Geevee's Reviews > Camelot's Court: Inside the Kennedy White House

The world is lucky to have had Kennedy as president of the USA for that short time from January 1961 to November 1963. He dealt with very difficult and complex events and challenges at home and abroad, and in respect of Cuba and Berlin situations that could have ended the world through nuclear destruction.

Having read about these events, visited the JFK Presidential Library and Museum in Boston, spent some of my army career in Cold-War Germany, including service in West Berlin in the British sector a couple of years before the wall came down, I have a fascination for this period, and Dallek's book, picked up at a discount bookstore on holiday in the US a few weeks' ago, looked like a good way to learn more about the men behind this young president and the decisions he took.

I could perhaps sum up this book in part by saying the military advisors, principally the joint chiefs of staff, wanted to nuke everything and everyone. They criticised Kennedy, sometimes openly and often behind the scenes, and considered him too young and inexperienced.

Another summation is that the young president whilst listening and deciding was at times a very lonely man with the weight of the world on his shoulders.

Kennedy's "Ministry of talent" drew together men from all walks of life and experience and the message from this book is they offered many views and lots analysis, but however well-meaning or experienced much (almost all from some) was wrong, misplaced and at downtimes scary and mad (yep that's the joint chiefs and CIA).

Names I assume many Americans' know well, such as: McNamara, Rusk, Rostow, Bundy, McCone and Lodge, Le May, Taylor, Harriman and of course Lyndon Johnson and Bobby Kennedy all feature. It would be hard to argue against that these advisors only wanted to what they thought right for the US, but personal situations and personalities play throughout this book (much of course like any political cabinet or corporate boardroom say), and events show the advice they gave JFK was flawed, wrong and at times possibly more than a little disingenuous.

There's little on domestic affairs, including sadly for me segregation, in this book, but Dallek positions this when he outlines that the biggest problems for the POTS were external. Although progress on the domestic agenda was made during his short presidency, and there are some mentions Dallek points to plans and priorities in the second term with a more electorally secure Kennedy second term.

Dallek provides a useful introduction on JFK and his rise to senatorship and then presidential nominee/candidate and to election. He then thrusts us into the fierce and fast days of 1961 and on.

The book has useful excerpts or sentences using Jackie Kennedy's comments or later recorded opinions alongside the use of cabinet papers, meeting notes and recordings. Schlesinger and Sorenson's information also feature. As does much on RFK - who for me comes across as determined, talented, pointed, driven, forceful and a little rude but genuinely had his brother's back and helped JFK through these tough times.

There is much in this book about Cuba and the demon Castro; Berlin and the defence of the free world, including of course the wily Khrushchev casting his shadow across these areas and challenges. But it is Vietnam that looms largest and the situation with JFK's advisors' plans, analysis, ideas (or lack of them) and disagreements amongst themselves is most interesting. It looms largest, as whilst Berlin and the Cuban missile crisis were resolved, Vietnam wasn't and slid later into full blown war and the deaths of 58,000 US service personnel (like standing at Britain's Post-1945 war memorial at the National Arborteum I have stood at the Vietnam war memorial in Washington and shed a tear for their bravery, their fear and dreadful experiences as well as the lost-potential).

It is easy to judge and to review these men from the comfort of over five decades later, especially as that intensity and atmosphere when nuclear war, sputnik and communist expansion and dominance are all a daily worry. Dallek is critical of all the players including JFK but he is to my mind even-handed in his treatment of all and the events within.

So as I finished this book I was left with some thoughts. De Gaulle was right about advisors and that ultimately it's best to make your own decision and stick with it. JFK was disappointed, sometimes angry and often despairing of the advice he was give and offered. To his credit and our benefit he took time, negotiated and acted with purpose and personal conviction.

Dallek's book is worthy of the time it takes you to read about one of the USA's most testing times.

It is of course impossible to know but this book suggests a president who would have continued to take tough decisions using a inner strength and intelligence. Sadly, the US lost chances and possibilities to change its and the word's future for the better.

But JFK's legacy for me is perhaps that I was able to stand at the Vietnam war memorial to pay my tribute to fellow allied service personnel as I described above because of JFK's wise decisions, rather than never having crawled on this earth as the world had been dissolved into dust.