deny him the prize. Against the President’s advice, Bobby Kennedy campaigned for the Democratic nomination. On June 6, the very night of Bobby’s triumph in the California primary, a second Kennedy became the target of an assassin’s bullet. This time, the gunman fired from close range, and did not miss his target. Robert Kennedy died two days later; his assassin, Sirhan B. Sirhan, would go to prison for life.

NIXON ELECTED PRESIDENT

   The Democrats chose Johnson and his hand-picked running mate, Senator Hubert H. Humphrey of Minnesota. But the 1968 election went to the Republicans. Richard M. Nixon joined by the formerly obscure governor of Maryland, Spiro Agnew, won 43.4 per cent of the popular vote, compared to 43 per cent for the Johnson-Humphrey ticket. The balance went to George Wallace, the staunchly segregationist Alabama governor.

   Vietnam behind him, Nixon concentrated on expansionist economic policies at home and followed up JFK’s efforts in foreign affairs. He handily defeated a Humphrey-McGovern ticket in 1972 but never finished his second term, resigning in disgrace August 9, 1974, in the wake of the Watergate disclosures.

   Democrat Jimmy Carter had little difficulty defeating Nixon’s successor Gerald Ford in 1976, and served two terms. His eight years were marked by economic stability and absence of inflation. (Economists said the U.S. disengagement from Vietnam saved the economy from dangerous overheating that would have led to rampant inflation.)

   On Carter’s retirement, Republican Ronald Reagan, the old movie actor, came to office after having served two terms as governor of California. He announced early in 1988 that he would not seek re-election, giving age and health as his reasons.

   One of Kennedy’s greatest achievements came from the vigorous leadership he provided for America’s venture into space. He remained a strong advocate of the space program even after the landing of men on the moon in 1969 and the disaster of the space shuttle, Challenger.

   For John Kennedy, the years following the White House were among the most fulfilling of his life. He had remarked early in his administration that, “whether I serve one or two terms in the Presidency, I will find myself at the end of that period at what might be called the awkward age – too old to begin a new career and too young to write my memoirs.”

   In fact, he became President of Harvard University in 1971, putting him conveniently close to the Kennedy Library in Boston, which he watched over closely.

NEWSPAPER EDITOR

   All his life, Kennedy had been fascinated with journalism. He worked had briefly as a correspondent for International News Service in 1945. Thirty years later, he returned to that craft as editor of a new daily newspaper, America’s Day. The paper, often criticized for the brevity of its news reports, soon became respected for the quality of its editorial page where President Kennedy would daily dictate a long, thoughtful analysis of a current issue in American life.

   For years, President Kennedy had suffered from Addison’s disease, as well as other health complications. On June 18, 1988 he was in the study of his Georgetown town house when he suffered a massive stroke. He died within minutes, at the age of 71. His state funeral a week later, attended by heads of state from around the world, was unmatched in American history.

   This essay was published in Best Canadian Essays 1989, by Fifth House Publishers. © Ray Argyle.