The Kennedy Men_ 1901-1963 - Laurence Leamer [97]
On August 1, Roosevelt called his ambassador to the Court of St. James’s. Afterward Joe dictated his recollection of the conversation. “I wanted to ring you up about the situation that has arisen here so that you could get the dope straight from me and not from somebody else,” Joe remembered the president saying. “The sub-committee of the Democratic Committee desire you to come home and run the Democratic campaign this year, but the State Department is very much against your leaving England.”
“Well, that’s all very good,” Joe remembered replying, “but nevertheless I am not at all satisfied with what I am doing and I will look at it for another month and then see what my plans are. I am damn sorry for your sake that you had to be a candidate, but I am glad for the country.”
Nary an honest word had passed between the two men. The president preferred to keep his troublemaker away from America until after the election, while Joe feared what a third term for FDR would mean. Joe believed that Roosevelt, Churchill, the Jews, and their allies would manipulate America into approaching Armageddon. He had begun to press his case not only with words but also with what could only be perceived as threats.
“For the United States to come in and sign a blank check for all the difficulties that are faced here is a responsibility that only God could shoulder unless the American public knows what the real conditions of this battle are,” he wrote Welles on September 11, 1940, leaving unsaid who he considered the best-qualified person to inform the Americans. “I can quite appreciate their desire to help this country fight this battle but they should have a very clear notion for what the responsibility will entail for the American people to take up a struggle that looks rather hopeful on the surface but is definitely bad underneath.”
Joe found ample time to write his children from London. He took special care in his letters to little Teddy. Joe was aware of the petty dissembling of his youngest son. He was not going to confront his son, but told him, “I certainly don’t get all of those letters you keep telling me you write to me.”
Little Teddy had been shuttled around from school to school, and from home to home. He did not have the strong hand of his father pointing him down the pathway that all the Kennedy sons must tread. Instead, he had these letters from Joe in which his father placed himself at the epicenter of danger.
“I am sure, of course, you wouldn’t be scared, but if you heard all those guns firing every night and the bombs bursting you might get a little fidgety,” Joe wrote. “It is really terrible to think about, and all those poor women and children and homeless people down in the East End of London all seeing their places destroyed.”
All eight-year-olds are literalists. Poor Teddy couldn’t know how much his father was exaggerating, and that Joe was safely in the country, belittled by Londoners as a coward. He must surely have feared that his father might never return. “I know you will be glad to hear that all these little English boys your age are standing up to this bombing in great great shape. They are all training to be great sports.”
Life was a merciless competition, and even here Teddy was being compared to others; he too was supposed to be a “great sport.” His father concluded: “Well, old boy, write me some letters and I want you to know that I miss seeing you a lot, for after all, you are my pal, aren’t you?” Teddy wasn’t his pal at all, for Joe was never a pal to his sons, never a comrade.
In his time alone, Joe had apparently sought solace in the arms of Clare Boothe Luce, the brilliantly acerbic playwright and journalist. Clare combined the coquettish skills of a courtesan with an ambition for power and influence the equal of any man’s. That she and Henry, her husband, no longer had a sex life together hardly appeared to shake their marriage, for the games of