![]() David Halberstam describes Rusk’s patience during this ordeal, in The Best and the Brightest: “He resisted the impulse to react to stories being told about him, but at times the anger and irritation would flash through. I had seen him learn how to dominate the faculty of Harvard University, a throng of intelligent and temperamental men after that training, one could hardly doubt his capacity to deal with Washington bureaucrats.” It is an interesting psychological point-and typical of the time-that Schlesinger considered the bureaucracy, not hostile foreign powers, the enemy to be dealt with.ĭean Rusk soon became the butt of jokes emanating from Bundy’s circle of bright men at the White House. Schlesinger felt that Washington could pose no difficulty too great for a man who had been king of the hill in Cambridge: “Bundy possessed dazzling clarity and speed of mind-Kennedy told friends that, next to David Ormsby Gore, Bundy was the brightest man he had ever known-as well as great distinction of manner and unlimited self-confidence. But McGeorge Bundy would supply the ideas on foreign policy, from his office in the White House. Dean Rusk, a southern gentleman acclimated to eastern-establishment ways as head of the Rockefeller Foundation, would be custodian of the State Department’s traditional duties toward other countries. Kennedy’s appointments reflected his sense of priorities. With Walt Rostow as his deputy and Bromley Smith, a remarkable civil servant, as the NSC’s secretary, he was shaping a supple instrument to meet the new President’s distinctive needs.Ī pattern was being set, by which the President’s special teams actively took on an adversary role toward the rest of the executive branch. After the inauguration, Bundy promptly slaughtered committees right and left and collapsed what was left of the inherited apparatus into a compact and flexible National Security Council staff. Mac was presently engaged in dismantling the elaborate national security apparatus built up by the Eisenhower administration.Richard Neustadt had taken great pleasure during the interregnum in introducing Bundy to the Eisenhower White House as the equivalent of five officers on the Eisenhower staff. In his book A Thousand Days, Schlesinger applauded the birth of what became the Vietnam-planning organ of government: Kennedy meant for it to be his own arm reaching out- through, over, or around the government-to get things done. Under Eisenhower, this was a coordinator of information coming to the President. All bottlenecks to fluidity had to be broken up. The President would direct his own operation. There would be no Sherman Adams in Kennedy’s White House. Kennedy, to imitate Roosevelt, had to become a sort of Eisenhower in reverse. In it, Roosevelt and Eisenhower were presented in sharp contrast-Roosevelt as a man free from procedural entanglements, Eisenhower as the slave of them. Neustadt’s I960 book, Presidential Power, became the “hot” item of the transition. His ideal was the Franklin Roosevelt celebrated by Schlesinger and Richard Neustadt. Kennedy wanted to be exposed, not shielded-out on the battlements, scanning all horizons, not seated in his chamber sifting documents. His first job was to dismantle the protective procedures Eisenhower had woven around the presidency. Kennedy’s presidency, portray their leader as just the “existential” hero Mailer pined for. An “existential" leader, as Norman Mailer put it, would dare to go outside channels, to confront the unexpected with a resourceful poise of improvisation.Īrthur Schlesinger and Theodore Sorensen, official historians of John F. Eisenhower had let problems go untended in order to preserve the country’s (and his own) tranquillity. They stifle originality, impose conformity. PRESIDENT EISENHOWER’S CRIME, IN THE EYES OF many of his critics, was a government by committee.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Details
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |