"He Asked Me to Listen to the Debate"

By Hugh Sidey

He was the greatest actor of our time, dimming those mere celluloid performers like Ronald Reagan. He was on a stage as wide as the world and in a drama of the centuries. He commanded with Marlborough and debated with Churchill; he dined with Jefferson and rode with Sherman to the sea. He was a practical romantic who sought the company of the great, both in his fantasies and in real life. He urged America to follow this youthful adventure of mind and body. That is why John Kennedy lives among us yet today. In death he found a place in the caravan of history's great whose thoughts and words he used, whose actions he revered.

When he flew north from Palm Beach in January 1961 to take over the presidency, Kennedy scratched away on a yellow pad, fashioning phrases for his Inaugural Address. He wanted them to equal those of Franklin Roosevelt, Wilson and maybe even Lincoln. What did I think, he asked, tossing the pad in my lap, fixing his bemused gaze on me to measure enthusiasm or lack of it. I couldn't read his handwriting and said so. He took the pad back, a little disgusted, and intoned a couple of his lines. Nice, I said, not at all convinced, since the cabin of the family plane, the Caroline, was hardly the environment for greatness. He wanted to tell the nation, he went on (abandoning any hope that I would rise out of my seat in ecstasy), that the American revolution continued, our greatest days lay ahead.

How well he succeeded with that message I realized three days later, clinging in the winter air to one of the columns on the Capitol front and watching Kennedy's shoulders below me sway and surge to the cadences of his address. He was listening to distant bugle calls; he was talking to John Adams and George Washington.

Kennedy decided to go to the moon late on an April afternoon, a short while after the Soviets had humiliated us with their first man in space and just 48 hours before the disastrous Bay of Pigs began. He had asked me to listen to the debate among his science and budget advisers. It was not a happy discussion. His space men wanted to go, but his budget man, David Elliott Bell, cautioned about spending $40 billion. Science Adviser Jerome Wiesner was not certain we could beat the Soviets to the moon even in ten years. I can still see Kennedy's profile as he put his feet on the edge of the Cabinet table and tilted back, brow deeply furrowed, fingers nervously tapping his bared teeth. His face was clouded through most of the discussion. But something stirred him toward the end. He concluded the meeting, re-entered the Oval Office and 15 minutes later sent word out: "We are going to the moon." Kennedy had heard the poets. He was beyond politics and dollars.

In the dismal summer of 1961, when Nikita Khrushchev was threatening Berlin, Kennedy often worried himself into a black mood. One night in his office he wondered out loud if the world would blow itself up and decided that it probably would, since all weapons ultimately had been used by man against man. Yet almost instantly he challenged himself. Maybe mankind with its new knowledge could find a way out. A short while later Kennedy invited me into the Oval Office; then he took me to the White House swimming pool. Almost before I knew what was happening he had shed his clothes and walked naked into the pool. I followed, somewhat shaken at how fragile he looked. His body was graceful and well proportioned: broad shoulders, narrow hips and well-muscled legs. Yet it was scarred and sore from his war injuries and back trouble. He backstroked powerfully down the pool, rolled and executed a strong crawl. As he splashed and stretched in the warm water, he talked between gurgles about Berlin. He was going to order a partial call-up of the National Guard, increase the draft, seek money for home fallout shelters. He seemed to gain personal strength as he talked of power and how to exercise it. Before he hobbled off to his bedroom on crutches, which he used when he removed his back brace, he was resolutely beckoning his nation from some far horizon to fall in behind him and hold the frontier of freedom.

As we now consider the effect of Senator John Glenn's space heroics on his presidential candidacy, the record should show that during those exact minutes when Glenn was drifting down out of orbit in his parachute and being fished out of the Atlantic Ocean, Kennedy was in a rage at the White House, questioning my ancestry, threatening my very journalistic life over a tiny item about his clothing that appeared in this magazine. Only when Captain Tazewell Shepard, naval aide, dashed in to announce, "Mr. President, Colonel Glenn is on the phone," did Kennedy climb back up on his pedestal with this admonition to me: "Stand there and see if you can get this right." I stood and saw Kennedy's shoulders go back and his eyes shine and I knew that he had grown weightless and was up there in orbit with the gods watching.

How Kennedy delighted in meeting Charles de Gaulle, whom he found pompous but awesome, and Khrushchev, who he concluded was a man of physical dexterity, bad tailoring and a stone heart. Twice Kennedy talked about Asia with General Douglas MacArthur, and each time he came away hushed and thoughtful from what he considered an audience with greatness. MacArthur told Kennedy both times to stay out of a land war on mainland Asia. That is one of the reasons I believe Kennedy would have done differently in Viet Nam and that our history would have been far happier if he had lived. This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.