Jack Kennedy - Chris Matthews [146]
One of those Cape Cod evenings provided an outpouring Fay never forgot. It was when Jack outlined for him what he believed in: “I will never compromise the principles on which this country is built,” JFK told him, “but we’re not going to plunge into an irresponsible action just because a fanatical fringe in this country puts so-called national pride above national reason.” Then he went on, “Do you think I’m going to carry on my conscience the responsibility for the wanton maiming and killing of children like our children we saw here this evening? Do you think I’m going to cause a nuclear exchange—for what? Because I was forced into doing something that I didn’t think was proper and right? Well, if you or anybody else thinks I am, he’s crazy.”
When his host reached for his crutches, Fay understood he was finished with him for the evening. “He started up the stairs, straining with every step. He stopped me in the middle of the stairs and looked down at me, his face still inflamed. ‘By God, there will be no avoiding responsibility—nor will there be any irresponsibility. When the decisive time for action arrives, action will be taken.’ Turning, he lifted himself painfully up the rest of the stairs and to his room.”
Meeting with the leaders of the Cuban Revolutionary Council, the main exile group, Jack spoke of his own wartime losses, even sharing a photograph of his brother Joe. One of the leaders, who’d lost his son in the invasion attempt, said the exiles had been “taken for a ride.” He suggested Kennedy had been taken for one as well.
With the wounds from the Bay of Pigs still smarting, another Communist threat suddenly loomed on the horizon. It presented the likelihood of a far more dangerous crisis. Premier Nikita Khrushchev, who’d been making dark utterances for several years about changing the balance of power in Berlin—a city that had become such a symbol—demanded a showdown with President Kennedy in Vienna in early June.
Before heading to the summit in Austria, JFK took his first foreign trip, to Ottawa, where he and Jackie were welcomed by Prime Minister John Diefenbaker. Fifty thousand people turned out to watch the Kennedys’ arrival. After addressing jointly both houses of Parliament, Jack took part in a tree-planting ceremony. As he lifted a silver shovel of dirt, he suddenly wrenched his weak back so painfully that he grabbed his forehead in anguish. Upon his return to Washington, he needed his crutches—which he used now only in private, in front of family and friends—to walk from the helicopter landing pad on the South Lawn to the White House.
Jack Kennedy had spent the past decades stoically rising above extreme physical discomfort, and he wasn’t about to change, having now reached the White House. Less than two weeks after their return from Canada, the First Couple flew off to France, where one of the highlights was a luncheon at the Elysée Palace hosted by President Charles de Gaulle. Throughout her stay, beautiful Jackie, with her fluent French and stunning wardrobe, was an unqualified success, both fascinating and delighting the French public. People would remember that her husband joked to the traveling press corps, “I’m the man who accompanied Jacqueline Kennedy to Paris, and I have enjoyed it.” But fewer will know that de Gaulle, an entirely formidable figure, had been captivated enough by her on a trip to Washington the previous year to have commented, “If there were anything I could take back to France with me, it would be Mrs. Kennedy.”
The two leaders got along surprisingly well. During the war, de Gaulle had headed the Free French, symbolizing their country’s resistance to the Nazi occupation. With regard to the American’s coming engagement with Khrushchev in Vienna, de Gaulle was both thoughtful and candid. Urging Kennedy to keep his priorities in perspective, the French president expressed doubts about the ultimate sustainability of the Soviet system. He put little faith in their economic model, and so the Russian tide, he predicted, eventually would recede from Europe. Until that happened,