Jack Kennedy - Chris Matthews [162]
But if America had attacked those missile sites, killing the Soviet soldiers and technicians there to deploy them, Khrushchev had in mind another target: West Berlin. “The Americans knew that if Russian blood were shed in Cuba, American blood would surely be shed in Germany.”
The bitter coldness of that statement would have surprised the American president only in tone. It’s precisely what Kennedy had on his mind when everyone else was thinking Cuba. It’s hard to imagine any other president—let alone the youngest one ever elected—resisting the pressures the way Jack Kennedy had managed to. Despite the many buddies he relied upon, despite his brother’s indispensability, despite the curiosity about the world that drove him, the Bay of Pigs had taught him whom he could best rely upon: himself.
Bobby Kennedy offered the sharpest assessment of what his brother had done. “The final lesson of the Cuban missile crisis is the importance of placing ourselves in the other country’s shoes. During the crisis, President Kennedy spent more time trying to determine the effect of a particular course of action on Khrushchev and the Russians than on any other phase of what he was doing. President Kennedy understood that the Soviet Union did not want war.”
It was his detachment that saved us. Another man would have reacted with force to the Soviet treachery. He would have shared in the righteousness of the cause, been stirred to attack by the saber rattling. Jack resisted. He was not moved by the emotion of others around him. He knew his course and stayed to it. Thank God. The boy who had read alone of history’s heroes was now safely one of them. He had done it not by winning a war, but by averting one far more horrible than any leader in the past could have imagined.
36
President Kennedy in West Berlin
37
“I have a dream.” Dr. King in Washington, DC,
August 28, 1963
38
Caroline and John Jr. in the Oval Office
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
GOALS
Blessed are the peacemakers.
—Matthew 5:9
Politicians are, at different times, driven by grand notions and near necessity. Speak of the next election when they’re dreaming loftily, and you risk being dismissed as a hack. Speak of high purpose when they’re hearing the footsteps of a rival, and you invite instant dismissal.
Jack Kennedy was both an original and a consummate politician. Yet his stewardship of priorities still resembled those of a college student. With a number of classes on his schedule, he gave most of his attention to some, did the best he could with others, and let a few slide. It’s common enough. He was always most committed to what interested him. What made all the difference was the love of history that never failed to engage him.
In the first two years of his presidency, he had been making history. His accomplishments were linked in a singular way to what he most highly valued: his commitment to the Peace Corps, to peaceful competition in science and space travel, to containment of nuclear arms, to civil rights. But he also needed to be reelected. He began his third year in office pushing for a tax cut. It was an attempt to court a constituency that was resisting him: a previous year’s poll had shown that 88 percent of businessmen viewed him as hostile to their interests. However, many of them didn’t even go for his idea of a tax cut. The view then from Wall Street and Main Street both was that balanced budgets were the best thing for business.
Kennedy had campaigned on just such a principle, only to grow concerned over time that the economy simply wasn’t growing as it should. His chief economic advisor, Walter Heller, believed tax cuts would stimulate spending and investment, thereby increasing employment. Eisenhower’s commitment to fiscal conservatism had spiked the jobless rate in the fall of 1960, hamstringing Nixon’s quest to succeed him. Looking ahead to November 1964, Kennedy wanted that rate heading downward—and believed a slash in taxes would do the trick.
He also