On the Presidency: Teacher, Soldier, Shaman, Pol by Thomas E. Cronin

Author:Thomas E. Cronin [Cronin, Thomas E.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Political Science, General
ISBN: 9781317255024
Google: ARweCwAAQBAJ
Goodreads: 28132585
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2008-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Realities and Paradoxes

Some basic realities shaped John F. Kennedy. Unquestionably, the most important shaping influence was his father. Joseph P. Kennedy put a remarkably strong stamp on his children. He taught them to have ambition, seek challenge, and love the competitive life. He also raised them to achieve politically and socially what he had achieved financially. He had been snubbed, and he deeply resented being considered a hyphenated Irish-American. He especially resented references to his own father as a bartender and saloon-keeper.

Joe Kennedy dreamed all the dreams associated with the American Dream, including joining the financial and political elite of the nation. Thus, he was deeply hurt when he was not allowed to join a private country club near Boston. He was bruised when Harvard overlooked him for an honorary degree and when he failed to win election to Harvard’s Board of Overseers. The discrimination that stemmed from his Irish Catholic background particularly haunted him, and his reaction typically was, “I was born here. My children were born here. What the hell do I have to do to be an American?” Ambassador Kennedy (he was appointed ambassador to Great Britain by FDR) got mad and got even. He sought to assuage his resentment by seeing his sons accepted. They would become politicians in order to become leaders in order to become American statesmen. They had little choice in the matter. Sparing no expense, the senior Kennedy turned his household into a training ground for political leaders. Did the father’s social and psychological need for power and acceptance influence his son John? Most assuredly. But for that influence, he could easily have lived a life of pleasure and leisure.

JFK was never a strong student, struggling merely to pass Latin, French, and math. In secondary school he graduated 65th in his 1935 class of 110. In 1930 he had taken an Otis Intelligence Test and scored 119, indicating above-average, yet less than brilliant, intelligence. He attended Princeton for three months in the fall of 1935, dropping out before Christmas presumably because of illness, yet possibly also because of weak performance. A year later he entered Harvard where his record was mostly “gentlemen’s Cs” until his last year or two. He failed to come close in a race for president of his Harvard freshman class and thereafter withdrew from campus politics.

Later, as a national politician, Kennedy often seemed more preoccupied with getting there than with the precise issues or goals to be dealt with once arrived. To get to the top in American politics, he knew one had to reflect the nation more than lead it; one had to respond to the dominant moods rather than shake them up and recast them. He became a representative figure in order to make his way to the top. It all came rather easily in some respects, for he was neither a pronounced progressive nor a conservative. If his family had not been so steeped in Democratic Party politics, he could as easily have been a liberal Republican.

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