American History Hit - JFK: The Most Popular President?

Episode Date: November 16, 2023

Who was JFK? How popular was he in his lifetime? And how did his untimely death impact the world's memory of him?In this first of two episodes to mark 60 years since President John F Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, we are exploring his personality and popularity.Don is joined by Fredrick Logevall, Laurence D. Belfer Professor of International Affairs, Harvard Kennedy School. Fredrick's most recent book is 'JFK: Coming of Age in the American Century'.Produced by Sophie Gee. Edited by Joseph Knight. Senior Producer was Charlotte Long.Discover the past on History Hit with ad-free original podcasts and documentaries released weekly presented by world renowned historians like Dan Snow, James Holland, Mary Beard and more.Don’t miss out on the best offer in history! Enjoy unlimited access to award-winning original documentaries that are released weekly and AD-FREE podcasts. Get a subscription for £1 for 3 months with code AMERICANHISTORYHIT1 sign up now for your 14-day free trial https://historyhit/subscription/You can take part in our listener survey here. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Want to explore even more history? Sign up to History Hit, where you will discover history from around the world. From the American Revolution to prehistoric Scotland, there is plenty to discover. With your subscription, you'll unlock hundreds of hours of exclusive documentaries, with a brand new release every week, exploring everything from the ancient world to World War II. Just visit historyhit.com slash subscribe to bring the past alive. November 22nd, 1963. The morning skies have lifted over this part of North Texas

as the smiling 46-year-old President John F. Kennedy and his wife Jackie greets the teeming throngs lining the route through downtown Dallas, waving from within their limousine. It is estimated some 150,000 people have turned out this Friday to welcome the presidential couple. Kennedy has specified to the Secret Service that during this day, early campaign tour, he wishes the bubble top to be removed from his vehicle. He wants to be available to the people, these Texan voters, especially in a city he lost in the election three years prior.

First Lady Jackie sits to the president's left. Ahead in the middle seats, Texas Governor John Connolly and his wife smile and wave as well. At 1229 p.m., the Secret Service agent driving, one of two agents seated in front, steers the limo left. down Elm Street, into what is called Dealey Plaza. The car moves slowly, around 11 miles per hour. As the president looks to his right, he waves to the crowd assembled along the curb in front of the Texas Book Depository Building and on the grassy rise beyond it.

An agent in the motorcade ahead radios that they are five minutes out from the president's scheduled luncheon stop outside of town. At 12.30 p.m., over the rumbling of car engines, buzzing radios and cheering and applauding crowds, shots are fired. The president stiffens, putting his hands to his neck. Governor Connolly feels a hard blow to his back as a bullet passes downward and forward through his wrist and thigh. He is pulled onto his wife's lap. Then another shot. Another bullet strikes the back of the president's head.

He falls lifelessly to his left, into his left. wife's arms. Half an hour later, in a nation now shocked and appalled, President John F. Kennedy is officially pronounced dead. It's been referred to as the end of Camelot, the loss of American innocence. Certainly, it is one of the lowest moments of our nation's history. The day hope seemed to perish when John Kennedy was felled by an assassin's bullet. One p.m. on November 22, 1916. brought the announcement. John Kennedy's presidency, and his life, had come to an abrupt and horrifying end. This triggered the advent of what has now been decades of commissions, hearings, endless debates,

and for so many, a sense of utter distrust and suspicion. A 60-year discussion that has never found its resolution, or at least not for a wide sector of American society, still preoccupied with alternative theories on who was responsible for the crime. Was John Kennedy killed by a lone gunman filled with hatred and resentment? Or was his murder the consequence of a cynical and violent conspiracy? Let's admit at the outset, our podcast here will not solve this confounding mystery. Sadly, American society may never definitively learn who killed JFK or accept the answer as final.

So, instead, this special two-part series marks this 60th anniversary by focusing on why the questions remain. Why are there still such holes in the accepted account? What evidence supports or refutes the official version of events? Over the next two episodes, I'm joined by several guests you will likely have never heard from before, including one Secret Service agent present at the scene on that awful day. who discovered potentially revealing evidence that has yet to be fully explained. We talk to experts about what other evidence is yet to be released. We face down this stubborn question,

why does half the nation still believe that JFK died not just in the crosshairs of a lone gunman, but perhaps as the victim of an insidious conspiracy? But before we do this, let's look at the man himself. John Fitzgerald Kennedy, son and Sion, whose personality and character is so often eclipsed by his untimely passing. Hello, folks, and welcome to American History Hit. An awful lot in the world is named in honor of John F. Kennedy. Airports, highways, boulevards, schools, and performance halls.

These honors, these tributes, were in most cases, sadly prompted by his tragic and untimely death, but it also speaks to the goodwill JFK had built up in life and in his short time in the White House. There was a magic to the man. Everybody saw it. Leadership qualities, great intellect, great orator, good writer, war hero. But it was also how he represented the United States at that time in that post-war era.

The good faith we'd build up as a nation, resisting fascism, fighting for human values, the betterment of civilization, all reflected in the striking face and carriage of that impressive man. John F. Kennedy represented the once shining promise of the American century, and when three gunshots brought him down in so many ways the whole nation went with him, and it would take generations to recover. But John Kennedy also had plenty of detractors in his day, resistant to the America he sought to realize. And in more recent years, much about the man's personal life has come to the fore, smudging his legacy. It all raises questions. What would J.F.K.'s presidency have become had he not died in only its third year, what were the policies he pursued,

and did they have a chance at success? This month is the 60th anniversary of the Kennedy assassination, an event still rife with hurt, anger, and mysterious questions. You're going to be hearing a lot of that this month, some of it even here on a later episode. But before all that negativity, let's focus on the positive. What was it that made JFK the man and the president he was? a leader still so cherished today. And for this, we're in the company of Dr. Frederick Logovon, author and professor of international affairs at Harvard Kennedy School. Greetings, Professor.

Nice to have you. I'm just delighted to be with you today. I think it's important as this 60th anniversary looms to take stock of why we think of JFK still so much. I mean, you look at any opinion poll of past presidents, and John Kennedy is right up there. I mean, with Washington and Lincoln and Lincoln, an FDR. I mean, top five, why do you think? Well, I've thought a lot about this question. And of course, as I work on this biography, it's one that I'm going to continue to think about. I think it's something I have to grapple with and will grapple with in the book. It comes out to some degree,

I think, in the first volume, which takes the story to 1956. And now I'm telling the rest of the story. I think, Don, you know, it has several causes. Some of this probably has to do with the circumstances of his death and that it was captured on film, plays in a kind of endless loop in our minds. Some of it has to do with the glamour of his White House, with his beautiful family. But I think the most important reason for this legacy that you referred to so powerfully in your introduction is about his inspirational message that I think resonated not just with Americans, but actually with people around the world. I'm originally from Sweden, and though I don't remember this, wasn't even around for most of his presidency,

my parents tell me about how that message of, ask not what your government can do for you, but what you can do for your country, resonated, even with Swedes. And I think with other people around the world, and this idea that for Americans, what unites them is more important than what divides them, which I think is a core message that he preached, not just as president, but as congressman, as a senator, Senator from Massachusetts is one that I think carries great power still today. His lifetime is really a journey of American consciousness in that regard. It's the baby boom generation, I suppose. But really, John F. Kennedy symbolizes so much.

I mean, the approval ratings speak volumes. If you take the modern presidencies from 1938 to like 2012 is where I'm looking at, and average their approval ratings, it's about 54%. JFK, 70%. I mean, he's way above the mean average. And this is only for three years in the White House. I mean, it's remarkable. It is. And I found this striking, too, because I looked into these same figures, and I was trying to get an average. And what was so striking to me was that these high approval ratings existed before the assassination. I was interested in knowing what the difference was between how people viewed him after the Dallas tragedy. But even before that, you see very high approval ratings. And interestingly, you see a lot more support from across the aisle, that is to say, Republican voters. in 1961, 62, 63 held higher views of the Democrat than you will see in subsequent or in previous administrations. So that tells you something about this message that he was able to convey to Americans. I think you're absolutely right that this is a really strong feature, I guess you

could say, of his legacy. Yeah. He's really pre-partisanship in terms of the government, But it's also that post-World War II time when unity had already been achieved and was solidly in place in the government. And it kind of fed off itself. Even in my childhood, that was kind of the norm. And that turned around completely. What I would say in response to this is that you're absolutely right. And we should recognize it's not to take anything away from Kennedy. But I do think that period of the early 1960s before the convulsions that would take place later in the decade, I think it was an easier time to govern.

And I think it would have been for victorious Nixon, had he won in 1960, of course, a very close election between the two of them. But it's still the case that it also, in my view, has something to do with Kennedy and what he presented. And there's a sense that what he is going to do is he's going to presume good faith on the part of American politicians and other leaders. That is to say, we're going to engage in good faith reasoning as politicians, both Republicans and Democrats. I think that worked and that was powerful. So this conversation between us is going to, as I mentioned in the introduction, concern itself with the man himself and the realities of that time before the assassination. There are so many interesting biographical features of his life that go into creating this story,

both the takeoff and the flight as presidency. But I find it very heartening to talk about the reality of his presidency at this time just before. I mean, he's struggling with the same factors that any. president is at this time in his career. This is the third year of his first term. Americans are programmed to distrust their leadership from the get-go. And so presidents tend to decline in popularity. And in fact, at the time of his death, he was declining in the face of the next election, which was a year from then. So there's real gnarly stuff that this guy is dealing with just like practical matters before everything gets crazy, you know, before he dies. Speak to me about the

beginnings of his career. We're talking about a war hero. Let's start there because we could go even further back and talk about a very privileged childhood born of great wealth. Joseph, his father, was a huge stockbroker and made tons of money. He's on a cloud as a kid, along with his brothers and sisters, nine of them and living quite a life. But after the war, let's take it from there. What happens? Well, he comes back, as you say, from the war, I would say a genuine hero. This is something I deal with a lot in the first volume of the book, what happened in the South Pacific and why this evaluation of Kennedy. But let's stipulate here that he comes back as a hero. And the question is what he's going to do. And his older brother, Joe Kennedy, Jr., is deemed

to be the golden child by the parents and the one who is going to become politician, perhaps even president. But Joe Jr. is killed in the war in 1944. I argue that Jack, for his own reasons, It wasn't because his father forced his hand or pushed him, although he certainly did push him. But Jack, for his own reasons, decides, I want to enter politics. I want to try my hand at this. And so what we have in 1946 in the 11th district in Massachusetts, which is right where I sit today, it included Cambridge, is John F. Kennedy, this skinny 29-year-old just back from the service, doesn't really know what he's doing. He's not a particularly effective campaigner, but even then you see his ability to connect with an audience. It's quite interesting.

He wins that Democratic nomination, and as was the case then, I suppose it's the case now. If you get the Democratic nomination, you've basically got the election. So he wins then the general election becomes a member of Congress taking office in 1947 and has a fairly ordinary six years in the House. and then defeats Henry Cabot-Lodge Jr., very famous name in American politics for the Senate race in 52, which is an epic battle that sends him to the U.S. Senate. Let's talk about those early years because that's really murky for people. I mean, first of all, we should mark the fact that the war hero experience we're talking about is nothing less than a movie quality of P.T.109 and the destroyed torpedo boat that he was the

captain of, or at least the leader of. And then it's followed, when they are sunk by this destroyer, they're followed by a week on a deserted island. He saves most of his crew. He just represents incredibly strong leadership and is celebrated quite correctly so for it. Yeah, and I think that's perfectly put. And I think it's a kind of awakening for him. In other words, I think he says, you know, I may have what it takes. This episode here in the South Pacific and what I was able to do over this week in his

helping to save my crew, myself and my crew, suggests that I have attributes that could be useful in public service. So I think it's a moment for him in which he has a realization. The other thing I think that matters about the war is that Kennedy now believes that when this thing is over, the United States needs to take a leadership position in world affairs. It cannot do, according to young Jack Kennedy, what it did after World War I, which was essentially to withdraw from world politics. No, that's not going to work. We are going to be premise interparis. We're going to be first among equals. And that too is maybe something I can somehow be a part of how it is that the United States assumes this leadership position. And I'll do it maybe if I'm lucky

first as a congressman, and then who knows? He really demonstrates the instincts of a writer. I mean, he has that ability to see theme and to understand context, which was his initial career idea. You were right to point out, Joe, the older brother, incredibly handsome guy, incredibly cool guy, apparently, goes off quite bravely to fight and fly in Europe. And that's how he tragically dies an explosion in one of those bombers. They never find his body. I mean, how traumatic is that for a younger brother to lose his older brother in the midst of this conflict? My own father had that situation happen. It's a life-shaping trauma that happens to a guy in that kind of situation to any human being.

So this shapes him a lot. It certainly does. And the two brothers are close. There's a certain sibling rivalry, which I write about, and which I think is also important in that story. I suggest that some of those qualities that we've been discussing that Jack had, Joe didn't have. So, for example, you refer to his writing ability. This, I think, is a very important point you make. And that's something I think that Joe did not share.

But to have a brother, your closest sibling in terms of age and of the same gender, die in this way has got to be an incredible experience for Jack. He had effectively already lost his sister, Rosemary, who underwent a botched lobotomy in 1941, just before Pearl Harbor. And he will lose Kick, or Kathleen is her formal name, the sibling to whom he feels close. has the closest connection. She's going to die in a plane crash a few years after the war. So this experience of family tragedy is key to understanding who John F. Kennedy becomes. It begins in a certain way with Rosemary, but then, as you say, with Joe Jr.'s death in

1944. I think the death is really the engine of what accelerates his life so quickly coming back from that war. Suddenly, he's in the catbird seat of his family and realizes the opportunity at hand, not only for himself, but also for America, which is really incredible. That would go hand in hand with the fact that he'd seen the world by this time, not only in the military, but because his father was a diplomat. Yeah, I mean, that international sensibility, I think, is really important. He does have this amazing set of opportunities, beginning when he's a college student, and then continuing in this period that we're discussing now to see, as you say, much of the

world. He has a curiosity about the world that I think is really important to note. And I think, among other things, this makes John F. Kennedy all the way down to his presidency. It makes him comfortable with differing conceptions of national security. It makes him a kind of realist about international affairs. It makes him understand that people in different countries are going to have different views on what matters most to them. And I think it's going to stand to him in good stead really for the rest of his life. Honestly, I'm giving away the ending of this episode. The final thoughts on Kennedy we can talk about already is that you have a supreme intelligence that's able to process a great deal of experience in a thematic way. And to be able to utilize

that in an active sense as a leader is an extraordinary gift and a very rare one. And we have not, I would venture to say maybe a couple times, haven't seen that since Kennedy. And people recognize this. You know, even in an unconscious way, we recognize that kind of leader and follow them. I think that's exactly right. And I think it's in part then about, tell me if you agree with this, I think it's in part about empathy, that you're able to put yourself in somebody else's shoes, whether that be, you know, Nikita Khrushchev, when you are face-to-face.

during the Cuban Missile Crisis, whether it's a fellow lawmaker in the House in 1948 or a senator maybe in the mid-50s, I think that's a capacity he had. Now one could argue that in a different sense, he lacked empathy, that when he's cheating on Jackie, he's not able to put himself in her pointier shoes because he's not able to see how she might feel about this, but in a kind of cognitive sense, if I put it that way. and certainly in a political sense, I think you're absolutely right that this is a key part of who he is, and it's something we have not seen in enough American leaders. I totally agree. Well, he's also written quite a few books. By the time he gets to the Senate, he's already quite an accomplished author,

and he really is the author, which is extraordinary. So let's get through to that Senate run and the beginning of his star journey. I mean, it's always struck me as strange that Jackie enters his life, and he's already in the national. magazines, I guess it was because of the war experience, right? That's what made him such a celebrity at that point? I think so. I think editors realized that the Kennedy name was gold. Let's remember that Joe, his father, Joe Kennedy Sr. had been ambassador to the UK, was a very famous American already, had been featured in cover stories and news magazines himself, And here comes along a handsome son of the former ambassador. And he sells magazines.

And I think what's also important to note here is that his father had taught him and the other kids that image matters. How you present is going to be important in how people view you. Joe Kennedy had been a Hollywood mogul. He had seen how movies were made. I think he transferred that knowledge to Jack. and this was, as we say, gold to magazine editors and newspaper editors. No question. We should never get too far away from the fact that JFK had enormous advantages in life simply because of his father. I mean, it's just an incredible, powerful.

No question. And, I mean, getting his first job as a journalist with Hearst magazines because his father knew Hurst, you know, was like that kind of stuff. And then had his own private plane to fly around and campaign on and all sorts of perks along the way. But having said that, I quickly follow with. Yeah, but the other stuff is really substantial, and that's what's extraordinary about this guy. They are featured in the magazines, Look Magazine Life, all these magazines with their big wedding. So let's talk about Jackie and the advantages that she brought to John's career. Well, I think she's a formidable player in her own right. And this is a theme

that's emerging in my biography. I think she is very smart. She is savvy about human, relations. She becomes, I think, a real asset to him in small ways and in big ways. So she, for example, helps translate materials from the French to English that he's able to use in speeches, for example. And she is also a critic of his speechmaking. So she will say, Jack, you spoke too quickly, you spoke too slowly. You're speaking above people's heads. So she is a coach in a sense, or at least she's somebody who will help him become a better speaker, which is an important theme, by the way. He's not particularly effective early in his career,

and it's because of hard work and because of input from various people, including Jackie, that he becomes much better. They share a certain absurdist sense of humor. They both like to gossip. They're also important differences between them. She's not particularly keen on political campaigning, and she finds politicians rather dull to be, you know, at dinner parties with. And he can also find that, too, by the way.

But I think this is going to be a very important partnership for him. There's a big age difference between them. She's quite a bit younger than you. It's 12-year difference. And he was concerned about that. He said to various aides, what do you think about this kind of an age gap? But at least with one of them, namely Dave Powers, a close aid of his, I think he knew exactly what he was asking because he knew that Dave Power is

was engaged to a woman who was 12 years his junior. So he asked him, is this okay, knowing the answer that he was going to get? But yes, big age difference. I mean, she's 31 when she's the first lady. That's extraordinary. I can't imagine what that feels like. I couldn't handle it now, let alone then. And her personality, her tone, her voice, all of that belies the actual, really supreme intelligence that she was and proves later on in her career. But she's a savvy and cagey woman, but you wouldn't have known it from the way she presented herself necessarily in the media. No, absolutely correct. And this is something that can't be underscored enough. And it's going to be something that I developed, as I said, in my second volume. I'll be back with more American history

after this short break. One of the aspects of most controversial at this point, which seems so silliest to us in this modern age, was his Catholicism. The fact that this was a Catholic family, the Kennedy's Irish Catholic, even more controversial. They were several generations, moved from an Irish were really looked down upon in this country. But more to the point, there was an inherent problem with supporting a Catholic candidate in that the assumption would be that he would answer to the Pope that any Catholic would. And how could you have a president in the United States in this world of separation of church and state have that faith? Yeah, I think the Catholic question, if we want to call it that, was one that loomed very large

for him. On some level, I think it's there from the beginning of his political career. I think his father had experienced the social exclusion that came with being Catholic. So at Harvard, he was not able to join the elite final clubs because of his Catholic faith, nor was Joe Jr. when Jack comes along, partly because of his charm, his greater social intelligence, he actually was tapped, as they say, for one of the final clubs at Harvard. And so he's beginning to break free from what Catholics had experienced, if I can put it that way. But nevertheless, in politics, the question becomes, what kind of ceiling will you have as a Catholic candidate, especially if you should try to go all the way? It's one thing to run for office in heavily Catholic Massachusetts, either for the House or the Senate.

It's another thing to wage a national campaign. And so this becomes a overriding issue in 1960. And I think people are divided. Will this help Jack Kennedy because of the strengths that he will. have in heavily Catholic states, or will it hurt him? And I think it's still hard to this day to make a determination in 1960. Was it a net positive or a net negative? One could argue, I suppose, that somehow it comes sort of in the middle. It helped him in some states, arguably helped him in the electoral college, but hurt him in the popular vote overall. But this is something he grapples

with. They think a lot about. He makes, I think, a very important speech to, Houston ministers meeting in September of 1960 in which he stresses his attachment to the separation of church and state and says, I will not be beholden to the Vatican. And I will make the determination on the basis of what's best for the United States and nothing else. And I think that speech diffuses a lot of concern that ordinary voters will have about his candidacy. The other controversial aspect of him is that he's so young. He's the youngest president ever elected to office to this day. Teddy Roosevelt was younger, but he came because of, you know, he was vice president. He was 42. JFK is 43 years old. I fall into this trap already in this

conversation. We always think of him as kind of the baby boom president. But in fact, he was a depression-era child formed by all those experiences and world wars. But actually when he's elected, he's a 43-year-old president. We think of him as a baby boom president, but he was really from another generation. Yeah, no, it's true. And I think he's a part of a wave of young lawmakers in the late 40s who come to Washington, indelibly shaped as one would be by their wartime experience. He then rises pretty quickly to the Democratic nomination, takes about 13 years for him to rise to the top rung, and runs against Richard Nixon, who seems much older, but he's actually only a few years older than Jack Kennedy and is himself a veteran of the war. They certainly did have a lot in

common. And it's a fascinating race in the fall of 1960. But I do think that there is a wave of Americans reaching voting age, first-time voters, maybe second-time voters, who are casting ballots in 1960. And the image of this youthful, as you say, 43-year-old preaching an idealistic message for Americans, talking about, for example, what becomes the Peace Corps, talking about what becomes the Alliance for Progress, talking about the things that he wants to do both domestically and internationally, but with a sense that we're in this together. And this is the United States. A core message in that campaign is, I want to get the country moving again, much to the frustration of Eisenhower and the Republicans who say, well, we're already moving. But it works. And that's in part because of his youthful message, demeanor, how he comes across to voters. He's in this cusp moment of America really becoming an international superpower. World War II obviously sets that in motion. But now we're figuring out new institutions, new ways of consolidating that role.

Of course, the UN had started in 1948, and that's part of this whole flow that was going on here. He's the one that's grabbing the reins of this new kind of America, this internationally-focused America. And of course, there's the Cold War to fight, and he's part of that. Yeah. And I think it's a key point that you make. And we should note that from the beginning of his political career, in fact, before he begins his political career, international affairs is what he cares about the most. And as you say, he comes of age just as the Cold War is beginning.

Typically, we date the Cold War from 1946 or 47. So it's precisely as he's entering public office. And he watches closely as the Cold War develops in the 1950s. And when he becomes president or when he's seeking the presidency, there are emerging deeper tensions with Moscow. And so whoever wins that election in 1960 is going to have to grapple with these. Jack Kennedy believes, and I think he was right about this, that even though he may not have quite the range of experience that Richard Nixon has in 1960, he believes, I understand international

affairs. I wrote my senior thesis at Harvard about this. I saw World War II up close. I fought in the war, and I've paid very close attention to developments since I took office as a congressman. I can handle this. And I'm in a position to really try to lead the United States and lead the West in this conflict. And I think that one of the reasons his assassination, if I can just jump ahead briefly. I think one reason why it resonated so deeply with people all over the world is because he was seen as the leader of the free world in a very powerful way. My parents tell me that in Sweden, little Sweden, his assassination had a profound effect because the president, they didn't even have to say the American president, the president has been shot. And he was, I think, perceived by many people

around the world as our leader. And that's powerful. Yeah. Well, and that's why so many things are named for him everywhere in the world. That was that moment. When he comes into the presidency, it's a very tight election. I mean, really tight. How did that affect him and the family on what footing was he when he first took power? Well, I think the closeness of the election surprised them. I think he and his advisors who were paying very close attention to this. They were using a lot of very modern polling methods and they thought they had a good handle on this. They expected a more comfortable win than he in the end achieved. Nixon was closing rapidly in the last few weeks of the campaign in part because Eisenhower decided belatedly to come out and campaign for his vice president,

for Richard Nixon. So as you say, a razor thin margin. And I think that makes Kennedy and his team inclined to tread quite carefully. He wanted to have some Republican presence in his cabinet, which he did. He wanted to have Republicans as top advisors, which he did. He wanted to govern from the center, which he did. I think he would have governed from the center anyway. He was a centrist politically. And still ultimately, I think a, let's say, center liberal Democrat in terms of his policy positions. I don't buy the argument that some have made. that John F. Kennedy was a conservative. But he's a centrist, and that's evident in his book, Profiles and Courage in 1956, for example. But he certainly was strengthened in his conviction

because of the closest of the election that I'm going to be treading quite carefully in terms of my relations with Congress and in terms of the policy positions that I pursue as president. His inaugural address, January 20th, 1961, says it all. I mean, really, it's one of the great American speeches. It suffers the unfortunate factor of one line standing out from a whole bunch of other thinking. Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country. Great line. Amazing theme. But really, it's in the midst of an extraordinary speech about the internationalism of America. It's really true. You put it perfectly. What's remarkable, Dawn, about the address is that it's about 1,300 words long. I mean, think about that. This is not a long

address. And he preached to Ted Sorensen and others who worked on the speech, basically that, you know, we're not going to use three words when two words will do. And so there's not a word wasted if you go back and look at this address. And it's a very powerful address about America's place in the world and the role that America will play. Some interpreters see it as a very hawkish address, that it's almost belligerent in its Cold War rhetoric. I don't see it. I think in the latter part of the address, it's maybe not quite conciliatory, but it's a different message than I think many people have suggested. And let us not negotiate out of fear, but let us never fear to negotiate. And it gives a trust that I think is very powerful in that direction. Also notable, of course,

is that I think there's a single sentence devoted to domestic policy. And that was put in there quite late in the game. It is very much an international speech, and one of the great inaugural I think we've had. I would put it up there in the top three or four inaugural addresses that we've had as a nation. At the time, as he's taking office, he's already dealing with this. I mean, the Bay of Pig situation has been cooking up under Eisenhower's administration. He's coming in already dealing with the Cold War in a very active way and to his detriment. Yeah, I think there are tensions building and this plan to try to oust Castro's government in Cuba, or at least destabilize it in a very profound way, is a plan that has already been hatched and been developed under Eisenhower and Kennedy, despite misgivings that are really quite deep, personal misgivings. And on the advice of others who are also skeptics, I think he's not at all certain that this will work.

But he says, in effect, I'm new, I'm untried. I've got to show here continuity between this administration and the previous administration. I'm going to approve this plan. And of course, it ends in disaster. Castro emerges stronger from this failed intervention by exiles, basically, who have been trained by the CIA. And Castro defeats them. He emerges stronger. what's notable about this is that Kennedy accepts responsibility. Politicians often find it really

difficult to admit a mistake. He says to the American public, basically, you know, the buck stops with me. I accept responsibility for this. And in fact, his poll numbers rose. It's a lesson, it seems, for politicians, that sometimes they should trust voters to accept that mistakes can be made and they can learn from those mistakes. But it's, as you say, a very tense time in these early months, partly because of the Bay of Pigs. Also, it speaks to his relationship with the press. I mean, he was almost the press in his career. And so he can speak that language very well.

He's in those press conferences. Another lesson for modern presidencies is to watch him communicate with these journalists, which he does so beautifully. And it's really fun to watch. Yeah, I mean, I think to spend probably too many hours on YouTube, noodling around and looking at these press conferences, it's just extraordinary. Because as you say, he almost became a journalist. He was one for a while. That could have been a career for him had he not entered politics, I believe. And so he could engage with reporters and columnists and to some extent editors, but more the reporters in a way that I think few elected officials could do. He could speak their language. I think they appreciated that. There's lots of evidence to this effect that they, to a degree were seduced by Kennedy's approach. to their craft and what they did. And he was interested. He would say, you know, I read your piece

last week. And I thought you got this right. Maybe this was wrong. But the fact that he could relate to reporters on that kind of a level meant a lot. There's a very strong human instinct with Kennedy. I mean, you get that feeling of trust because a person is able to communicate and connect with you. I think that's really what those journalists were responding to. We always want to talk about him seducing him and how friendly the press corps was to him. obviously, like they were to FDR. But the truth is, it's because they had that ability to connect, and that's respected and appreciated. I think you're absolutely right about this. There's another element that I think is also interesting, which is that at the same time, he kept a certain

distance, which I think is also important. I think Americans want to feel that their president is somehow apart from them, that there's a sense of mystery, that he is on some level on a different plain than they are. And so a candidate like Hubert Humphrey, who of course contested that 1960 Democratic nomination, Humphrey was very chummy with the press. He too liked to talk to reporters, but he was almost too available to them. Kennedy had this unique ability, or maybe not unique, but unusual ability to maintain a certain distance, to keep a certain mystery about himself and his family that I think made him more interesting to journalists and to their readers. And a little bit exotic. He was a higher plane for them. How much does the Cuban missile crisis,

which happens then a year later, turn that all around? Coming out of the Cuban missile crisis, I imagine the man was just soaring in approval ratings. He came out stronger from his handling of that crisis. It's interesting, he was worried, as were his aides, about the effect of the missile crisis on the midterm elections, which took place just a few weeks after the resolution of the crisis. But broadly speaking, there was a sense that the Soviets had backed down. There wasn't knowledge yet of a sort of deal that had been reached, whereby the United States would remove Jupiter missiles from Turkey in exchange for the removal of the Soviet missiles from Cuba. So I think he came out stronger, but he also came out committed, as did Khrushchev. And I think this is important, committed to taking steps to reduce the tensions in the superpower relationship.

And so what we see over a period of months in 1963, and arguably right down to the Dallas assassination, what we see is an improvement in Soviet-American relations, tangible improvements that had the effect of lowering the temperature. An interesting counterfactual question is, had Kennedy survived, would further steps have been taken? Could one imagine a scenario in which the Cold War ends, full stop? And I'm going to try to explore that in my book, even though it's a counterfactual, even though it's resistant to a conclusive answer. I think my sense is that he and Cruciv were taking these steps and an opportunity was lost here, as in so many other areas, by the tragedy of Dallas.

Because of his early death, we're left wanting in every regard. I mean, that's why it's such a brutal thing. I mean, it was brutal because it was a terrible killing, but it was an open wound for this country that would never be healed. And we'd always be this gigantic open question. And, you know, it's just unrelenting in our history. It really is. It's like Lincoln, I suppose. Same thing.

Yeah, I think you're right about that. And it'll be, I think, tricky for me to write about it. But I do need to address that. Maybe in the epilogue to my project, I guess we have to be a bit careful about exaggerating the degree to which it all could have been different had he survived, that some of the things that would erupt later in the decade were already subterranean themes. that were ready to explode. I think, nevertheless, another counterfactual that I've written about that I think is worth noting that with respect to Vietnam, and I've written a lot about

the war, I do think that the best argument here is that a surviving Kennedy avoids a large-scale American war in the jungles of Southeast Asia, again, for reasons that I've laid out. Civil rights, I think that we need to give lots of credit here to Lyndon Johnson and his ability to pass, hugely important, if still imperfect, but hugely important civil rights legislation, that happens after Kennedy's death. But it happens in part because of the steps that Kennedy belatedly took. I do want to underscore belatedly, but the steps that he belatedly took on civil rights, especially in his final year in 1963, remarkable address from the Oval Office in June, in which he makes civil rights a moral issue in a way that it hadn't been before. Johnson is able

to build on that and then pass this important legislation. So I guess before I come down, Don is with you that something terrible happened in Dallas, needless to say, and it went beyond the loss of a president. But it also speaks to possibilities that were not realized, could not have been realized, even with Lyndon Johnson's important, in many respects, hugely laudable efforts. It will never be denied the fact of his murder. A brutal traumatizing, the worst sort of public event. The open wound of his killing is still not healed. The assassination is one thing, but it's the unbridled spirit that was dashed.

That still hurts now, the sense that hope was lost in the moment of his death. One wonders if any amount of truth can ever solve that problem or heal that wound. I mean, we will still have to see, and I suspect we won't within our lifetimes, which is incredible. I would relate that back to Lincoln. I think there is a very, very strong link between the two of them for obvious reasons, but also for the what-if quality of their presidencies and the doors that they had opened. Yeah, and I think Jackie is interesting on this point too, because Jackie, as you probably know, said later in the day on the 22nd of November, even as she's reeling from what's just

happened and she was witness to the thing, obviously. She says to people, we need to look at Lincoln's funeral. I want to see how this was done with respect to Abraham Lincoln. What can we learn from that funeral a century ago? It was almost exactly a century before. I think Jackie had a sense, even in this moment of grief, that there's an important tie between my husband, just killed, and Abraham Lincoln also felled by an assassin's bullet.

And I want to make sure that this funeral has a direct link. to Mr. Lincoln's funeral. At least with Lincoln, we knew why. That was the only big question of what the heck happened, and that's going to always ride on the coattails of all of what we've just discussed. It's a tough conversation. I really appreciate you. The capacity of Kennedy's spirit and mind reflecting the capacity of his times,

or the complexity of his times, I suppose. And amazingly, one matches the other, at least for a magic moment there. Dr. Frederick Logueval, I appreciate your time. You've mentioned an upcoming project. What are you working? So I'm working on the second volume of this biography. It's our life and times, as they say, of John F. Kennedy, wanting very much to tell the story of his life, but also the story of America in these 46 years that he lived and tell the story to some extent of international affairs. So this is why it became a somewhat longer project that it was going to be originally. It was originally slated to be a one-volume study. But that's what I'm immersed in fully now and making pretty good progress. Frederick Logovall is the Lawrence D. Belberg Professor of International Affairs at Harvard Kennedy School, Professor of History. His most recent book is JFK coming of age in the American century, 1917 and

1956. Fred is working on the second volume of his JFK biography, as we've said, and we really look forward to that. Thank you very much. Thank you so much for listening to this episode of American History hit. Grateful you made the time. And I hope you found out something new today. If you're interested in more JFK, please be aware. In our next episode, I will be talking with Paul Landis, who on November 22nd, 1963, was a secret service agent present at the assassination, just behind the president's limousine. I'll also be chatting to Jefferson Morley and Thomas Waylon about why we can't seem to accept the official answer to the age-old question of what happened to JFK. Do make sure you hear this upcoming episode and others beyond. Do me a favor, please, and click

like and follow wherever you get your podcasts. It really makes a difference. And we'll see you next time. This podcast includes music from Epidemic Sound.