The Kennedy Men_ 1901-1963 - Laurence Leamer [432]
In settling the immediate crisis, Kennedy could have pushed the Cuban issue to the back burner of international politics, turning it down to a simmer. He had an excellent device for doing so in his pledge not to invade Cuba. To be successful, he would have had to do precisely what he had done during the Cuban Missile Crisis: finesse the Joint Chiefs, the CIA, and other proponents of aggressive action almost as much as he attempted to finesse the Soviets. Instead, he diminished the scope and intent of the no-invasion pledge.
By authorizing extensive covert actions and making the threatening sounds of war, the Kennedy administration had some culpability in the Russian decision to place missiles in Cuba. Yet the president was willing to head back down that same dark road. He had signaled to the Joint Chiefs, the CIA, and the exile community that he would not sit by letting Castro luxuriate in peace and security. There were strong, willful men waiting for that signal, men who would set out again to try to kill Castro, men who would seek to poison and burn Cuban fields, men who would try to become such a thorn in Castro’s side that he and his regime would bleed to death. Among these men, there was probably no one more determined, no one more willful in his resolve, no one more obsessed with Castro, and no one more committed to his downfall than the president’s own brother.
29
The Bells of Liberty
Joe taught his sons that nothing mattered more than family loyalty. As the Kennedy brothers became men, they did not so much develop a newfound closeness as discover the ties that had always bound them. The three men shared a belief in public life as a man’s greatest sphere, a transcendent concern for the high destiny of their family and its name, and a love that in its intensity and purity was unlike anything they bestowed on anyone else, even their own wives.
The decision about whether Teddy should go ahead with his Senate race in Massachusetts was profoundly complicated, involving not only the highest political calculations but also the most intimate emotional bonds of family. The president was certainly in favor of Teddy’s advance in the world, but he did not like to spend his political capital unless he had some chance of receiving a return on his investment. If Teddy ran, many Americans might conclude that the Kennedys were not an exalted race of citizen politicians but an ersatz royalty believing itself entitled by right of birth to the highest offices in the land.
Teddy, a classic last son, was forgiven faults for which his brothers would have been harshly judged. Teddy’s life did not have the hard-won authenticity that his brothers had achieved. In his quest for credibility as a candidate, he traveled from country to country as if he were plucking exotic fruit, taking a nibble of Ireland here, a bite of Italy there, seeking not knowledge but votes. In the fall of 1961, he sat at the head table at the annual dinner of a society of Italian-American attorneys, an honor rarely accorded an Irish-American assistant district attorney for Suffolk County. After a speech in which Teddy celebrated the incomparable greatness of Italy, the group saw a film titled “Ted Kennedy in Italy,” an epic account of his “good-will mission.” By the time the film ended, Teddy was already gone, on to his next public moment.
It was just as well that Teddy brought no film back from his monthlong tour of Latin America in the summer of 1961. When he left Panama, Walter Trohan of the Chicago Tribune asked Joseph P. Farland, the American ambassador, for his impressions of young Teddy’s short visit. “I can tell you what I told Teddy the next morning,” the ambassador said. “‘The harm that you have done in six hours will take me six months to undo.’ “The