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place, to friend and foe alike, that

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the torch has been passed to a new

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this

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century, tempered by

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every nation know, whether

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that we shall pay any price, bear

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any burden, meet any hardship,

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support any friend, oppose

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any foe, to assure

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the survival and the success of liberty. That

2:42

Dominic was John F Kennedy's inaugural

2:44

address on the 20th of January 1961. Did

2:48

you enjoy that? I thought

2:51

it was pretty extraordinary to be honest.

2:56

So you said before you recorded this, what

2:59

were your expressions? I wasn't going to bother with precision,

3:01

it was about the vibe. Precision is for journeymen,

3:03

you said. Yes, well it's kind of like Picasso

3:06

painting a ball or something. You get

3:08

the sense of the ball but you don't get the kind of absolute

3:11

sense that it has four legs. You just have a sense

3:13

of ballness. You do. Explain

3:15

the pauses, the long pintaresque

3:18

pauses. Well if you watch it, he

3:20

has incredibly long pauses. Very

3:23

very long pauses. So I went through and I listened

3:25

to it and I was struck by those pauses because this is

3:27

what we impressionists do. You

3:29

pick up on the little kind

3:32

of hints of personality, things

3:34

that make it distinctive that other people might not

3:37

pick up on. And I went through and I put a dash

3:39

through that passage every time

3:41

there was a pause. Well that is what sets

3:44

the really top performers apart,

3:46

isn't it? I like to think so. The attention to

3:48

nuance and detail. I like to think so.

3:51

But it's tremendous rhetoric, isn't it? It's

3:53

great rhetoric written by Theodore Sorensen,

3:55

Ted Sorensen, his speechwriter who had been working for

3:57

him since the late 50s. Kennedy is a

3:59

great free... And he has a slightly

4:01

sort of, I don't think he's the best speaker

4:04

in the world, but he has this kind of declamatory

4:07

style, you know, slightly friends,

4:09

Romans, countrymen style that I think works

4:11

very well. It is. It's traditional

4:13

oratory. Yeah. As opposed to say to

4:15

Reagan's more folksy. Exactly.

4:18

Oh, kind of. Yeah, because JFK never really does

4:20

folksy. He would probably regard that as

4:22

too populist. He sees himself

4:24

as the leader of the new Rome. Yeah, exactly.

4:27

Exactly. So Tom, we are doing this series

4:29

about the assassination of John F. Kennedy. And

4:31

this week we're talking about the victim to try

4:33

and sort of shed some light on why he might have been assassinated.

4:37

Before we get into his presidency and how he becomes president,

4:39

we should just recap a bit to reflect on the man and the politician.

4:42

So as a man, I'm surprised how

4:45

much I like Kennedy having read up

4:47

on him for these episodes, because there's

4:49

parts of me that are always, you know,

4:51

he's so boring because he's so ubiquitous. You

4:54

know, it's like people who don't know the Beatles because they're over-familiar

4:56

with the Beatles. Yeah, but actually the Kennedy

4:58

that I think emerges from the first, let's say, 40 years of

5:01

his life, it's actually a pretty

5:03

likable guy. Charming,

5:05

funny, brave. Yeah, brave, anglophile. I

5:08

mean, what's not to like? Right. A big fan

5:10

of Winston Turtle, the North Melbourne, and

5:12

somebody who, as we know, most importantly,

5:15

defended Stanley Baldwin in his box while England

5:17

slept. Taking all the boxes. Who's

5:20

taking all the boxes? The one box that I think some

5:22

listeners may be wondering about is

5:25

the fact that he is so promiscuous

5:28

and that, you know, he's not a faithful husband. I

5:31

suppose the one thing I would say in defence of him, as

5:33

it were, not that I think it's historians' jobs

5:36

to attack or defend, he's not predatory.

5:39

He doesn't have non-consensual relationships.

5:42

He without exception has relationships with people

5:44

who are very keen to have them with him. But

5:47

also we were discussing this in the previous episode. I mean, it's

5:49

tied up with his daddy issues. It is. Because

5:52

his father, Joe Kennedy, has basically taught

5:55

his sons that it's fine. That this

5:57

is what you do.

5:58

I mean, his father is a terrible father.

5:59

He lobotomizes his

6:02

oldest daughter, Rosemary. Yeah, exactly.

6:04

In 1940, was it, or something? An absolutely tragic

6:07

story. So Rosemary had what we would now call severe

6:09

learning difficulties, and the family

6:11

decide, or Joe decides, we

6:13

don't really know how much his wife was involved with the decision,

6:16

he's persuaded by sort of people

6:19

he talks to, you know, surgeons

6:21

on Cape Cod or whatever, that the thing

6:23

to do is to have her sent for lobotomy. And

6:26

that destroys her life, effectively.

6:28

It's a terrible mistake to have made. It's not necessarily

6:30

his fault. He's following the advice. Well, yeah,

6:33

it's a ghastly story, Tom. It's an absolutely ghastly

6:35

story. But anyway, he's not a good father. No,

6:38

he's not. And maybe you could say

6:40

about JFK that what's incredible is he

6:42

turns out as well adjusted as he does. I

6:45

think that's actually a reasonable thing to say. We

6:47

reflect on the man, just reflect on the

6:50

politician for a second, because I think understanding the politician

6:52

is really important when we get into the theories about

6:54

why he was murdered. At the point that we

6:56

ended last time, the late 1950s, he

6:59

is an extremely conventional

7:02

politician. He is not on

7:04

the left of the Democratic Party. He

7:06

is kind of squarely in the middle. So

7:09

he's from Massachusetts. That

7:12

means he's almost automatically more

7:14

liberal than many, because Massachusetts is a

7:16

very liberal state, an urban state, big unions,

7:19

all that kind of thing. So he's not going

7:21

to be a big defender of segregation. It would be unthinkable

7:23

for a senator from Massachusetts to be a defender

7:25

of segregation, for example. And

7:27

he's not an isolationist or anything like that. But

7:30

there's nothing about JFK at this point that

7:32

would alarm people. Unless you're the kind of

7:34

person who thinks all Democrats are Marxists, and

7:37

there are people like that, that business

7:39

leaders, other politicians,

7:42

even sort of Southern Democrats or

7:44

Republicans in Congress, they've seen

7:46

plenty of people like him before. He's not

7:48

as left wing as FDR was, for example. So

7:50

this presumably makes him an ideal

7:53

person to run for the presidency. Absolutely.

7:55

I mean, he's the kind of figure that the Democrats at the moment

7:58

are significantly lacking. Because,

8:00

you know, the Kennedy that's floating around now believes all

8:02

kinds of mad stuff, doesn't he, about? Yes, Robert

8:04

Kennedy's son. Aliens and all

8:06

kinds of stuff. Exactly. But JFK is

8:09

straight down the road, bang on the nail, centrist,

8:12

exactly what you want if you want to win an election.

8:14

Especially in an age, Tom, when the two big parties

8:16

are uneasy coalitions. They're

8:19

regional coalitions rather than ideological.

8:21

But they always are, aren't they? They are. But

8:23

in this period, to win, the Democrats

8:25

must win urban, northeastern

8:28

kind of cities and things. So, the Chicago's,

8:30

the Boston's, New York's and so on. Ideally,

8:34

they'd like to win California. And they would

8:36

also need to win the white segregationist

8:39

South, where a lot of black people can't vote.

8:41

So in other words, if you nominate somebody

8:44

who is a fervent

8:46

champion of black civil rights, you

8:48

will alarm white southern voters

8:51

and you will forfeit the support of

8:53

the kind of white southern power brokers. But

8:56

conversely, presumably, if

8:58

you are very associated with the

9:00

segregationist traditions, then you're not going to win

9:02

liberals in the northeast. Correct. Exactly.

9:05

Exactly. Yes, I see. Yes.

9:08

It's a coalition and it's a tough ask. And if you've got a young war hero

9:11

with a very beautiful wife, a

9:14

young family, loads of money,

9:17

you know, lots of glamour, then you're

9:19

laughing. And so when Kennedy announced

9:22

that he's standing, which is in January 1960, he's

9:24

obviously going to be very hard to beat. There

9:27

are two downsides. One, senators don't

9:29

normally won. So it's very rare

9:31

for a senator to get the nomination because senators are kind

9:33

of seen as legislators and not executives.

9:36

And secondly, he's a Catholic and America's

9:38

never had a Catholic president. There has been a Catholic

9:41

candidate for president, Al Smith, in 1928, but he was hammered

9:43

by Herbert

9:45

Hoover. So that kind of hangs

9:48

over Kennedy. Can he beat the wasps?

9:50

Can he beat the wasps? And he has to prove himself

9:52

by doing something that a lot of candidates don't bother

9:55

doing. He enters the presidential primaries. So

9:57

we now think of presidential primaries as the norm.

10:00

but they were quite exceptional in those days. Lots

10:02

of people didn't enter and thought they could kind of set

10:04

up the nomination at the convention. So

10:06

he enters the primaries and he wins

10:09

in two quite Protestant states, so

10:11

Wisconsin and West Virginia. There are the two big

10:13

tests. He beats the local favorite, who's

10:15

Hubert Humphrey from Minnesota. And

10:17

in doing so, he shows that Catholics

10:19

can win elections outside their own kind of

10:21

heartland. And how much kind of anti-Catholic

10:24

sentiment is there floating around his candidacy?

10:27

Is he gonna be ruled from Rome and all that

10:29

kind of thing? There's a fair bit of talk of this. I

10:31

think most Americans actually don't think this way at

10:33

all. There are always a few who do, because

10:36

there's still a fair bit of kind of sectarianism,

10:39

but most Americans don't. I mean, Kennedy puts that to

10:41

bed quite successfully. But I think because

10:43

it had never happened, he's always

10:45

being asked about it. I mean, it seems mad

10:47

now, looking back, that in 1960, the

10:50

candidates for the Democratic Party

10:52

was having to go around making speeches about his belief

10:55

in the separation of church and state. And

10:57

it seemed to him to go out of his way to say he

10:59

believed in the separation of church and state, and that he would not

11:01

be dictated to by Rome. That all

11:03

dates back to Gregory VII, the famous Pope of the 11th

11:05

century. So a historical irony

11:08

there. Well, this is a lovely teaser, Tom, for

11:10

your forthcoming episodes, which you would be

11:12

doing in 2029, did we agree? To

11:16

be discussed. Uncorrectly, the seven. Anyway,

11:18

he goes to the convention. He wins on the

11:20

first ballot. There are lots of other candidates. So

11:23

Lyndon Baines Johnson, the Senate Majority

11:25

Leader, Democrat, kind of Texan, is

11:27

one of the other candidates. And Kennedy actually

11:30

ends up picking him as his vice presidential

11:33

nominee. And that's to balance his

11:35

Northeast kind of liberal, Harvard,

11:37

Massachusetts vibe with a hard-drinking,

11:41

hard-pitten Southerner. Right,

11:44

yes, a Texan. So not

11:46

somebody from the real heartland, the segregationist

11:49

heartlands of, you know, Mississippi, South Carolina

11:52

or somewhere, but a Texan, so on the kind of

11:54

fringes of the South, but somebody who knows

11:56

how to work the system in Congress. Somebody

11:59

who's been around a lot. I mean, they're a very odd couple.

12:01

They have nothing in common, but it's a

12:03

sensible choice. And Kennedy makes

12:05

this grand speech at the convention about the new

12:07

frontier. You know, we stand on the frontier

12:10

of the 1960s. He appeals

12:12

to youth. He says, my cord is to the

12:14

young at heart, regardless of age. The

12:17

Cold War is crucial for him. So he says,

12:19

you know, we're in a struggle for mastery, a

12:21

race for mastery of the sky and the rain, the oceans

12:23

and the tides, the far side of space

12:26

and the inside of men's minds. This is

12:28

the kind of soaring rhetoric that

12:30

I think if somebody did now in the 21st century, people

12:32

would slightly laugh. But in 1960,

12:35

people would love it. I mean, they did love it. I don't

12:37

know. I think someone should try it. Can you see

12:39

Rishi Sunak coming out with this, Tom? No, not

12:41

Rishi. You know, someone in America. Yeah,

12:44

maybe. So he goes into the

12:47

general election and he's up against Nixon, the

12:49

vice president, with his five o'clock shadow,

12:51

with his five o'clock shadow. That's been

12:54

massively overstated, you know. So this is a reference

12:56

to the TV debate. Nixon wore

12:58

a pale suit and kind of looked very

13:01

paggard. Sweaty. He did look

13:03

sweaty because he said he was gonna visit every single

13:05

state to show his dynamism. So he visited

13:07

every single state and he was absolutely exhausted. And

13:09

he'd also hurt his knee and then

13:12

been hospitalized. And he drags himself

13:14

from his hospital bed to do this debate.

13:16

And actually, I mean, there's sort of

13:18

one clip of him looking a little bit sweaty. He's

13:20

not even looking that sweaty. He's looking a tiny bit sweaty.

13:23

And that's now become a staple of documentaries.

13:25

But actually, if you watch the whole debate, it's

13:28

actually very boring. They're both really

13:30

good by modern standards. I

13:32

mean, you watch it in disbelief at how far the standards

13:35

have plummeted since then. They're both

13:37

very articulate, really well-informed, very

13:39

thoughtful. They don't really disagree

13:42

on very much. The big issue is, Kennedy

13:44

says, under the Eisenhower administration, we've

13:47

fallen behind the Soviet Union. They sent

13:49

up a Sputnik satellite in 1957. Fidel

13:52

Castro has come to power in Cuba and the Cuban Revolution.

13:54

And also, Kennedy says there's this massive missile

13:56

gap. He goes on about this all the time. He

13:59

says the Russians... have family more missiles than we do.

14:01

So in a way, he's attacking Nixon from

14:04

the right. Yeah, if you want to see it that way. I

14:06

mean, I wouldn't describe it in left-right terms, but yeah, absolutely.

14:08

He says they're stagnant, you

14:11

know, conservative, and they've done nothing.

14:13

And they're falling behind in the Cold War. And

14:16

I will prosecute the Cold War with great dynamism

14:18

and vigor. I will have shiny rockets,

14:20

and we'll go to space, and we'll do all of these

14:23

exciting things. When does he give

14:25

his pledge to get a man on the moon? Say that's 1961 later. But

14:28

it's kind of incubating there. Oh, absolutely.

14:30

So when Gagarin is the first man into orbit,

14:34

his response to that is to say, we will

14:36

get somebody on the moon by the end of the decade. So

14:38

this is all part of his kind of new frontier thing. You

14:40

can understand why he's saying this, because America

14:43

has had... It's not perfect,

14:45

of course, it's had McCarthyism and the civil rights

14:48

issue. But America is by

14:50

far the richest, most affluent, most technologically

14:53

advanced country on Earth. Tremendous optimism

14:55

around, we can do what we want. We

14:57

can put a man on the moon. We can solve poverty.

15:00

We can win the Cold War. Kennedy is

15:02

the embodiment of that early 60s,

15:04

kind of shiny space age,

15:07

atomic age optimism. But

15:09

also Camelot, famously, is the word that's applied

15:12

to his White House. They're only afterwards,

15:14

Tom. Oh, not at the time. So

15:16

it's actually Jackie giving an interview

15:18

to Life magazine, I think months

15:21

after his assassination says, oh, it was

15:23

like Camelot. We love Camelot because

15:26

they love the musical. Yes. Very

15:28

much a musical. So when people go on about

15:30

the glamour of the Kennedy White House... What is it? What

15:33

do the common people do? I think they sing. That's

15:35

it, yes. Yeah. I can't remember

15:37

how it goes. But they're very much people who like to listen to Broadway musicals

15:40

and sipping martinis. That's

15:42

their kind of mad men. Yes.

15:45

Yeah. And that's the sort of Camelot mistake. Now,

15:47

actually, the interesting thing is we've listed all

15:49

Kennedy's great advantages and assets.

15:52

This is the closest election in

15:54

modern American history. Life candidates

15:56

win just over 49 and a half

15:59

percent of the vote. and actually

16:01

goes to two states in Annoyan, Texas.

16:04

And in both of those states, there were allegations that

16:06

it had been fixed and there had been fraud and

16:08

that people had stuffed boxes. Right,

16:11

because the allegation that Joe Kennedy

16:13

bought the presidency for his son is a

16:15

kind of Trump-esque complaint,

16:17

isn't it? That rumbles throughout his presidency.

16:20

And it plays a part in

16:22

the theories after Kennedy's death, because

16:24

some people listen to this, may well say they

16:27

fixed the election. Joe Kennedy

16:29

bought the election, but he didn't deliver, and then the

16:31

Mafia killed him. Okay, so let's bear that in mind. Well,

16:34

the truth of the matter, just on that election, he didn't buy

16:36

the election. They did spend a lot of money,

16:39

but was there a sense in 1960 that

16:41

it had been fraudulently bought? Not really. And

16:44

also, it's possible that

16:46

there had been a little bit of ballot box stuffing

16:48

in Illinois. The margin there was 9,000 votes. But

16:51

in Texas, the margin is 46,000 votes. That's a hell

16:53

of a lot of votes. So

16:57

most academics, in fact, almost all academics,

16:59

I think, who've looked into this, say that

17:02

was not a stolen election. Okay. You

17:04

know, actually, there's always a little bit

17:06

of gray area in some of these things, because

17:08

local election officials,

17:10

they make mistakes, they are appointed by the party,

17:13

they maybe lean one way or the other. But

17:15

this isn't a case of major fraud by any means. So Dick

17:18

Nixon slinks off to lick his wounds. And

17:21

Kennedy, meanwhile, is preparing to deliver his long

17:24

pause-strewn inaugural address. He is

17:26

indeed. Now, on his

17:28

administration, Tom, this is again important

17:30

when we come to the murder. A

17:32

common belief among conspiracy theorists

17:35

is that Kennedy was ultimately much more

17:37

left-wing than people realized. That

17:39

he's a radical who is going to alter

17:42

American foreign policy or domestic policy

17:44

in some alarming way. And

17:46

for that reason, he had to be eliminated. When

17:49

you look at the people in his administration, the

17:51

key players, they're all very

17:54

much the old kind of Washington insiders. So

17:57

his Secretary of State, Dean Rusk, had

17:59

been a state of the law. State Department official in

18:01

the 1950s and then he had run the Rockefeller

18:05

Foundation. His Treasury Secretary

18:07

Douglas Dillon was an Eisenhower Republican,

18:10

had been an Eisenhower official. And

18:12

his Defense Secretary Robert McNamara had

18:15

worked for the Air Force and then he had been head of

18:17

the Ford Motor Company. So these are not,

18:19

you know, firebrand

18:21

radicals by any stretch

18:23

of the imagination. They are very establishment

18:26

figures. Very military industrial complex

18:28

though, Dominic. They are very military industrial

18:30

complex, but is Kennedy himself

18:33

not somebody who would be military industrial complex

18:35

adjacent to Tom? People who've watched Oliver Stone's

18:37

film JFK will remember that he opens with

18:39

Eisenhower in his last broadcast

18:41

warning against the military industrial complex,

18:43

doesn't he? So I just throw that out. Which

18:46

he absolutely did, but I think Eisenhower's warning there

18:48

is partly a warning actually about let's

18:50

not overspend. Let's not throw

18:52

loads of money at expensive military white

18:55

elephants just to please, you know,

18:57

big business and their friends in the military who

18:59

want to build air bases and stuff everywhere and waste

19:02

everybody's money. I think this sort of the idea

19:04

that Eisenhower is actually secretly

19:06

Dwight Eisenhower hated the United

19:08

States and its mission in the world. I mean, that's

19:10

obviously nonsense. Eisenhower is incredibly patriotic

19:13

and has already toppled a government in Guatemala,

19:16

Tom, in 1954. All right,

19:18

Poirot. Carry

19:21

on with your account of the murder's administration

19:24

stacking up the clues or not. No, it's

19:26

possible, I suppose, that somebody might want to

19:29

murder Kennedy because they regarded

19:31

him as too left-wing domestically. It's

19:33

possible, but is it likely?

19:36

So if you look at his economic policy, that's the thing that

19:38

most people usually care most about. Not

19:40

the most eye-catching, but if you ask ordinary

19:43

people, it's bread and butter stuff. The

19:45

economy grew every year in Kennedy's administration

19:48

and the one big thing he did was to cut everybody's

19:51

taxes. So the economy

19:53

had stuttered a bit at the end of Eisenhower's

19:55

time. It had been a brief recession in the late

19:57

50s and Kennedy's keen to get it.

20:00

started again. Now he could do this

20:02

through his sort of Roosevelt type big

20:04

government public works

20:06

or he could cut taxes and give people

20:09

more money to spend. The Liz Truss

20:11

option.

20:14

That's not a comparison

20:16

you often hear is it? The Kennedy Truss

20:18

comparison.

20:20

But it works for JFK. It

20:22

does work for JFK and he lasts longer than

20:24

Liz Truss. So he cut most tax

20:27

bans, there were about a thousand different tax

20:29

bans in America in the early 60s. The

20:31

average cut was about 20%. So if you were the top

20:33

rate taxpayer, so the people

20:35

who might be in a shadowy meeting Tom, yes

20:38

smoking cigars, yeah, deciding

20:40

to rub him out, you have JFK to

20:43

thank for slashing your rate of tax from 90% to 70%. So

20:45

whether such people are genuinely suffused

20:50

with rage against JFK's

20:52

socialistic policies, I will leave the listener

20:55

to decide for themselves. And

20:57

in fact, some liberals, it's often the thing among

20:59

liberal historians, they will say, JFK

21:01

is just an establishment centrist, centrist

21:04

dad. He's not actually doing all

21:06

the things that he should be doing. So there's that.

21:08

Okay, on the centrist daddery, of

21:11

course, the great domestic talking

21:13

point, the thing that's roiling

21:15

America is the Civil Rights Movement. So

21:18

we did episode didn't we on Martin

21:20

Luther King's great speech? Yes.

21:23

In 1962. And you talked there about how

21:26

Kennedy was kind of a bit

21:28

ambivalent about civil rights, was he

21:31

as an unfair to a degree, you know,

21:33

if Kennedy unusually had decided to spend

21:35

late nights at the White House, not with some imported

21:38

secretary, that his aides have brought him

21:40

for the occasion, but with you, Tom, he would

21:44

say to you, I do care about civil rights. I

21:46

think it's a disgrace that people are treated so bad

21:48

in the south. Of course, it's a long deep

21:51

problem that's been going on for generations. I

21:53

would hate it if I lived there. But he

21:55

would see it in quite academic terms. He'd see it

21:57

as a policy issue. How do we solve

21:59

this?

21:59

And is that

22:01

firstly because he's looking

22:03

at it as someone who wants to win re-election?

22:06

Of course. And doesn't want to alienate

22:08

white democratic voters in the South.

22:10

And secondly, is it because he

22:14

doesn't have much personal experience of

22:17

what it means for segregated

22:20

black people in the South to be denied

22:22

the vote and attacked with dogs

22:24

and denied basic rights? Absolutely.

22:27

Absolutely. Right on both counts. So

22:29

on the one hand, he's grown up in Gilded

22:32

Splendor in Massachusetts and been going around

22:34

to London and going on trips to Europe

22:37

and hobnobbing with actresses and all that stuff.

22:40

He spent far more time in Europe than he has ever

22:42

spent in the American South. I mean, he spent probably more

22:44

time in one city, London, than

22:46

most of the American South put together. To him,

22:49

he doesn't have black friends. There weren't black people

22:51

at Chote or, you know, would there

22:53

have been people at Harvard, not that he would

22:55

have associated with. It's just never

22:57

been an issue for him. So he has no emotional investment.

23:00

One of the things I remember from the episode that we did

23:02

on the Martin Luther King speech is that Kennedy

23:05

had never heard Martin Luther King speak before.

23:07

No, exactly. That's his first time

23:09

he hears him. Yeah. And then

23:12

there's the issue of the coalition. To

23:14

get anything through Congress, he'll probably

23:16

need to depend on Southern democratic

23:18

votes. Obviously, they will never vote for him on civil

23:20

rights. So if he wants to get that through, he'll

23:23

have to rely on Republican votes. He

23:25

appoints as attorney general, so he's in

23:27

charge of law and order. His younger brother, Robert.

23:30

Robert at this stage, he's a fascinating

23:32

character, actually, Tom, ends up being a great aficionado

23:34

of Greek tragedy, would you believe? I'm not surprised.

23:37

But Robert, at this stage, is a very hard man.

23:40

Robert is the fixer who does the dirty work for his

23:42

older brother. And he basically says

23:44

to Robert, just keep

23:46

me out of civil rights. Keep it quiet. We

23:48

can deal with that in the second term. I don't need

23:51

any grief about civil rights. And actually, what happens,

23:53

of course, is that civil rights becomes this colossal issue.

23:56

And on a couple of occasions, he has

23:58

to federalize. National Guard,

24:01

send in the National Guard over

24:03

the heads of state governors to

24:06

enforce the desegregation of universities,

24:08

first in Mississippi in 1962 and then in Alabama in 1963. So

24:13

circumstances are pushing him to take

24:15

a more and more interventionist line on civil

24:17

rights. And then in June 1963,

24:20

he finally realizes he has to bite the bullet.

24:22

He gives a landmark TV speech,

24:24

actually a really powerful speech, in

24:27

which he says, this is a moral issue as old

24:29

as the scriptures and as clear as the American

24:32

Constitution. He says, we

24:34

preach freedom around the world.

24:37

But how can we do that

24:38

when we say we are the land of the free,

24:40

except for the Negroes? We have no second class

24:43

citizens except for Negroes. We

24:45

have no class or caste system, no ghettos,

24:47

no master race, except with respect to

24:49

Negroes. And he also says, who

24:51

among us, if we were black, would

24:54

be content with the councils

24:56

of patience and delay? So

24:58

he says, okay,

25:00

enough, let's fix it. And

25:03

he says, I'm going to send to Congress a bill

25:05

to outlaw discrimination in schools and

25:07

public accommodations and employment

25:10

to end the age of discrimination. The issue

25:12

he has is, is he going to be able to

25:14

get this through Congress? And at

25:16

that point in the summer of 1963, it looks very

25:19

unlikely it looks like the Southern Democrats will

25:22

block it. So he's been pushed into taking this

25:24

position. And lots of black

25:26

civil rights leaders say he's been very

25:28

slow, he's dragged his feet. But at last,

25:32

he's given us the speech we dreamed of from a

25:34

president. But whether he can turn that

25:36

into legislative accomplishments, that's

25:39

a very different question. So presumably,

25:41

that is something that he would now having

25:43

made this speech, he has to look to

25:45

sell it to people in the south, and

25:48

to cities like Dallas in Texas.

25:51

Yeah. So that's Kennedy's domestic policies.

25:54

But let's take a break now. When we come back, let's look

25:56

at the dimension of foreign policy.

25:59

Cuba. missile crises and

26:01

the Cold War. So we're back in a few minutes.

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27:26

Hello, welcome back to the rest of history and we are looking

27:29

at the presidency of JFK.

27:32

Dominic, in the first half, we, well, you, to

27:34

be honest, gave us a survey of his domestic

27:36

record. But as

27:38

we said, his real focus,

27:41

the events that he's really remembered for,

27:43

are all pretty much in the dimension of foreign policy,

27:45

aren't they? They are, because that's what fascinated

27:48

him since he was a teenager. In

27:50

the first episode, we talked about him reading Winston Churchill's

27:53

book, The World Crisis. He read

27:55

a biography of Duke of Marlborough. He had

27:57

written his thesis about British politics in the 1930s.

28:00

But what those things had in common was that they're all really about

28:02

foreign affairs and kind of international relations,

28:05

and that's what fascinates him. Presumably, it's not just

28:07

that he's kind of, oh, I can't be bothered with

28:10

the domestic sphere. I mean, foreign policy

28:12

is intruding on him, isn't it? Because

28:14

he has this huge problem

28:17

that there is a communist outpost in the form

28:19

of Cuba right on America's doorstep.

28:22

Yes. And don't forget, he's come to office

28:25

proclaiming we will pay any price,

28:27

bear any burden in the

28:29

defense of liberty, or this kind of crusading

28:32

rhetoric. He believes in the Cold War.

28:34

Kennedy is more nuanced than just to say, he's

28:37

anti-communist, of course, but he's

28:39

been very conscious in the 50s because he has been to

28:41

places like Indochina, he's been to Vietnam.

28:44

He has seen the difficulty of what happens when

28:46

a European empire withdraws, and

28:49

then someone's going to fill the gap and there's competition,

28:51

is it going to be communists or anti-communists? What's

28:54

the United States going to do? He's

28:56

very conscious that the United States can't

28:59

just be the bully and can't be kind of

29:02

the sponsor always of the most repressive

29:05

conservative forces in society. So

29:07

he's kind of wrestling with that. But Cuba

29:09

is a particularly incendiary problem because

29:12

it's right on America's doorstep. A

29:14

lot of Americans have lost money because

29:16

of the Cuban Revolution. A lot of Cuban

29:18

exiles have ended up in Florida and Miami

29:21

and are pressing for action. And when

29:23

he comes in, he is briefed within

29:26

days, I think, by the CIA

29:29

that they have been planning an operation to retake

29:31

Cuba. They've been planning it for a year. They

29:33

have a scheme of basically

29:35

getting Cuban exiles, getting paramilitaries

29:38

and transporting them from Central

29:41

America to Cuba and giving

29:43

them air support with bombers under CIA

29:45

command and that they think there was

29:47

enough of a groundswell of anti-Castro feeling

29:49

in Cuba that they will be able to topple

29:52

Castro. And I mean, if this

29:54

goes ahead, it'd be a great coup

29:56

for Kennedy. Literally. Yeah,

29:59

it will be a great coup. Yeah, very good. Now,

30:01

straight away, some of Canada's

30:04

aides think,

30:06

this sounds kind of far fetched, like 1,500 people is not

30:08

many. Because these

30:10

are the same guys who are giving Castro

30:12

exploding cigars and... Well, they're not doing

30:15

that at this stage. Oh, have they not? Okay. They're

30:17

later on going to be exploding

30:19

cigars. Making his hair fall out. Right,

30:21

the beard falling out powder and so

30:23

on. These are very much the plan B. So

30:26

the plan A is the plan of pigs. And

30:28

at the time, some of Canada's aides, well,

30:31

they clearly have doubts.

30:33

But

30:34

the general mood, and you see this again with Vietnam

30:36

years later, the general mood is, you know, we

30:39

should look strong.

30:40

We should do things with the United States.

30:43

Let's give it a go. What could possibly go wrong?

30:45

So

30:46

in April 1961, they launched

30:49

the Bear Pigs operation. Now, I think the CIA

30:51

always thought that basically they could blackmail Kennedy.

30:53

You know, if things went wrong, he would have no choice

30:56

but to send a loss of support. Authorise

30:58

more airstrikes, all this kind of thing. And

31:01

actually what happens is the whole thing is pretty

31:03

much done and dusted in about three days. The

31:06

guys land. Cuba doesn't rise

31:08

as they hoped. They basically end up

31:10

either being killed or captured by Castro's

31:12

troops. And JFK, when people

31:14

say to him, will you send more air support?

31:16

He says, no, this is obviously a disaster.

31:19

Why would I bother? No. So

31:21

he doesn't want to get sucked into this flashpoint

31:25

that could cause problems with the Soviet Union.

31:27

Yeah. With Cuba's sort of communist

31:30

sponsor. So the

31:32

bear pigs are a disaster. And there's no

31:34

doubt that among some Cuban

31:36

exiles, they blame Kennedy and

31:39

there's a lot of bitterness. They think he let them down.

31:41

You know, it was a pretty stupid operation to begin with.

31:44

Kennedy hasn't given up on the idea of getting rid of Castro.

31:46

So this thing called Operation Mongoose, Tom,

31:49

which is your exploding cigars, seashells

31:52

planted that would explode when he picks them

31:54

up. Or these guys, it's sometimes

31:56

claimed, I think, in a lot of histories

31:59

that this is. Canada's personal obsession,

32:02

that when he wakes up in the morning, he's thinking about

32:04

exploding cigars. Because it's quite Churchill,

32:06

isn't it? It's the kind of thing Churchill would have loved. It is. Mad

32:09

schemes. Yes, it is a mad scheme. Exploding

32:12

gizmos. So is he influenced by

32:14

that at all or not? You see, I don't think actually

32:16

Kennedy is quite as into this as everybody

32:19

thinks he is. I think it's become conventional

32:21

wisdom that the Canada is thought of nothing else

32:23

but murdering Fidel Castro. I think

32:25

when it comes up in meetings, Kennedy says, sure,

32:28

go for it. But I don't think when he's off

32:30

with the latest secretary, I don't think this

32:32

is what's playing on his mind. Damn you, Castro.

32:34

Yes, yes. Is that what he's saying?

32:36

Yeah. Yeah. I think

32:38

it's annoying that Castro is still there, but

32:40

I don't think he's obsessed by it as we are

32:43

now with it, if you know what I mean. Because presumably

32:45

his real focus is with the Soviet Union. Yes.

32:48

Of course, absolutely it is. The guy who's written

32:50

that, who wrote that essay about Francois I

32:52

of France. Yeah. This is his field

32:54

of the cloth of gold or something going off to meet Christophe

32:57

and all that. Castro

32:59

is just an irritation. How

33:02

conscious is he of the shadow of the mushroom

33:04

cloud? Oh, he's very conscious of it. It's

33:06

there the whole time. It's absolutely there the whole time

33:08

in the early 60s. And he presumably has

33:10

lots of accurate briefings on what a

33:12

nuclear war would mean. Oh yeah, he does

33:14

see there's a nuclear war. I mean, he doesn't want a nuclear

33:16

war. And thanks in large degree

33:19

to Kennedy, there isn't a nuclear war.

33:21

So

33:22

funny enough, the one thing that often gets missed is

33:25

there could easily have been a nuclear war about Berlin. So

33:28

that would be a very obvious flashpoint. He

33:30

first meets Nikita Christophe, who's the relatively

33:33

new paramount leader of the Soviet Union.

33:35

In the summer of 1961, they go to Vienna. So

33:38

this is just a couple of months after the Bay of Pigs.

33:40

And he is off his face on painkillers,

33:43

isn't he? Kennedy. Yeah. Yeah.

33:46

I remember a brilliant book by David Reynolds. Is it David Reynolds?

33:49

David Reynolds, yeah. Summits. Yes.

33:51

Yeah. And the count of the summit there is amazing. But

33:54

Kennedy's just shoveling painkillers. But

33:56

this is true, Tom, for Kennedy throughout this

33:58

period. So the The reason

34:00

we spent so long talking about Kennedy's back,

34:03

his malaria, his urinary

34:05

issues, his Addison's disease,

34:08

is because in this point, if you look at photos

34:10

of Kennedy as a young man and then photos

34:13

of him as president, the one thing that is so

34:15

obvious is that as president he's like somebody

34:17

has puffed him up. His skin is

34:19

very puffy, his eyes are narrowed,

34:22

his face is kind of yellow and puffy. He's

34:25

still a handsome man, but the truth

34:27

is he is on a massive cocktail of drugs,

34:30

often working against one another because

34:32

the Addison's disease makes a mess

34:35

of all the other things. He

34:37

travels when he goes to Vienna, for example,

34:40

or when he goes to Dallas later on. He would

34:42

travel with a special kind of plank, like

34:45

a wooden plank and all this orthopedic

34:48

stuff. He has a kind of corset,

34:50

doesn't he? A corset that he has to wear

34:52

to basically keep him upright. Him

34:55

being off his face, as you put it in Vienna,

34:58

that's nothing unusual, but he's often in agony

35:00

actually. How do you judge his performance at Vienna?

35:03

He does really badly in Vienna. Kennedy

35:05

himself says that of Khrushchev, he beat the hell out of me, that

35:07

Khrushchev has gone in for a fight. Khrushchev

35:10

said later, I would have liked to be nice

35:12

to Kennedy, he seemed a nice guy, but

35:16

I was doing my job, which was to give

35:18

him a really hard time, and he does. They

35:21

want to kind of reconcile the status of Berlin,

35:23

which has obviously been divided since the Second World War.

35:26

The Soviets wanted to be part of East Germany, and

35:28

they basically won the West out. The West obviously

35:31

don't want that at all. Kennedy

35:33

just allows himself really to be shouted at by

35:35

Khrushchev, and he's really shaken when he comes

35:37

away, because he hasn't done himself justice.

35:40

Somebody who's so used to being the alpha male, actually,

35:43

he's used to people falling for his charm and finding

35:45

him funny and great company. And

35:47

Khrushchev's not interested in any of that, and Kennedy finds

35:50

that very troubling.

35:51

And then just two months later, Khrushchev

35:53

moves in Berlin. We

35:55

did the episode, Tom, about the Berlin Wall with Ian

35:57

McGregor, a wonderful guest, great episode.

36:00

episode, the Berlin Wall goes up. Now

36:02

that is a moment that a different president could have overreacted

36:05

to. And Kennedy protests, but he does nothing

36:07

about it really. He sends troops

36:10

to the checkpoint, the tanks squaring up.

36:12

The tanks, the footage and the photos,

36:14

it's extraordinary. I mean, that could be the beginning of the

36:16

Third World War. But Kennedy is very

36:19

conscious. We won't do anything to provoke

36:21

them because actually in some ways, the forced

36:23

partition of Berlin with the erection

36:25

of the wall, it's not a bad outcome from

36:28

his point of view. I mean, aside from anything else, it's a terrible

36:30

symbol of what the Cold War means. Yes,

36:33

but it freezes the conflict. I mean, if there's a bloody

36:35

big wall there, then you can't fight each other. So

36:37

how would you gauge his performance in that,

36:39

that he's kind of Goldilocks, tough,

36:42

but not too tough? Yeah,

36:44

I mean, in that first year, it's

36:47

Khrushchev and the Kremlin that are driving

36:49

the pace. And he's reacting, he's purely

36:52

reacting. But he's reacting in a fairly sensible

36:54

way. He's not escalating things.

36:57

He's not overreacted to

36:59

the provocation in Berlin. And

37:01

that's actually the pattern that you will see in the second year

37:04

with the great event of the second year, which is

37:06

the Cuban mytho crisis. So

37:08

that really is, even if you're a Kennedy

37:10

skeptic, even if you say he is

37:12

a spoiled brat, and he's entitled, and they're

37:14

making excuses for the womanizing, and, you

37:17

know, he's just a rich man's David Cameron,

37:20

even if you said all that, I think

37:22

his performance in the Cuban missile crisis is pretty

37:24

good. Because he gets these

37:27

photos on the 16th of June 1962, the

37:30

missiles are being installed Soviet missiles in Cuba,

37:33

and that clearly can reach the American mainland. And

37:35

this is a massive deal. I mean, this

37:37

is puts America itself under threat. And of course, Kennedy

37:40

is always a politician. So if news of this gets out,

37:43

he can't just do nothing. Because if news

37:45

got out that he knew about it and did nothing, he

37:47

would make him look so weak, especially after

37:49

what's happened in Berlin. So he doesn't

37:52

do what maybe Nixon would have done. Nixon

37:55

is a great man for brooding, you know, darkened

37:57

rooms, classical music.

38:00

playing, staring into the fireplace

38:02

and thinking about how miserable he is and how uncool

38:04

he is. Kennedy doesn't do any of that. And

38:07

he doesn't sort of secrete himself away with Henry Kissinger

38:09

and hook up some scheme. He convenes

38:11

this big kind of committee, it's called the

38:13

X-Com, and with generals and

38:16

advisers, and they're all sworn to secrecy. And

38:18

his brother, Robert, who's a really big

38:20

player in this, I mean, somebody that, as we said before,

38:23

is very happy to be his hard man and

38:26

to argue with everybody on Kennedy's behalf

38:28

and push the generals and all this kind

38:30

of thing. And Kennedy just sits there.

38:33

He's obviously always present in the discussions.

38:35

We know from the tapes and the transcripts that

38:37

he's an active participant, but

38:39

he's weighing up all the different options. Because

38:42

some of those generals, I mean, the most famous one is a

38:44

guy called General Curtis LeMay. He

38:46

would love to get going. Have a crack at the commies.

38:48

Let's have a crack at the commies. They

38:51

think that if at the end of all this, there's

38:53

one Russian left and two Americans, then we've

38:56

won. And that's a great result. And

38:58

he's very conscious. He's been in war. You

39:00

know, he didn't enjoy it. He came

39:02

back from war a weakened man,

39:05

a sickly man. He is very

39:07

conscious of the costs the whole

39:09

time. So we know that in

39:11

all these discussions, I mean, all the people

39:14

who've studied them, the historians, Max Hastings and

39:16

so on, Fred Logelwald, say he

39:18

is judicious, he's careful,

39:20

he says let's not rush. And

39:23

so the stakes are very high for himself personally,

39:25

for his administration, for the United

39:28

States. Is he thinking the

39:30

stakes are global? This could be the

39:33

end of humanity. Of course he is. Of

39:35

course he is. Yeah, we absolutely know that, you know,

39:38

the mood in these meetings is funereal,

39:41

is really somber. We're in an impossible

39:43

position here. We have to do something. We

39:45

can't not do anything. But we're very

39:47

conscious that if we do this wrong, you

39:49

know, the human race could be ravaged

39:52

beyond imagination. Whoops, apocalypse. Exactly,

39:55

absolutely, exactly. So they impose a blockade. They don't act

39:57

immediately. against

40:00

the missiles. They don't do what some of the

40:02

generals want, which is to strike at Cuba straight

40:04

away. He says, we'll have a naval blockade around

40:07

Cuba. I mean, this is a great subject for at

40:09

least one rest of history podcast. But

40:11

just to tell the story very quickly, they impose the blockade.

40:14

The Soviets look like they're going to ignore it. And they

40:16

have a ship steaming towards the islands.

40:19

The world holds its breath, Tom, I know you love

40:22

a BBC two documentary cliche. The

40:25

world holds its breath.

40:28

And then Khrushchev sends two messages,

40:30

the first of which seems to be quite emollient, the

40:32

second of which seems to be quite belligerent. And

40:35

Kennedy says, let's pretend the second one

40:37

never happened. Maybe he sent that answer to duress or

40:40

been drinking or whatever. Let's reply to the first

40:42

message. And let's do quietly

40:44

a little deal. They will withdraw their missiles

40:46

from Cuba. And we will withdraw

40:49

our missiles from Turkey,

40:51

which is obviously on the border of the Soviet Union. So

40:54

they will feel that they have got something out of

40:56

it. And that's what they do. So

40:58

Dominic, yeah, Khrushchev blinks,

41:01

was perceived as Khrushchev blinking. It's

41:03

a tiny bit more ambiguous

41:05

than that, because Khrushchev has got the removal

41:08

of the American missiles from Turkey out of it.

41:10

So he has got something. But in the world's press,

41:13

because of this image of the Soviet

41:15

ship steaming towards Cuba, and

41:18

then going back and then going back, it

41:20

looks if Khrushchev has blinked, good

41:22

optics. It's bad optics for Khrushchev,

41:25

who then gets the boot in Moscow,

41:27

not just because of that, but also because he's been kind

41:29

of very unreliable and eccentric. And

41:32

Kennedy comes out of it looking the

41:34

person who held his nerve and won the

41:36

day. Young, charismatic. The amazing

41:38

thing is that during all this, amid

41:41

all the stress, he was still carrying on having a mistress

41:43

called Mimi Beardsley smuggled

41:45

into the White House for Tris. Well,

41:48

I suppose if you know, you think the world's going to end. Yeah,

41:50

get on with it. Yeah, I think back on. Yes,

41:53

exactly. It could be the last chance you have. Now

41:55

there is one other thing. So on all this, Tom,

41:58

on the foreign policy. because we mustn't

42:00

forget we're thinking about motives to bump Kennedy

42:02

off. You can see why anti-Castro

42:05

Cuban exiles will be very, very cross with Kennedy.

42:08

You can actually see why, you know,

42:10

if a Cuban exile had been caught red-handed

42:12

with a revolver in his hand having shot Kennedy

42:14

in the White House, you wouldn't be surprised. I mean,

42:17

it's not inherently implausible. On the missile

42:19

crisis, on his handling of affairs with the Soviet

42:21

Union, he's definitely not weak. I

42:24

mean, he's not an appeaser like his father had been.

42:26

So what did the generals make of him in the wake

42:28

of the missile crisis? Do they kind

42:30

of express their respect or are there some who

42:32

think? I mean, there would be one or two who

42:34

would grumble, but I think most of them recognize

42:36

that he's done a decent job. There's no General

42:39

Pinochet waiting in the wings at a Pentagon

42:42

or anything. Now the other big thing is Vietnam.

42:44

So when I saw that Oliver Stone film JFK,

42:46

which we talked about in episode one, I

42:49

remember really vividly how

42:51

Vietnam absolutely hangs over that whole film

42:54

and the idea that Kennedy is going to withdraw from

42:56

Vietnam and that's why he was murdered. And

42:59

that is, put it

43:01

this way, I think it is hard to

43:04

sustain that claim with any authority

43:06

when you look at Kennedy's record in

43:09

Vietnam. So the United States is already committing

43:11

to Vietnam before he becomes president, but

43:13

not by masses of people.

43:16

It's really just the military advisors

43:18

level at that stage? Yeah. So

43:21

the military advisors has maybe something like a thousand

43:23

when he comes in. He increases

43:25

them quite radically in his

43:27

first three years. So there's about 16,000 by late 1963. Now,

43:32

don't forget, there's lots of American troops

43:34

and advisors in different parts of the world. So

43:36

this doesn't make Vietnam a complete outlier. He

43:40

is conscious that the Viet

43:42

Cong, the National Liberation Front, the

43:45

North Vietnamese have been pushing

43:47

and pushing since about 1961. They

43:50

are trying to strengthen their grip in the countryside.

43:53

Their dream is to unify North Vietnam, which

43:55

is communist, South Vietnam, which is anti-communist. But

43:58

there are loads of them. of examples

44:00

of Kennedy saying to people, I'm very

44:02

well aware how much we're hated. I'm well

44:05

aware of how much the Vietnamese people resent

44:07

outside interference. I'm very

44:10

worried about this. I don't want to lose South

44:12

Vietnam, but equally I don't want to see us stuck

44:15

in this terrible quagmire that we can't get out

44:17

of. So he's conscious of all this. Now, one

44:19

development that it kind of seems

44:23

uncanny given what we know is going to happen is

44:25

the President of Vietnam, South Vietnam, that he's

44:27

got reasonably close relationship with, I

44:29

call President Ziem. He

44:32

is toppled by a coup in October 1963. It's

44:34

not CIA orchestrated, but it's CIA

44:37

backed. It's a bit like the one in Chile that

44:39

we talked about. Yeah, it would have happened anyway, even if the Americans

44:41

didn't approve of it, but the Americans do say,

44:43

fine, go for it. He is toppled

44:46

and he is then murdered. And when

44:48

Kennedy hears that Ziem has been murdered,

44:51

he's very shocked. I mean, people say he's

44:53

furious. He thought he was just going to

44:55

be imprisoned or sent to exile or something,

44:58

but he is killed. And this is just

45:00

weeks before Kennedy's own death. And Kennedy is

45:02

very troubled by this. And

45:05

at this point, he is clearly dithering

45:07

about what to do in Vietnam. Now, there's some historians

45:10

who say he would probably

45:12

have got out. He would have said, listen, this is obviously a bit

45:14

of a basket case. We're not going to win. Let's

45:17

go home. There are others who say

45:19

he wouldn't have got out. The talk of

45:21

getting out was a political tool.

45:24

He was using that as a way of putting pressure on the

45:26

South Vietnamese. But actually he would

45:28

have stayed. The thing is, we know from

45:30

the United States, his involvement in other places, let's

45:33

say Iraq and Afghanistan this century,

45:35

how difficult it is actually in those situations

45:38

to pull yourself out of a cork Meyer,

45:40

Dominic, a morass, I think, or a Meyer,

45:43

a morass. They are the approved metaphors

45:46

for Vietnam and any other is wrong. No,

45:48

but Tom, he clearly hasn't made up his

45:50

mind, I would say, in 1963.

45:53

We will come to the argument about his

45:55

assassination. But is it plausible

45:58

that He is

46:00

so clearly committed to withdrawing

46:02

from Vietnam and that people

46:04

care enough that other people

46:07

in his administration or in the American establishment

46:09

care enough to have him

46:11

killed because of it. I mean, whether

46:13

that is plausible, again, I'll leave it for

46:15

the listeners to determine. We will discuss,

46:18

won't we? But you can probably tell from

46:20

the way I framed that, that

46:23

I don't regard that as overwhelmingly

46:25

convincing. Okay. Okay.

46:28

And then we'll come to the reasons that he goes to Dallas.

46:30

Yeah. Space. The

46:33

final frontier. The final frontier. I mean, there's lots of paranoid

46:35

theorizing about space,

46:38

aliens, Roswell. I have no idea

46:40

where you're going with this, Tom. I have to... I'm

46:42

just wondering whether you feel there's any credence

46:44

in ideas that...

46:47

Yeah, I find them very credible.

46:49

What do you expect me to say to

46:51

that? Okay. Well, I'm just putting that out there

46:53

because that's all part of the mix. So, hold on. I

46:56

want us to go to the moon and people say, we have to stop

46:58

him getting to the moon. It's not for you.

47:00

They've got stuff on the moon they don't want people

47:02

to see. It's all in the X-Files,

47:05

the things. I can't remember whether it's something about aliens

47:07

and stuff. So just to jump ahead to next week, there's a

47:09

guy called Vincent Bugiossi, who has written

47:12

a book, which I've sent you the manuscript of, Tom. I

47:14

know you haven't read it. And the reason I know you haven't read

47:16

it is I know that book is 2,500 pages long. So,

47:20

it's implausible that you will have read it when you're also

47:22

revising other things. But he has written

47:24

this absolutely monstrous book

47:26

looking at every conceivable assassination

47:29

theory and conspiracy theory. Did he not mention it?

47:31

I think aliens are present, but only very briefly

47:33

and dismissively. I

47:36

think it's fair to say. Well, it's my favorite one. So,

47:38

anyway, Jonny, that's brilliant. Sorry, I've let the

47:40

tone down. That was a very authoritative

47:42

and scholarly account. That interruption.

47:45

I wasn't an interruption. It was an intervention. It

47:47

was consistent with the tone with which

47:50

you began the podcasts, which is nice. So, you brought

47:52

us back full circle. Yeah, well, good.

47:54

With your precision is for Jonny Mann impression.

47:57

So, that's just then, obviously, what Kennedy

47:59

does in Vietnam.

48:00

Obviously, whether his civil rights legislation passes,

48:03

these things depend on the election. And

48:05

it's just worth pausing for a second to talk

48:07

about that. We're at the end of the autumn of 1963.

48:11

Next year, he will face a Republican,

48:13

probably the Arizona

48:15

Senator Barry Goldwater, who

48:18

is the great new hope

48:20

of conservatives. So he is

48:22

the guy, Tom, I know you love this. Yes.

48:25

I know what you're going to say. In your guts,

48:27

you know he's nuts. That's right, because

48:30

the slogan was, in your heart, you know he's right.

48:32

But in your guts, the Democrat said, you know

48:34

he's nuts. He's a libertarian,

48:37

actually, Goldwater. So he's not a religious

48:39

conservative or anything like that. He's a libertarian. But

48:41

at the time he was perceived as the most right-wing candidate

48:43

the Republicans could possibly nominate. Those

48:46

are the days. And could Kennedy

48:48

beat him? Well, if we look at the polls

48:51

and Kennedy's approval ratings, the

48:53

lowest approval rating Kennedy ever

48:55

had was in September 1963, and that was 56%. To

48:59

put that into context, that is incredibly

49:02

good. So that's very sapphologically promising.

49:05

His approval rating average, Tom,

49:07

so he doesn't even finish three years as president.

49:10

He does two years and

49:12

almost 11 months. His

49:15

average approval rating at that time was 70%. That

49:18

is the highest in modern American

49:20

history. That's not bad, is it? So it's not

49:22

just, you know, retrospective

49:25

sentimentalizing post-disassination

49:28

to say Kennedy is perceived

49:31

by the American public as an extremely

49:33

competent, emollient,

49:36

impressive political actor.

49:39

He absolutely is. And I think there's no doubt

49:41

that he would have won reelection had

49:43

he stood. The only issue

49:46

he has is, as you said, the South. And

49:48

he has another problem, which is that in

49:51

Texas, which has been so important to him in 1960,

49:54

his vice president state, there is a

49:56

big rift within the Texas

49:58

Democratic Party. two of the local

50:00

power brokers, a senator called Ralph Yarborough,

50:02

who's more liberal, and the Texas state

50:04

governor, John Connolly. And

50:07

it's the rift over civil rights. It's actually

50:09

much more about personalities and patronage.

50:12

It's a kind of patronage rate. So it's not over civil

50:14

rights specifically at all. But the fact that they are on different

50:16

wings of the party is currently basically

50:19

becoming a Republican. That's probably

50:21

in the air vaguely, but it's a kind

50:23

of court politics thing. And

50:25

so Kennedy thinks, I'll go down to Texas, get

50:28

that done and dusted, do a little tour.

50:30

His plan is to see five cities in two days, get

50:33

that done, come back home, run

50:35

up to Christmas, announce my reelection

50:37

campaign in early 64, see

50:40

if we can get the civil rights bill through before then.

50:43

But all the other things being equal, he thinks

50:45

is pretty set fair. He decides he's going to

50:48

go with Jackie. Now, why is he taking Jackie with him? Because

50:50

they have actually just lost a child, Patrick,

50:54

who lived, I think, for two days or so, was

50:56

born very sickly and died afterwards.

50:58

And Jackie had sunk into a very deep depression,

51:01

obviously completely understandably and naturally.

51:04

And aides and people who knew them said

51:07

their time in the White House, they'd had

51:09

lots of glamorous dinners and all that kind of thing. But there'd

51:11

been a lot of arguing and bickering and

51:13

normal kind of marital stuff compounded by

51:15

the fact of his affairs. But the

51:17

loss of Patrick, their little boy, had brought

51:20

them very close together. And

51:23

she was going to come with him now to Texas. He

51:26

wanted her with him. He wanted her with him. So on the 21st of November,

51:28

they visited San Antonio, Houston, and

51:31

Fort Worth. And the plan is they

51:33

will tour Dallas on the 22nd, and then

51:35

they will spend the evening in Texas at

51:37

Lyndon Johnson's ranch. And

51:40

so that, Tom, is the plan. And

51:42

of course, I hate to call it a

51:44

cliffhanger because everybody knows what

51:46

is coming next. But next time,

51:49

we will look at the day of the murder,

51:52

and then we will look at the various theories.

51:54

And the possible culprits. And

51:57

of course, as we said last time, the thing with

51:59

the murder mystery is he... just can't stop, can you? You're

52:01

just so excited to find out what happens. Yeah,

52:03

and you can actually do that with this, can't

52:06

you Dominic? Some lucky people, members of the

52:08

Restless History Club. The golden ticket. Yeah.

52:11

Yours for a very, very reasonably priced

52:13

admission. People have never heard this before, a lot

52:15

of people, because I imagine there's loads of people listening

52:18

to us for the first time. So for those people, I'll

52:20

say you have to go to restlesshistorypod.com and

52:22

you get an unbelievable range of benefits and

52:24

treats. We're practically giving it away, aren't we? It's

52:26

like Camelot, actually. It's very like the atmosphere,

52:29

the glamour. So if you go into our chat community,

52:32

it's not just incredible value. It's like the dazzling

52:34

repartee of Camelot in the

52:37

height of the Jack and Jackie regime.

52:39

I mean, that's pretty much what we are, Tom, actually.

52:42

Mad men. The Jack and Jackie of

52:44

history podcasting. Right. So if that doesn't

52:46

entice people to join the Restless History Club, I

52:48

don't know what will. Yeah, nothing will. And we will

52:51

see you next time. For the

52:53

day of the murder. And then we will be looking at

52:55

all the various theories. I don't think we'll

52:57

be revisiting the alien story, Tom. I'll tell

52:59

you that now. Well, we'll see. I mean,

53:02

you know, two of us in this party, Dominic.

53:04

There are. That's true. So we

53:06

will see. So coming up, we've

53:08

got the day of the assassination, the events

53:11

of that terrible day. That is episode

53:13

three. And then all the various theories about

53:16

who did it and why Russians, CIA,

53:19

mafia, aliens, whatever,

53:21

we'll be looking at them all. So whether it's immediately

53:24

after this episode or next week, we

53:26

will hopefully see very soon. Bye bye. Bye

53:28

bye.