PAGE 1 DEBORAH LEFF: Good afternoon, I m Deborah Leff. I m Director of the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum. And on behalf of myself and John Shattuck, the CEO of the Kennedy Library Foundation, it s a pleasure to welcome you on this beautiful day to today s forum. And I d like to begin by thanking those who make these forums possible The Bank of America, Lowell Institute, Boston Capital, Corcoran Jennison, and then our media sponsors, WBUR, who broadcast these forums every Sunday night at 8:00 p.m., and the Boston Globe. I know that many of you in this room have visited the Kennedy Library s new website at www.jfklibrary.org. And when you click on it what captures you the moment that website comes up is that voice. My fellow citizens of the world ask not what America will do for you, but what together we can do for the freedom of man. It is the voice, and it is the words. It is the inspiration and the vision that made America a richer, better country, full of values and a notion of the public good and hope. It is that voice and it is those words which form the underpinnings of the new book and CD by Robert Dallek and Terry Golway; you see it on the table, Let Every Nation Know: John F. Kennedy In His Own Words. You can hear 31 of John F. Kennedy s speeches, two of Robert Kennedy s, and Senator Edward Kennedy s tribute to his brother Robert. The speeches, of course, are eloquent, critically important, dealing with the major issues of the day. They re memorable. John F. Kennedy s campaign
PAGE 2 debates with Richard Nixon; his civil rights speech; the call for the Peace Corps; the commitment to put a man on the moon; and the Cuban Missile Crisis. And enriching them all is a rich, insightful commentary that offers analysis, historical context, and what Booklist in a starred reviewed called, a superb sense of the man and his charismatic style. The result, the reviewer said, is nothing short of terrific. Here with us to give us a flavor of this delicious work is eminent historian and leading JFK biographer Robert Dallek. It s a pleasure to have him back here, one of America s top presidential historians. Professor Dallek s biography of President Kennedy, An Unfinished Life, for which he spent, I should note, endless amounts of time researching in our archives on the fourth floor of this building. That book received rave reviews and was number one on the New York Times Bestseller List. And Bob tells me it is now published in 12 countries, 12 foreign languages. Among his other books are Franklin D. Roosevelt: An American Foreign Policy, which won the Bancroft Award and was nominated for an American Book Award; and his acclaimed two volume biography of Lyndon Baines Johnson, Lone Star Rising and Flawed Giant. After today s forum, Mr. Dallek will be signing books in our museum store. And after hearing these words today, I suspect you ll be fairly interested.
PAGE 3 Moderating today s discussion, it s a great pleasure to welcome back to the Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, Bruce Schulman, professor of History at Boston University. And his family is here. We re very pleased that you could join us today. Professor Schulman graduated summa cum laude in History from Yale and earned his Masters and Doctorate degrees at Stanford University. He has written four books and numerous articles on 20 th century history, among them a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. Please join me now in welcoming Robert Dallek and Bruce Schulman. [applause] BRUCE SCHULMAN: Well, thank you, Debbie, very much for that warm introduction. And I also want to thank all of you for coming out here this afternoon on the first day without rain in who knows how long. And I especially want to thank my old friend and colleague, Bob Dallek, for joining us to talk about his new and very intriguing and exciting book. So, Bob, to get us started, John F. Kennedy s career was tragically brief when we think about it. Only 1,000 days in the Oval Office. Yet, very well remembered, as this audience here I m sure will agree, and continues to have an impact on American public life -- indeed, on people all around the world. How do you account for that?
PAGE 4 ROBERT DALLEK: It s a wonderful question, Bruce, and it s something I ve been thinking about over the years as I worked on Kennedy. And I was particularly focused on it. When the book came out and it was such a warm, positive reception for the book. I think what you see when you ask Americans who were the greatest presidents in the country s history, and they predictably mention George Washington and Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt. But then the two others they mention are John Kennedy and Ronald Reagan. And with Kennedy, part of it of course is the assassination, the fact that his life was snuffed out in so early an age. He was only 46. And we can t imagine if he were alive today, he d be 89 years old. He s frozen in our memories at the age of 46 and also because of television, we have this image of him so young, so vital, so vibrant, so intelligent, witty, charming, you see. The first one to hold live televised press conferences. And those are preserved on tape, and we see them periodically on television. And I think both these things the assassination, television contribute to keeping his memory green, keeping it alive. But I think there are other things that are very much at work. And a lot of it has to do, I think, with what has come since Kennedy s death. I don t think the country has gotten over the death yet, the assassination yet. And I think because you ve had a number of essentially failed presidents and so much unhappiness in the country about moving off in the wrong direction: Johnson, the Vietnam War, compelled to leave the presidency however badly he wanted to stay on and run again in 68; Richard Nixon, who of
PAGE 5 course the only president in the country s history to be compelled to resign; Gerald Ford, who was there for a very brief time defeated by Jimmy Carter; Carter loses out; the first Bush is not held fast in our memory at this point; and now the current administration. I should be very careful what I say here. Recently, I spoke about this book at Politics and Prose, and it was taped. And I said some critical things of the current incumbent, as well I should, and I was giving a lecture in University of Delaware, and somebody raised their hand and asked me, What would happen if Bush left and Cheney became President in his place? So I told her, I said, As my dear departed mother would have said, `Bite your tongue. I got some hate mail because of the critical comments, which I don t think were excessive on my part. But I think there is a kind of defensiveness about this administration because something like 65-70% of the country see it as on the wrong track. So the deeper we sort of get into this miasma and now with Iraq, I think Kennedy becomes all that more appealing. And the same with Reagan. But the bottom line, I would say and my long-winded answer to your question, Bruce is that people don t remember what presidents do in the White House. How many people remember that Theodore Roosevelt was the architect of the Food and Drug Administration? That Woodrow Wilson set up the Federal Reserve System. How many know that Franklin Roosevelt was the architect of the Wages and Hours Bill? I don t know how many
PAGE 6 people know that Lyndon Johnson was the president who signed into law the Federal Aid to Education Bill and the Medicare Statute, you see. I think what recommends these presidents to the country is their rhetoric, their words. And especially if they re inspirational language, and if they re optimists, if they see a better future, a happier time in America. And I think that s what Kennedy gives us. And I think that s what Reagan gives the country to this point as well. So I think those two Presidents, since Roosevelt, are the two who have the greatest hold on the country. And I think a lot of it has to do with what they had to say, their outlook, the language, the rhetoric, and it resonates still. BRUCE SCHULMAN: And how important do you think was the content of their language, the nature of their rhetoric? And how much of it was the showmanship, their mastery of the media, especially media of television? Reagan, remember, when he left office said, They called me the great communicator, and I ll accept that. But I m not the great communicator; I simply communicated great things. ROBERT DALLEK: Well, it was a nice way to put it. Kennedy also knew that image was very He was told when he said he was going to hold a live televised press conferences, he was told by some people not to do it, that he was taking risks. But he knew that television was his great ally, and that his
PAGE 7 image was something which was very compelling and gave him a kind of special hold on the public. But if you listen to these speeches and there s a CD in the back of this book and you listen to these speeches, you will see how much substance there is to the talks, to the addresses. He never spoke down to the country. His speeches are so full of illusions to national history, to traditions, to all sorts of things that we don t hear from politicians these days. It s really the contrast is so striking to my mind as an historian. BRUCE SCHULMAN: So why don t we think about some of those speeches and the way that Kennedy developed as an orator and as a leader. Maybe begin with the campaign of 1960, because J.F.K. got a rather late start as a candidate, at least by our contemporary standards. So how did his campaign take shape? What were the big issues? How did he evolve as a candidate and a leader? ROBERT DALLEK: Yeah, he was not If his brother, Joe, had lived there s lots of speculation that he might never have gone into politics. And at first he was not terribly comfortable running for public office. He wasn t initially the sort of guy who was hail-fellow-well-met, went into the taverns and the barber shops slapping people on the back, shaking their hands, and asking, How s your mother? and How s your uncle, etc., you know, the good old fashioned kind of Boston politics.
PAGE 8 But he grew into this and he grew to love politics and love public speaking and love campaigning. And by the time it came to the 1960 presidential campaign, I think he had honed his skills sufficiently to really be very effective in doing it. And what s striking about that campaign, of course, is that he had to overcome two major impediments. One was that if he were elected to the White House, he was going to be the youngest man in American history to ever be elected. Now, Theodore Roosevelt was younger than he was when he entered office at McKinley s assassination, but only by a few months. So Kennedy and Nixon attacked him as being too inexperienced, too young to really run for President. The second impediment, of course, was that he had to overcome the barrier of religion. He was going to be the first Catholic in American presidential history to gain the White House. And he handled those two issues brilliantly. One, a famous talk he gave before Protestant ministers in Houston, Texas, in which he said to them, I m running for President not as a Catholic, not essentially even as a Democrat, but as an American. Nobody asked my brother when he was killed in World War II, nobody asked me when my destroyer was cut in half in the Southwest Pacific what my religion was. And so he really overcame this issue, I thought, very effectively and overcame the youth business in that first debate he had with Richard Nixon.
PAGE 9 Nixon was avid to debate him, because Nixon was a very old fashioned successful debater. And he made a big mistake. He tried to debate Kennedy, looking at him, trying to put points before him. And Kennedy sort of ignored him and spoke to the audience and spoke about the issues and spoke to the public, so to speak. And also, of course, Kennedy, here was image. People who heard that debate on the radio thought Nixon had won. And those who watched it on television, which of course was the great bulk of the audience, thought Kennedy had won. Now, Kennedy understood how to dress, how to appear. Nixon had this five o clock his heavy makeup on, his five o clock shadow. And somebody said, He looked like (inaudible) the chipmunk. And I think it was Mayor Daley who said, He looked like he died and they hadn t embalmed him yet, or something like this. [laughter] He just came across as not very appealing or attractive. And Kennedy, after that debate I think, convinced people, not just in terms of image, but substantively, that here was someone who could handle the presidency and was a clear match for Richard Nixon, who was trumpeting the idea that he had served in the House, in the Senate, eight years as Vice President. And, of course, he was shot in the foot when they asked Eisenhower, Can you tell us one good thing or major thing he did as Vice President? And Eisenhower said, If you can give me a week, I ll think of
PAGE 10 something. Ike wasn t very fond of him. It wasn t the kind of answer they were looking for. BRUCE SCHULMAN: The religion question is fascinating because, of course, for Kennedy in 1960 he had to downplay his religion to say that it really wasn t an issue or shouldn t be an issue in the election. Where if you look at let s say the last two or three, or maybe even going back to Jimmy Carter, the last several presidential elections, candidates for the nation s highest office seemed to rather ostentatiously tout their religious commitments. And even those like Howard Dean in 2004 that weren t particularly religious seemed to feel the need to exaggerate them. I wonder, what do you make of that change? ROBERT DALLEK: Well, it s what I would describe as retrogression. It saddens me. Because what Kennedy said, in essence, was that I m not a- religious; I m not anti-religious; I m not against religion. You can t run for President of the United States and suggest to the public that you don t have religion. But that there is a tradition of separation of church and state. And he allayed their anxieties about the possibility as he was being attacked for this idea, that his loyalty would be to Rome, to the Pope, to the Catholic church, rather than to the United States, rather than his American citizenship.
PAGE 11 So nowadays, of course, nobody asks the question anymore, Are you a Catholic? What he did was dispense with that issue, cut it out of the political dialogue. But you re right, religion remains very much front and center. And I think what it mainly has to do with is an attack on what the first Bush called the L word, liberalism. These liberals are not really good old fashioned American folks who go to church, who are family folks, who are traditionalists. That s what I think they re playing up, is this idea that you go to church and you re a good family man, and you don t believe in abortion and you re against gay marriage. You know, it s all these liberal ideas. We were talking before about the fact that after Barry Goldwater lost in 64, Bruce was pointing out, all sorts of articles all over the country that conservatism was a dead letter. The Republican party was going to go the way of the Whigs in the 1850s, you see. And what they did was shrewdly exploit the tensions that evolved, that developed between the liberal side of the Democratic party, and the mass of Americans who were alienated by too much kind of left wing Democracy, if you will, with a capital D. And they exploited that brilliantly, and they also exploited the foreign policy issue. Because they ve wrapped themselves in the flag and become very much the national security party. And it s ironic because after all it was the Democrats who presided over World Wars I and II, and over the Korean War, and essentially over the
PAGE 12 Vietnam War. And not always to their credit. But it really is quite ironic, I think. BRUCE SCHULMAN: Maybe let s get back to President Kennedy, because even before he debated with Richard Nixon he had to win his party s nomination. And his first real appearance before a national audience was when he accepted the Democratic party nomination in Los Angeles. Could you maybe set the scene for us. ROBERT DALLEK: Sure. It was a very hard fight. Remember, in those days you didn t get the nomination by winning primaries. That s really a post-1960 phenomenon. I think Kennedy only ran in eight primaries, if my memory serves me correctly. And so it was a matter of achieving status and winning over the party bosses, winning them to your side. And Robert Kennedy, of course, was John Kennedy s campaign manager and worked the floor of the convention to the nth degree. And they understood they had to win on the first ballot. Because if he didn t win on the first ballot, there was going to be a substantial continuing challenge. They do win on the first ballot. And then Kennedy gives this address at this outdoor coliseum in Los Angeles as an acceptance speech. And I think we have that, which we re going to play an excerpt of it. [Kennedy speech]
PAGE 13 BRUCE SCHULMAN: That s a remarkable piece of speechmaking there. It introduces the idea of the New Frontier that will define his administration. Could you just maybe, Bob, tell us a little bit about Kennedy, the speechwriter, and how he worked with people like Ted Sorenson to put his speeches together and all the biblical illusions, the historical illusions. ROBERT DALLEK: Well, first I would say what s so striking in that speech is the extent to which I think it makes the point I was trying to get across before, that he s optimistic; he s hopeful; he s talking about a better America, a better day ahead; and it s a New Frontier. America, the best days and Reagan used that line too The best days for America are not behind us, they re before us. And we now will manage to achieve great conquests on this New Frontier. Now, he worked with Ted Sorenson principally, but there were other speechwriters, other people who helped them like Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., Robert Kennedy would work with him as well. But what s striking about his speeches is however much he had speechwriters, they were done in his own voice. And somehow Sorenson had an extraordinary capacity to capture his tempo, capture his way of his phrasing of things, and his expression of hope, of buoyancy, of optimism. And he would edit these speeches.
PAGE 14 There s a lot of controversy about did he write that book that won the Pulitzer Price, Profiles in Courage. And the argument is oh, Sorenson did it. And there was an historian at Georgetown University who was supposed to have participated in it. But he worked on it. He edited it. And we have tapes in which he s working on the edits for these chapters. So, ultimately, these speeches were in his own voice. And when he gave his inaugural speech, which we ll come to in a minute, he worked very hard on that. And he was very conscious of the idea that there were only a handful of great inaugural addresses. Thomas Jefferson s first, in which he said, We are all federalists, we are all Republicans, signaling that for the first time in the country s history, we had a constitutional opposition that was going to take power. And that the transfer of power in America was to be done by democratic constitutional means. Lincoln s second, in which he calls for binding the wounds of the Civil War with malice toward none, with charity for all. FDR s third, which is, Nothing to fear but fear itself. And he wants to make this one of the great inaugural speeches of American history. And I think he achieves that because his now, I think, is the fourth inaugural speech in our country s history that is remembered. Let s listen to that: [speech] BRUCE SCHULMAN: And so Kennedy became president. And we tend to forget, I think, that Kennedy won election as president very, very
PAGE 15 narrowly. He didn t even win a majority of the popular vote. And that also he became President at a time of incredible tension in international affairs, what he s alluding to in many of the remarks in that great inaugural address. So maybe, Bob, you can tell us something about the situation when Kennedy comes into the office. And what that inaugural speech does for him. ROBERT DALLEK: Absolutely. But, first I would remark that in listening to that speech, what it reminded me of was what some people said about Woodrow Wilson s speeches. They were so lyrical, you could have danced to them. There s a quality of musicality to them. Can you imagine Lyndon Johnson or Richard Nixon giving that speech? I mean, it just wouldn t wash. But somehow he had this quality. And it wasn t just the words; it was the delivery. It was the tempo and the voice and the timber of the voice that, I think, made it so special. BRUCE SCHULMAN: The pregnant pauses and all of that build drama. ROBERT DALLEK: Yes. And so there is a certain showmanship to it. But it s more than You know, style cannot be divorced from substance with a man like that. And when you get it together, when it s so well integrated, I think it makes for a kind of greatness in speechmaking.
PAGE 16 But to come back to your point, you re quite right. It was a time of great challenge, of great concern. Eisenhower, in leaving office at that point, was the oldest man in the country s history to have served in the White House. And Kennedy was the youngest elected President. And he understood the need to revitalize, create a new mood of hope, of energy. Because in the late 50s there was the sense that America was falling behind. As fantastic as it seems now, given what we know about the Soviet Union and its economy and its miserable system of governance and economic distribution, at that time there was the feeling that the Soviets are stealing a march on us. They put Sputnik up in the atmosphere. Khrushchev banged his shoe on the table at the UN. He declared, We re grinding out missiles like sausages. He said, We ll bury you. And there was this feeling that, gosh, can America compete? And there was all this talk about the competition for hearts and minds. And so Kennedy is speaking to that when he talks in this lyrical way about the challenges before us, about the way in which we will stand up to these challenges, the way in which we will meet our obligations to ourselves, to our allies, to the traditions of freedom, of democracy. And, of course, what s striking about his speech is how much it s about foreign affairs. Because the anxiety at that point was not focused on domestic affairs, although as we know, and we ll come to that in a few minutes, there was a tremendous amount of anxiety in this country about domestic divisions and particularly about issues of race, of segregation, of civil rights.
PAGE 17 But his focus was on foreign affairs. And he was very much a foreign affairs President. And that s what he had been schooled in. And that s what he was comfortable with. And he was the right man in the right place at the right time, because that was the great challenge as it was seen. And, of course, a number of the challenges that come up in the very first days of his administration, the Bay of Pigs operation in Cuba which fails miserably. And then he s terribly chagrined about that and says, How could I have been so stupid to have launched on that enterprise. And it raised tremendous concerns in his mind about trusting the CIA, about trusting the military. We hear nowadays, Well, I will listen to the commanders on the ground as to what they want, what they think we need. Kennedy never would have done that. He made up his own mind. He didn t trust simply what the commanders on the ground told him. But he trusted what his instincts told him, what his good judgment told him. See, ultimately, I think, the difference between presidential greatness and mediocrity has a lot to do with presidential judgment. Franklin Roosevelt, in 1941, after the Nazis invaded the Soviet Union, June 22 nd, 41, his military chiefs told him, Don t provide them with Lenley s help. We ve seen what the Nazis did in Poland, how they rolled over France and all of Western
PAGE 18 Europe. The Soviets can t stand up to them. We need these military supplies to help Britain, to defend ourselves. Roosevelt knew something about history, and he knew Russia s greatest ally, winter. And he provided the Lenley supplies. He didn t listen to the military; he made his own judgment. And the same was true of the Cuban Missile Crisis. Because Kennedy was confronted by a military in the United States that wanted him to bomb, wanted him to invade Cuba, and he resisted it. And he relied on his own judgment, his own independent analysis to conclude that he needed to try this diplomatic option, which of course worked brilliantly. There was a famous letter that I found in the course of my research. Robert McNamara wrote him, I think it was five or six days after the Missile Crisis was supposedly resolved. And in this letter, or memo, McNamara lays out a plan for the invasion of Cuba, because we were not certain whether the Soviets were going to honor the commitment to withdraw the missiles from Cuba. So they re still making these invasion plans. Kennedy read this, and he wrote McNamara a note, in which he said, Bob, the plan is very thin. Think of the kind of nationalistic fervor we ll meet if we were to go in there. Think of the technical capacity they now have supplied by the Soviets. But also let s not forget what happened to the British in the Boar War. What happened to the Russians in the winter war
PAGE 19 against Finland, the winter of 1940. Let s not forget what happened to us in Korea. And he concludes by saying quote unquote, We could get bogged down. Now, it was so thoughtful, it was such an expression of his knowledge of history and of making his own judgment based on that knowledge and of a distrust of military planning. And so what makes him, recommends him in part to us to this day, I think, is the fact that he had good judgment. That he acted upon his own intelligence, his own wisdom, see, rather than relying on advisors. BRUCE SCHULMAN: And Bob do you think did he bring that to the White House with him, or did he mature in office? If you look at Kennedy, the world leader, at the end of his first year, you have the disaster in the Bay of Pigs, you have a summit conference with Krushnev in Vienna, I think it is, where he really gets pushed around. Bobby Kennedy thinks that they were badly out-manned there. And, of course, then the construction of the Berlin Wall, which also seems like a setback. So I was wondering, Kennedy as world leader, and as foreign policy strategist, how does he, or does he develop over the course of his 1,000 days? ROBERT DALLEK: I think, Bruce, it s an excellent point, because what it shows you is that there was a certain learning on the job. That he learned from the experience. He developed his own independent view of things. And
PAGE 20 what he saw was that every president reinvents the wheel. He starts afresh, he starts anew. And that what he has to do is really be in command. As Harry Truman said, The buck stops here. And that s the way Kennedy preceded. But also he was a practical man. He was flexible. He was not a dyed in the wool ideologue. Yes, he was a fierce anti-communist one could say. There s just no question about it. He understood what he was up against in dealing with communism. But what are your tactics? How do you go about combating them? What do you do? It was like FDR s greatness. Roosevelt s greatness rested on the fact he compared himself to a quarterback on a football team. He said, I try one play. If it doesn t work, I move on to something else. The New Deal was a kind of experiment. And in a sense, I think what you were just describing, Bruce, is the experiment that Kennedy went through in his first year, and what he came to when it was the Cuban Missile Crisis was having the benefit of those months of experience that taught him how to be more effective. And then moving on to a higher plane, one might say, with the Test Ban Treaty that was so much a step in the direction of detente and peace. And we have that famous peace speech at American University. Let s listen to that. [speech]
PAGE 21 BRUCE SCHULMAN: Well, that seems like a remarkable change when you think of those first two speeches, where he s really trying to rally the country to stand up strong against the threat of the Soviet Union and wage the Cold War. Now he s really moving the United States to a different place. ROBERT DALLEK: Yeah. And what s also interesting would be to contrast that to the speech he gave in Berlin in which he said, Ich bein Berliner. And that was a pretty inflammatory speech attacking communism. And it was really much more in the kind of traditional Cold War rhetoric. But I think what this speech shows you is the way in which he s learned and has been sobered by the experience of the Cuban Missile Crisis, which they knew had brought them to the brink of a nuclear war. It was the most dangerous moment in the history of the Cold War. And if we had stumbled, if the Soviets had stumbled, if Khrushchev had not been more flexible, we could have gotten into this horror of a nuclear exchange. And so coming off that he understands the desperate importance of reigning in the proliferation of these arms. As somebody said at one point, You build and you build and you build these nuclear weapons. And all they can do is make the rubble bounce. I mean, you know, you use 10 of them or 15 of them; how many of them can you use? We had something like 30,000 of these nuclear weapons, which was just The redundancy was absurd.
PAGE 22 So I think the tone of things had changed for him. And he understood the heavy burden of responsibility and the Soviets did too at that point. BRUCE SCHULMAN: Let s turn for a few minutes to domestic affairs and particularly to what by certainly 1963 had become the pressing issue at home, that of civil rights. I think even here at the John F. Kennedy Library and Museum, we have to admit that JFK was rather late to get on the right side of the civil rights issue or to really play an active role in that struggle. Why was that? And how did he come to change? ROBERT DALLEK: Yeah, there s no question, Bruce, that he was very cautious in the first roughly two and a half years of his presidency about pushing for anything resembling a major civil rights bill. What happened was he had four major pieces of domestic legislation that were on the table when he died. None of them were enacted when he was assassinated. The $11 billion dollar tax cut to spread the economy forward; the Federal Aid to elementary, second and higher education to upgrade the American educational system; Medicare to provide health insurance for the elderly, which was so painfully lacking in our society system; and civil rights. And he thought that if he pushed for the civil rights bill from the get-go, from the start of his presidency, it would so antagonize the old Southern chairmen of the House and Senate committees that could -- though they were Democrats, they were first and foremost segregationists and they were
PAGE 23 not going to cater to his demands. So he was hoping that he could at least get these other pieces of domestic legislation through if he held back on the civil rights matter. And, of course, it proved to be wrong. It was dead wrong. Because by the summer of June of 1963, he had gotten nowhere with those three other major pieces of legislation and by then the civil rights issue had come to something of a boiling point. And, of course, again, television here played a major role. Because the marches the Martin Luther Kings, Southern Christian Leadership Conference, which was fighting bravely, courageously, to put across changes in the southern system of apartheid this was something that Kennedy was lagging behind on until there was such civil disorder in the south, at the University of Alabama, in Montgomery, that Kennedy felt because when he saw these television pictures of the Bull Connors police abusing these young people BRUCE SCHULMAN: Birmingham in the spring ROBERT DALLEK: Birmingham, exactly that he said he was nauseated by it. And so he felt compelled to go on national television and give a speech in which he called for the transformation, this huge social transformation, of southern history. We have that speech. [speech]
PAGE 24 BRUCE SCHULMAN: So there he puts himself firmly on the side of civil rights and even adopts some of the language, This is a moral issue; the counsels of patience,... (inaudible) that rhetoric from Martin Luther King and others. What can you tell us about that speech? And also can you speculate for us given that Kennedy, despite all his accomplishments was not very successful as a legislative leader, do you think he could have gotten a civil rights bill passed had he not been assassinated? ROBERT DALLEK: I think if he had lived -- he obviously was going to run again in 64; he assumed his opponent was going to be Barry Goldwater. And as he joked with somebody, If Goldwater is our opponent in 64, we re going to get to bed a lot earlier on election night than we did in 1960. Because he knew, like Lyndon Johnson, they were going to win a big victory. And I think if he had been reelected, and he certainly would have been as his approval ratings very high at the time he was assassinated and would have been I think in 64, I think he would have gotten those four major pieces of legislation through. And, you know, Johnson is the one, of course, who gets them passed. But it is a Kennedy/Johnson legacy. Kennedy puts those on the table. They re part of his commitment to domestic change in the country. Johnson has the wisdom, the foresight, to put these across. And the importance of this speech, and then of Johnson s actions in 64 and 65 and putting across those civil rights bills, will be remembered I think for as long
PAGE 25 as there is a United States of America. Because it was a social transformation in this country. It honors the traditions that Kennedy is speaking to about. It s as old as the Constitution, it s as old as the Bible, as old as scripture itself, you see. It s a kind of moral commitment. But look at the practical commitments as well. What Johnson, in particular, understood coming after Kennedy was that as long as you had a segregated South, it was not only segregated internally, but it was separated from the rest of the country. Segregation, the rest of America, to one degree or another, saw the South as sort of the crazy aunt you kept in the attic. It was this nutty system of racism. Here was an America, in this battle for hearts and minds against communism, the Chinese communists, the Russian communists beating on us unmercifully over the fact that we are a racist society. And that Johnson, in a sense Kennedy before him, are responding to this. Now, in a sense, Johnson said, I have to administer this medicine to the South. They ve got to take their medicine. And he saw that if he got this civil rights bill passed he was gone after the civil rights was passed, and Bill Moyers saw him that next BRUCE SCHULMAN: This is LBJ. ROBERT DALLEK: LBJ, sees him the next morning. He s in his bedroom surrounded on his bed with all these newspapers with headlines.
PAGE 26 And Moyers said to him, Mr. President, why are you so glum? This is a great day in your administration. And Johnson said, Because, Bill, I think we ve given away the South to the Republican Party for as far into the future as anybody can see. He administers this. It transforms the South. It integrates it into the rest of the nation, economically, politically. Look at what s happened since. Before Johnson, a southerner couldn t run for President. There was still the shadow of the Civil War. And since then, you have Johnson, you have Carter, you have the two Bushes. BRUCE SCHULMAN: Bill Clinton as well. ROBERT DALLEK: You have Bill Clinton. It s mainly southerners who are getting to the presidency, because you have this shift to the Sun Belt and political and economic power are so much more. And Bruce, of course, has written about this quite brilliantly. And I don t have to tell him about it. He knew it before me. And it s really a transformation in the country s political, social, economic life. BRUCE SCHULMAN: So, Bob, in the last couple of minutes before we open the floor to your questions, just as a kind of wrap up question, so why a book about John F. Kennedy s speeches today? What do you think
PAGE 27 Kennedy s speeches have to say to our present predicament? What do they tell us about what s changed since the 1960s. ROBERT DALLEK: Well, you know, Ted Kennedy gave us a little bit of a blurb for the book and said, The language is as alive as it was then. The speeches are as meaningful to us today as they were in the 60s. And I think that s true. Because he speaks to the issues, the fundamental issues in a society of war and peace, of morality, of issues of racism, of equal opportunity. A Catholic being able to run for and win the presidency of the United States. This is a prelude. In a sense, Kennedy is a prelude. It won t be long. We ll see a woman as President of the United States. And this will be traced back to the fact that Kennedy broke that barrier, you see, which will remove the presidency from the hands of simply white Protestant Americans. Now, I m not saying that we should vote against somebody because he s a white Protestant American. But what s wonderful about this, and particularly it will be also when we get a woman as President of the United States, is the fact that it will double the pool of candidates we can turn to as nominees. And Lord knows, we need to increase that pool. [applause] BRUCE SCHULMAN: Thank you very much, Bob. Bob has agreed to take any questions you might have. We ask you to please stand up and line up in front of the microphones in either aisle. This is going to be broadcast over the air, so you do need to speak from the microphone. I only ask that
PAGE 28 you Any subject is open for discussion; I only ask that you observe what I like to call the Jeopardy Rule and make sure that your remarks are in the form of a question. Q: When you write a biography, I think you begin to develop some kind of affection towards your object. You are so much involved with JFK, and I m sure you have lots of affection toward him. And I understand now you are working on Richard Nixon. Isn t it sometimes very difficult for you to get involved? [laughter] ROBERT DALLEK: That book, it s a book on Nixon and Kissinger. And double. And I hope to have it out in September of 2007. And I ll come back and answer in more elaborate ways to your question at that point. But, you re right, can you write a fair minded biography of someone you re not as engaged with -- someone you don t admire as warmly, as strongly as I do Franklin Roosevelt or let s say John Kennedy. But I like to think the two volumes I wrote on Lyndon Johnson are reasonably balanced studies of that man s life and his career. I had very mixed feelings about Johnson, especially about what he did in Vietnam. And so it allowed me to move on to Nixon and Kissinger, not because I like them or don t like them, but because they re very important figures in American history, political history, foreign policy history. And what trumps,
PAGE 29 I think, your attraction to or disaffection from a particular person, is the desire to understand. To try and explain why have we come to this moment in our history. Why did we get Richard Nixon? Why does he do what he does? How do we assess his presidency, you see? And in some ways it may be that I wasn t the best person to write on Kennedy because there was too much of an affinity for him. I like to think that I was reasonably objective. But, on the other hand, you really need to detach yourself. But I always take comfort from the thought expressed by the great Dutch historian, Peter Geyl, who said, History is argument without end. And Oscar Wilde said, The historian s one obligation is to re-write history. Because we always write it from our own times. There is no such thing as strictly objective history. And some people kindly say to me at times, Oh, this is a definitive book. And I say, Nonsense, there is no such thing. Others will come along and write -- and all to the good -- other Kennedy biographies, other Johnson biographies, other Nixon biographies. Because this is the life blood of our political history, of our political consciousness. We re still writing about Abraham Lincoln. Doris Kearns Goodwin recently did a wonderful book on Lincoln and his cabinet. It s part of our understanding. There s always a new generation which doesn t know the history. But there are still generations that do know it, but they welcome hearing about it afresh, anew. And so I think that s what s always important for the historian to keep in mind.
PAGE 30 BRUCE SCHULMAN: And one of the angels asked God, Why did you create historians. They re such an obnoxious breed. And God replied, Well, I needed someone who could change the past. Not even I could do that. [laughter] Q: Quick editorial comment. I thought your LBJ and Kennedy biographies were very balanced. The question: you had said a second ago that when you talk about Kennedy s oratorical style you could never have imagined LBJ giving those speeches. But at the same time, LBJ was very good; he was very effective on a one-on-one basis. Talk a little bit about how Kennedy was not in large audiences, but when he was dealing with members of Congress or dealing with other people. ROBERT DALLEK: It s a very good point. What I meant there is that I don t think you would have (inaudible) Johnson s speech, I mean the same language. He just didn t have quite the style that Kennedy did. And he was sort of abrasive in the way he But you re quite right, in small groups he was brilliant. And if you listen in Washington, DC, where I live, on every Saturday afternoon CSPAN radio plays excerpts of the Lyndon Johnson television tapes, and they play Nixon tapes now with expletives deleted. But they play the Johnson tapes, and you see this man at work. You see what a brilliant legislative executor is able to do. Very, very effective. That was his greatest strength.
PAGE 31 Q: But how was Kennedy one-on-one with members of Congress? That was my question. ROBERT DALLEK: He was also quite persuasive, but this was not the area in which he excelled to the extent to which Johnson did. I think Johnson eclipsed him in that area. And I think it s reflected in the fact that Kennedy was much more the foreign policy president, and Johnson was the domestic president. And Johnson complained bitterly about having been diverted into these foreign policy matters. And he described the Vietnam War, that bitch of a war that keeps diverting me from my first love, which is the Great Society. So I think there was a qualitative difference. Maybe what it suggests is that we need two presidents, one who does foreign affairs, and one who does domestic. But then maybe we d get a double whammy rather than [laughter] Q: What was the President s working style with his speechwriters? It seems to me that would have been a daunting job to have, being the presidential speechwriter. The President, even back when he was in the House, was a great communicator, he was articulate. How can you coach the coach? ROBERT DALLEK: Well, I think that the first thing for any public official is to find a speechwriter who you re comfortable with, who thinks along your lines and understands the way in which you want to voice your ideas, your thoughts, your assumptions.
PAGE 32 And I think Kennedy found this sort of marriage, a very effective marriage with Ted Sorenson, because they understood each other. But also Sorenson I think was highly respectful of Kennedy s impulse to take his words and meld them into his own voice. No good speechwriter will go out and say, I wrote that speech. I m the one who did it. It s the President s speech. My son was Richard Gephardt s speechwriter for two and a half years. And he told me that Gephardt was an extremely intelligent, when he was in Congress, intelligent and attractive political leader. And that Gephardt would take his words, take what he wrote, and meld them into his own voice. Turn them into what he wanted to say. Because I think any politician, any political leader, any President who would have a speechwriter who would sit down and write something, and the President would simply take it and read it verbatim You know, there s that wonderful joke about there was a politician who would do that. And he had a falling out with his speechwriter. And the speechwriter was about to leave, and he wrote the last speech and turned it over to the politician. And about halfway through the speech it stops and it says, Screw you, you re on your own. [laughter] How to get even. Q: Vietnam: where did JFK take it in terms of his speeches? And long- term, do you think he would have supported it as Johnson had to?
PAGE 33 ROBERT DALLEK: It s an excellent question. We ll be debating it forever, apropos of Geyl s comment, History is argument without end. I ll tell you what I said in my book and what I think about it. There s no question Kennedy escalated American involvement in Vietnam. When he came to office there were about 600, 650 advisors in Vietnam. When he died there were 16,700 or 800 advisors there. Now, he was deeply skeptical of turning the Vietnam War into a full scale American enterprise. And it s evidenced, I think, in part by that letter I quoted to you from Kennedy to McNamara about the invasion of Cuba. If he was worried about getting bogged down in Cuba, you could imagine how he felt about Vietnam. What s striking to me is that after the war was escalated with Johnson, Johnson had painful relations with the press. He was furious at them, because he saw them demoralizing the country and undermining the war effort. Kennedy had a lot of difficulties with the press also over Vietnam, and in particular over David Halberstam, remember, who he asked the New York Times to remove from his post in Saigon. There was a real qualitative difference, though, in the tensions between Kennedy and President Johnson in the press. Johnson resented them because they were undermining the war effort, he felt. Kennedy was worried that
PAGE 34 they were trying to push the Vietnam issue onto the front pages. And he didn t want it to go there. And indeed Halberstam, who later, of course, has this justifiable reputation as a dove, as an insightful critic of the best and the brightest over the Vietnam War. He pushes a book in 1963 called The Making of a Quagmire in which he s criticizing the Kennedy administration for failing to be more effective in Vietnam. And Kennedy doesn t want to go there. He s worried. And my understanding or impression is that he never would have done what Lyndon Johnson did in relation to Vietnam. And we know he gave McNamara marching orders to pull a 1,000 of those advisors out by the end of 63. We ll never know exactly what he would have done. But I don t think he would have escalated that war to the extent, in the way, in which Johnson did and produced the greatest, at that point, disaster in American foreign policy history. Q: Well, I wanted to ask that what gave you the idea for the name of this book? Why is this called Let Every Nation Know. ROBERT DALLEK: I will tell you I m very bad at making titles. And my story is that when I published my first Lyndon Johnson volume it was called Lone Star Rising. It wasn t my title. My wife goes around and says to all our friends, Robert s going to publish another book. This is the subject. If you come up with a title, you get an acknowledgement in the book, you get a free
PAGE 35 copy of it, and you get a free dinner for you and your significant other. Think of my Nixon/Kissinger, I m happy to honor that. A friend of ours in Los Angeles who s an architect, he came up with the title A Lone Star Rising. My editor at Oxford came up with the second Johnson title, A Flawed Giant. My wife came up with the Kennedy title, An Unfinished Life. And my editor and agent came up with this title, Let Every Nation Know. Now, to answer your question, I think it speaks to the whole idea that Kennedy was a foreign policy President -- that he was speaking not just to America, but to the world. And when he spoke in the 1960s he was speaking as the leader quote of the free world, as we used that term at the time. And so Let Every Nation Know, this is where America stands, this is what we re trying to achieve, this is what we re aiming for, this is what we hope for. And so we thought that Let Every Nation Know is the appropriate title for a book of Kennedy s speeches. Q: I agree. [applause] Q: I ve recently come upon a book called Ultimate Sacrifice. And I haven t read it yet because it s huge. And it proposes in a very shocking and alarming explanation what happened to President Kennedy. I wonder if either of you two gentlemen had read it or are familiar with it. And if you
PAGE 36 have, is it truthful, partially truthful, or is it a piece of junk? If either of you gentlemen -- It was written by a gentleman named Thurman, I believe his name is Thurman or Thorman. And I m not sure if either of you have ROBERT DALLEK: I take what it s about is the assassination. Q: Yes, of course. BRUCE SCHULMAN: I m not familiar with that book. But I m familiar with a lot of the vast literature about the assassination. ROBERT DALLEK: I do not believe to this day that there was a conspiracy. I think that John Kennedy was killed by one gunman. I think that s the way history works, utterly random, bizarre, crazy. Some novelist said recently that when it comes to fiction and non-fiction, only fiction has to make sense. Only fiction has to make sense. And I think that s the way human affairs operate. There s something terribly random, happenstance about it. And that was the crazy business by which Kennedy was assassinated. And I don t think I ve never been convinced that there was a conspiracy. And I think the best book on it was -- help me out Bruce, by the attorney, the lawyer, who refuted all these conspiracy theories.