Kennedy: The Classic Biography (139 page)

History and posterity must decide. Customarily they reserve the mantle of greatness for those who win great wars, not those who prevent them. But in my unobjective view I think it will be difficult to measure John Kennedy by any ordinary historical yardstick. For he was an extraordinary man, an extraordinary politician and an extraordinary President. Just as no chart on the history of weapons could accurately reflect the advent of the atom, so it is my belief that no scale of good and bad Presidents can rate John Fitzgerald Kennedy. A mind so free of fear and myth and prejudice, so opposed to cant and clichés, so unwilling to feign or be fooled, to accept or reflect mediocrity, is rare in our world—and even rarer in American politics. Without demeaning any of the great men who have held the Presidency in this century, I do not see how John Kennedy could be ranked below any one of them.

His untimely and violent death will affect the judgment of historians, and the danger is that it will relegate his greatness to legend. Even though he was himself almost a legendary figure in life, Kennedy was a constant critic of the myth. It would be an ironic twist of fate if his martyrdom should now make a myth of the mortal man.

In my view, the man was greater than the legend. His life, not his death, created his greatness. In November, 1963, some saw it for the first time. Others realized that they had too casually accepted it. Others mourned that they had not previously admitted it to themselves. But the greatness was there, and it may well loom even larger as the passage of years lends perspective.

One of the doctors at the Parkland Hospital in Dallas, observing John Kennedy’s six-foot frame on the operating table, was later heard to remark: “I had never seen the President before. He was a big man, bigger than I thought.”

He was a big man—much bigger than anyone thought—and all of us are better for having lived in the days of Kennedy.

APPENDIX A
SELECTIVE LEGISLATIVE ACCOMPLISHMENTS OF
THE EIGHTY-SIXTH AND EIGHTY-SEVENTH CONGRESSES

1. The Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (required Senate approval only)
   

2. The Civil Rights Act
   

3. The Tax Reduction Act
   

4. The Trade Expansion Act
   

5. The Peace Corps
   

6. The Mental Health and Mental Retardation Acts
   

7. The Higher Education and Medical Education Acts
   

8. The depressed communities Area Redevelopment Act
   

9. The Manpower Development and Retraining Act
   

10. The authority and funds for
    

     
    

    1. A full-scale outer space effort, focused on a manned moon landing in the 1960’s
       

    2. The largest and fastest military build-up in our peacetime history
       

    3. New tools for foreign policy: the Disarmament Administration, a revamped Foreign Aid Agency, an independent Food-for-Peace program and a UN bond issue
       

    4. The Alliance for Progress with Latin America
       

    5. More assistance to health, education and conservation than had been voted by any two Congresses in history
       

    6. A redoubled effort to find an economical means of converting salt water to fresh
       

    7. The world’s largest atomic power plant at Hanford, Washington
       

11. Modernization of New Deal-Fair Deal measures:
    

     
    

    1. The most comprehensive housing and urban renewal program in history, including the first major provisions for middle-income housing, private low-income housing, public mass transit and protection of urban open spaces
       

    2. The first major increase in minimum wage coverage since the original 1938 act, raising it to $1.25 an hour
       

    3. The most far-reaching revision of the public welfare laws since the original 1935 act, a $300 million modernization which emphasized rehabilitation instead of relief
       

    4. A revival of Food Stamps for the needy, plus increased food distribution to the impoverished and expanded school lunch and school milk distribution
       

    5. The most comprehensive farm legislation since 1938, expanding marketing orders, farm credit, crop insurance, soil conservation and rural electrification
       

    6. The first accelerated public works program for areas of unemployment since the New Deal
       

    7. The first major amendments to the food and drug safety laws since 1938
       

    8. The first full-scale modernization and expansion of the vocational education laws since 1946
       

    9. A temporary antirecession supplement to unemployment compensation
       

    10. The first significant package of anticrime bills since 1934. plus a new act on juvenile delinquency
        

    11. The first major additions to our National Park System since 1946, the provision of a fund for future acquisitions, and the preservation of wilderness areas
        

    12. A doubling of the water pollution prevention program, plus the first major attack on air pollution m. The most far-reaching tax reforms since the New Deal, including new investment tax credit
        

    13. Major expansions and improvements in Social Security (including retirement at age sixty-two for men), library services, hospital construction, family farm assistance and reclamation
        

12. The Twenty-fourth Amendment to the Constitution, outlawing poll taxes (required ratification by states instead of the President’s signature)
    

13. The Community Health Facilities Act
    

14. The Communications Satellite Act
    

15. The Educational Television Act
    

NOTE: This listing is restricted to measures advanced as well as initiated by John F. Kennedy and thus omits the War on Poverty Bill of 1964. While he was not present to sign approximately one out of six of the measures listed above—including such important measures as civil rights and tax reduction—and while President Johnson skillfully facilitated their passage, the Democratic and Republican leaders of both houses have stated publicly that these measures, too, would have passed the Eighty-seventh Congress had Kennedy lived in—and view of his role in formulating and forwarding them—properly belong in his record.

APPENDIX B
SELECTED MILESTONES IN THE PRESIDENCY
OF JOHN F. KENNEDY

INDEX

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A

Abel, Rudolf, 517

Academic Advisory Committee, 388, 406

Acheson, Dean, 255, 256, 270, 271, 288, 334, 391, 571, 583, 584, 589, 590, 598, 675, 705, 719

Adams, John Quincy, 67, 289, 755

Adams, Sherman, 232, 238, 261, 262, 281

Adenauer, Konrad, 331, 541, 554, 559, 569, 570, 572, 578, 581, 584, 596-597, 598, 686, 705, 715, 720, 734

Adoula, Premier, 533, 638

Adzhubei, Aleksei, 515, 517, 552, 556, 598, 613n.

Adzhubei, Mrs. Aleksei (Khrushchev), 556

AFL-CIO, 52–53, 438, 439

Africa, 646, 662

“Africa for Africans,” 538, 539

Agar, H. S., 62, 67

Agency for International Development,
see
AID

agriculture, 237, 741, 742

Agriculture Act (1961), 742