766 Chapter 29 From Camelot to Watergate: 1961–1975
Kennedy in Camelot
Having lampooned the Eisenhower administration as
stodgy and unimaginative, President Kennedy made
a show of his style and wit. He flouted convention by
naming Robert, his younger brother, attorney gen-
eral: “I can’t see that it’s wrong to give him a little
legal experience before he goes out to practice law.”
Kennedy also prided himself on being a man of let-
ters, winner of a Pulitzer Prize for Profiles in Courage.
He quoted Robert Frost and Dante. He played and
replayed recordings of Winston Churchill, hoping to
imprint the great orator’s sonorous cadences on his
own broad Bostonian vowels. At the instigation of
his elegant wife, Jacqueline, Kennedy surrounded
himself with the finest intellects at glittering White
House galas to honor Nobel Prize winners and cele-
brated artists.
Kennedy’s youthful senior staff boasted impres-
sive scholarly credentials. His national security
adviser, McGeorge Bundy, had been dean of the fac-
ulty at Harvard (and the first undergraduate at Yale to
receive perfect scores in three college entrance exami-
nations). Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara
also had taught at Harvard before becoming the
first nonfamily member to head the Ford Motor
Company. The administration constituted, as journal-
ist David Halberstam observed later, and somewhat
ruefully, “the best and the brightest.”
Kennedy’s campaign slogan—“Let’s get this coun-
try moving again”—was embodied in his own active
life. He played rugged games of touch football with
the press corps and romped with his young children in
the Oval Office. In an article for Sports Illustratedenti-
tled “The Soft American” published just after the elec-
tion, Kennedy complained that television, movies, and
a comfortable lifestyle had made too many young peo-
ple flabby. His earliest presidential initiative was a phys-
ical fitness campaign in the schools.
Kennedy’s image of youthful vigor was enhanced
by the beauty and presence of Jacqueline, whose
wide-eyed diffidence was universally admired as regal
bearing. The image was enhanced by Lerner and
Loewe’s musical Camelot, which opened a few weeks
before the inauguration. Its evocation of King Arthur,
who sought to lead his virile young knights in chal-
lenges great and good, suggested the Kennedy White
House. (The musical became a favorite of the presi-
dent; he often listened to cast recordings before
going to sleep.) All Washington seemed aglow with
excitement and energy. In the words of the adminis-
tration’s chief chronicler, Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr.
(another former Harvard professor): “Never had girls
seemed so pretty, tunes so melodious, and evenings
so blithe and unconstrained.”
Never, too, had the substance of an administra-
tion been so closely identified with the style of its
president. But the dazzle was misleading. Although
quick-witted and intelligent, Kennedy was no intel-
lectual. His favorite reading was the James Bond spy
novels of Ian Fleming. He never admitted it publicly,
but much of Profiles in Couragehad been ghostwrit-
ten by his speechwriter.
Nor did the president embody physical fitness.
Congenital back problems, aggravated by war injuries,
forced Kennedy to use crutches or a cane in private
and to take heavy doses of painkillers and ampheta-
mines. The president’s permanent “tan” did not result
from outdoor exercise, as the public assumed, but
from Addison’s disease, an often fatal failure of the
adrenal glands for which Kennedy gave himself daily
injections of cortisone. Though he publicly denied it,
Kennedy was chronically ill throughout his presidency.
The president nevertheless engaged in many
extramarital sexual affairs. Reporters covering the
White House were aware of his often brazen indiscre-
tions, but chose not to intrude on what they regarded
as the president’s private life.The Cuban Crises
“The torch has been passed to a new generation of
Americans,” Kennedy declared in his inaugural
address. Its chief task was to stop the spread of com-
munism. While Eisenhower had relied on the nation’s
nuclear arsenal to intimidate the Kremlin, Kennedy
proposed to challenge communist aggression when-
ever and wherever it occurred. “We shall pay any
price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support
any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and
the success of liberty,” Kennedy intoned. A new
breed of cold warrior, Kennedy called on young men
and women to serve in the Peace Corps, an organiza-
tion that he created to mobilize American idealism
and technical skills to help developing nations. His
was a call for commitment—and action.
Perhaps seduced by his own rhetoric, Kennedy
blundered almost immediately. Anti-Castro exiles were
eager to organize an invasion of their homeland, rea-
soning that the Cuban people would rise up against
Castro and communism as soon as “democratic” forces
provided the necessary leadership. Under Eisenhower
the CIA had begun training some 2,000 Cuban exiles
in Nicaragua. Kennedy was of two minds about the
proposed invasion. Some in his administration opposed
it strongly, but his closest advisers, including his
brother Robert, urged him to give his approval. In the
end he did.
The invaders, 1,400 strong, struck in April 1961.
They landed at the Bay of Pigs, on Cuba’s southern