Fearing Fear Itself?
Candor obliges me to admit that, politically speaking, my administration made good use of fear itself. If my run for the White House had an overarching theme, it was to scare the bejesus out of the American people. And once in office, fearmongering formed an essential part of my presidency. The famous Jack Kennedy wit and charisma was no more than a side dish meant to make the panic-inducing main course more palatable.
Here's me at the National Press Club early in the 1960 campaign, sounding the alarm about "increasingly dangerous, unsolved, long postponed problems" that would "inevitably explode" during the next president's watch. KABOOM! Chief among those problems, I warned, was "the growing missile gap, the rise of Communist China, the despair of the underdeveloped nations, the explosive situations in Berlin and in the Formosa [i.e., Taiwan] Strait, [and] the deterioration of NATO."
Note the sequencing. Item number one is that nuclear "missile gap," with its implications of an Armageddon lurking just around the corner. It was my own invention and, if I do say so myself, a stroke of pure political genius. Of course, like the "bomber gap" that preceded it by a few years, no such missile gap actually existed. When it came to nukes and the means to deliver them, we were actually way ahead of the Soviets.
President Eisenhower knew that the missile gap was a load of malarky. So did his vice president, Dick Nixon, the poor sap. But they couldn't say so out loud without compromising classified intelligence.
Even today, people still treat my inaugural address "The torch has been passed," etc. as if it were sacred scripture. But when it came to putting the nation on notice, the Kennedy-Sorensen fright machine really hit its stride barely a week later during my appearance before a joint session of Congress.
"No man entering upon this office," I said with a carefully calibrated mixture of grace and gravitas, "could fail to be staggered upon learning even in this brief 10-day period the harsh enormity of the trials through which we must pass in the next four years." Then came a generous dose of Sorensen's speechwriting magic:
"Each day the crises multiply. Each day their solution grows more difficult. Each day we draw nearer the hour of maximum danger, as weapons spread and hostile forces grow stronger. I feel I must inform the Congress that our analyses over the last ten days make it clear that in each of the principal areas of crisis the tide of events has been running out and time has not been our friend."
For eight years, Ike had been asleep at the switch. Now, in a mere 10 days as chief executive, I had grasped the harrowing magnitude of the dangers facing the nation. Time running out! The enemy growing stronger! The hour of maximum danger approaching like a runaway freight train!
But not to worry. With a former PT-boat skipper at the helm, assisted by the likes of Mac Bundy, Bob McNamara, Max Taylor, brother Bobby, and a whole crew of Harvard graduates, the Republic was in good hands. That was my message, anyway.
Okay, Joe, now let me come clean. In the months after that, we hit a few bumps in the road. Having promised action, we did act with vigor, but in ways that may not have been particularly judicious. (Had I lived long enough to finish my term and win a second one that was the plan, after all things might have been put right.)
So, yes, the CIA's Bay of Pigs Cuban debacle of April 1961 was an epic snafu, although as much Ike's fault as my own. Viewed in hindsight, my escalation of our military involvement in Vietnam, that distant "frontier" of the Cold War thousands of U.S. troops test-driving the latest counterinsurgency theories wasn't exactly the Best and Brightest's best idea. And the less said about my administration's complicity in the murder of South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem the better. That was not our best day either.
You didn't know Bobby, but when my brother got a bit in his mouth, he was unstoppable. So I will admit that he got more than slightly carried away with Operation Mongoose, the failed CIA program aimed at assassinating Fidel Castro and sabotaging the Cuban Revolution.
If given the chance to do it over again, I also might think twice about ordering the deployment of 1,000 Minuteman land-based ICBMs, a classic illustration of Cold War "overkill," driven more by domestic politics than any strategic calculus. Mind you, the Air Force's Strategic Air Command was lobbying for 10,000 ICBMs so it could have been worse! (In the things-never-change category, I hear that your administration is quietly pursuing a $1.7-trillion upgrade of the U.S. nuclear strike force. Does that form part of your intended legacy?)
The Limits of Fear
Learn from our mistakes, Joe, but pay special attention to what we got right. Yes, fear led us to do some mighty stupid things. On occasion, though, fear became a spur to prudence and even wisdom. In fact, on two occasions overcoming fear enabled me to avert World War III. And that's not bragging, that's fact.
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