The Kennedy Promise

...Quite prophetic...

...She is intent on describing human elements: emotions, convictions, loyalty, wit...

...In many ways Margaret Truman affirms her esteem for her father...

...Congressional critics of the Administra- tion, however, fear that the dismantle- ment of OEO.could establish a dangerous precedent...

...Such a man was Harry S. Truman, as his daughter Margaret Truman Daniel attests in a recent collec- tion of memories entitled Harry S. Truman...

...It is good for a chuck- le, by the way, to watch the current agonizing of the liberal senators who have only discovered the problem of a strong president when faced with one not doing what they want...

...JFK the politician has been obscured by JFK the martyr...

...Kennedy, Johnson, McGovern --all were in tune with the zeitgeist of the liberal-intellectual elite of their times, and their failures were not merely due to their personal shortcomings...

...Campaigning throughout the nation, he named the "Number One" problem in America to be, in various places: the depressed areas, the decline in farm income, and unemployment...

...The ability of government to in- crease the happiness of its citizens is very limited, and promises to that effect can lead only to failure, disillusionment, discontent, and upheaval...

...There were other forms of appeal for support of the President, to be sure...

...But so far from their being repealed, they are on their way to being institutionalized--to being rendered conventional, un-subversive, in the end uninteresting (though not un-influential...

...This is a very dangerous belief to be held by the president of the United States, especially by a president who adds in his brief tenure five divisions to the army and five tactical fighter wings to the Air Force...

...President but as "Dad...

...not what your country can do for you...

...His dismissal of General MacArthur is once more succinctly justified...

...Where is Ted Sorensen when we need him most...

...From the "philosopher-king" president down to the The Alternative April 1973 "philosopher-gladiators" at RAND, there were all these bright young Harvard grads speed-reading great books, speed- hearing great music, speed-viewing great art at all hours of the day and night and ruling the country besides...

...In Eisenhower's farewell address in which he warned us of the "military-industrial complex," he also warned against the distortions of education produced by government research contracts and "the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite...

...Phil- lips, to the chagrin of his congressional opponents, has made it clear that he en- joys this task and that he intends to be the last Director of OEO and not neces- sarily the best...

...The minds that wanted to bring their brand of the good life to nations all over the globe have tired of that, but not of imposing this vision on their fellow Americans...

...The expectations raised by the Kennedy Ad- ministration far exceeded what they or anv government could accomplish, and the disillusionment brought the erstwhile believers to the streets in the latter sixties...

...In fact, sentiment is what makes it delightful and enjoyable...

...Part of his paper-thin margin over Richard M. Nixon (a politician of the p'~riod) was due to the "missile gap" JFK discovered, which JFK's Secretary of Defense debunked not too lon~ after the campaign...

...Kristol is 'undoubtedly correct in his summation of the seventies...

...The tribute Fairlie tries to dissociate the Kennedys' failures from those of liberalism, unconvincingly...

...The scope of this book might indicate a long-involved political and psychoanalytical biography, but such is not the case...

...President Kennedy was allowed to make it seem desirable...

...These innova- tions may or may not have been alto-gether desirable...

...Campaigning in the Midwest in 1960, he wasn't above a little corn: "The American cow is the 'foster mother' to the human race and a great asset to the nation...

...In office, he urged us all to sacrifice for the country he led, "Ask the ideological ovcrtones one might ex-pect, and many conservatives have indi- cated their opposition to the President's policies...

...handling it "'a minute before midnight" a bit risky...

...Fairlie effectively contrasts this with Eisenhower's prescription for meeting the hostile ideology of commu-nism: "To meet it successfully, there is called for, not so much the emotional and transitory sacrifices of crises, but rather those which enable us to carry forward steadily, surely, and without complaint, the burdens of a prolonged and complex struggle...

...One may even think that, on balance, they have been alto-gether undesirable...

...The icon-smashers include British liberal Henry Fairlie as well as a gentleman named Halberstam (in the ironically-titled The Best and the Brightest and a certain Ms...

...To be president of the United States, in part responsible for the future of the world, yet main-tain a sense of self-honesty as well as sanity, is a difficult task...

...And the hell ot it is, they don~t export 8 i For a free ~:apy of single thing we NATIONAL RE-VIEW, write: Dept...

...Yet he told the readers of Missiles and Rockets magazine that "Certainly, na-tional scientific goals will be our first objective...

...Margaret Truman is interested in portraying her father first as a man, then as the .political leader...

...the Cultural Gatherings which were to degenerate into radical chic parties by the end of the decade...

...He must he prepared to ex- ercise the fullest powers of his office --all that are specified and some that are not...

...She wants us to know that Harry S. Truman, burdened with enormous re-sponsibilities yet considerate of the far-reaching effects of his decisions was moved by sincere intentions...

...Kennedy's plans made real did not cure the ills of Amer- icans, and Johnson and The System were blamed...

...Having out-spent his rivals to capture the Democratic can- didacy for president in 1960, Kennedy ignored the half-dozen men he had hinted he would choose as vice-president to pick a running mate on pure political expe- diency...

...This sentimental biography is also a revealing and intimate portrait of a president...

...No one will fault Margaret Truman for justifying all her father's actions or concluding that her father was an exceptional man...

...If the appeal to patriotism wasn't enough, there were other appeals, such as to the desire to survive thermo-nuclear war...

...The Washington press has given wide publicity to Phillips, a modern day Cato (as he cheerfully calls himself), bent on the destruction of Carthage...

...The admira-tion, affection, and respect which she shows for her father is evidence enough "SEEN AT THE PENTAGON, shopping for a slightly used B-52: Gloria Steinem and Betty Friedan...

...Robert Frost at the inaugura- tion...

...The result will be an Amer- ica quite different--but not altogether different--from the America we have known...

...His efforts in behalf of civil rights show a commendable dedication to equality and justice...

...I could boycott...

...Clinch (The Kennedy Neurosis), none of them coming from the long-critical Right...

...Not allowing Castro to have nukes was wise...

...If a leader of such exceptional vigor, commanding an ad-ministration of such unusual talents could not achieve his purposes, there must be something at fault with the poli- tical institutions which balked him...

...The Alternative April 1973...

...The Nixon Administration's memoran-dum serves to illustrate the dilemma with which Congress is faced...

...Ask what you can do for your country...

...His early criticism of Senator McCarthy for "reckless accusations" and "gutter tactics" confirms his hatred of demo-goguery...

...D. W. Cooper paid to General George C. Marshall is a necessary acclamation of an often ignored but distinguished statesman...

...senate years and the Truman Committee, the Roosevelt-Truman ticket af 1944, the brief months as vice-presi-dent, the bequeathed presidency, termination of the war, postwar confer- ences, cold war origins and policy, and life in retirement...

...OEO is to be dismembered by the end of Fiscal Year 1973 (June 30, 19"/3) before congressional opposition to gath- er and develop a legislative counterstrat- egy" can be accomplished...

...Beginning with the election of 1948, Margaret Truman, largely from personal correspondence and recollection, retells her father's political career and reminisces about family life...

...We were in danger, but a good bit of that danger may have been due to the man who promised "we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hard- ship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty...

...Presi-dent Kennedy had long shared this view of the presidency...

...In a leaked Adminis- tration memorandum, which received wide circulation here on Capitol Hill, the strategy for the successful conclusion to the dismantlement of OEO was laid out...

...Fairlie pro-tests, "Power is no doubt necessary...

...Eisenhower promised less, yet would not have re-neged on what he promised...One cannot imagine Ike refusing air cover at the Bay of Pigs because it would embarrass us at the U.N...

...The fact that he was not, from day to day, exercising any political leadership within those institutions went unnoticed...

...Cri-ses" were handled through the choice of appropriate "options...

...E, 150 E. 35 Street, N. Y. 10016...

...She in-cludes the Truman heritage, youthful experiences, military involvement in the First World War, short -lived business ventures, association with the Pender-gasts, involvement in local politics, of crisis and mission has its uses, how- ever: "If the zeal and the intelligence of the Kennedys were not to appear to be harnessed to personal ambition alone, they must be seen to be consecrated to a loftier and more strenuous ideal...

...And the unfortunate fact that President Roosevelt snubbed and belittled Truman perhaps best ex-plains his being thrust into the presidency unprepared and ill-advised for the challenges which awaited him...

...Crisis-man- agement is not a good substitute for pol- icy, although crisis options are usually simpler and more ciear-cut than policy choices, and the mandate that eluded one in an election can be gotten tempor- arily in response to crisis...

...Each day we draw nearer to the hour of maximum danger, as weapons spread and hostile forces grow stronger," President Kennedy told us in his State of the Union speech in 1961...

...How-ever, as Irving Kristol in a recent col-umn observed: "The '70s, as I sense their drift, will be years of assimilation and adaptatiqn, of 'cooptation.' Big gov- ernment is not going to go away, any more than pornography or abortions or women's lib will go away...

...His devotion to party loyalty as the bulwark of demo- cracy is similarly laudable...

...The author concludes about the Ameri-can people, "Round and round they went, between 1961 and 1968, when they all fell down, tired of building nations, tired of stabilizing regions, tired of global con-flict...

...Everyone smiles kindly upon a daughter who insists that "father knows every-thing...

...Unfortunately, John F. Kennedy believed it when he said, "Great crises produce great men...

...Fairlie cites Kennedy's pre-presidency belief in a strong leader as expressed in a speech in January, 1960 before the National Press Club: the chief executive "must be the Chief Executive in every sense of the word...

...Howard Phillips, a former Republican congressional candidate from Massachu- setts who has long been associated with the arch-conservative Young Americans for Freedom, has been appointed to car- ry out the dismantlement of OEO...

...Rather like a blank check drawn on the lives of the Amer- ican people...

...The rhetoric Harry S. Truman by Margaret Truman Morrow $10.95 The Spanish philosopher Jose Ortega y Gasset once remarked that a real hero is a person with the strength to be him- self...

...Fairlie says it so well: Kennedy "in fact achieved so little that the people could hardly be blamed if they concluded that their political processes were inade- quate to their tasks...

...What was done with the power...

...As Fairlie points out, the period of the fifties and sixties was one in which the intellectual elite was enthralled with the concept of the strong chief executive, a head of state who could wield the power of the federal government to do "good things" here and abroad...

...Fairlie's book is well-written, engros-sing, well-substantiated...

...This explains why the controversy has not taken on The Kennedy Promise The Politics of Expectations by Henry Fairlie Doubleday $7.95 Is nothing sacred...

...Having this faith in the character-building efficacy of crisis, hav- ing beefed-up the military, and being concerned with image, such a president might ignore Senator Keating's warnings about the build-up of missile bases in Cuba until the situation seemed critical...

...His "wrecking crew" and "gaulleiters," as they are invariably called, are equally pleased with their assignment...

...This she illustrates by revealing the man known not as Mr...

...Johnson carried out what Kennedy started, in Vietnam and in a variety of domestic programs, yet he received the vilification of that constituency which had been John F. Kennedy's, the intel-lectual establishment...

...As Fairlie and others have noted, those Keunedy-idolaters who credit the Kenne- dys with being the dominant figures of the 1960s shouldn't absolve them from the nastiness of the decade...

...One of the most effective was the linking of JFK with "images of excellence": the dinners with artists, Nobel laureates, and the like...

...It will do much to place the Kennedy years in proper perspective, and it helps explain the mood of many Americans today...

...Kennedy knew the value of image-making and quoted Burke to the effect that "...the whole world marks our demeanor...

...Fairlie's thesis is that the Kennedys were basi-cally politicians who clothed their pursuit of power in lofty rhetoric, promised more than they could deliver, and raised ex-pectations to sueh a pitch that when they were not satisfied by the political sys-tem, the system came under bitter attack...

...and the nation, ennobled by their example, rriust consecrate itself in turn...

...Pretentiousness is usually self-deception, and hypocrisy is a sin unto oneself as well as others...

...The Ken- nedy years bi'ought promise and youth and vigor to the White House, and little in the way of legislative accomplish-ment...

...Evidence abounds: John F. Kennedy was a masterful politician, politician, politician...

...Seems the men ot Liechtenstein have done it again: voted 2,128 to 1,675 (a much wider margin than two years ago) to deny women the vote...

...Truman's dim view of newspaper objectivity accurately foreshadows pres- ent-day controversy...

...Congressional reaction, in the form Book R iew of the customary hot air, has be~l, vocif- erous if nothing else...

...Add to this the complex and mystifying role of father, and the man who can still be true to himself is a gifted and rare individual...

...If the President is successful with his programs it might not only be the first step towards returning this country to the path of fiscal responsibility, but it might also eventually signal the reversal of the Great Society philosophy...

...Then such a president might scare the hell out of all of us by issuing a last-min- ute ultimatum to the Soviets that in-volved intercepting their ships on the high seas...

...Both "charisma" and "options" seem destined for history's trash bin...

...The Eisenhower years seem now to have been years of tranquility...

...The gap between promise and performance, between a j/ha~ for freedom and the war in Indochina has proven disheartening...

...Although the first session of the 93rd Congress began on January 3, 1973, and the dis- mantlement of OEO is not to be com-pleted until June 30th of this year (six months), it is considered.,douhthtl by congressional observers that the languor- ous mechanisms of Congress can get in gear in time to meet this challenge...

...But as one of Phillips' conservative cohorts wry- ly observed to me, "'the meeting of con- servative minds here at OEO is not to be confused with the YAF reunion," which apparently is not to be held until later in the year...

...Although it is the belief of many that the distinction of the for- mer is a prerequisite for the latter...

...They argue that it should be the responsibili;y of Congress, and not the Exe~tive, to determine the nation's priorities and how the American tax dol- lar should be spent...

...But little more has been forthcoming...

...Historical revision- ists are dumping on Camelot and the Kennedy Clan...

...No one should expect this book to be objective...

...But this does not make the present debate any easier, nor its outcome any more certain...