• U.S.

The Presidency: Above The Battle–For Now

5 minute read
TIME

THE PRESIDENCY

“I want to say,” said the man with the famed ski-nose and nasal voice, “that I played in the South Pacific while the President was out there. The President was a very gay and carefree young man at the time. Of course, all he had to worry about then was the enemy.”

The scene was the White House flower garden, crowded with a giggle of presidential secretaries, a gaggle of Congressmen, Bob Hope as the guest of honor, and John Kennedy as his admiring straight man. What was Hope doing there? He had come, along with his wife, to receive from President Kennedy a congressional gold medal for having entertained U.S. troops all over the world since 1941. Hope was happy—although there was “one sobering thought. I received this for going outside the country. I think they are trying to tell me something.”

In presenting the medal to Hope, the President noted wryly that the comic’s congressional commendation was “the only bill we’ve gotten by lately.” That good-humored but less-than-half-joking remark was somehow symbolic of the President’s mood of the week—in which he displayed a relaxed, above-the-battle attitude toward all manner of serious issues.

Very Simple. At his press conference the next day, Kennedy was asked some questions that in the not-so-old days would have brought out the tiger. But now he was bland, and clearly determined not to be mad at anybody.

He refused to get into the international name-calling contest about South Viet Nam (see THE WORLD). Said he mildly when asked about U.S. policy toward Viet Nam: “We’ve got a very simple policy in that area, I think . . . We want the war to be won, the Communists to be contained, and the Americans to go home.”

Was he mad because the Air Force Association, a private group of Air Force officers, veterans and aircraft businessmen, had adopted a convention resolution criticizing the atomic test ban treaty as a danger to the U.S.? Kennedy did not agree with the organization’s opinion, but “I think the Air Force Association is free to give its views.” What about the decision of Georgia Democrat Richard Russell, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, to oppose ratification of the treaty? Said Kennedy: “Well, I think he’s highly respected, probably the most individually respected, perhaps, in the Senate. Therefore, what he says is going to have some influence.”

In the past, published criticism of him has often thrown the President into shows of temper. Now he was asked about two recently published books—one by TIME’S White House correspondent, Hugh Sidey, the other by Victor Lasky (see Opinion). Some reviewers had called the Sidey book too uncritical of Kennedy, the Lasky book too critical. What did the President think? Again, he refused to rise to the bait. He had, he said, thought Sidey’s book “critical.” As for Lasky’s hatchet job, he had only read the first part, but he had seen it praised by the New York Herald Tribune’s columnist, Roscoe Drummond, and by New York Times Pundit Arthur Krock. And so, said the President, he was “looking forward to reading it, because the part I read was not as brilliant as I gather the rest of it is, from what they say about it.”

The Right Tempo. So it went—smiling, good-natured answers to provocative questions.

In fact, even before the press conference, some perceptive Washington witnesses had already noticed and remarked on what seems to be President Kennedy’s new air of remoteness. Although his long-ailing back still bothers him, he appears in otherwise perfect good health. He works as hard as he ever did at his job.

But somehow missing from the White House is that sense of electric excitement; and somehow gone from the President’s words, both public and private, is that man-the-barricades urgency. Congress is muddling through its most tedious, least productive session in decades; but Kennedy does not criticize. The gold flow continues as a potentially disastrous drain on the nation’s economy; Kennedy has suggested some panaceas, but they are hardly ultimate solutions. The Negro revolution caught him (as well as most everyone else) by surprise. His Administration’s reactions have been denounced by some as too hasty, by others as too slow. But at the press conference, Kennedy said with only the mildest emphasis: “I think we’re going at it at about the right tempo.”

No one, of course, can accurately estimate the significance of Kennedy’s current mood—or how long it will last. But for so long as it does, everyone might as well enjoy it—as Kennedy so clearly did while weekending at the Newport, R.I., home of his mother-in-law. There Jack and Jackie Kennedy celebrated their tenth wedding anniversary with a party, a sail on Narragansett Bay and a swing around the Newport Country Club golf course.

More Must-Reads from TIME

Contact us at letters@time.com