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John F. Kennedy: An Unfinished Life 1917-1963.
by William D. Rubinstein John F. Kennedy An Unfinished Life 1917-1963 Robert DallekAllen Lane, x + 838 pp ISBN 0 713997370; 25 [pounds sterling]JOHN F. KENNEDY served as President of the United States for only two years and ten months, barely longer than the administration, now virtually forgotten, of Gerald Ford in the 1970s and less than the duration of the Korean War. Apart from the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962--which Kennedy handled very well--even a well-informed person in the street would have some difficulty in naming a single historical event or achievement which can be credited to JFK. Arguably, he had no lasting legacy: the achievements of his successor, Lyndon Johnson, were in many ways a new departure, while the history of the Kennedy dynasty since 1963 has been a continuing tragedy. John Kennedy's private life was a tabloid editor's dream and, had it become public knowledge at the time, would certainly have destroyed both his Administration and his public career at a stroke.Despite this objective paucity of achievement or even of purpose, John F. Kennedy remains all authentic twentieth-century icon, probably the most famous American President m serve in the post-war period. Much of this renown is due to Kennedy's genuine and considerable intelligence and to his admirable style, and to a charisma which has paradoxically become more apparent since his death than during his lifetime. More important still, in all likelihood, was his assassination in November 1963, an event quickly followed by the unpopular Vietnam War and by the unprecedented domestic turmoil which marked the rest of the 1960s. Rightly or wrongly, in hindsight the Kennedy yeats appear to so many as a golden age, a retrospective view which it is not unfair to compare to reminscences of Edwardian England alter the Great War. The unfulfilled holms of a generation have consistently been projected backwards on John F. Kennedy and his Presidency, arguably in a way which plainly distorts Kennedy's purpose and achievements.In this fine and authoritative biography of Kennedy, Robert Dallek, a professor at Boston University, understands this very well. His lengthy but very readable biography--400 pages of which examine the relatively short period of his Presidency--steers a midcourse between the adulation of Kennedy's partisans and the iconoclasm of some recent biographers like Seymour M. Hersh.Dallek realises that Kennedy's achievements, objectively considered, were rather meagre, and that he was more symbol and promise than substance. He also realises that Kennedy was much more of a political moderate, often unwilling to take truly bold steps on issues like civil rights, than many now imagine, and that during his lifetime he was by no means universally idealised by America's liberals. Dallek also asks. but is low-keyed in his response. as to whether, if Kennedy had lived and served as President for two full terms, the catastrophes of the 1960s might have been avoided. Kennedy was far more intelligent and subtle than Lyndon Johnson, and it is difficult to believe that his continuing response to Vietnam would have been the policy of bloody-minded escalation followed by his successor. But Dallek does not really know what Kennedy would have done had he lived--the existing evidence is simply unclear--and wisely does not claim to know. |
