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"Jack who?" But no longer. Now everyone in Washington knows who Jack is: he is the man at the other end of the line.
At 44, Kennedy's weight remains steady at 175 Ibs. He has few more grey hairs or wrinkles of care than when he took office —but he somehow looks older and more mature. Indeed he is older—but in a way that the mere month-by-month passage of time could not have made him.
Less Than Omnipotent. Kennedy has come to realize that national and international issues look much different from the President's chair than from a candidate's rostrum. There are fewer certainties, and far more complexities. "We must face problems which do not lend themselves to easy, quick or permanent solutions," he said recently in Seattle. "And we must face the fact that the U.S. is neither omnipotent nor omniscient, and that we cannot right every wrong or reverse each adversity, and that therefore there cannot be an American solution for every world problem."
That sober view of the limitations of power and authority is far removed from Kennedy's campaign oratory, which often seemed to suggest that any problem could be solved if only enough vim and vigor were brought to bear on it. Kennedy promised a "New Frontier" to "get America moving again." He soon found that it was tough enough just to keep the old problems from getting out of hand.
Before he came to the White House, Kennedy chose as his model the Franklin Delano Roosevelt of the New Deal years. He expressed admiration for Roosevelt's ability to "do" things and to "get things done," even adopted some of F.D.R.'s speech mannerisms (the cocked head, allusions to historical fact). Kennedy advisers talked about a Rooseveltian 100 days of dramatic success with Congress. But before the azaleas had bloomed in the White House garden, the Roosevelt image went by the boards—and so did the 100-day notion. "This period," says Kennedy today, with just a shade of irritation, "is entirely different from Franklin Roosevelt's day. Everyone says that Roosevelt did this and that, why don't I?"
Changed Positives. Kennedy has al ways been a man of positive ideas — but some of the positives have changed. During the 1960 campaign, he effectively used the charge that U.S. prestige had plum meted during Dwight Eisenhower's Ad ministration. In fact, the U.S. had under Ike, and retains under Kennedy, a high reservoir of good will in the free world —as Kennedy saw for himself in his triumphal trips to London, Paris and, more recently Latin America. During the presidential campaign, Kennedy also made much of the "missile gap" between the U.S. and the Soviet Union; within a few weeks after he took office, the missile gap somehow seemed to disappear (although the President was publicly annoyed at Defense Secretary Robert McNamara for saying as much at a news briefing. Kennedy himself said: "In terms of total military strength, the U.S. would not trade places with any nation on earth."
As an amateur historian, Kennedy might have realized that no new President starts out with a blank book to be filled with fresh-ink policies. The reach of current history is such that any President's program becomes a continuing part of national policy;