Transcripts For CSPAN2 Book Discussion On Camelots Court 201

Transcripts For CSPAN2 Book Discussion On Camelots Court 20131209

About cover. They want to feel better about the countries future. And i think thats what Kennedy Still gives people. You know, they compare him to other subsequent president s. Johnson with vietnam. Nixon with watergate. Force truncated presidency. Jimmy carters one term. The first bush one term. The second bush leaves under a cloud. So they look to two president s to give them better hope in feeling about the government. First off, kennedy, reagan in this poll which kennedy had 85 approval, reagan had 74 . So people remember that kennedy yo he put a man on the moon, that he called his administration the new frontier. He has frozen our minds at the age of 46, and nobody could quite imagine if he walked into this room tonight, he would be 96 years old. Its 50 years later. But he is still young, vital, energetic, a celebrity, and exciting personnel. People are attached to that, and i think what comes to mind, my teacher was richard hofstetter, the great historian. And dick once said to me that america is the only country in the world that believes it was more perfect and strives for improvement. [laughter] and this is what in a since kennedy gives to people this day. Id say one other thing, which is that the kennedys are a americans dynasty. Not the roosevelts, not the bushes. And what people find so appealing about that is, on the one hand, they represent the fulfillment of the american dream. The Irish Catholic who became fabulously rich and famous, you see, and on the other hand so stock course that the oldest brother killed in world war ii, the oldest sister killed in a plane crash in france in 1948, the president assassinated, Bobby Kennedy assassinated, the president s son killed in a senseless plane crash off cape cod, Jacqueline Kennedy died in her early 60s of cancer, ted kennedy, the whore at chappaquiddick where that young woman died in that accident. They identify also with the suffering that the family has gone through, because everybody lives to something a difficult in their lives. So its the combination on the one hand of their fame and fortune, and on the other hand their suffering, their tragedy. But they are really the dynastic family. That will explain the public fascination but in this book he tells the truth and weve had a range of kennedy biographies. Then there was the tearing them down at exposure of his womanizing and the concealment of his Health Problems, but i left his platoon this was a pretty positive portrait. He was my take away come to paint the picture of a president came in with a lot of faith and going to defer to his disasters, but he learned from that expense and by the time of the cuban missile crisis he realized he was also responsible for the decisions and wisely resisted rational military action and save the world from nuclear annihilation. Right on the mark, very fair assessment. He brought in what David Halberstam later called the best and the brightest. He wanted these exceptionally intelligent and accomplished people to come in and be around him. He did nothing to the only one in new was of course his brother, bobby, who he made attorney general. Somebody said to him, even if its not a great idea to appoint your brother attorney general. He really doesnt have significant legal experience that would qualify him for the job. And kennedy said, i need, i need someone i can put my feet up with and talk to candidly, because he did not know dean rusk. He didnt know mcnamara. He didnt know steve douglas, who was eisenhowers secretary of the treasury. And bundy became a smash is a good advisor, he knew him, but not very well from the associations at the harvard board of cynics or whatever its called. [laughter] Harvard University faculty . Right. [laughter] you are hearing from long serving academic. Anyway, so he was comfortable with robert kennedy. And i must say, the thing you never have our many conversations i think he and bobby had behind the scenes. They are not taperecorded. They are not on paper. But people could detect theyd come into the room and theyd meet with the cabinet or they would meet with the many advisors, and bobby would drop the hammer or the dime on something, and jack would sit there with a slight smile on his face because bobby was doing his bidding. And my guess is that they had worked out but bobby was going to say beforehand. So he was a comfortable with bobby. And i called bobby in the book the advisor of chief. He did have a chief of staff but Bobby Kennedy was the one who really did it. Just more directly to your point, he grew in office. He learned you can just take at face value what these advisors were telling them. He was badly burned by the bay of pigs experience. Walk around afterwards saying how good ive been so stupid . He saw Charles De Gaulle at the end of may shortly after that come and charles said to them, give the best advice you can. The smartest people you can possibly bring into your administration. But at the end of the day, you must make the decision. You are the one who has to decide what is appropriate and wise, and can you be remembered what harry truman said, the buck stops here. So he grew and he was skeptical and had the greatest tension with the joint chiefs of staff. He battled with them over the issue of nuclear weapons. As you say, both president clinton and Bobby Kennedy, much better than the joint chiefs and many of the advisors. They were pragmatic, cared about politics but argue for military restraint where both the joint chiefs, people like bundy and mcnamara all state under johnson really tarnished the reputation by their performance in vietnam. Why was kennedy better than his advisers sequence well, its not working. I think kennedy understood he was the responsible party. And he was deeply troubled by the fact that and what people have forgotten, i still teach, im in washington and in beijing people 20 years old, they dont have a clue at this point as to how frightened and concerned people were in the 50s and 60s about the possibility, indeed, even the likelihood that there could be a nuclear war. Kennedy at one point said to somebody in private, id rather my kids be red than dead. He never couldve said that in public. But what worried him so much was the fact that the chiefs when he came into office, that local commanders in the field, if there were an incident with the soviets, that they could unleash a nuclear weapon. And bundy said to him, we need to get a Nuclear War Plan, and we need to increase the controls over whether and when these weapons will be used. Bundy called up the generals, the pentagon, whos in charge of Nuclear War Plan and said, we want to see. The joseph, im sorry, we dont show that. And bundy said, i dont think you understand. Im asking for the president. And so then they had a briefing for kennedy with charts and discussion of how many weapons they had and how they might be used, and they were talking about the possibility of dropping 170 atomic and Nuclear Bombs on moscow. 170. And that what they described would come in a war, wiped out hundreds of millions of people in russia, eastern europe, china, you see. And as kennedy walked out of the room he said to dean rusk, the secretary of state, and we call ourselves the human race. He just was horrified at the thought that there could be such a conflict, and he would be the responsible person to he was the one who is going to pull the trigger. He didnt want any of them to have that control. He reserved for himself and, of course, the ultimate moment in that regard was in the cuban missile crisis when they wanted to bomb and invade, and he, with mcnamaras help and advice, he was ordered to diplomacy which resolve that crisis peacefully. He held the joint chiefs at arms length to that crisis, and at the end of it, he called them in to show the a certain deference. They came in and they said to him, mr. President , youve been had. Was just deciding those missiles in case. The white house leaked this to the press. Khrushchev then wrote kennedy, i dont live in a cave. Im no caveman. Well, they had a plan to drop a nuclear bomb on cuba. One Megaton Nuclear bomb. Would have turned the island into a pile of rubble. Let alone what it wouldve done to the south coast of florida. But they had come out of world war ii and their attitude is, if youre fighting a ruthless enemy, you bomb them back to the stone age. You have an advantage, you use it. Kennedy just didnt want to describe it is, and he thought they were off the wall. He just resisted their advice. The cuban missile crisis is riveting, ma and to tell the story of the generals who are keen to absolutely have a Nuclear Escalation and many of the advisors, including bundy, pushing him in the same direction. And the whole thing seems to have been saved by slow to negation, the fact they were able to get two letters from khrushchev in response to the second one, the peaceful one and not the first one. Of the world have been saved in the age of the internet . Yeah, its such a different world. Its so change. Could kennedy have gotten away with the compulsive womanizing . Could he have hidden his Health Problems . You know, as bill clinton found out, this is not something you can get away with. But it was a different time. I assume if they knew about the womanizing and they said yes, they did, but i said why didnt you report it . They said, it just wasnt done in the 60s. You didnt invade a president s private life that way, and you were much more restrained. You acknowledge the most extreme excesses, the womanizing and the way he would humiliate his mistresses by making them be with his aides in the White House Pool and so forth but to say he did it because not the passion or the sex but because of the need for affirmation and attention. I thought maybe with that too generous . I think it was probably both, and he felt like in a sense he was a prince of the realm and he could get away with it. He was entitled. He was president. The most troubling thing i found with him in that regard was the fact that he seduced this 19 yearold, 20 year old, had an affair with her for a year and a half to my story about the is that when i was working on that first volume, i read an oral history by the White House Deputy press secretary, and those 17 blacked out pages, and i happened to meet her at a Cocktail Party in washington shortly after that, and i said to her, barber, i said, its 40 years later, what about those blacked out pages . She said, okay, ill open them for you. So i went to the archivist at the Kennedy Library and i said, making, barber said i could read the 17 pages. She shook her said and said please, dont get me in trouble with the kennedys. Asked the board directly. Needless to say, i didnt whet my appetite, and i a responsible for storing, of course. Got to do your research. And so i went back to her and of course what i found was that he was having this affair with a 19 yearold kid, that he seduced her in jackies bedroom. Anyway, on the eus of the publication of my book, the New York Daily News called me up and they said, whose this woman . Whats her name . I said i do know. Barbara didnt tell me. I didnt want to know. After all, shes probably in her \60{l1}s{l0}\60{l1}s{l0} now. Leave her alone. Why do we need to know her name . I trust that barber is done the trick. Investigative journalist at the news, they found out that this woman, her name was meaning mimi. They found who she was. For three days running after that they read headlines about kennedys monica. On the first day it ran a headline on page three. They had a picture of monica lewinsky. Next to her a picture of me. [laughter] spent and you had to tell you what, i did not have [laughter] spent i said to my wife, i dont even know the woman. Anyway, these are the adventures a historian can get into. It really was something off the wall about this. It was he was 45, president , and, of course, this young woman was dazzled by them. It was just over the top so that was something coming you know, unwholesome one might say about the way in which the behavior. But again, he got away with it and i dont think it wouldve been detected even if yet another five years in the white house, because the journalists didnt report it. It did have an effect on his leadership . Like jackie kennedy, told him nothing that was going on and she had to read the newspapers. That was like the general resistance to criticism. He and bobby, they were very guarded in many ways. Joe, the father, once told him, never put anything on paper and, indeed, joe was the one who counseled them not to reveal jacks Health Problems, which require substantial. Because, joe said, it cant do him any good. Or the world to know that he is a sickly or has addisons disease and has this miserable back problem, cant help them in any way at all. So they were guarded and very protective of their image and reputation. Joe kennedy as early as 1920s understood that public relations, and he hired pr people to polish his image, and he was very mindful of this and i think jack and bobby were, too. And joe told them, the only one you can really trust is the immediate members of your family. Hover close you may be to this aid or that eight or this cabinet member or that cabinet member, bobby is the only one you can really trust. And i think thats the way they operated. Health problems, which you revealed before any other historian, he was taking all sorts of pills during the crisis and so forth. How much of Health Problems with the drugs he took the condition and how much was the underlying condition . Because i was mindful of this, when i gained access to the medical records because the threemember committee wanted a professor at harvard, the other yale, if in ted sorenson and i talked sort them into getting access to the records. He didnt want to do. The other two were ready to do it. So sorenson did know what was in the records, and the New York Times found the revelation so interesting as the book was about to come out, they published a frontpage story about the revelations, because it was kind of shocking. Just the image of kennedy was of this robust, vital, at that young man who played touch football, when, in fact, he was burdened by these Terrible Health difficulties, and on a host of different medications. When i read the records i took with me to washington to boston rather, a friend from washington, dr. Jeffrey kelman, a wonderful physician, because i didnt have the expertise to instead what i was looking at, let alone the medications. We sat there and looked at this, and he shook his head and he said look at all these medications hes on day by day. So i said his medical records and medications he was taking down alongside of the 13 days of the missile crisis, and what i found was he was extraordinarily stoic and able to because of taking the medications i think, able to do with the tensions and the pressures that were on him as a consequence of that crisis. And i think that people currently, or in recent years, have not complained about the coverup of his Health Problems because they see them as a rogue, stoic, and as someone who took the burdens of his Health Difficulties in stride. Sorenson was angry at me for revealing the material, and he would say to me every time i saw him, there was no coverup. But ted kennedy told me he didnt know that much about his brothers Health Problems until he read my account. And he learned about his brothers Health Difficulties from my book. And Arthur Schlesinger also learned, and arthur in ted kennedy, they were very positive about my book, plus they felt that they made the president look courageous, stoic. And i think thats the way the public views a health issue, not as something to complain about as when he was president , but someone who it adds to the positive image of him. Stewart, courageous, those are qualities that emerged. Others all cool, cerebral, not a natural politician, someone whos more interested in reading historical biography like schlesingers book than in shaking hands. Repeatedly, as i read this book, i thought of another president come and that is president barack obama. You have had dinner with president obama several times, as a group of historians someone to talk with them. You have an impression on him. In ted kennedy and obama in terms of leadership style and temperament. First off, what i would say is that if it werent for kennedy i dont know that obama ever wouldve made it to the white house. Because kennedy broke the hold of the white promise to males on the office. He opened the way to the idea that it should be a much Broader Group that can think about running for the office. And when we see a woman as president in the nottoodistant future not lobbying for anybody now, but [laughter] nonpartisan. Thats why i said that. But we will see what was so and at some point we may see an asian american, maybe a hispanic, you see. But i think obamas presence in their innocence can be traced back to kennedy. Obama is quite interesting in kennedy and hes quite interested in history of the presidency. Weve had four dinners with them, and that the first dinner he wanted to talk about how other president s had achieved their transformative presidency. Roosevelt, woodrow wilson, fdr, reagan. How did they achieve big transformations. And the second and he wanted to talk about how to reclaim this hold on the public of the united states, because this is 2010 and he was slipping. 2011, he talked about the election, the coming election of 2012, and tell you one and a goat. He complained about congress in particular, michele bachman. Shook his head and said, what she says about me, and so i said to them, mr. President , i guess you know what mark twain said about congress, and taoiseach is a. He said marc twain said the closure a congressman and suppose you were an idiot, but i repeat myself. [laughter] he loved it. But yeah, coming back to your point, i think there are similarities. Obama is very cerebral. He is an academic, taugh

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