In the Trash Pile

At the White House a lone copy of a newly published 653-page book is already badly dog-eared by New Frontiersmen. And all over Washington, those who try to keep up with the talk on the cocktail circuit are eagerly spending $7.95 for Victor Lasky's J.F.K.: The Man & the Myth.

Lasky, co-author with Ralph de Toledano of a 1950 book on the Alger Hiss case, Seeds of Treason, is presently employed as an analyst of world and domestic affairs for the North American Newspaper Alliance. During the 1960 Kennedy-Nixon campaign, Lasky was assigned to write a review of Arthur Schlesinger Jr.'s pro-Kennedy book, Kennedy or Nixon: Does It Make Any Difference? He became so angry at Schlesinger's partisan arguments that he expanded his review into a 300-page anti-Kennedy paperback. Still incensed, Lasky has now enlarged and updated that book.

From Pegler to Khrushchev. The new volume, which devotes only 83 pages to Kennedy's performance as President, is simply a massive compilation of every criticism that anyone has ever written about any of the Kennedys, tied loosely together by Lasky's own biased and bitter generalizations. It presents, with equal weight, criticism from the Chicago Tribune and the New Republic, from Westbrook Pegler and Eleanor Roosevelt, from the New York Times and Variety, from Walter Lippmann and Nikita Khrushchev.

In attacking the Kennedy "myth," Lasky writes that J.F.K.'s "military experience included having the PT boat of which he was the skipper rammed and sunk by a much slower Japanese destroyer." A Pulitzer Prize author? "Kennedy had considerable help." Even Kennedy's use of naval power to pressure Khrushchev to withdraw his missiles from Cuba was, to Lasky, merely a ploy for domestic political advantage, since "among other things, Kennedy was able to accomplish the political destruction of his former rival, Richard M. Nixon, in California."

In this buffeting from all sides, Kennedy is pictured as both "Red-baiting" and "soft on Communism." He is criticized for not caring enough about his legislative proposals to fight for them, but when he does, he is accused of a "bold executive attempt to frighten Senators." He is at the same time a "radically liberal" politician whose "personal beliefs seem to indicate a deep-dyed conservatism."

Hairdos & Dog Hairs. Asks Lasky: "Was there ever any political leader who devoted so much time worrying about his hairdo?" He quotes Newsweek: "Kennedy carries a white manicurist's pencil to make his fingernails whiter." And Westbrook Pegler: "Kennedy looks at people through half-shut eyes. If a guy can't look me square in the eye, I don't trust him." (Almost 200 pages later, Lyndon Johnson is quoted: "I can tell a man by looking in his eyes. I looked in John Kennedy's eyes and I liked what I saw.") Lasky even quotes one book about Kennedy to explain why J.F.K. could never have made a Nixon-type "Checkers" speech: "After midnight once, on a freezing night, Kennedy drove for hours searching for a motel, finally found a tourist home in the town of Athol, got himself ready for bed, when he spotted some dog hairs, got dressed again, piled back into his car, and drove on. He's allergic to dogs."*

But Lasky's dislike for the President appears almost as adoration compared to how he feels about the President's father. He depicts Joseph P. Kennedy as anti-Semitic and pro-Nazi, as a fearful, cringing figure during the London blitz, and as perhaps the most ruthless, malign businessman in U.S. history. To Lasky it was Joe's dough alone that made Jack President and Bobby the nation's second most powerful man. And the father did it all to avenge an ethnic insult. "Having suffered all the slights and indignities Brahmin Boston could contrive for its despised minorities [the new Irish], Joseph P. Kennedy had set out to beat his persecutors at their own game." Lasky even makes it sound sinister when President Kennedy "dropped the nation's business" to fly to his father's bedside after he suffered his stroke in December 1961.

Shifting Ground. Some of Lasky's buckshot pellets do, of course, hit home. He is especially effective in documenting some of the inconsistencies of Kennedy's political career. "How long can we continue deficit financing on such a large scale with a national debt of over $285 billion?" Kennedy asked the House as a Congressman in 1950 before casting his vote to cut federal spending across the board by $600 million. Yet, under Kennedy, the federal debt has risen to $300 billion, and he has presented a 1964 budget deliberately in deficit by at least $10 billion. "There is just not enough money in the world to relieve the poverty of all the millions of this world who may be threatened by Communism," Kennedy said about foreign economic aid as a Congressman. "Our resources are not limitless. Mere grants of money are debilitating and wasteful." Last month, when the House cut his foreign aid requests by $1 billion, Kennedy denounced the action as "shortsighted, irresponsible and dangerously partisan." Since the book is fat and heavy, an unsuspecting purchaser might think that it contains a rational evaluation of Kennedy as a politician and political leader. No such thing. Lasky documents some of the President's weaknesses--but he buries them in a trash pile.

* This may come as a shock to Pushinka, Charlie, Clipper, Shannon, Blackie and White Tips.

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