Listening In (44 page)

PRESIDENT KENNEDY AND CHAIRMAN KHRUSHCHEV AT THE SOVIET EMBASSY IN VIENNA, JUNE 4, 1961.
LEFT TO RIGHT:
U.S. AMBASSADOR LLEWELLYN THOMPSON, PRESIDENT KENNEDY, CHAIRMAN KHRUSHCHEV, AND SOVIET FOREIGN MINISTER ANDREI GROMYKO

CALL TO MARSHAL JOSIP BROZ TITO, OCTOBER 24, 1963

President Kennedy was always eager to work his charm on foreign leaders, particularly when those leaders had shown a disposition to thwart the will of the Soviet Union. When Yugoslavia’s Marshal Josip Broz Tito came to the United States for a visit in the fall of 1963, President Kennedy reached out personally to convey his regards.

JFK:
Hello?

OPERATOR:
Yes, please.

JFK:
Hello?

UNIDENTIFIED:
2192.

OPERATOR:
Ready.

JFK:
Mr. President?

TITO:
⁹
Yes, I am …

JFK:
Oh, how are you? This is …

TITO:
I am very good, Mr. President …

JFK:
How are you feeling? Are you feeling better?

TITO:
Yes. Much better.

JFK:
I’m very sorry about some of your difficulties in New York.
¹⁰
And I’m very sorry you didn’t get a chance to get to California and some other parts of the United States.

TITO:
Thank you, thank you. It was not so bad.

JFK:
Well, they always, they boo me in New York, too, sometimes. So, I hope that you have a good trip back, and we were very glad you came to the United States.

TITO:
Thank you, thank you very much.

JFK:
And give my best to Mrs. Tito.

TITO:
Thank you.

JFK:
And as I say, we’ve been glad you’re here, and we want you to come back sometime.

TITO:
Yes.

JFK:
And to see California and Massachusetts and the rest of the United States.

TITO:
Yes, thank you.

JFK:
Good.

TITO:
I hope, but I hope also that I will meet you in Yugoslavia. [laughs]

JFK:
[laughs] All right, fine, good, thank you very much.

TITO:
Bye.

JFK:
Bye-bye.

MEETING WITH ASIA SPECIALISTS, NOVEMBER 19, 1963

In early 2012, the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library released its final batch of tapes, including meetings from the last week of President Kennedy’s life. In this meeting, held on November 19, he spent an hour talking with Asia specialists about a major trip to the region, with a particular focus on Indonesia and its charismatic but volatile leader, Sukarno. Kennedy displayed fascination with Sukarno and his troubled nation, full of resources and potential, yet held back by roiling internal conflicts. Throughout his life on the public stage, Kennedy had sought new ways to recast the Cold War and the binary logic of the 1950s. A major exchange of visits with Sukarno was designed to be a first step toward this end, and in this meeting Kennedy committed to a sixteen-day journey that would take him to, among other places, Malaysia, Thailand, the Philippines, Taiwan, Japan, Korea, and Indonesia. Kennedy was well aware that using the full prestige of a presidential visit and his particular popularity was “the most powerful lever we’ve got,” in the words of one of his advisors, and he hoped to use the visit to improve political conditions in Indonesia. Also present at the meeting were the U.S. ambassador to Indonesia, Howard Jones; the secretary of state for Far Eastern affairs, Roger Hilsman; and Michael Forrestal from the National Security Council.

JFK:
Why don’t we proceed. I think we’re pretty well in agreement as far as what we can do on all these matters we’ve discussed. I’d like to go up there, I don’t know if I can go to all the places where Roger’s got me going, I’d like to go, I don’t know if politically …

JONES:
How long would you be thinking of, sir?

JFK:
I don’t think I can be away more than sixteen days.

JONES:
What month, sir?

JFK:
Well, I want to go to Latin America twice, if I can, or at least once. [unclear]. Actually, politically, Latin America is going to be a big part of policy issues. Actually, politically, domestically, the only place that really makes a hell of a thing is Japan, because it’s impressive to Americans. Eisenhower’s difficulties, and so on. So going to Japan and having a successful visit would be very helpful. The Philippines are pretty old hat. But going to see Sukarno, who is not a political asset here, and we got a hell of a reception, and it was well done, and it would make an impression.

THE OVAL OFFICE, AUGUST 14, 1961

A
presidency is often defined by its most glorious ceremonial moments. That is certainly the hope of administration officials, in any administration, and an elaborate machinery of pomp and circumstance contributes to that stage-managed effect. Elevated speeches, triumphal processions, and state dinners are only a few of the cogs in that machinery, and remind us that our democracy still retains features from the monarchical system it displaced.

John F. Kennedy reveled in all of the above, and his charisma infused the ceremonial events with an unusual degree of excitement between 1961 and 1963. That excitement still colors his memory, and many of the most iconic images from that time show him outside, speaking to a huge throng and basking in their attention, in places ranging from the East Portico of the Capitol to Rudolph Wilde Platz in Berlin.

But the tapes restore some balance by offering a window into the hard work of a presidency—the long indoor meetings, the disagreements, and even worse, the constant agreements, arrived at too quickly, by underlings all too eager to please. “The Burden and the Glory” was a phrase he used in his 1962 State of the Union address, and that title was later given to a book of his speeches. In the excerpts that follow, a very human President Kennedy vents his occasional frustration at the burden that lies not far below the surface of the glory.

And as the private dictation of November 12 indicates, President Kennedy faced real worries as he headed into what promised to be a bruising campaign year. Reelection would validate the New Frontier and give him four more years to consolidate the progress of his first term. Indeed, it would allow him to complete his original campaign promise from 1960 and shape the entire decade along the lines he had first sketched out in his convention speech, creating a time of youthful activism, broader civil and economic rights, and a willingness to confront difficult problems with courage rather than complacency.

Rejection, on the other hand, would constitute a crippling setback, and place the United States on a very different trajectory. Personally, it would have been devastating as well; John F. Kennedy would have left the White House as a forty-seven-year old man, with no political office, a single term to mull over, and well-chronicled health problems. Writing a memoir based on these recordings might have been one of the few consolations available.

The events in Dallas removed all of those speculations and gave us a far different history that we are still coming to terms with. The New Frontier did not exactly end; indeed, it is likely that Kennedy’s martyrdom advanced many of the causes he cared about, especially that of Civil Rights. President Lyndon Johnson cited his memory powerfully as he rounded up the votes needed for the great Civil Rights Act of 1964. But those achievements came at a cost, including the departure of much of the South from the Democratic coalition, the rise of a powerful right, and a stridency that has never left our politics since. A tragic entanglement in Vietnam, far deeper than it is likely John F. Kennedy would have permitted, was also pursued by President Johnson, sometimes with the explanation that Kennedy would have made the same decisions, although most of the evidence disputes that theory. Like most theories, it remains subject to interpretation.