2012 12 12 the life of jospeh p kennedy

7/29/2019 2012 12 12 the Life of Jospeh P Kennedy

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THE LIFE OF JOSEPH P. KENNEDY

DECEMBER 12, 2012PAGE 1

TOM PUTNAM: Good evening. I'm Tom Putnam, Director of the John F. Kennedy

Presidential Library and Museum. On behalf of Tom McNaught, Executive Director of the

Kennedy Library Foundation, and all of my Library and Foundation colleagues, I thank you for

coming and acknowledge the generous underwriters of the Kennedy Library Forums: lead

sponsor Bank of America, Raytheon, Boston Capital, the Lowell Institute, the Boston

Foundation, and our media partners, The Boston Globe and WBUR.

During the buildup to the 1960 Democratic National Convention, JFK did all he could to lock up

the nomination, including an attempt to secure the support of former President Harry Truman.

Truman had expressed reservations about the potential nominee's inexperience and seemed

concerned about whether the country was ready to elect a Catholic. When asked publicly,

Truman offered this pithy retort, based in part on his earlier interactions with JFK's father: "It's

not the Pope I'm worried about, it's the Pop." [laughter] The legendary stories of Joseph P.

Kennedy have over the years devolved towards easy caricature. This Library could not be a more

perfect setting for tonight's conversation, unveiling a more complex and nuanced view of the

man and the myth.

Out of these windows we can see many of the landmarks that defined Joseph Kennedy's life and

which are captured so vividly in David Nasaw's new biography, The Patriarch: The Remarkable

Life and Turbulent Times of Joseph P. Kennedy. First, there's the harbor through which Joe

Kennedy's grandparents, Patrick and Bridget, arrived when emigrating from New Ross; then

Noddle's Island, which we now know as East Boston, where his father, PJ Kennedy, prospered as

a politician and businessman. Just south of us is the coastline of Quincy, where Joseph Kennedy

launched his public service career at the Fore River Shipyard during World War I. And one can

easily see Squantum, the site of an airbase where his oldest son, Joseph P. Kennedy, Jr., learned

to fly before heading overseas to die in a war that his father did all in his power to try and

prevent.

It's also fitting to meet here as much of Professor Nasaw's research took place right in this

Library, the repository of the Joseph P. Kennedy papers. He quipped earlier this afternoon that


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when he arrived, he mistakenly headed right to our fourth floor research room. For years, the

JPK collection was closed until Eunice, Jean and Ted Kennedy saw the benefit of granting

unfettered access to this material to a respected historian to write a no-holds-barred biography of

their father. How fortunate we are that David Nasaw had the interest and independent spirit to

take on such a monumental project, resulting in this magisterial new book, which is on sale in

our bookstore. Abook signing will follow this evening's program.

David Nasaw is the Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., Professor of History at the City University of New

York and has written acclaimed biographies of Andrew Carnegie and William Randolph Hearst,

the latter the winner, among other awards, of the Bancroft Prize for History.

Our moderator this evening is Christopher Lydon, known for his skills in sculpting conversations

with penetrating questions and historical insight. One of our most distinctive voices in

journalism, Mr. Lydon founded The Connection on National Public Radio and is the current host

ofRadio Open Source, an American conversation with a global attitude on the arts, humanities

and politics.

Allow me two final observations. The first is how affecting it is to read of Joseph P. Kennedy's

role as a loving and devoted father, captured humorously by JFK, who called his dad

immediately after his first Presidential debate against Richard Nixon. After hanging up the

payphone, JFK reported to Ted Sorensen, "I still don't know how I did. If I had slipped and fallen

on that stage, my father would have said, 'Jack, the way you picked yourself up was terrific.'"

[laughter]

At the end of his life, and before his debilitating stroke, Joseph Kennedy stated, "The older I get,

the less inclined I seem to want to write an autobiography. A lot of the so-called facts of my life

have been repeated so often that they are considered true by most people, and I can't imagine

adding enough to the reports to make a dent. I'll just let the history of my life stand as it stands,

and I'm quite sure that nobody will care a damn."


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In this new book, David Nasaw makes more than a dent, correcting the facts as we have come to

know them, and adding others in a manner that, especially for those of us who care deeply about

this history, thoroughly refashions the way we think of the remarkable life and turbulent times of

Joseph P. Kennedy.

Please join me now in welcoming David Nasaw and Christopher Lydon to the Kennedy Library.

[applause]

CHRISTOPHER LYDON: Thank you, Tom, and good evening, everybody. I've been reading

this book for four days in a kind of absolute panic of pleasure. David, congratulations, it's an

extraordinary book. I started in the middle, got to the end, went back; I've read it twice now. It's

an amazing book. Already pronounced by The New York Times one of the ten best books of

2012. This is astonishing.

But there's so much fun in it. I think everybody in this room thought they knew the Joe Kennedy

story; I surely did. And it's breathtakingly new and sympathetic in incredibly complex ways that

we'll try to get to. But welcome. I'll try to stay out of the way, although I do have a few needles

and openings I went to get in. As I say, we think we know the story. My frame in this story, very,

very broadly, was the Nigel Hamilton view inReckless Youththat and many other things

contributing to the notion that Joseph P. Kennedy was something that JFK had to get over, get

around, conquer, rise above, et cetera.

There was that wonderful story buried in Arthur Schlesinger's book,A Thousand Days, in which

JFK is recalling a moment in the 1960 campaign when Bobby especially had been working on

keeping Martin Luther King out of jail, but they realized that Daddy King -- Martin Luther King

Sr. -- had announced his intention to vote for Nixon because he couldn't vote for a Catholic. And

Kennedy said, must have said to Arthur Schlesinger, "Can you imagine that? Martin Luther King

having a bigot for a father." And then he said, "But we all have our fathers, don't we?"


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The point being that there had to be many, many more differences than similarities between son

and father. Reading this book you realize that it's an incredibly complicated, shaded, nuanced

variation on themes. But to my mind, they come out much more alike than different. Yes or no,

David?

DAVID NASAW: Yes! Simple answer, yes. One of the difficulties of writing a long, long book

and then being interviewedand this is why this is going to be a joyis that 99 out of 100

people who've interviewed me so far, haven't read the book. [laughter] So the first question and

the second question and the third question are all based on assumptions that I try to destroy. And

it's hard to say to your interviewer, "You fool, what a stupid question. If you had read the book!"

And the question is always phrased the other way; the question is always asked of me, "How did

JFK get so different? He was so different in his foreign policy and this and this and this." And I

have to politely nod and then try to work my way around it.

I think that if we're going to look at JFK and JFK's Presidency, and certainly his candidacy, we

have to look at the similarities. And we have to take into account that JFK, while he was taking

his year off -- sort of playing at Stanford -- before he comes back, he becomes a journalist, then

he runs for Congress in 1946. From a very early age, he becomes his father's chief speechwriter,

consultant, advisor.

His book, his Harvard thesis is very much a rearticulation of what his father is thinking. And

there is a Kennedy foreign policy. There is a Kennedyshared by both of these men, developed

by both of these menoutlook on the world. And we forget it. Joseph Kennedy wasand stop

me anytime because I can just go on forever.

CHRISTOPHER LYDON: Smack on.

DAVID NASAW: Joseph Kennedy was an appeaser and an isolationist. But that did not mean

that he was against the military or defense. To be an isolationist meant that you keep the military

budget way up, but you use all of it to protect the United States, to create a fortress America.


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During World War II, he didn't want to send any destroyers to Britain; he wanted the entire

military budget to be used to protect the Western Hemisphere. He wanted ships, he wanted

planes, he wanted everything he possibly could get to guard the Atlantic from any attempt of the

Germans, ever, to come in this direction.

JFK runs for the Presidency. He discovers -- some would say constructs -- a missile gap. Because

he believesagain, with his fatherthat the way to fight the Cold War, the only way to fight the

Cold War is to build American defenses up so that we're impregnable against the Russians, as his

father wanted us to be impregnable, protected against the Germans.

In the book, I tried to point out many other similarities. In 1960, when Kennedy is running for

President, Eisenhower goes to Paris to meet with Khrushchev in a huge summit. He arrives in

Paris and Khrushchev says, "Because you sent a U2 over Soviet territory, I'm leaving. Good

bye." The summit collapses like this. Jack Kennedy says -- and he's a candidate at the time -- he

says Eisenhower should apologize because we've got to negotiate with our enemies. Anything is

better than war. And Lyndon Johnson goes ballistic.

During the campaign, Nixon talks continually about Quemoy and Matsu, two tiny, little islands

off the coast of China that he says the Americans should fortify in case the Red Chinese go after

them. They belong to Nationalist China. Jack Kennedy, echoing his father earlier, says, Wait a

minute, we can't protect those islands; they're halfway around the world. That's not our business.

We have a pledge to protect Taiwan, but not these islands which the Taiwanese claim are theirs.

And Cuba, Jack Kennedy, like his father, says we must do whatever we can to get the Russians

out of this Hemisphere.

Let me just make one other point. Historians can't predict the future. I can tell you who won the

2012 election and the 2008 election. Further than that, I can't go. I also can't tell you what might

have happened here, there and elsewhere. But I'm pretty sure that if Kennedy had lived, 500,000

Americans would not have gone to Vietnam. And I'm pretty sure of that from what Kennedy said


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and did in his thousand days. But also because he was his father's son, and his father would not

have sent American boys to die, to fight and to die in a war in Asia.

CHRISTOPHER LYDON: I'm so glad you start there. And we can talk about this all night,

around the appeasing theme. He was a genuine appeaser. He was a Neville Chamberlain guy. He

thought that was a great thing when Neville Chamberlain went and brokered a deal about

Czechoslovakia and announced it at Munich. And the war. This was his great overriding fear.

And just to jump ahead a little bit, there's no more touching line and I think revealing line about

Joseph Kennedy in the book than something he said in this period when he was ambassador to

London, and there were grave, grave dangers. And Hitler was running amok and Mussolini made

it worse, blah, blah, blah; we all know that. But he said, "I hate to think how much money"he

was a very rich man"how much money I would give rather than sacrifice Joe and Jack in a

war." This was a man of very sophisticated understanding of business, for sure, politics, personal

politics, but this was coming right from the heart, I think.

But the point, as I took it, David, is also that the flip side of appeasing is negotiating. And it also

reminded meI had never thought of it in this wayJFK in his inaugural address said, "We will

never negotiate out of fear, but we'll never fear to negotiate." That was pure Joe; like, Wait a

second, we could blow up this building, but why don't we figure out what you need and what I

can possibly yield, and we'll make a deal, and it's over. And it ran very, very deep. He'd done a

million business deals. What's the building worth, or not worth, and what are the liens on it, and

blah, blah, blah; let's check it out, what will get the thing done. But he was perfectly ready to

make a deal with Hitler, including everything. Like, basically, Mr. Hitler, what do you need?

And the book, even though Joe Kennedy's reputation is considered to have been really blotted

and maybe entirely disgraced by his years as ambassador, his appeasement, his Chamberlain

thing, did not like Churchill, did not think the war was necessary, you persuaded me We

won't get through this tonight, but there's a very deep plausibility, even for today's world, in that

point of view. We're so conditioned to think somebody stubbed their toe in Thailand; well, bring


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in the B52s. But the ingrained lesson for Joe was, Work it out, get some really good people on

the case, study the hell out of it and settle it. Am I on the right track?

DAVID NASAW: I think so. Looking back, Arthur Schlesinger -- who was a colleague of mine

at the Graduate Center, a terrific historian -- always said that we live history moving forward; we

write it looking backwards. So when we write it, we know what happens. So it's hard to write

about the buildup, 1938 to 1940, without looking at the Holocaust. We can't help ourselves but to

think if we had somehow stopped Hitlerand why didn't these people know in '38 and '39 what

was coming? Well, nobody knew in '38 and '39, in 1940. We knew that the persecution of the

German and the Austrian and European Jews was dreadful, was unthinkable, was horrendous,

but nobody knew what the end was going to be, that there were going to be six million dying in

the killing fields, in concentration camps, mostly Jews.

Kennedy was convinced, in '38, '39, '40, even after Chamberlain had given up on Hitler,

Kennedy was convinced that anything was better than war. And why was he convinced of that?

Because until Hitler made the dreadful mistake, for Hitler, thank god, of turning east and going

after invading the Soviet Union, so he had to fight a two-front war -- in '38, '39, '40, the Soviet

Union was out of the picture. So the war would have been Hitler and most of Europe against

Great Britain. France fell in a matter of weeks. For Kennedy, there was no conceivable way that

the British were going to win that war. None. They might put off the ultimate invasion for a year;

maybe for two years. But they weren't going to win.

And he was convinced that somehow, some way, a deal had to be made with Hitler. Now, he was

wrong. Hitler was a madman and there was no way to make a deal with Hitler. But the logic

behind this position, that war with Hitler is not going to save Britain, and even if Hitler decides,

after a year or two years or three years, "Okay, let the British Isles remain independent, I'll take

the rest of Europe," which he controlled, the cost in human lives, in resources, American and

British, would have been too much. It would have been easier to negotiate with him.


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Now, this wasn't popular then, it isn't popular now. But in 1938, 1939, 1940, even into 1941,

every public opinion poll showed that the American people did not want to go in Europe, to fight

in Europe, did not want a war in Europe. I remind myself, I remind my students, I remind you

how did we get into war in Europe? Hitler declared war on us after Pearl Harbor. And historians

do not know to this day what Roosevelt would have done had Hitler not made his job easier and

declared war on the United States, thereby getting us into a war in Europe.

CHRISTOPHER LYDON: This is why you have to read the book. It's very, very dense and

complicated issues, but I just want to mention one other facet of it. It's sort of central, and it's the

frequent charge against Joe Kennedy, that he was anti-Semitic. I think this book dismisses It

doesn't dismiss it, it reframes the whole question in very, very subtle ways, lots of layers. It's

never a defense to have Jewish friends, or have worked in the movie business, or competed with

Jews, or loved Jews, or whatnot, but let it be said, he was well aware of the horrible predicament

that European Jews were in under Hitler. And he was quite articulate about it, even more so than

Roosevelt. He was willing to say more about it than Roosevelt. It was not off his map at all, and

he was not unsympathetic to it. And he was working with a number of Jewish agencies --

interesting relationship with Weissman and lots of others. He was on the case.

I think if he were here tonight defending or rethinking, he would remind us all that war did not

save the Jews of Europe. It was a horrific problem; Hitler was a certifiable, everything he's

cracked up to be as a nutcase, but that doesn't mean that war was the right response, or that

Joseph Kennedy was wrong on the issue.

I may be further out on this than you, but the logic of his argumentfirst of all, it was embraced

by a guy I barely know, but AJ Muste and the Fellowship of Reconciliation, a real sort of

ultimate peacenik, even at the time. And it resonates a lot with Nicholson Baker's wonderful

book calledHuman Smoke. Do you know that? It's sort of a sustained argument by documents of

the time that Churchill was a sort of necessary foil for Hitler; he was not the same, he was not a

bad guy in that category, but he had a lust for war, almost like Hitler's, for blockading Europe,

for making the whole continent suffer through something horrific. As I say, I don't think I'm


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summarizing this adequately, but there's an argument here that will absolutely rivet you about,

what if Joe Kennedy was right?

DAVID NASAW: It's one of the most complex and complicated tasks I had, was to figure out

Joe Kennedy's relationship to the Jews, whether he was an anti-Semite or not. And in order to

figure that out, I had to first define myself what it means to be an anti-Semite, and what it meant

to be an anti-Semite in 1930/1940.

So I concluded that to be an anti-Semite, like Henry Ford, like Lindbergh, like Lady Astor, like

Breckinridge Long, who was the Assistant Secretary of State in charge of refugeesI can name

othersa real anti-Semite believes there's something in the genetic makeup, in the blood of Jews

that makes them sinister, evil and destructive of Christian morality. I think Henry Ford believes

that. I think Lindbergh believes that. They have a real racist, racial understanding. Kennedy

doesn't believe that at all.

On the other hand, Kennedy believes thatand he's brought up this waythat the Jews are

another tribe. They're different; they're culturally different. They look after themselves, just as

the Irish Catholics look after themselves. The Jews are smarter, because they're better organized.

He says to the Pope, of all people, "You know, we should be better organized in the United

States as Irish Catholics. The Jews get what they want."

But his admiration of the Jews allows him, permits him, encourages him to buy in to thousand-

year-old anti-Semitic myths while he is the Ambassador to Great Britain. And it is frightening,

indeed. And I'm glad that his family didn't have to read some of his letters and some of his

diaries, and some of his conversations that other people recorded.

He is totally, absolutely opposed to war, and he believes, from 1938 on that the Jews are the

major force behind pushing Great Britain, first, and then the United States into war; that the Jews

have demonized Hitler; that the Jews want war, either because they think it will save European

Jewry, or to get revenge on Hitler; andand this is what was most disturbing to methat the


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Jews have this Jewish conspiracy, that there is a Jewish conspiracy, that the Jews control the

media. And he says this, though he knows damn well I mean, William Randolph Hearst is his

friend. Colonel McCormick is his friend. The Jews control theNew York Post; they don't control

the national media. He says the Jews control Hollywood; he's right to some extent.

But then he says the Jews control Roosevelt in '38, '39, '40. He's worried about Jewish influence.

He's worried about Brandeis and Frankfurter and Steven Wise and Sam Rosenman and Ben

Cohen, Morgenthau. And he talks about the Jews, they're getting too much from Roosevelt; we

can't trust them.

And then, one of the most disturbing parts of my research was the discovery that in 1940, after

he helps elect Roosevelt to a third term, Kennedy goes out to Hollywood and he's invited by Jack

WarnerI shouldn't tell you this story because then you won't read the book. It's a great story; I

have to tell it.

He goes out to Hollywood. Jack Warner invites him, and the Warner Brothers invite him to sort

of give a luncheon seminar to the studio executives on what's going to happen to the export

business now that there's war in Europe. Hollywood was making a lot of money sending

Hollywood films to Europe and around the world. What were they going to do now? And

Kennedy's just come back from London. He knows Europe. He's going to tell the studio

executives.

He shows up at the Warner Brothers studio luncheon, and there's a room filled with studio

executives, most of whom are Jewish. And he proceeds to spend the next three to four hours

lambasting them in the most vicious terms. The Great Dictatorhas just come out -- Charlie

Chaplin's vicious lampoon of Hitler. And Kennedy spends three hours saying to the Hollywood

executives, who are Jewish, "Unless you stop this anti-Nazi, anti-Hitler propaganda, unless you

stop making films like this, you're going to be responsible for pushing the United States into war.

You're going to be responsible for the absence of negotiations for peace. And when war comes


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and American blood is spilled, it's going to be on your hands. And the outbreak of anti-Semitism

in this country will be unimaginable." And he says this, and he believes it.

So yes, he succumbs to anti-Semitic scapegoating. No, he's not an anti-Semite like Henry Ford.

And to complicate the story further, in 1938 and 1939, he does his best to rescue the German

Jews; he comes up with a Kennedy plan. He is so vociferous in this plan, in pushing this plan,

which will force the British government to open up some territory. Not Palestine, he knows

they're never going to open up Palestine because they need the Arabs on their side once war

comes. But some other part of the British Empire, maybe in Africa, in South America, some part,

as a homeland for the Jews.

And he pushes and he pushes and he pushes and he pushes, until the British government gets in

touch with Roosevelt and Secretary of State Hull and they said, "Who the hell does this guy

think he is, telling us. The Americans are doing nothing for the Jews. They haven't opened up an

acre. And yet Kennedy is telling us that it's our fault?" And what does Roosevelt do? Roosevelt

says to Kennedy, "Shut up, it's none of your business. Bow out." The end of the Kennedy plan.

Let me just say one other thing, that Washington, DC is frighteningly anti-Semitic in the '30s and

the '40s. The State Department is a nest of anti-Semites. And Kennedy's rantings are notthis is

not to excuse themthey're not unique in Washington in any way.

CHRISTOPHER LYDON: One more thought on his role as Ambassador. It's sort of automatic

-- I think even Christopher Buckley's review, his wonderful review of your book -- the

ambassadorial years were sort of a low point, where he finally found something he was

completely ungifted at. On the contrary, it seems to me there's something to be said for the role

this man played. Cordell Hull and Roosevelt himself said, "Shush him down, and run that speech

by the State Department before you give it." And he was always off the record and speaking his

mind. And I'm thinking, where are those people today in our government who speak He

sounds much more like Ralph Nader than anybody in the Obama Administration. It's sort of like,


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"I'll tell you what I think, and I believe it passionately, and I've done the work, and I'll argue for

it, and I'll defend it."

DAVID NASAW: There will never be another ambassador like Joseph P. Kennedy, in large

part because if it ever happens again, that an ambassador to a major nation pursues his own

foreign policy, he'll be called back within a week. Kennedy should have been called back within

a week. Roosevelt made very few mistakes. Roosevelt was very savvy politically. And Roosevelt

thought, "I'll give Kennedy what he wants and he'll stay on my side. He'll support me in 1940

when I run for a third term. And if I don't run for a third time, he'll support whomever I choose.

And that's important because Kennedy is the most important, the most visible, the most popular

Irish American and Catholic in this country, number one. And number two, Kennedy gives me

street cred. He gives me credibility with bankers and Wall Street, and I can't lose him."

So he sends Kennedy away. Within a week, Kennedy is no longer following orders. He's off on

his own foreign policy agenda, which is peace at all costs, let's make a deal with Hitler, which he

continues to do even when Chamberlain gives up on Hitler. Roosevelt should have recalled him,

but Roosevelt can't because 1940 is just around the corner, and he needs Kennedy to remain. He

doesn't want Kennedy to come home angry and support Wendell Willkie.

Again, as we write history backwards and we look at Roosevelt as invincible in 1940. Well, he

wasn't, and he didn't think he was. He thought Willkie was the strongest candidate he had run

against, and he wasn't going to take any chances with Joe Kennedy supporting Wendell Willkie.

Clare Booth Luce, who was a friend and lover, was convinced he was going to come back and

support Willkie. So was Henry Luce, a big Willkie supporter. But, no, Joe wouldn't break with

Roosevelt for a variety of reasons, including the fact that as his good friend, John Burns, from

Boston, the youngest Harvard law professor, I think, John Burns said, "Joe, if you break with

Roosevelt, your boys will never have an opportunity to get anywhere in politics." Irish Catholics

have to be Democrats.


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CHRISTOPHER LYDON: You say Roosevelt should have recalled him. I say President

Obama should find five people of this kind of sovereignty, intelligence, brass, outspokenness.

This world would be a better place.

You mentioned the sound of the man's voice. And somehow I'm sure I've heard it; it's got to be

on YouTube, but I keep wondering, reading this book, and you're very correct about cleaning up

his language, but apparently it was full of curses and every kind of thing. Can you give us any

sense of what the man sounded like? I don't know. Did he bark?

DAVID NASAW: No. The only time I've heard his voice is on speeches, and he speaks without

any Boston accent whatsoever. He sounds like a Harvard grad. He sounds like the blue blood that

he was not. He speaks very, very well, and he cultivated that style.

Another question I'm always asked is how did he elect Jack President in 1960? Well, by 1960, he

had receded. He was smart enough to know that Jack and Bobby and Sorensen and the whole

gang were much smarter than he was and knew politics in 1960 better than he did. But he had

already helped form this candidate, and he helped form the candidate by teaching themJack,

Bobby, Teddy, Jean, Eunicehow to be comfortable in public.

He had a little bit of a battle to teach himself how to be comfortable in public. And he was going

to make sure that the kids grew up with a camera in their face. And the kids, when you see them

on newsreel footage, who are children, when the newsreel cameras are put right in their faces,

they have such poise, enormous poise.

Kennedy bought the nannies the first video cameras, and they took pictures of the kids when the

kids were growing up. The kids then got their own cameras and took moving pictures of one

another.

By 1960, when Jack Kennedy looked so good on television in the '60 debate and Nixon is

unshaven and sweating and looks uncomfortable in front of the camera, and Nixon doesn't know


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where to look -- whether to look at Kennedy, whether to look at --Kennedy just stands and

looks into the camera. That's because his father had, for the past 15 years, 20 years, 25 years,

prepared him for this moment.

CHRISTOPHER LYDON: A quick digression. There was another similarity, or you just feel

an incredible continuity. JFK was, of course, famous for the brilliant young staff and a cabinet of

stars, and all this sort of thing. But that was Joe Kennedy, too, at the SEC. After the Wall Street

bust, they created the Securities and Exchange Commission, very much in the pattern of the

Consumer Protection Agency today. And he was the first -- unlike Elizabeth Warren -- he got the

job to run the Commission. And it's a remarkable thing, the net went out. Everybody in the world

wanted him to find a job for their kid, or their nephew, or Uncle Al. But he got the best.

DAVID NASAW: He got the best. He made sure there were a lot of Irish Catholics from

Boston.

CHRISTOPHER LYDON: Nothing against Irish Catholics from Boston.

DAVID NASAW: No. And at one point, people laughed at the number of Irish Catholics from

Boston, but, boy, were they smart. They were incredible. And then he branched out. Then he

brought the best and the brightest. He brought William O. Douglas, who later becomes a very

liberal Supreme Court Justice, is teaching God, is he teaching mortgage law at Yale? He's

teaching something at Yale, debt law or something. And he reaches out and he brings him to

Washington. And Douglas arrives, and Kennedy is sort of gruff with him and says, "What are

you standing around for? Get to work." And Douglas says, "Where's my office?" And he said,

"We'll worry about that later. Sit over at that desk." And the people love him. They absolutely

adore him, the people who work for him. And they follow him around.

CHRISTOPHER LYDON: And he told them to be there at 9:00 in the morning, because he

was going to call and he expected an answer.


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DAVID NASAW: Yeah, he expected everybody to work as hard as he did. And they did. Now,

the interesting thing, another comparison is that he has a group of friends who are there to amuse

him. He has a group of advisors who were the smartest in the world; some of them are also his

friends. But he's got another group who he plays golf with, who joke with him, who are

absolutely hysterical. Arthur Houghton, who was a vaudeville producer, is a dear friend, so dear

a friend he drives Rose nuts. One of the reasons why Rose stays away from Palm Beach is that

Houghton is over there.

JFK did the same thing. JFK had his entourage of friends and Navy buddies. And he had his best

and his brightest. Sometimes there was an overlap, but not always.

CHRISTOPHER LYDON: One other point on the sound of Joe Kennedy. I still don't know

how blue is language was, his guy language, his around-the-pool language. Do you?

DAVID NASAW: Yeah. I mean, nobody quotes it, but Senator Kennedy, when There was a

tradition in the Kennedy family. Jack starts it when his brother Joe dies, horribly. He's

incinerated in a bomber crash after D-Day. The war is already won and he's continuing to fly

bomber raids, very dangerous ones, and dies. And the whole family is totally, absolutely

devastated. Jack is just distraught. And to make himself feel better, he puts together a book of

memories, of remembrances of his brother for the family. It takes Joe, his father, two years

before he can open up the book and look at it.

Later, when Joe has his stroke, Teddy puts together a book of remembrances that's wonderful,

wonderful, wonderful. And just about every one of his friends refers to this tongue, this foul

mouth. It doesn't happen until after Harvard, because a good friend remembers at Harvard you

didn't drink, you didn't smoke, you didn't use foul language.

Soon after that, he began to use foul language. He used it in incredibly imaginative ways. He

would come up with curses that were both chilling and humorous and that you'd remember. But

everybody talked about it. And it didn't matter who he was with. One of the reasons I think why


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Roosevelt was afraid to send him to England was that he didn't want the Queen or the King to be

offended. [laughter]

CHRISTOPHER LYDON: There's also Joe Kennedy, the writer, who fascinates me. He was

writing letters all the time, some to Roosevelt, or people in government, or people in England.

But always to his children. And they're completely riveting. I know his voice by now; he's

internally reassuring, improving his children. That wonderful story -- sounds like what Tom said

about watching Jack on television early in his career -- and he's sitting with the people who wrote

the speech and saying, "You did it all wrong, it was simply awful," and blah, blah, blah. Then

Jack calls, he says, "Jack, you were great!"

But in any event, I kept wondering is he writing by hand? Is he dictating? Is he typing? What's

the record here? He spent an awful lot of time at a desk writing.

DAVID NASAW: He spent a lot of time writing, and he spent a lot of time dictating because he

wrote so much. And you can tell when he wants to say something personal, he doesn't want his

very loyal and trusted secretaries or stenographers to read it. He has a secretary everywhere, in

retirement, everywhere he goes. But when he has something special to say, it's in handwriting.

And those are remarkable letters.

He writes to each of his children. When most of us write home -- those of us who still write -- we

write one letter to the family, "Dear wife and kids." He would write ten separate letters: one to

Rose and nine to the kids. And in each of those letters to the kids, they would be personalized

because he would know what those kids needed to hear. He knew that Eunice was too serious

and worked too hard, needed to spend more time sailing and fooling around; that Jack was too

sloppy and didn't take anything very seriously; that Joe sometimes took things too seriously. He

knew their teachers. He knew their best friends. He knew their habits. There's something

absolutely remarkable about it.


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When I first interviewed the childrenand in the beginning there were three children alive, and I

talked to Eunice, and I talked to Jean, and I talked to Tedthey would all go on and on about

their father. And in the beginning I thought, this is the family line they're feeding me. Nobody

can respect, admire, adore their father this way. But it was true. Because he always lifted them

up. He was a Cassandra; he thought the world was falling apart until he talked to his kids.

I'll just tell you one story. After the Bay of Pigs, when we now know from the book recently

published, Jacqueline Kennedy's interviews with Arthur Schlesinger that were here and were

published about a year ago, in it Jacqueline tells Schlesinger that after the Bay of Pigs, she found

her husband crying, sobbing. And nothing could cheer him up, nothing. At one point, Bobby, the

Attorney General, says to Jack, the Presidentthey're in the Oval Office"Let's call Dad, he'll

make us feel better." So they pick up the phone and they call Palm Beach, and Kennedy answers

the phone, the patriarch answers the phone, and he says, "Boys, you did just fine. You did the

right thing." And he says to Jack, "And you especially for taking responsibility for this disaster.

That was the absolute right thing to do. The American people will forgive you for that. They will

absolutely forgive you for that." Then he says -- and I can almost imagine it with a little bit of a

chuckle -- "If you're going to have a debacle like this one, it's best to have it early." [laughter]

And Bobby was right; they hung up the phone and they felt better. And it wasn't just

cheerleading, he was right. Jack's poll numbers went up, and within a year the Bay of Pigs was

on the backburner.

CHRISTOPHER LYDON: This matter of families, one of the amazing subtleties of this book,

David, is that it feels like a free book, that you put this thing together without anybody looking

over your shoulder, saying, "No, you can't print that." And at the same time, by the time we

absorb it, we have, I think, the kids' view of Joseph P. Kennedy, which was very knowing, very

forgiving, incredibly grateful, very much in awe of this guy.

But there's another trick point of continuity that I just have to raise, and that has to do with his

unbounded sexual roving. It started early. It went right to the end. It persisted in other

generations, certainly JFK's. And yet, this was a serious Roman Catholic, Irish Catholic with a


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big loophole that he gave himself about sex. And he seems to have done it without guilt or pain.

He says at some point that adultery is the most obvious and easily forgivable of sins, and that

you just go to confession, especially with a priest who knows that you might contribute

something to the church. [laughter] And you walk out and you're a free man, and it's a new day.

DAVID NASAW: Gloria Swanson. I'm the only historian, I think it's fair to say, who took a

research trip to Austin and spent time at the LBJ Library and at the Harry Ransom Center at the

University of Texas reading the Gloria Swanson papers. Gloria Swanson, for some reason

CHRISTOPHER LYDON: You keep referring to staff that she didn't put on here.

DAVID NASAW: Yeah. Gloria Swanson -- and I don't recommend this -- kept everything.

Thank god. She has one of the largest collections of memorabilia, of archives of letters and

papers of anybody. So I went to the Harry Ransom Library and I looked through the Gloria

Swanson papers. Everybody had told me don't go, it's a waste of time. Every Kennedy researcher

has looked through there; there's nothing there. And my wife said over and over again, "David,

you've got to go. You've got to go, you've got to go." And my friend Bob Caro said, "You should

go to Austin and look at the LBJ papers." So I figured while I'm there, I'll go the Gloria Swanson

papers.

And I found just a treasure trove of stuff. Why? Because Gloria Swanson decided to write her

memoirs after Rose published hers. Rose's book is a great book, and in the Kennedy Library,

upstairs, on the fourth floor, are all the notes and the tape recordings that Rose had with her

ghostwriter. So you can listen to her words to what later becomes a combination, a partnership

with her ghostwriter.

At the Gloria Swanson archives, it's even better, because Gloria wrote handwritten, scrawling

letters, memos to her ghostwriters. Ninety percent of what she wrote in those notes doesn't get

into the book. And in that, she says, "The reason I'm writing this damn book is because Rose said


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I didn't have an affair with her husband in her book. So I'm going to set the record straight."

[laughter]

And in it, she writes letters to Joe, and she writes memos to her ghostwriters, and Gloria was a

strange woman. I think she hooks up with Joe in a business relationship because he's not Jewish,

but she doesn't much like Irish Catholics either. And she says in there, "Confession for Kennedy

I tried to figure out how he could be shameless, guiltless in this affair when he has this

family." She had a family, too, and she was married at the same time. And she says, "It bothered

me, it hurt me. But he was carefree. How did that happen? How does an Irish Catholic " and

then she says, "Then I got it." Now, this is Gloria Swanson saying this: "It was confession.

Confession was like washing his hands; he washed all the dirt off and he started all over again.

And he went to confession a lot." [laughter]

I hope I'm not offending anybody. He made sure, according to Gloria, that when he went to

confession, he chose his confessor and he made sure it was someone who wasn't going to give

him too much to do as penance for his sins.

CHRISTOPHER LYDON: Again, it's very hard to pin down quickly, but to me the amazing

thingand I've sort of got to rethink the whole theology of marriage and whatnotit's very clear

to me, reading his letters to Rose, that he preserved a real marriage. As JFK did, too. It was not a

pretend marriage. I don't know how do we account for this? How did he figure out how to be

truly in love with his wife and hundreds of other women [laughter] and get away with it?

DAVID NASAW: Do you all know the Toodles story with Honey Fitz? It's a true story. Honey

Fitz is running for reelection, for his third term as mayor against James Curley. Honey Fitz meets

his match in James Curley. James Curley sends a letter home and says, "I want you to know that

you might be interested in my lecture. I'm giving three lectures on great lovers in history, from

Cleopatra to Toodles." Toodles was the name of the cigarette girl that Honey Fitz was fooling

around with. Honey Fitz withdrew from the primary. Rose knew all about this story and Rose


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knew that her father was a philanderer and that her mother put up with it. You didn't get

divorced; you put up with it.

And a good husband was someone who provided for the family, and god knows Joseph Kennedy

did, and doesn't embarrass you. A bad husband is someone who sticks a Toodles in your face so

you can't live in a bubble plausibly denying that your husband has other women. And I think the

relationship between the two of them works because Joe is discreet. He never embarrasses Rose.

He never leaves behind love letters. There are never scenes. He allows Rose to live this fiction,

that she's the only woman in his life. In order to do that, they lead separate lives until he has his

stroke.

I chronicle some of the times I was able to tell Senator Kennedy when he was conceived

because the two of them were together so seldom that I can mark the spot. They were

vacationing at the Homestead in Hot Springs, or Warm Springs. Hot Springs? Thank you. And

Kennedy got there a week in advance and played golf with his friends. This was in all the society

columns. Rose arrived for the weekend. They spent one night together. Kennedy went back to

New York and Rose stayed for a second week. So the Kennedys were there for two weeks, but

together for only one night. And nine months later Ted was born. But I could pinpoint because

they were never together. Never together. And that's one of the ways this marriage worked.

CHRISTOPHER LYDON: We knew the kids -- was it Robert or Jack, would complain every

once in a while that Mom was not around much. She was on an ocean liner to Paris, or

whatever. I didn't realize that Joe was so absent, too. And when you combine them, they were

absent from each other. This famous couple would go months and months without It was a

tight marriage in a certain way, but they would go months and months without seeing each other.

How do you account for the incredible influence that father had on all those kids? No, rebels,

really. Rosemary was a case by herself, but people who all not only worshiped but were entirely

shaped by that family, given the absences, given the misbehaviors.


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I was working forThe New York Times in '72 covering George McGovern when Tommy

Eagleton was suddenly off the ticket. We know why. And Sargent Shriver was on. And I was

immediately dispatched onto the Shriver campaign. Eunice came with him, obviously. Rather,

he came with her to an event that she had booked years earlier, opening the Special Olympics at

UCLA.

And I remember Mike Barnicle and I sat there in the bleachers watching Eunice, and we were

just thunderstruck by several things. First of all, how the genetic material that made JFK was

99.99999999 in Eunice. And I always thought afterward, in terms of what would JFK have done

about Vietnam, don't ask historians, ask Eunice; she is JFK. It was all there. And she spoke, but

she spoke about her father. And she spoke to those kids who were competing, handicapped kids

competing in the great UCLA stadium, and she spoke about her father urging everybody to run a

little "fahster" and a little "fahther," and whatnot. But you just felt an incredible conditioning in

so many values and attitudes. And most of them wonderful. What was the secret? What was the

trick?

DAVID NASAW: The secret was that he paid attention, and they knew it. There are wonderful

stories. When he comes back from a visit, the kids just jump all over him and instead of going

upstairs and saying, "I need time to myself, I've been on a train for two days," he would take

each kid and they would have separate time, and he would talk with them.

He read to the little ones. He played with the medium-sized ones. He stopped playing tennis

when Joe Jr. He didn't compete against them in tennis when Joe Jr., started to beat him, but he

played golf with all of them, because he was better. Pat was really good, but he could always

freak them out, and he would always win.

But he loved these kids. And they knew whenever there was a problem in their life, when they

didn't know what to do when they grew up The daughters all married late because they'd go

into business, they had professions. They go into public service and then they marry closer to 30

than to 20, much later than was the norm.


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And he gets them their first jobs. He gets them their second jobs if they want help in it. When

there's a medical problem he's the one who goes with them to the doctor and talks to the doctor

with them. He's the one who, when there's a problem because Jack is misbehaving at Choate,

he's the one who leaves Washington to fly to Choate, to be there on a Monday to meet with the

headmaster and say, "I'll take care of him."

There is something remarkable about him as a father, and I think they all appreciate it and they

all love him for it. And he sets these goals for them, but they also know that they can disagree

with him. There's no more remarkable story in this book than the story that begins to unfold

when the boys decide, the three of them, that they're going to enlist. Bobby is 16 years old. But

he's going to enlist when he's 17; he's not going to go to Harvard. As a matter of fact, he's not

even going to finish prep school. Joe Jr. not only decides to enlist, but to fly bombers. Jack, who

can't stand up half the time because of his bad back and his bad stomach, decides he's going to

command a PT boat that's the size of this rug. And Joe, who is against the war, who's fearful that

his kids are going to die in it, helps Joe get his assignment, pulls strings so Jack, who fails his

first physical -- and never should have passed a physical -- Joe sets up a special physical with a

friend in Boston, who must have looked the other way, or must have asked Jack to count to ten

and then said, "Okay, you're okay."

And he goes to visit Washington to get Bobby into officer candidate school. Bobby essentially

says, "No, I want to be a sailor." Joe says okay, and he writes a letter to his friend and he says,

"If this war goes on long enough and Teddy tries to enlist, I'm going to lock him in the back

room." But he knows that he can't. He's raised these kids to be like him, to be strong-willed,

independent. And they know it. They know that they don't have to rebel to be individuals, to be

themselves.

CHRISTOPHER LYDON: David, this is so much fun. I've completely lost track of the time.

I'm sure it's time for members of this wonderful audience to speak their piece. Questions,

comments, brief, brief, brief. But thank you, this is wonderful. [applause]


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QUESTION: Professor Nasaw, I'm eagerly looking forward to reading the book. I have a

question for you. It has to do, again, about the 1960 campaign and the relationship between Joe

Kennedy, Frank Sinatra, and Sinatra getting Giancana involved with the West Virginia primary

and the dirt that was put on Humphrey that caused Humphrey to lose that campaign. This has

been written about in Anthony Summers's book on Sinatra and Kitty Kelley's book on Sinatra,

and Judith Exner, and so forth. Do you have any more of a background on that whole episode

and the relationship between Sinatra, Giancana and Joe Kennedy?

DAVID NASAW: Yeah, there was none. Simple. I'm not saying that about Jack and Giancana.

Look, all these stories about the Mob, believe me I tracked them down. Nothing would have

made me happier than to be able to write about Momo Giancana. But I couldn't, because there

was no relationship.

Joe Kennedy didn't need the Mob's help. What was the Mob going to give him? He had all the

money he needed to ship to West Virginia, and he did. I found one of his accountants who talked

about bringing satchels of money and what account it came from to West Virginia to buy votes.

Humphrey was also buying votes, but he didn't have as much money.

In Chicago, the story is that Joe buys the support of the unions who deliver the votes, stuff the

ballots and Jack wins in Illinois. I did hard digging and hard research and I discovered, number

one, thateverybody should knowthat Jack doesn't need Illinois. He would have been elected

President if he had lost Illinois. He had a tiny majority of the popular vote, but largely in the

electoral vote. So he didn't need Illinois, number one. Number two, those districts where the

unions had leverage voted The totals for Jack were less than for any other Democrat who ran

locally. And three, Joe Kennedy was smart enough to know that he didn't have to interfere in

Illinois, because Richard Daley was the mayor. And if anybody was going to watch over the

Democrats' interest in that state, it was Richard Daley. Joe Kennedy wasn't needed.


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QUESTION: That was exactly the question that I was going to raise, but I do have another one.

I understand that during the period when Joe was Ambassador, and he was getting information

on what was going on in Europe, that his speculation in Czech bonds raised him a fortune when

he shorted them before Hitler moved into Czechoslovakia. Did you come across any indication

of that?

DAVID NASAW: No. Again, I can't prove a negative. I can't prove that something didn't

happen. What I can tell you is that there is absolutely no credible evidence of any sort that he did

that. Joe Kennedy was very, very conservative with his money, number one. Joe Kennedy knew

where the law was, what he could do legally and what he couldn't do legally, two. And number

three, he knew the British were spying on him. I found the Kennedy file in the National Archives

in Britain. They were watching him. They knew everything he was doing. He knew he had

enemies over here who were watching him.

And that means two things: Number one, if there had been evidence, somebody would have

found it. And number two, there wouldn't have been evidence, because he wouldn't have done it,

because he knew he would have been caught. Remember, he's not only concerned with his own

reputation, he's concerned with his children's reputation.

Let me just say one other thing on this. When you start to look at Nobody's mentioned

bootlegger, but he wasn't a bootlegger. Again, I would have been very happy had he been a

bootlegger, but there's no evidence, again. And when you start looking at the Summerses and the

Kelleys and the Sy Hershes and the Kesslers and the Russos, and all the other people who write

this, and you check out As a historian, I read footnotes and I read the source

acknowledgements in the front and in the back. And I try to check out every story. And you

know what happens when you check them out? You find that the major sources for his being a

bootlegger are Al Capone's piano tuner. Or Sam Giancana's nephew and half-brother. Or, with all

due respect to her, Tina Sinatra, who says she heard her father, or her father had told her he had

heard from someone about Kennedy and the Mob. No, I didn't find any of it. And again, that


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doesn't mean it didn't happen; it means there is absolutely no credible evidence to connect this

man with the Mob.

QUESTION: I wanted to ask a little bit more about the massive stroke that Joseph Kennedy

had. I'm very interested in it; my wife had a massive stroke as well. But it seemed that he had

been such a resilient character, but when he had the stroke, that really changed things and he

almost gave up. I was reading parts of that in your book. As well as the change that happened

between him and Rose. And I was wondering if you could talk a little bit more about what you

saw, or what you discovered in regard to the stroke and how that changed him, and also the

relationship.

DAVID NASAW: Thank you. The last chapter of this book was the hardest one to write. I

mean, it was devastating to write. And I think it's not going to be easy to read.

If I were a novelist or a playwright or a poet instead of a historian, no one would believe this

story. No one. The most vibrant, articulate, handsome, well-groomed man, who always had the

most expensive haircut, custom-made clothes, who had the best military athletic posture, who

dominated every room with his presence and his speech, had a massive stroke a little more than a

year after his son had been elected President, and within the first year of his son's Presidency, in

December 1961. Jackie was with him at the time, and they rushed him to the hospital. And Jackie

covered him with a blanket because she didn't want anybody to see what had happened to this

man.

They performed the last rites. He recovered enough to go home. But they thought he had weeks,

a month. He lived eight years, but he was never able to use language again. This is the

remarkable part. He was rendered speechless, like his daughter Rosemary. The only word he

could sayand I talked to his doctor, Dr. Henry Betts in Chicago, and he said, "Yes, it's

automatic speech." He once joined in a chorus ofHappy Birthday at one of his grandchildren's

parties. But besides joining in that, the only word he said was no.


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So he would wake up in the morning and he would start bellowing, "No! No!," and would get

louder and more vicious and more furious. And everybody would rush in, Rose and his cousin

Ann Gargan, who took care of him, and the nurses, and they would say, "Are you hungry? Do

you want your breakfast?" "No!" "Are you cold? Are you hot?" And the nos would get louder

and louder and louder, and then they'd say, "Is the sun in your eyes? Do you want us to lower the

shade?" And he'd look at them and he'd say, "No."

The grandchildren learned to read his face and to read his nos. But he never spoke again. And

it was in this condition that Ted and Eunice entered his bedroom to tell him that Jack had been

killed. And only a few years later, Rose entered his bedroom to tell him that Bobby had been

killed.

The family early on had to struggle to figure out and there were books by his nurses who say

this, and his chauffeur and bodyguard who say thisthe family had to figure outand I'm glad

it wasn't mewhether to push him to walk again, or to let him live a more comfortable existence

in a wheelchair. And they decided after some rehabilitation at Rusk, and after building pools and

ramps for him to exercise, that the cost was too great. Maybe he would have been able to walk,

but with heavy braces that ate into his legs. So he spent the last years of his life in a wheelchair,

speechless and gnarled, crippled, monstrous looking. His grandchildren, when they first saw him,

were scared until he smiled and they saw it was Grandpa.

He had a twisted arm, like this, and the family would put a blanket over it, or would try to hide it.

Jackie was the only one who, when she came into see him, would pat or kiss that hand as if to

say, "It's okay."

The family had to struggle about, do we let him go to restaurants? Do we let the rest of the world

see him like this? And they decided to follow his lead. And he went out, and he tried to live a

life. Rose stopped traveling for the last eight years of his life; she stopped taking vacations, she

stopped going to Paris for the fashion shows because she thought he could die at any moment,

and she wanted to be there.


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So it is a horrendous I don't know whether it's Shakespearean or Greek or Biblical, but those

last years were dreadful for everyone. And if you buy the book, you will see, I have a photograph

in there, an extraordinary photograph, the last photograph of Jack leaning over to kiss his father

goodbye.

QUESTION: Did your research reveal what Joe Kennedy himself considered to be his greatest

accomplishment?

DAVID NASAW: Yes, he was very clear on that. His children. He would say that over and

over again, and he would believe it, and he would mean it. And that's why the tragedy I end

the book with the line something like, He outlived Can I see the book?

CHRISTOPHER LYDON: Sure.

DAVID NASAW: Sorry. I've forgotten. The last line in the book is: "Joseph Kennedy died

peacefully in the place he loved more than any other, at Hyannis Port. He was 81 years of age

and had outlived four of his nine children." And a fifth was in an institution.

CHRISTOPHER LYDON: David, it's a wonderful book, and it's a wonderful life. It's an

astonishing life. It's many lives. It's a whole century, and it covers everything. You are a novelist;

it's too big for life. Thank you enormously, and much admiration. [applause]

DAVID NASAW: Thank you.

THE END

2012 12 12 the life of jospeh p kennedy

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