ROBERT DALLEK ON JOHN F. KENNEDY IN HIS OWN WORDS 6/11/06 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

ROBERT DALLEK ON JOHN F. KENNEDY IN HIS OWN WORDS 6/11/06 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.

ROBERT DALLEK ON JOHN F. KENNEDY IN HIS OWN WORDS 6/11/06 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 20th 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?

ROBERT DALLEK ON JOHN F. KENNEDY IN HIS OWN WORDS 6/11/06 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

ROBERT DALLEK ON JOHN F. KENNEDY IN HIS OWN WORDS 6/11/06 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

ROBERT DALLEK ON JOHN F. KENNEDY IN HIS OWN WORDS 6/11/06 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

ROBERT DALLEK ON JOHN F. KENNEDY IN HIS OWN WORDS 6/11/06 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.

ROBERT DALLEK ON JOHN F. KENNEDY IN HIS OWN WORDS 6/11/06 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.

ROBERT DALLEK ON JOHN F. KENNEDY IN HIS OWN WORDS 6/11/06 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

ROBERT DALLEK ON JOHN F. KENNEDY IN HIS OWN WORDS 6/11/06 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.

ROBERT DALLEK ON JOHN F. KENNEDY IN HIS OWN WORDS 6/11/06 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

ROBERT DALLEK ON JOHN F. KENNEDY IN HIS OWN WORDS 6/11/06 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]

ROBERT DALLEK ON JOHN F. KENNEDY IN HIS OWN WORDS 6/11/06 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.

ROBERT DALLEK ON JOHN F. KENNEDY IN HIS OWN WORDS 6/11/06 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

ROBERT DALLEK ON JOHN F. KENNEDY IN HIS OWN WORDS 6/11/06 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.

ROBERT DALLEK ON JOHN F. KENNEDY IN HIS OWN WORDS 6/11/06 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.

ROBERT DALLEK ON JOHN F. KENNEDY IN HIS OWN WORDS 6/11/06 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 22nd, ’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

ROBERT DALLEK ON JOHN F. KENNEDY IN HIS OWN WORDS 6/11/06 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

ROBERT DALLEK ON JOHN F. KENNEDY IN HIS OWN WORDS 6/11/06 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

ROBERT DALLEK ON JOHN F. KENNEDY IN HIS OWN WORDS 6/11/06 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]

ROBERT DALLEK ON JOHN F. KENNEDY IN HIS OWN WORDS 6/11/06 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.

ROBERT DALLEK ON JOHN F. KENNEDY IN HIS OWN WORDS 6/11/06 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

ROBERT DALLEK ON JOHN F. KENNEDY IN HIS OWN WORDS 6/11/06 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]

ROBERT DALLEK ON JOHN F. KENNEDY IN HIS OWN WORDS 6/11/06 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

ROBERT DALLEK ON JOHN F. KENNEDY IN HIS OWN WORDS 6/11/06 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.

ROBERT DALLEK ON JOHN F. KENNEDY IN HIS OWN WORDS 6/11/06 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

ROBERT DALLEK ON JOHN F. KENNEDY IN HIS OWN WORDS 6/11/06 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

ROBERT DALLEK ON JOHN F. KENNEDY IN HIS OWN WORDS 6/11/06 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,

ROBERT DALLEK ON JOHN F. KENNEDY IN HIS OWN WORDS 6/11/06 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.

ROBERT DALLEK ON JOHN F. KENNEDY IN HIS OWN WORDS 6/11/06 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.

ROBERT DALLEK ON JOHN F. KENNEDY IN HIS OWN WORDS 6/11/06 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.

ROBERT DALLEK ON JOHN F. KENNEDY IN HIS OWN WORDS 6/11/06 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?

ROBERT DALLEK ON JOHN F. KENNEDY IN HIS OWN WORDS 6/11/06 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

ROBERT DALLEK ON JOHN F. KENNEDY IN HIS OWN WORDS 6/11/06 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

ROBERT DALLEK ON JOHN F. KENNEDY IN HIS OWN WORDS 6/11/06 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

ROBERT DALLEK ON JOHN F. KENNEDY IN HIS OWN WORDS 6/11/06 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.

ROBERT DALLEK ON JOHN F. KENNEDY IN HIS OWN WORDS 6/11/06 PAGE 37 BRUCE SCHULMAN: Posner.

ROBERT DALLEK: Yeah, Gerald Posner. I think that’s the best book on

the reputation of the … But, on the other hand, don’t listen to me; 70% of

the country still thinks there was a conspiracy. But I think what it speaks to

is the fact, as I said before, the country hasn’t gotten over the assassination.

And it just can’t make sense, it can’t accept the idea that someone as

consequential as Kennedy could have been killed by someone as

inconsequential as Oswald. So it just doesn’t want to accept that.

Q: Okay, my question is Kennedy’s election against Nixon was a squeaker.

And since that time, the last two elections were highly, very, very close

margins. How did Kennedy bring the country together? And if he were alive

today, given that we’re very polarized and it seems like it’s a completely

different time, would that approach work today? What major change has to

happen for us to consider ourselves one nation?

ROBERT DALLEK: It’s an excellent question. And I wish I really had a

good answer for you. Because I could wholesale it, retail it perhaps to

politicians. My guess is, my speculation is, that because Kennedy, as the

first Catholic, you see, what he was doing in a sense was symbolizing that

this was a time in which the country needed to be more integrated in terms

of its ethnic groups, in terms of its racial separation, racial differences. But

also because it was a time of so much danger over the Cold War. And people

ROBERT DALLEK ON JOHN F. KENNEDY IN HIS OWN WORDS 6/11/06 PAGE 38 were eager to go forward as Americans. But it was also his rhetoric. It was

the way he spoke to the country about the idea -- famous words, “Ask not

what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.”

Let’s pull together. We’re all Americans. We’re all in this boat together. We

need to think about these things.

And, of course, this is, it seems to me one of the sad facts of our recent

history, that the country instead of being unified is so divided. When

Richard Nixon came in he said he was a unifier, not a divider. And, of

course, that proved to be false. And we’ve had so much in the way of

division.

Bruce and I were talking about this before. This period reminds me so much

of the 1920s when you had this bitter struggle between the modernists and

the fundamentalists, you see, in the rural as opposed to the urban areas. And

there is such a—this red state, blue state divide. Somebody will come along.

At bottom I’m an optimist. Someone will come along and we’ll reunify the

country. Franklin Roosevelt did it brilliantly in the 30s. Of course, it took a

Depression. And I hope we don’t have to go through a disaster of that sort in

order to bring the country together again. Bruce, what do you think?

BRUCE SCHULMAN: One thing we have to remember also is Kennedy’s

tragic death, I think, somewhat clouds our imagination. Certainly, he did try

to bring the nation together and his rhetoric played that role. But there were

ROBERT DALLEK ON JOHN F. KENNEDY IN HIS OWN WORDS 6/11/06 PAGE 39 important divisions that remained. And we can look at both sides of that by

remembering why he was in Dallas in the first place when he was

assassinated. He went down there essentially to try to heal a breach within

his own Democratic party. So there were even divisions within the

Democratic party, divisions over the issues of civil rights, divisions over

economic policy, over foreign policy, over many other things.

The one statistic that I remember that always gives me a laugh is that in

December of 1963, just after his assassination, the Gallop Organization

asked Americans who they had voted for in 1960. Not who they would vote

for now, but who they had voted for. And something like 80% claim they

had voted for Kennedy, when only 49.7% actually had.

ROBERT DALLEK: And I bet if you asked today who voted for Kerry

and who voted for Bush, I bet you’d see a similar result. Maybe not 80% but

…

Q: Good afternoon. A lot of your talk today was on speeches and rhetoric

by Kennedy. And you also mention Abraham Lincoln, Franklin D.

Roosevelt, Thomas Jefferson. Through your research, and I’d like to hear

from both of you, were there any presidents out there through your research

that also had, maybe not similar, but surprisingly good rhetoric in speeches

that are less known? I mean, we all think of Lincoln. We all think of FDR.

We all think of Kennedy. So I’d like to hear about that.

ROBERT DALLEK ON JOHN F. KENNEDY IN HIS OWN WORDS 6/11/06 PAGE 40

BRUCE SCHULMAN: Well, I think the two obvious ones that you left

out, Bob, and I think you would agree, would be Woodrow Wilson, who was

a brilliant speechmaker and the only history professor to be elected President

of the United States for good and for ill. But whatever you want to say about

Wilson as a leader and a President, and I think we can certainly find many

things to be critical there, he was a brilliant orator. He was also someone

who excelled in talking to large audiences and was not very good at the face-

to-face contact.

The other person would be Theodore Roosevelt, who was not I guess a

brilliant … He had kind of a high squeaky voice when you think of this, you

know, extremely sort of macho, bellicose, adventurous kind of man. And

you hear recordings of his kind of high squeaky voice, it’s not all that

impressive. But on the page his speeches are very eloquent. And he was

someone that largely wrote his own speeches. So I think those are the two

that immediately come to mind.

ROBERT DALLEK: I agree, Bruce. And also, of course, Theodore wasn’t

a professional historian, but he was a historian.

BRUCE SCHULMAN: He was a President of the American Historical

Association.

ROBERT DALLEK ON JOHN F. KENNEDY IN HIS OWN WORDS 6/11/06 PAGE 41 ROBERT DALLEK: That’s right.

Q: You talked about the use of inspirational language as why these

speeches are remembered. And I was struck by the following. There is a

great deal of criticism about the excessive idealism in what Kennedy said.

The set of somewhat unreasonable goals as history looks back, on we will

bear any burden, pay any price. And I think Reagan kind of put it in the

context of why idealistic speech is not so popular today, “Government is the

problem.” And so I think when Kennedy and Johnson were talking the

public didn’t see government as a problem; they saw government as an ally.

And we’ve been living through almost 35 years of seeing government as an

adversary. And I think if someone tries idealistic speech, particularly if

they’re a Democrat, they are always sent back with the “L” word. And only

the Republicans seem to be able to bring in the more simplistic values which

Democrats seem not to view as important in their speech. I’d just like you to

see if my premise is correct.

ROBERT DALLEK: Yeah, I think you make an excellent point. And I

think this is the current challenge to the Democratic party. To find a voice,

find a leader who can inspire that hope again: hope in government; belief in

the idea that government works; that it is not the people’s adversary but their

ally.

ROBERT DALLEK ON JOHN F. KENNEDY IN HIS OWN WORDS 6/11/06 PAGE 42 I always love to tell that anecdote about Eleanor Roosevelt. After Franklin

Roosevelt died, somebody stopped her on the street and said to her, “Mrs.

Roosevelt, I miss the way your husband used to speak to me about my

government.” Now, who could imagine that today. But that was the way in

which FDR personalized the government, made people feel that the

government was on their side.

And I think people had some of that feeling with Reagan. And that even

though he said, the irony is he said, “Government’s not the solution;

government’s the problem.” But of all the presidents since Kennedy who

helped to reestablish a degree of respect and enthusiasm and regard for the

executive, I think Reagan was the most successful. Because the others have

really created a degree of cynicism and alienation.

I mean, it’s a very difficult job. And especially you get a second term, the

burdens are so heavy. But this is the challenge for the country. This is the

challenge for a political leader. And maybe it takes a combination of things:

of the right person, the right time, dealing with the … See, if Lyndon

Johnson had been President during that Katrina disaster, I think he would

have been so much more effective than the current administration, because

he believed in government. And he would have been on the case to use

government to get down there and do things and help those people. He

wouldn’t have sat still with the kinds of disarray. Now, this is not to idealize

him and say, “Oh, everything would have been hunky-dory.” But I think

ROBERT DALLEK ON JOHN F. KENNEDY IN HIS OWN WORDS 6/11/06 PAGE 43 there would have been a much better image of how effective the government

is.

Part of it, of course, is when you turn away from the private sector. I don’t

mean toward nationalization of industry or anything that extreme. But in the

30s there was such disillusionment over big business. And there’s a certain

amount of that now also with things like the Enron scandal, you see. But you

need somebody who’s going to come along and voice that to folks. Speak to

them in ways that convinces them that government can be an instrument of

their needs, of their wishes, to help them, benefit them.

BRUCE SCHULMAN: Time for just two more questions. So let’s here

from these two gentlemen briefly.

Q: It’s been said that President Kennedy’s favorite orator was Sir Winston

Churchill. And I just wonder whether or not in your research you found any

reflections of Churchill in Kennedy’s style or prose or cadence.

ROBERT DALLEK: Yeah, Kennedy had read Churchill very carefully

and knew his speeches and his cadence and the inspirational rhetoric. And

especially because what Kennedy knew, of course, he was a child of the

Second World War, had served in the Southwest Pacific in the American

Navy. And he knew Churchill as a great leader. And it was a model for him

ROBERT DALLEK ON JOHN F. KENNEDY IN HIS OWN WORDS 6/11/06 PAGE 44 to listen to and to follow. And so I think there was a major influence on him

from the way in which Churchill led and spoke.

Q: It’s fairly well accepted that Kennedy and the administration had a hand

in the assassination of Diem in Vietnam, which certainly escalated that

whole situation. I’m wondering, what is the impetus and the correlation

among the Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon administrations in pursuit of a war

or a conflict, and the current administration’s certain pursuit of the same

issues in Iraq?

ROBERT DALLEK: Well, you know, Kennedy had no direct part in the

assassination of Diem. There’s no question that they sanctioned a coup and

they gave Henry Cabot Lodge the go-ahead, the green light to allow the, or

even encourage the South Vietnamese military to topple the Diem

government. But he was horrified by the assassination. And as he said, “He

didn’t deserve that” – of Diem – “He was a patriot. However one may

question the wisdom of what he was doing, he certainly didn’t deserve that.”

However, your point is a good one. There is a certain line of continuity here

and what people write about. You know, in the early years of the 20th

century we had a powerful group of isolationists. And one of the things they

were most frightened of was America’s deep involvement in world affairs.

Because they trembled at the thought that we would get agencies like the

CIA that would be sort of rogue institutions, that would be freelancing, that

ROBERT DALLEK ON JOHN F. KENNEDY IN HIS OWN WORDS 6/11/06 PAGE 45 would be going out in the world and doing things that were at variance with

our democratic traditions.

The isolationists are not urging or even suggesting that you can in any way

at all go back to isolationism. But there was a certain wisdom to what they

thought, what they said. Because our involvement in world politics, it’s a

dirty business. It’s ugly. And when you get involved in the war like we’re

fighting now in Iraq, ugly things are going to happen, terrible thing.

Now, this is not to say, you know, it’s all our fault. After all there are real

adversaries out there. This is not paranoia. But how do we measure this

whole thing? How do we balance this out? This is such a struggle for this

country. The great traditions of openness, of freedom, of a kind of balanced

democracy as opposed to secret government, machinations, assassination

plots. It’s so … George Kennan toward the end of his life -- who had been

one of the architects, of course, of our détente containment policy -- he was

very disillusioned with this kind of national security state. And he thought

that maybe the best thing the country could do would be dismantle

something like the CIA. He didn’t believe that it really, in the long run,

benefited the national well being. He opposed the creation of the North

Atlantic Treaty Organization. He said it was going to militarize the Cold

War. And in many ways, he was right. Because the Russians responded to it

with the Warsaw Pact. Again, this is not to suggest that, you know, we were

the bad guys and the Russians were … but these are the difficulties of being

ROBERT DALLEK ON JOHN F. KENNEDY IN HIS OWN WORDS 6/11/06 PAGE 46 a super power. And all the more reason to think that you need someone with

good sense, with wisdom, to deal in sensible ways with these foreign policy

challenges rather than plunging into a war like this. To be entirely candid, I

think this Iraq war is the greatest foreign policy blunder since Vietnam. I

think it’s a disaster. And I cannot imagine us coming out at the end of this in

some very constructive happy way. I think this is happy talk about

democracy spreading across the Middle East. Noble vision, Woodrow

Wilson, noble vision, but it ain’t so easy to do.

And I think what you need is someone who has a better sense of history,

better judgment as to how to go about these things. They won’t be perfect;

nobody can be in these situations. But I think frankly to end on a partisan

note, we can do a hell of a lot better than we’ve been doing lately. [applause]

BRUCE SCHULMAN: Thank you, Bob. Thank you all for coming out.

Let me remind you that Bob is going to be signing copies of the book over in

the shop next door if any of you want to pick up one.

As we heard President Kennedy say about the great work of a generation,

“Let us begin.” Let me end today by echoing Lyndon Johnson and saying

that, “With the help of all of you here today, let us continue.” Thank you

very much. [applause]

END