Kennedy: The New Frontier Revisited PDF
Preview Kennedy: The New Frontier Revisited
KENNEDY: THE NEW FRONTIER REVISITED Also by Mark J. White THE CUBAN MISSILE CRISIS MISSILES IN CUBA: Kennedy, Khrushchev, Castro and the 1962 Crisis Kennedy: The New Frontier Revisited Edited by Mark J. White Assistant Professor in United States History Eastern Illinois University Charleston Selection, editorial matter, Introduction and Chapters 2 and 8 © Mark J. White 1998 Chapters I, 3-7 © Macmillan Press Ltd 1998 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1998 978-0-333-65941-0 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 90 Tottenham Court Road, London WIP 9HE. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The authors have asserted their rights to be identified as the authors of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 1998 by MACMILLAN PRESS LTD Houlldmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS and London Companies and representatives throughout the world ISBN 978-1-349-14058-9 ISBN 978-1-349-14056-5 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-14056-5 A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 I 07 06 05 04 03 02 01 00 99 98 For Robert Frazier, Lloyd Gardner, David Healy, and Warren Kimball Contents Notes on the Contributors viii Introduction: A New Synthesis for the New Frontier Mark J. White Vietnam and the Question of What Might Have Been 19 Fredrik LogevaU 2 The Cuban Imbroglio: From the Bay of Pigs to the Missile Crisis and Beyond 63 Mark J. White 3 The Berlin Crisis 91 Georg Schild 4 Meeting the European Challenge: The Common Market and Trade Policy 132 Thomas W. Zeiler 5 Dealing with de Gaulle 160 Josephine Brain 6 Space: The Final Frontier of the New Frontier 193 Derek W. Elliott 7 John F. Kennedy as Domestic Leader: A Perspective on the Literature 222 James N. Giglio 8 Behind Closed Doors: The Private Life of a Public Man 256 Mark J. White Select Bibliography 277 Index 282 vii Notes on the Contributors Josephine Brain received her undergraduate degree from the Univer sity of St Andrews and her MA from the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee, where she was also a teaching assistant. She has received various honors, including a research award from the Roosevelt Study Center in Middelburg. Derek W. Elliott is Assistant Professor of History at Tennessee State University. He received his doctorate from George Washington Uni versity, and is currently converting his doctoral dissertation, "Finding an Appropriate Commitment: Space Policy Development under Eisen hower and Kennedy, 1954 -1963," into a book. He has also published articles and contributed to Air and Space History: An Annotated Bibliography. James N. Giglio is Professor of History at Southwest Missouri State University. He earned his doctorate from the Ohio State University, and is the author of The Presidency of John F. Kennedy (1991) and John F. Kennedy: A Bibliography (1995), as well as H. M. Daugherty and the Politics of Expediency, Truman in Cartoon and Caricature, and many articles. He is currently working on a biography of Stan Musial, the baseball legend. Fredrik LogevaU is Assistant Professor of History at the University of California at Santa Barbara. A native of Sweden, he received his PhD from Yale University. He is author of Choosing War: The Long 1964 and the Lost Chance for Peace in Vietnam (forthcoming, 1998), as well as articles in such journals as Diplomatic History, Pacific Historical Review, and Journal of American-East Asian Relations. He is also the recipient of the Stuart L. Bernath Article Prize from the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations. Georg Schild is Wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter at the University of Bonn, Germany. He received his PhD from the University of Mary land at College Park and is the author of Between Ideology and Realpolitik: Woodrow Wilson and the Russian Revolution (1995) and Bretton Woods and Dumbarton Oaks: American Economic and Political viii Notes on the Contributors IX Postwar Planning in the Summer of 1944 (1995), as well as a forth coming book on Kennedy. His articles have appeared in a variety of journals, including World Affairs. Mark J. White is Assistant Professor of History at Eastern Illinois University. He received his doctoral degree from Rutgers University, and has taught previously at the University of St Andrews, Scotland. He has published The Cuban Missile Crisis (1996) and Missiles in Cuba: Kennedy, Khrushchev, Castro and the 1962 Crisis (1997). His articles have appeared in Mid-America, Journal of Strategic Studies and Illinois Historical Journal, amongst others. He is also the general editor of the Longman History of America. Thomas W. Zeiler is Assistant Professor of History at the University of Colorado (at Boulder). Since receiving his doctorate from the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, he has written American Trade and Power in the 1960s (1992), and articles in such journals as Diplomatic History and Business History Review. He has served on committees of the Society for Historians of American Foreign Rela tions and as a referee for various journals. He is currently writing a history of the international trade system, focusing on GATT. Introduction: A New Synthesis for the New Frontier Mark J. White "In many respects how Kennedy died is as important as how he lived." That observation, made by historian James Giglio in 1991, provides the key for understanding what has been the most conspicu ous feature of the literature on John F. Kennedy - namely, its polar ization between those works that lavish praise on JFK and those that heap scorn. Of course, all historical debates generate a spectrum of views. In the work on Kennedy, however, both the commendation and the criticism have been exceptionally intemperate. I Kennedy's assassination on 22 November 1963 ensured that the American people's initial assessment of his life's work would be glowing. Naturally enough, the American people came to terms with the tragedy in Dallas by investing his life with a Lincolnesque sig nificance - that is to say, a moral importance that transcended pol itics. (This need to enlarge the meaning of his life applies equally to his death; hence the proliferation of conspiracy theories over the years.) In the wake of his assassination, therefore, Americans came to view their slain president as a martyr, one who had died having fought valiantly for noble causes - peace, freedom, and justice: peace with his American University speech and the settlement of the Cuban missile crisis, freedom for West Berliners, and justice for blacks through civil-rights reform and for Latin Americans via the Alliance for Progress. The need to come to terms with the assassination was only one reason why Americans came to regard Kennedy as a great leader. The other was the tireless effort by JFK's family, friends, and political aides to cultivate a positive image of the Kennedy presidency. Shortly after her husband's death, Jacqueline Kennedy granted an interview to journalist Theodore H. White in which she recalled that her hus band had enjoyed listening to the musical Camelot, thereby connect ing the Kennedy administration's reputation to the Arthurian legend. White wrote up an article of the interview. The Camelot legend, the
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