The Man we trusted
Media
Part of Panorama
- Title
- The Man we trusted
- Creator
- Freeman, John
- Language
- English
- Year
- 1963
- Rights
-
- Abstract
- The brightest legend of our time — he captured the imagination of a whole generation.
- Fulltext
- ■ The brightest legend of our time — he captured the imagination of a whole generation. THE MAN WE TRUSTED John Freeman The most grievous assassi nation in modern history has transformed John Kenne dy from an embatted pres ident, deadlocked with a hostile and suspicious Con gress, into the brightest le gend of our time. It was inevitable. The shock and the grief are universal and so great. Emotions have poured out — and they have gilded the truth. Yet that too may be misleading, for the emotions were part of the truth; and if Kennedy is re membered, as I think he may be, along with Lincoln and FDR as one of the great presidents, it will be more because he captured the ima gination of a whole genera tion in almost every corner of the world than because he succeeded in fulfilling the purposes to which he dedi cated his presidency. His great achievement, for which the world outside America chiefly honours him this week, was his leadership of the western alliance. When he took over, we walk ed in the shadow of nuclear war. Two years and 10 months later, the dialogue between the White House and the Kremlin has pro ceeded so far that no one can doubt the genuineness of Khruschev’s dismay at the young President’s death. Yet he wrought this change with out any surrender of vital in terest, by strength and not by weakness. He persuaded Khrushchev that negotiations were practicable, because he was himself clear about what could be negotiated — and firm about what could not. The test-ban treaty and the hotline are the visible signs of a business relation between the Soviet bloc and the West, in which each side re cognizes the power of the other and the suicidal folly of pressing points of difference to the brink of war. The 10 Panorama differences still exist; the Cold War goes on; errors of judgment by less sagacious men on either side can still plunge us all to catastrophe; there is no more than an agreement to disagree — but that, after all, is the essential prelude to an eventual har mony. Kennedy’s achievement in all this was not one-sided. Nuclear war would be as deadly to Russia as to the West, and Khrushchev has played his part. But few would deny that the initia tive has lain most of the time with the White House or that Kennedy’s own qualities have been decisive. The three personal gifts which lifted him into the realm of inter national statesmanship were intellect, steadiness of nerve and the capacity to take de cisions. Indeed, this week’s inevitable anxiety about the future is — or ought to be — based not on half-baked guesses about President John son’s capacity or intelligence as a politician, but on the fact that the decision-making machine — which Kennedy created to meet his own needs proved so uniquely well-suit ed to the strategic demands of the Cold War. The doubt must exist whether President Johnson, operating through more normal political chan nels, will be able, however sensible his purpose, to match the speed, logic and certainty of his predecessor. For Ken nedy’s decisions were his own. The professors, the soldiers, the computers, sel dom the professional politi cians, were detailed to pro vide the data and rehearse the arguments. The Pres ident listened, reflected, ba lanced the equation and, for tified by all that intellect and calculation could bring to bear, finally took the de cision. Naturally this method of government was unpopular on Capitol Hill, and the un popularity was reflected in Kennedy’s inability to secure from Congress either the mo ney or the legislation he needed to implement his do mestic policies. And this in ability amounted to some thing like failure. Whether it stemmed fundamentally from a lack of profound con viction about liberal causes with which he was saddled by his 1960 campaign-mana gers, or from the intellect’s contempt for the log-rolling of the workaday politicians, December 1963 11 or from over caution about the electoral consequences of controversy, or from a cons titutional inadequacy of the Congress to live with the speed of modern decision making will long be argued by American historians. And in the end we may never know. What we can say this week is that, despite his visi ble achievement in foreign affairs, the quality of Ken nedy’s presidency as a whole — apart from the noble and historic decision to stake the whole prestige of the pres idency on his civil rights leg islation — is arguable. His quality as a man is to me beyond argument. He brought to public life not only the hard assets of leader ship which determined ideas by the grace of his personal ity and the clarity of his speech. One can only guess, for instance, at the legislative outcome of his battle with Congress and his own party over civil rights. But one can be sure that individual American opinion about the cause of justice for the Ne groes has been touched, as never since Lincoln, by the words he spoke. Perhaps his greatest achievement in the end was to turn the gaze of his own people towards some of the more distant goals of political action and to infuse his pragmatic programmes with the radiant light of to lerance, idealism and pur pose. And so, my fellow Am ericans: ask not what your country can do for you — ask what you can do for your country. My fellow citizens of the world: ask not what America will do for you, but what together we can do for the freedom of man.' Those words struck the keynote of his inaugural address; they form a message which evokes a response in every radical heart. However limited his social achievement, his ap proach to politics was funda mentally a challenge to conversatism everywhere. That is whyA with all our reser vations about where his ulti mate convictions lay — they certainly did not lie with the ideological left — and with all our disappointment at his comparative failure to make good the promise of 1960, the left in Britain admired and, when the chips were down* trusted him. He was the gold en boy of the post-war world, and we mourn him as a friend — The New Statesman. 12 Panorama