Through the Rosy Lenses of Time, Shortly Passed

After the recent monumental rant about the "Pendulum of Republicanism," it was with no small irony that I noted the cover of the July 2, 2007 issue of Time magazine. As I closed the "Pendulum" screed and was in the midst of denouncing the relentless move toward monarchy (whatever form it may finally embody), there was the face of "The Man Who Would Be King" on the cover of the venerable magazine. How appropriate that the liberal mass media would dredge up the image of the martyred and much-lamented John F. Kennedy and harken to his brief reign for lessons for our current, troubled time. [pun intended]

As the various authors wrote glowingly of his wisdom, vision and - yes - even the fashion sense of the young, would-be monarch, I could not help but note how the passage of time - and the appropriate liberal leanings - can put a shine on the most opaque road apple. And shine it they have.

Certainly, I understand the lamentations of the American public over any public figure who suffers such a vicious and graphic demise and, similarly, the sorrow we all feel for those he left behind. Conversely, I have a more difficult time comprehending what possible lessons such a flawed and pock-marked Presidency can have for our complex 21^st century. In my opinion, we do not need illusion, grandeur and pretense in our current leaders. We need, desperately, moral, resolute and innovative leaders who have a clear vision of the global politics and economy in which we are immersed. In short, we do not need a Tom Cruise but a John Wayne. We do not need Camelot; we need Fort Apache.

As we read the articles, one after the other, we see the prosaic contortions the authors manage to put to paper: touching, feather-like, on the cosmic blunders of the 35^th President while stroking with broad, firm brush, on the "successes" of the 1000 day reign. In "Warrior for Peace" by David Talbot we learn, according to Time’s managing editor (Richard Stengel) that: "[the] lead story argues that Kennedy was less a cold warrior than a warrior for peace, that he was a man who despised war and sought above all to avoid nuclear conflict. The Kennedy who emerges is a wily pragmatist who had certain moral limits that he would not compromise." [Emphasis mine]

Well. To dare to include "moral limits" in a description of President Kennedy has its own lofty measure of panache, not to say utter and complete drollness. This is the President, after all, that was the ultimate inspiration for William Jefferson Clinton in so very many ways, not least being a shared penchant for cigars. But, once again, I find I am off the topic of "Warrior for Peace."

In the article, if I may summarize, we learn that JFK didn’t trust anyone but Bobby Kennedy and a few of his close advisers. He thought the CIA and the Joint Chiefs of Staff (particularly, Curtis LeMay) were trigger-happy buffoons. JFK, we learn, was completely powerless and/or lied to about the Bay of Pigs disaster even though he, as every noble monarch should, fell on his sword for the good of the country. The article proffers on the evil CIA planners (chiefly Allen Dulles and Richard Bissell), thus:

"While he famously took responsibility for the Bay of Pigs debacle in public, privately he lashed out at the Joint Chiefs and especially at the CIA, threatening to ‘shatter [the agency] into a thousand pieces and scatter it to the winds.’...Kennedy never again trusted his generals and espionage chiefs after the 1961 fiasco in Cuba, and he became a master at deflecting their militant counsel."

If this is true, can someone please explain to me how, under Kennedy’s watch, the United States managed to send 16,000 troops and a 4-star general to plunge us into the Viet Nam Quagmire? Oh, I apologize. Mr. Talbot explains this as well:

"Once again, Washington hard-liners pushed for an escalation of the war, seeking the full-scale military confrontation with the communist enemy that JFK. had denied them in Cuba and other cold war battlegrounds. But Kennedy's troop commitment topped out at only 16,000 servicemen. And, as he confided to trusted advisers like McNamara and White House aide O'Donnell, he intended to withdraw completely from Vietnam after he was safely re-elected in 1964."

Therefore, we see that Kennedy was merely making a show of force in Viet Nam and, had he survived to be re-elected, he would have simply withdrawn the troops and called "no harm, no foul." It has to be true because the author quotes former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara who lays the blame for Viet Nam squarely on Kennedy’s successor, Lyndon Johnson.

As Talbot closes his article, I find it even more disingenuous. And I quote:

"When Khrushchev got the news from Dallas in November 1963, he broke down and sobbed in the Kremlin, unable to perform his duties for days. Despite his youth, Kennedy was a "real statesman," Khrushchev later wrote in his memoir, after he was pushed from power less than a year following J.F.K.'s death. If Kennedy had lived, he wrote, the two men could have brought peace to the world." [Emphasis mine]

I don’t personally care what Khrushchev wrote or has had written about him. The plausibility that he "broke down and sobbed" when he heard Kennedy was shot is beyond my reach. On the other hand, to submit that he was "unable to perform his duties for days" was possibly due to the fact that he was having a Vodka hangover from a long night of partying over the death of an American President. That would fit into my image of Nikita Khrushchev.

Next in line to sing the praises of the fallen sovereign was Robert Dallek and his contribution, "A Slow Road to Civil Rights." Here, we see a little more reality and modicum less glitter. Dallek starts with these excerpts:

"Although more a civil rights opportunist than a passionate convert to the cause, Kennedy sent repeated messages that if elected, he would use presidential power to promote equality for African Americans. He backed a strong civil rights plank in the Democratic Party's 1960 platform and refused to abandon that position when Southern Senators pressed him to do so. He argued that desegregation of public housing could be accomplished with one stroke of the pen as part of Executive action "on a bold and large scale." ... But once elected, Kennedy was reluctant to give in to demands for prompt and forceful action on civil rights. And his attention was elsewhere: he devoted his Inaugural Address almost exclusively to foreign affairs. Part of his restraint was simple political calculation: he and his brother knew any change would have to come from their branch, not Congress, which was dominated by conservative Southern Democrats serving as chairmen of key committees. So Kennedy's actions were modest at first."

Dallek even quotes Reverend Martin Luther King: "I'm convinced that he has the understanding and the political skill, but so far I'm afraid that the moral passion is missing." Dallek rightly pinpoints the Birmingham riots and the nationally televised racist savagery of police commissioner Bull Connor as being the turning point in Kennedy’s activism. But, from a Birmingham jail cell, King’s famous letter spoke directly to Kennedy’s timidity. King wrote: "I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion, that the Negro's greatest stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Councilor or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to 'order' than to justice... who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man's freedom."

Finally, Kennedy gave a speech to the nation on June 11, 1963 and called for Congress to enact a suitable Civil Rights Bill to end racial exclusion from American society. He, tragically, did not live to see the Bill passed in 1964. Then, unfortunately, Dallek gets all misty eyed as he closed his article: "Although J.F.K. had been slow to rise to the challenge, he did ultimately meet it. That gives him a place in the pantheon of American Presidents who, in his own words, were profiles in courage." Please.

What Dallek conveniently omits from his, otherwise, relatively objective chronicle of JFK’s civil rights posture was his (and his brother, Attorney General Bobby Kennedy) consent to allow the FBI to monitor, document and record Dr. King’s phone calls and his hotel rooms. Kennedy apologist have long said and wrote that this was all at the direction of the FBI’s Director, J. Edgar Hoover. But, as is often the case when the light of truth meets myth, myth dissolves. John and Bobby Kennedy were both aware of the efforts of the FBI and - whether explicitly or implicitly - did nothing. In summary - if only my summary - John Kennedy was no friend to Dr. King or the civil rights movement and reacted only when it was politically expedient. He was no shining knight riding to the aid of the beleaguered Southern blacks.

The remaining entries in this love-fest, bear no commentary. They are the usual hall of mirrors, reflecting what the liberal mass media would have us remember. Nancy Gibbs’ "The Catholic Conundrum" writes about how deftly Kennedy handled the apparent backlash of Protestant voters for the first Catholic President. Caroline Kennedy’s "Call to Action, Inspired to Give Back" is, well, how shall I put this? Understandably plauditory but readable. Kate Betts’ "The Cool Factor" and Don van Natta’s "The Swingingest President Ever" are unredeemable on any intellectual footing. Finally, Dabid Talbot’s and Vincent Bugliosi’s "The Kennedy Assasination: Was There a Conspriacy?" was old news and, as such, generally boring.

If Kennedy was, as portrayed in Time, a "Warrior for Peace," one must ask how one can explain away the explicit encouragement offered to the military leaders of South Viet Nam to undertake a coup against President Diem in late 1963? Clearly, here was a President who saw no bounds to his power and ushered in the tragically-recurrent theme of Presidents in the 1960s and 1970s manipulating the affairs of other nations through assassination of foreign leaders. Diem was no saint, surely, but he was also no Saddam Hussein.

Also conspicuously absent from the Kennedy memorial issue was a clear excess of Executive Authority which the President and Brother Bobby unleashed on the steel industry and the press in early 1962. Smarting after the Bay of Pigs and losing ground in domestic opinion, the Kennedy brothers unleashed an attack to set price controls on the price of steel. Through bullying and the use of FBI agents as Presidential henchmen, the Kennedy’s bludgeoned U.S. Steel into submission. It was liberal union coddling at its best. First, they mediated U.S. Steel to give into the Union demands for higher wages and, when U.S. Steel responded - as any business would - by increasing prices on their product to cover the wage hike, Kennedy stifled it. This shady incident - and many others - were inexplicably absent from the Time hagiography.

Let us, ultimately, be frank. President John Kennedy was raised as the second son of a Boston bootlegger and renowned philanderer. Joe Kennedy was a failed Ambassador to Great Britain and a Nazi sympathizer. JFK was, after his older brother Joe’s death in World War II, groomed by Papa Joe as "the future Kennedy President." He was handsome and well-spoken. He had a lovely wife and two beautiful children. His Presidency can best be characterized as bumbling and unremarkable in its 1000-day tenure. He is much lamented, even today, I suspect, not so much for the proverbial "lost promise" he supposedly brought to America but because of the tragic lineage that has unfolded since his assassination. In my opinion, he does not deserve to be included in Time’s "Portraits of American" series whose past issues have featured Benjamin Franklin (a true genius), Thomas Jefferson (a true visionary), Abraham Lincoln (a truly great President) and Theodore Roosevelt (ditto).

I am reminded of the late Senator Bentson: "I have read of great Presidents. I have lived under a very few great Presidents. And you, Mr. Kennedy, were no great President."