WILLIAM LEUCHTENBURG: The other aspect of your book that the press has made a great deal of is your discovering new medical records. And you deal with that in considerable detail and certainly detail that none of us has ever know about before. I’m reminded of a book that came out a generation ago about the time that I think I first encountered you, Bob. A book appeared suggesting that a certain American president had an unnatural relationship to his sister.
And my colleague David Donald, one of America’s great historians and biographers, my colleague down at Columbia said, "Well, that’s all very interesting, but I want to know what this tells us about the Bland-Allison Act," meaning the leading currency issue of the day. And this is a similar kind of question here. After one has found all of this evidence about this -- you alluded to it briefly in your opening remarks -- how does it affect our understanding of his policies or the way he behaved as Chief Executive?
ROBERT DALLEK: Well, I think with the womanizing, with the medical history, the fundamental question that the historian, the biographer has to ask is, "Did it have any impact on his conduct of the presidency? That’s the most important part of it. What impact did it have on making policy on Vietnam, civil rights, the other domestic initiatives, the Cuban Missile Crisis?"
The medical was much more important to me because tracking down how the womanizing might have deterred him from carrying on or dealing with domestic or foreign policy, I think maybe Richard Reeves put it best in his volume, President Kennedy, in which he said, "The womanizing took him no more time than to arrange a tennis match." And maybe that’s too flippant but, on the other hand, I could not see clear evidence that there was a deterrent to behaving in thoughtful, considered ways about major issues.
But the medical issues were a constant struggle for him to deal with day in and day out. And we had -- my medical colleague and I who reviewed the records -- we had some MAR, Medical Administration Records, and we could set these down alongside, for example, the Cuban Missile Crisis and track day by day the medicines he was taking, the fact that they increased the hydro-cortisone that he took and salt tablets in order to deal with the pressures, the tensions that he was under because he was an Addisonian. His adrenal glands don’t function and he needs this to keep him steady and going effectively.
What my medical friend, Jeff Kelman, told me was, if it were not for the medicines, he probably could not have performed effectively as president. He could not have carried off his performance in the Cuban Missile Crisis. Now, when he went into the privacy of his quarters at night, maybe he was a bit zonked. Maybe he was, you know, driven in one direction or the other by the medicine, but I tried to set the medical records down alongside various crises, Berlin, the Bay of Pigs, Alabama, civil rights.
Did he seem less than lucid, less than cogent? And, of course, we have the tapes. The tapes are so revealing and so helpful in tracking his performance and what he does. And I found him consistently cogent. And he did have a kind of iron will, I think, too, a kind of strength of character to … But I share with you the feeling, which I think you probably have, this was something that we would never want to do again. He was making a bet that he could perform effectively as president.
I think all of us are entitled to the privacy of our medical records, but when it comes to presidents, I think we’re entitled to know as much as we possibly can about their physical and emotional health. They have their fingers on the nuclear trigger. This is something which I don’t think should be sacrosanct. And, of course, they hide their medical histories.
We know, going back to Grover Cleveland, he hid it. Woodrow Wilson hid it. FDR in 1944, Roosevelt didn’t want to know but nevertheless, as we know, Churchill’s physician at Yalta said, "The President has hardening of the arteries in the brain. He will be dead in three months time." And he called it right on the mark.
So I don’t think that his hiding this … It was a cover up; I think that term is an appropriate description of what they did about his medical problems.
And it continued after his death because I heard from physicians and others who knew about what was going on, the records were destroyed. His urologist, a man by the name of Herbst, was approached by the FBI and asked to turn over the urological records. And he said, "I have to consult the family." He did. Bobby Kennedy told him, "Destroy the records," which he did. A young man at the time in the White House as an aide to Admiral Burkley, a physician named Young, tells me he believes that the Burkley medical records were destroyed at Bobby Kennedy’s behest.
So it was a cover up. We wouldn’t want to do that again. Happily, I think Kennedy was able to carry it off. But it’s a cautionary tale.
WILLIAM LEUCHTENBURG: I’m going to ask Bob one more question before opening the floor to questions. You’ll see that there are microphones in each aisle and if you have questions for Bob, if you would line up in order behind the microphones, I would appreciate it.
This is my last question, Bob, and I’ve enjoyed this immensely.
ROBERT DALLEK: Thank you.
WILLIAM LEUCHTENBURG: You mentioned in your book that one of the two figures most responsible for the transition between Kennedy’s election and his taking office was the Columbia political scientist, Dick Neustadt. And I recall when Neustadt returned from one of these meeting with President-elect Kennedy, we had lunch at the Columbia faculty club and he said to me, "The Kennedy presidency will bring many things, but the new Jerusalem will not be one of them."
And after Kennedy died, when Neustadt who was certainly well disposed to Kennedy was asked about him he said, "I think that John F. Kennedy will only be a flicker, that he will be lost in the parade of other presidents, that history," Neustadt said, "will not have much space for John F. Kennedy." How do you respond to that, Bob?
ROBERT DALLEK: Bill, I’ve thought of that because Neustadt said the same thing to me. We once spoke about this and he said exactly this, "Oh, in 200 years it’s hard to imagine that Kennedy will hold some kind of significant place in the country’s history." I’d be more optimistic about this, Bill. I think, getting back to your point about style. Style and substance are not entirely divorced. And given the kinds of presidents we’ve been seeing -- have I said enough for you?
WILLIAM LEUCHTENBURG: Of course, you realize, Bob, what I’ve just been inviting you to do is to say about the book on which you spent so many years and which you are about to promote is about a figure of minor historical significance. I’m not surprised by your response. The floor is now open for questions.
So there isn’t any particular disadvantage to being in any particular aisle, I’ll start with my left. Let me just say as a ground rule, no speeches, please. Make your questions to Professor Dallek as succinct as you would. Thank you.
Q: About three months ago I was in this room when we discussed the Nixon tapes. And at that time we had a very distinguished panel of people: historians, scholars, writers. And I asked the question touching on Vietnam that you dealt with. And I asked whether they thought that Kennedy would have accelerated the number of troops in Vietnam. None of them had an answer. None of them knew. And yet you come up with an analysis saying that, even though he went from 650 to 16,700 that he would have, in essence, in my words, backed off at some point.
I have not read this in any other scholarship and want to know what is your evidence for that?
ROBERT DALLEK: Well, first of all, unlike them, I wrote an 800-page book on John Kennedy and I spent a lot of time reading, studying, thinking about this. And I think if you read an article I have in the current issue of the Atlantic Monthly June issue, I lay out the major pieces of evidence that I think support this proposition. And I think he would have been very dubious about Americanizing the war in Vietnam.
I don’t deny for a minute that there was increased involvement on his part, that he was concerned. The Green Berets were part of this operation. But the Americanization of the war, to the extent that Lyndon Johnson engaged in it, was just something that I do not believe John F. Kennedy would have committed to because of everything I read about his view of the military, about his view of being bogged down with Cuba, about his view of being drawn into a morass in Vietnam.
Maxwell Taylor, his Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said that Kennedy had a visceral aversion to putting ground troops, that is combat troops, into Vietnam. And Kennedy himself said, "This is not like Korea. Korea was a direct act of aggression. And he spoke about how different this was from Korea and how, if we got involved in such a conflict, it could open up a painful breach in the United States among the public as to what we were doing there.
I can only say I can’t recount all the evidence I have in my book, but I think it is a fairly compelling case and that’s what I would argue.
Q: My name is Michael Youvanovitch and I’m Serbian. I will be very short in my remarks. Because I am Serbian, I cannot be objective. I’m subjective, because Serbian people like Kennedy more than any other nation in the world. It was written in ’64 that every single family had John F. Kennedy’s picture. And one of the Communist leaders told me that when he died, Serbian people grieved as much as they grieve when King of Yugoslavia was killed.
You spoke about domestic and foreign policy. In his inaugural speech, Kennedy said, "My fellow Americans, ask not what America can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country." It was capsulated formula for his domestic policy. In the next sentence, he capsulated his foreign policy. Remember what was the next sentence?
ROBERT DALLEK: You tell me. I’m a historian. I forget things.
Q: Okay. I’ll remind you. Next sentence was, "My fellows citizens of the world, ask not what America can do for you, ask what we together can do for the freedom of man."
WILLIAM LEUCHTENBURG: Sir, you are being very eloquent. Now, can you frame a question for us?
Q: That was formulation. I would like to make a remark. Romans had a saying, "De mortuis nihil nisi bonum," which means "say nothing but good about the dead." When Solzhenitzyn came to Harvard, he criticizes American people have the right to know. He said people have the right not to know. Every president is a role model. What was the reason that you have in your book to say something that does not contribute to the great of the greatest American presidents? Some people think that you wanted to publicize your book. I would like to defend you. How could I defend something that you should not have done?
ROBERT DALLEK: Well, I think Bill Leuchtenburg put it very well, previously. His womanizing is part of the historical record.
Q: I don’t hear you, could you come closer.
ROBERT DALLEK: This is a part of the historical record. And after the Bill Clinton experience, I think this is a historical fact about the intern, which is not necessarily salacious, especially if you are putting in just two lines about it. I did not know the woman’s name. I did not try and find out who she was. I had no intention or desire to embarrass her. It was one of the newspapers that brought this forward and she said she’s relieved now that it is out in the open. But my feeling is that it is a historical fact and it should be there.
Q: (simultaneous conversations) Just a minute. Just a minute. It was very important.
WILLIAM LEUCHTENBURG: No. No. No. We cannot have colloquies. (simultaneous conversations)
Q: You talked longer than I did. Both of you.
WILLIAM LEUCHTENBURG: You are out of time. You are out of time. Please.
Q: Yes. Thank you. Kennedy’s challenge to all of us to become citizens of the world is really what motivates my question. How would you describe Kennedy’s vision of the United Nations at that time in history and, also then, how would you describe Kennedy’s vision of multilateralism within his foreign policy at that time?
ROBERT DALLEK: Wonderful question. I think that he understood that America was not able to go it alone in the world. He went to Canada. He did not like the Prime Minister of Canada. He said some unkind things about him in private. He was not wildly happy about Charles de Gaulle. He had all sorts of tensions with Khrushchev. But he understood that the United States lived in a very dangerous world, that allies were essential to our national well being and to the future peace of the world.
And, as Winston Churchill once said, "The only thing worse than having allies is not having them." And he was committed to building these relationships and, also, he was profoundly concerned about the third world, about Africa. A friend of mine, Phil Kaiser, was his Ambassador to Senegal. And Phil tells me that he was so concerned to assure a kind of victory for hearts and minds in Africa. He raised the consciousness of -- at least the people in his administration -- of matters relating to Africa. I don’t want to glamorize it as to suggest that he took phenomenal initiatives, but it was important to him. And he was a foreign policy president. He had traveled. This is what he knew, much more than knowing about civil rights, knowing about the plight of African-Americans in this country. He was much more attuned to questions of war and peace and having good relations with allies.
Q: All right, Bob. Two questions. Well, actually, two remarks …
ROBERT DALLEK: I just want to say that this is Sheldon Stern who spent more years at this library than I ever did and he’s bringing out a wonderful book on the Cuban Missile Crisis with Stanford University Press. Next month Sheldon?
SHELDON STERN: Yes. Thank you very much. Two points. One, I just wanted to agree or to give you another argument for the Vietnam question and that is for those who say that McNamara, Rusk, Bundy were Kennedy people, they should all listen to the Saturday, October 27th meetings when he stood up against everyone of them and did not do what they wanted him to do. So I mean I think that is an extremely important point. If there had been a vote that day, he would have been just about the only one to vote "Yes" and they all voted "No."
ROBERT DALLEK: And like that famous Lincoln episode …
SHELDON STERN: And like the Lincoln episode, precisely. And then the other thing, which I wanted to disagree with you, I think that, which you said twice, that Kennedy would have won in ’64 by a similar margin in terms of Johnson’s victory. I don’t think that is the case. I think he would have lost much of the south. George Wallace, in his interview here at the library, makes that point and I think he was quite right. They would have carried many southern states against … As a matter of fact, Barry Goldwater himself said that he knew he had a chance against Kennedy. And as soon as he heard Kennedy had been killed he said, "There’s no point in running because I can never beat Johnson." But he ran anyway, but that’s beside the point.
ROBERT DALLEK: Except Sheldon, I think he would have certainly kept Johnson on the ticket because of the point you are making.
SHELDON STERN: Oh, absolutely.
ROBERT DALLEK: His sensitivity to winning some of those southern states and, of course, that’s what Johnson gave him in 1960. He gave him Texas and a handful of southern states, which were crucial in allowing …
SHELDON STERN: But the difference was civil rights between the four year interim.
ROBERT DALLEK: Sure. That had become a hot issue. But there is some wonderful material I came across. Some people in the south were writing and, I think -- especially middle class southerners -- who wanted to free the south from the burden of segregation, the burden of apartheid. It’s hard to know. And I think your argument is well taken, but whether he would have lost that much of the south, I’m not sure. But he still would have won a victory.
SHELDON STERN: I agree completely.
ROBERT DALLEK: One of the biggest victories, I think, in presidential history. Thank you.
Q: Mr. Dallek, we’re all struck then, as now, by Kennedy’s charisma and personal style, was so affable and magnetic. I’m curious. Were there particular nuggets, particular things that you unearthed in your research that you hadn’t previously known that were new and exciting for you that fed into the charisma?. Anything like a rhetorical tool that he used or something sort of specific that you unearthed that you found interesting and compelling?
ROBERT DALLEK: Well, I think the most striking aspect for me there was reading the medical records. And as Bill said, the extent of his illnesses simply were not known, seeing that he was hospitalized nine times between 1955 and ’57, once for 19 days, twice for a week. And I was just taken aback by the extent of his medical problems and all the medications he took and how he was able to function. I just marvel at this.
And then to have the audacity to run for president. He’s doing this when he’s hospitalized and the public doesn’t know it, nine times. He’s revving up to run a presidential campaign. Now maybe this is foolishness, audacity, but the guy had a kind of determination, iron will that I found very impressive. And so it made me feel all the more sympathetic to him and seeing him, I guess, as more of a charismatic and appealing figure.
WILLIAM LEUCHTENBURG: Yes.
Q: Could you talk a little bit about after the Johnson election in ’64, his decision to keep most of the Kennedy cabinet together. I think that’s a big part of that story and you’ve written two books on this. And that’s a key transition and you hear about it and people talk about it. But could you really talk about it, how that helped Johnson and how that hurt him?
ROBERT DALLEK: Well, I think it speaks volumes about Lyndon Johnson’s psychology. He wanted to be president in his own right. But what he wanted so badly was for the Kennedy people to accept his legitimacy as president. To wit, after the assassination, when they were on Air Force One, about to go back to Washington, he takes the oath of office. He didn’t have to take the oath of office. Under the Constitution, as I understand it, the minute the President was killed, the vice president became president. Now, he did this as a ceremonial gesture and he insisted that Jacqueline Kennedy come forward. Some people have seen this as rather cruel because there she was standing with her blood-spattered suit on. And he wanted her there as a sign of his legitimacy. He was a brilliant politician, very sensitive to these political nuances. And I think he wanted the cabinet … He told people like Arthur Schlesinger and he told Bobby Kennedy that, "I need you now more than your brother needed you." See, because he knew that there was also going to be speculation that he might have had a hand in doing Kennedy in and, of course, the flames of this sort have been fanned by Oliver Stone in his very foolish movie of JFK.
I was thinking that he was deeply worried by this. And there were people around him like John Connolly who told him, "Get rid of these fellows. They’re not your folks." And slowly but surely, a number of them did drift away, like Mac Bundy. Schlesinger left very quickly. Sorenson left. Pierre Salinger left. But I think he saw it as an essential ingredient of giving him a kind of legitimacy.
WILLIAM LEUCHTENBURG: Yes, Johnson, incidentally, called Pierre Salinger, Peter.
Q: I’m Joseph LeMond. I have some fascinating things here I would like to check out with you. Ever since 1840, in increments of 20 years, there has either been a death or an assassination in the presidency, which went up to Ronald Reagan who survived the assassination. I don't know about George Bush, but he was elected in 2000. And then it says, "Both Lincoln and Kennedy went to Congress in 1846.
ROBERT DALLEK: Well, Lincoln went in 1846.
LeMOND: Oh, excuse me, Lincoln went In 1846 and Kennedy in 1946. Are you familiar with these increments?
ROBERT DALLEK: Yeah. I’ve heard these. And I don’t know what to make of them.
LeMOND: Well, it’s right here. It’s written out like that. It was Lincoln in 1860, Kennedy in 1960, both had civil rights, both were shot on Friday, both shot in the back of head. Their wives were present. Both were southerners. Wait a minute now.
WILLIAM LEUCHTENBURG: I think we are going to have to cut this, because we are running out of time and I can see there are more people.
ROBERT DALLEK: My answer is don’t run for president in those even years.
LeMOND: I’ll show it to you later.
WILLIAM LEUCHTENBURG: Actually, Kennedy was aware of those 20 year intervals. And it’s described in his physician, Janet Travell’s, book about Kennedy and she tells him this and she says, "You don’t believe in anything like this happening do you?" And he says (inaudible) doubt. There is a kind of melodramatic aspect of this. Yes.
Q: I’d like to go back, Bob, to the …
ROBERT DALLEK: This is Martin Sherman, who is professor of history at Tufts University.
MARTIN SHERMAN: And whose dissertation advisor was Bob Dallek, and, therefore, I’m related to Bill Leuchtenburg once removed. My grandfather.
ROBERT DALLEK: ...(inaudible)
MARTIN SHERMAN: I’d like to go back to the big counter factual of, if Kennedy had lived, what would have happened in Vietnam? For almost 20 years in my lectures, I always argued the opposite of what you’ve argued in your book. And I began to change my mind in the mid-1980s when it was revealed by Dean Rusk that he had been called into Kennedy’s office on what, the 27th I think it was, and told to arrange a meeting, should things not work out, between Andrew Courtier, I think, at Columbia and the Secretary General of the United Nations, who was then to announce a trade between the missiles in Turkey and the missiles in Cuba to avoid what the military had committed itself to.
And this is a question really about character and decision-making. John Kennedy took, I think, the most difficult decision that I know of any president ever taking when he refused to commit the American military during the Bay of Pigs to a follow up. He was three months in office. And it was an extraordinary act of political courage and, potentially, political suicide. This man had a sense, as you pointed out in your book, in the article, in your talk, of the limitations of military power.
And I’m really sort of following up on your question. Not only is there all of this evidence that Professor Dallek has, you know, revealed, but there is character there. And I think that the most profound support for the argument are the Bay of Pigs decision, the Cuban Missile Crisis decision, which shows how in these deep, deep commitments and crises, he was different than Nixon, he was different than Johnson, and he was somebody who would not have gotten involved.
And I guess since we have to put this as a matter of a question, do you agree?
ROBERT DALLEK: Marty, you know what they say, great minds think a like. I would just add to that the wonderful tape, which Sheldon, of course, and I both have listened to, and know about, Kennedy talking to two or three of his aides about the American military and he says, "You know, these fellows in the foreign service, they have no cojones. Now, these guys in the military, they have cojoness but they don’t have any brains." I think that echoes your point, Marty.
Q: Ah--
DALLEK: This is Bruce Shulman, Professor of history, my colleague at Boston University. See, we’re stacking the cards.
BRUCE SHULMAN: Bob, I want to ask you also about the great counter-factual, but not with regard to Vietnam. That is, in imagining a second Kennedy term, one which you have to admit is more successful than the actual Kennedy term on record, you’ve resolved one of the two great divisive issues of the sixties, the Vietnam War. The other, of course, is race and particularly more than a hundred urban race riots, major, violent incidents that take place every summer from 1965 to 1968. Now is there anything in the record that suggests that Kennedy would have been able to negotiate that crisis differently or better than Johnson, that he might have been able to keep the Democratic party coalition together over that?
ROBERT DALLEK: Bruce, I think that is an excellent question and an excellent point. I think this is one of the problems that Kennedy would have shouldered in a second term. I don’t think we would have … I mean, some people speculate that Johnson raised such hopes that those ghettos exploded out of a kind of frustration. But I think it is a much more complicated situation, and I doubt that Kennedy would have had great answers or different answers or better answers than Lyndon Johnson.
That was not his area, so to speak, of expertise or keen understanding. He didn’t know African-Americans. This was not part of his world. He was really divorced from that. And as I said before, I think his insensitivity to all of this was demonstrated by the fact that he does not put forward the Civil Rights Act in ’61 or ’62 and he’s dragged into it, so to speak, in ’63. The speech he makes is a great speech because he’s finally giving a kind of recognition to what I think he should have recognized earlier. And I do give him credit for learning on the job, so to speak. But I think this would have been something that would have plagued him in the second term and would have been a real difficulty for him.
WILLIAM LEUCHTENBURG: Yes.
Q: You mentioned Kennedy’s appeal to ethnics, which was perhaps the origin of American multiculturalism. I don't know. But there is another interest currently, which is American imperialism and your colleague, Andrew Bacevich, has written a book on the American empire, which he is opposed to. And I’m reading Niall Ferguson’s book on empire and there are many people who are concerned that America has an empire and doesn’t know what to do about it.
I wondered if you have any sense -- by the way, as a non-historian, my impression is that Roosevelt was opposed to empires like the British Empire. He insisted on dismantling it, I believe. And Eisenhower, also, was not in favors of empires. I wonder if you have any sense of Kennedy’s view of empires, both foreign empires and the possibility that America was building an empire.
ROBERT DALLEK: Well, Kennedy was also quite uncomfortable with these empires. And if you remember what he did in the 1950s, he was very critical of French behavior in Algeria and thought that they were making a terrible mistake in trying to hang on to that colony. And he was also highly critical of their behavior in Vietnam because his attitude was that if you are going to save Vietnam, it’s got to have autonomy. It cannot continue to feel that it is under France’s control as part of the French empire. And he kept emphasizing this idea that colonialism had passed its day.
Q: Even American colonialism.
ROBERT DALLEK: Well, yes. And I think he was uncomfortable with that and, of course, he got into terrible trouble over Cuba because instantly what the Bay of Pigs did was to echo American empire, echo American sort of imperialism in the western hemisphere. That’s why I say what’s striking to me is in the last few months of his term, when these back channel conversations are going on in which they are talking about a possible rapprochement with Cuba, this is part of, I think, what he understands is really barking up the wrong tree.
Also, let me add, there’s a lot of controversy as to whether, in fact, he knew that assassination plots were being hatched against Castro. What I say in the book and what I would argue is that he’s the Chief Executive. Whether he knew directly or not, he’s the responsible party. And if his administration, the CIA or whatever agency it was was plotting these assassinations, then he has to bear a responsibility.
But he understood that in many ways empire had passed its point of usefulness. He was a very pragmatic man and he described himself once as an idealist without illusions. And I think on this case of empire, that’s where he stood.
WILLIAM LEUCHTENBURG: I regret that we’ve almost run out of time and I think the interest that Bob has stirred by his remarks and by the book here is indicated by the fact that there are still questioners in the aisle. And I’m so sorry that we can’t find time for you. I do want to thank all of you here in the audience for coming. Bob, I’ve admired your earlier books. I think this is your finest book.
ROBERT DALLEK: Oh, thank you. Thank you.
WILLIAM LEUCHTENBURG: I think that one of the many things that your book will achieve is to stimulate an interest in Americans to come to this splendid Library and anybody who has not been here to have seen the wonderful museum and the setting here, we have sail boats bobbing in the bay, are missing something. I want to give you a chance -- we have a minute more -- to make a final comment.
ROBERT DALLEK: Yes. I would simply like to say, I’m grateful to Bill for coming here today. It was really a very nice thing for him to do and very generous. I’m grateful to the Library for having me and for arranging this. And I’m grateful to my wonderful supporters at Little, Brown, Jeff Shandler, the editor of my book, Clare McKinney, who has been putting up with my constant chatter on these car rides around New York and now Boston. And she is going to have to hear more of me in the future. It will be ad nauseam.
But everybody at Little Brown has been so supportive of this book and it’s been so gratifying. And it seems to be even appealing to a general public, so, no complaints.
WILLIAM LEUCHTENBURG: We all wish you well on it.
ROBERT DALLEK: Thank you.