Kennedy: The Classic Biography (50 page)

Repeatedly, publicly and privately, the President praised his Defense Secretary in glowing terms. But he did not refrain from overruling him. He was impressed but never overwhelmed by McNamara’s confident, authoritative presentations of concise conclusions. Presidents of the United States, he also felt, knew more about press and Congressional relations than presidents of large automobile companies. And aware that McNamara’s energetic involvement in foreign affairs was often resented in the Department of State, Kennedy had a shrewd sense of when to rely on him, when to restrain him and when to hear from the Secretary of State.

Dean Rusk possessed many qualities ideally suiting him to be Kennedy’s Secretary of State. Many had predicted that Kennedy would be “his own Secretary of State”—a phrase incapable of practical application to the administration of a huge department and Foreign Service, the daily relations with more than one hundred nations, and the simultaneous negotiations with allies and adversaries on several different fronts. Kennedy looked to Rusk for the bulk of this work, and he made clear that the latter—not McNamara, Bundy or any of the many he consulted on foreign affairs—was his principal adviser and agent in foreign relations.

But Kennedy was one of the few Presidents who, in someone else’s administration, would have made a first-rate Secretary of State himself, and his interest, energy, experience and enterprise in this area exceeded those in all other departments combined. Like MacMillan, De Gaulle, Khrushchev and most modern chief executives, he regarded peace as too important to be left to the diplomats and took the reins of foreign policy into his own hands. An Acheson, Dulles or Charles Evans Hughes, accustomed to asserting strong-minded leadership from the Secretary’s chair, would not have worked so comfortably with Kennedy. The gentle, gracious Rusk, on the other hand, deferred almost too amiably to White House initiatives and interference. He was quiet, courtly and cautious, noncommittal in his press conferences and unaggressive in his excellent relations with the Congress. Intelligent and well informed but never patronizing, he chose his words coolly and carefully, avoiding unnecessary controversies with bland and lucid logic. Recognizing in Rusk a hard worker, a knowledgeable negotiator and an experienced diplomat, Kennedy liked his terse, low-key Secretary of State—-though he could never come to call him “Dean.” Rusk in turn was wholly loyal to the President and wholly committed to his objectives.

(His loyalty was early demonstrated when I solemnly handed him, during the transition period, a clipping from a Costa Rican newspaper which contained, on that nation’s equivalent of April Fool’s Day, a faked photograph and news story to the effect that President-elect Kennedy, “on his way” to Palm Beach, had stopped off in San Jose to promise an outsized foreign aid grant. Rusk looked at the bogus clipping and nodded gravely that any commitment made would have to be kept. Although he later proved to possess a wry sense of humor, he looked more reassured than amused when I confessed it was a hoax.)

Rusk’s strong points were also his weaknesses. At times the President wished that his Secretary—whose judgment he found thoughtful when expressed—would assert himself more boldly, recommend solutions more explicitly, offer imaginative alternatives to Pentagon plans more frequently and govern the Department of State (where his subordinates included four former governors not of Rusk’s own choosing) more vigorously. Rusk at times seemed almost too eager to disprove charges of State Department softness by accepting Defense Department toughness. Too often, Kennedy felt, neither the President nor the department knew the Secretary’s views, and neither in the public mind nor in Congressional wars did Rusk share with the President, as most of his colleagues did, in the criticism for controversial decisions. The Secretary did bear with almost too much composure another kind of criticism,—that aimed at the frequent sterility of the State Department bureaucracy.

Rusk had been highly recommended by Lovett and Acheson. Kennedy, who had never met him, summoned the former diplomat from a meeting of the Rockefeller Foundation of which he was President (and where he had just met Trustee Dillon), talked briefly and somewhat vaguely with him about an article Rusk wrote on
The Presidency
, and called him the next day to say the job was his.

At no time, press reports to the contrary, did the President regret having selected him. He in fact admired the Secretary’s patience in the face of repeated press speculation on his demotion. Kennedy neither demoted him nor wished that he had started his administration with any of others originally considered and gradually eliminated. He could not take Dillon, he was advised, because he was a Republican, Bundy because he was still young, Bruce because he was already an elder statesman, and Fulbright because he had taken the Southern position on race. (Among other names mentioned, Stevenson, Bowles and Bunche had never been seriously considered, and Lovett had refused to accept this or any other post.) Kennedy recognized that Rusk’s unobtrusive modesty had more advantages than disadvantages in his kind of Cabinet, and concealed qualities and accomplishments not always known to the public.

Douglas Dillon, Eisenhower’s Under Secretary of State and Nixon’s probable preference for Secretary of State or Treasury, became Kennedy’s Secretary of the Treasury. His acceptance annoyed many leaders of both parties. It reassured many leaders of finance. Democratic Senator Albert Gore protested that Dillon was merely an “affable easy-goer” at a time when bold economic policies were needed. (Two years later Dillon was leading the fight for the boldest economic measure in at least fifteen years—the tax cut—and Gore was in the opposition.)

While he was more likely to resist or delay Presidential pressures than any of his Cabinet colleagues, particularly on international monetary matters, Dillon was also skilled at sensing which way the President leaned. He remained a liberal Republican, but never acted out of partisan motives, never differed publicly with the President and loyally supported the entire Presidential program. He became more and more of an expansionist at home, an activist abroad and a personal friend of the Kennedy family, although, except for a brief encounter at the 1956 Harvard Commencement, he had not known the President previously. In contrast with his party’s traditional policies, Dillon supported deficits to ease a recession, tax cuts at a time of deficit, the closing of tax loopholes, an expansion of foreign aid and greater economic growth to finance greater budgets.

During our first week in office, Dillon, Heller and Bell (known by some of us as the Troika) worked late one night with me on Kennedy’s first Budget design, which required an increase in the deficit. When the President reluctantly accepted it the next morning, I observed, “The press will say, Mr. President, that a spendthrift Democratic President insisted on this deficit over the protests of his Republican Secretary of the Treasury, but the truth is exactly the opposite!”

Kennedy, in securing Dillon’s acceptance, had made no commitment on fiscal policy. “A President,” he said, “cannot enter into treaties with Cabinet members.” But he did make clear at his first Cabinet meeting that the office of the Secretary of Treasury was being removed from its customary partisan role. Dillon, Rusk and McNamara were all exempted from attending any political function. Dillon, whom Kennedy had appointed only after ascertaining that he was not a candidate for Governor of New Jersey, often made speeches on behalf of Kennedy’s policies but never for either party. “If Goldwater is nominated in 1964,” he told me, “that would make the choice for all of us [liberal Republicans on the Kennedy team] much easier.”

Although on our first meeting in Palm Beach he said Joe Alsop had warned him that I was suspicious of Eastern bankers, we worked closely and harmoniously, often at night and on weekends. Like the Kennedys, millionaire Dillon could have been taking his ease on the beach instead of serving as a target for Congress. Like Bob Kennedy’s and Robert McNamara’s, his enlarged role in Presidential decision-making was aided by a reputation for thoughtful judgment, a topnotch staff and an invitation to sit with the National Security Council. And like the entire Kennedy Cabinet he was cool under pressure, more pragmatic than dogmatic and possessed of considerable intellectual capacity.

No Secretary of Labor ever possessed more intellectual capacity or boundless energy than Arthur Goldberg. An articulate adviser even beyond the field of labor, he might have been Attorney General had Bob Kennedy’s initial “no” been accepted. A tireless activist, and a skillful mediator respected by both sides, he was touring unemployment centers and settling labor disputes within days of his assumption of office. His legislative work for the labor movement in earlier years, which first brought him together with Kennedy, also endowed him with both contacts and judgment that were helpful in getting bills passed.

Early in 1962 the President was faced with the first of what he regarded as among his most important tests—the opportunity to fill a Supreme Court vacancy. He was not unaware of Arthur’s judicial interest and ability or unappreciative of his labors in the Cabinet. The fact that his appointment would place two Jews on the Court did not disturb John Kennedy in the slightest. Neither did the lack of precedent for moving a labor lawyer to the highest court in the land. But the administration’s economic recovery and expansion program—and, more particularly, its anti-inflation drive and hopes to contain steel wages and prices—had not yet reached the point where he felt he could risk losing Goldberg. He was reluctant to lose any key Cabinet member and close adviser, in fact, even though Goldberg was to be replaced by his Under Secretary, the able Willard Wirtz—equally thoughtful, equally articulate and frequently with far fewer words. After weighing several names for several days—including those of Harvard Professor Paul Freund, Negro Federal Judge William Hastie and several state judges and lawyers—the President selected the scholarly Deputy Attorney General, Byron White. But when another opening occurred on the Court later in the year, he nominated Arthur Goldberg without a moment’s delay.

Two other members of the original Kennedy Cabinet resigned their posts voluntarily. The President was genuinely sorry to lose Abraham Ribicoff as his Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare, though he could appreciate Abe’s preference for the Senate. Ribicoff, who had practically his pick of jobs, had been a long-time Kennedy friend, adviser and supporter since their days in the House together. Contrary to press speculation, Abe had preferred the HEW post to the more controversial (especially for a Jew, he said) attorney generalship; and for the HEW post Kennedy had preferred Ribicoff to the more controversial (and thus less productive of legislation) Mennen Williams. As a Cabinet member, like McNamara, Bob Kennedy and Orville Freeman, Ribicoff loyally accepted abuse and attacks for being out in front on administration positions.

The President’s original intention had been to name as Ribicoff’s successor the outstanding Housing and Home Finance Administrator, Robert Weaver, already the highest-ranking Negro in Federal Government history. Weaver’s race had blocked Congressional approval of the plan to elevate his agency into a Cabinet-level Department of Housing and Urban Affairs, but it had not, contrary to earlier predictions, blocked comprehensive housing legislation or widespread admiration for Weaver’s work. Regrettably, by the time Ribicoff had been nominated for the Senate from Connecticut and resigned from the Cabinet, a shaky stock market and increased business hostility had so darkened the atmosphere in Congress that any further revolt by Southern legislators would have endangered the entire Presidential program. There were rumblings from Northerners also that Weaver was needed in the Housing Administration post, for which he had long prepared, and that shifting him to HEW would look like politically inspired racism-in-reverse.

The President decided then on Anthony Celebrezze, who had been seeking, and even preferred, a Federal judgeship. While ethnic considerations for the first time were not irrelevant (Italian-Americans had been complaining of insufficient appointments from their ranks, and the President asked me to check with Census on their relative weight in the electorate), Kennedy had long known and admired Celebrezze for his exceptionally efficient administration as Mayor of Cleveland. After a year of Cabinet meetings, however, in which Celebrezze at some length analyzed every world and national problem in terms of his experiences in Cleveland, the President was more amused than admiring. Celebrezze performed yeoman political service, however, and during his tenure the success of HEW legislation in the Congress continued, aided not only by the Kennedy-O’Brien effort from the White House but also by such able HEW sub-Cabinet officials as the indefatigable Wilbur Cohen, Frank Keppel and Boisfeuillet Jones.

Ethnic politics also played a minor role, but no more than a minor role, in the selection of Wisconsin Tax Commissioner John Gronouski to succeed Day as Postmaster General. Gronouski had been an able administrator as well as an early Kennedy supporter and friend of Pat Lucey. “I don’t know why,” the President told his press conference,

it causes so much excitement when the name is Gronouski as opposed to…Smith or Brown or Day…or even Celebrezze…. [They say if an appointment] is of Polish extraction…therefore it must be political but if it is not of Polish extraction it is not political. I am not sure that I accept that test.

These were almost the exact words he had used at breakfast that morning in saying he hoped he was asked about Gronouski. But at the press conference he added to his praise of Gronouski’s qualifications a candid conclusion: “I think we just happen to be fortunate that his grandparents came from Poland.”

The President regretted losing Ribicoff but fully understood his reasons. On the other hand, he felt less regret over the resignation of J. Edward Day as Postmaster General and never fully understood Day’s reasons. He liked Day’s peppery personality, his comments at Cabinet meetings and, above all, his businesslike administration of the huge Post Office bureaucracy. In naming Day in December, 1960, Kennedy had observed, “Having just mailed a letter from Washington to Boston and having it take eight days to get there, I am hopeful we can improve the postal service.” Later in his administration he addressed a testimonial luncheon for Day by wire instead of letter “to be certain that [it] reaches you in the right place and at the right time.” In fact, Day did improve the service, cut costs, reduce frills and obtain an unpopular but necessary rate increase. Unfortunately he was more capable of making uncleared and uncalled-for public statements than of dealing with the practical political problems channeled through his deputy, William Brawley; and after a bitter falling-out with Brawley, who moved to the National Committee, his own decision to leave government was only a matter of time.