Man Of The Year: John F. Kennedy, A Way with the People

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summitry—decided to go to Vienna to meet Nikita Khrushchev. He hoped, he said, to size up Khrushchev and to warn him against miscalculating U.S. determination in the cold war. He knew beforehand that Khrushchev was tough—but only at Vienna did he discover how tough. "The difficulty of reaching accord was dramatized in those two days," he says today. There was no shouting or shoe banging, but the meeting was grim. At one point Kennedy noted a medal on Khrushchev's chest and asked what it was. When Khrushchev explained that it was for the Lenin Peace Prize, Kennedy coldly replied: "I hope you keep it."

Kennedy managed to wangle out of Khrushchev a paper agreement on the need for an "effective cease-fire" in Laos and for a neutral and independent Laos (Communist guerrillas nonetheless continued to violate the cease-fire), but the two got nowhere on other matters. Then Kennedy insisted on a last, unscheduled session with Khrushchev. "We're not going on time," he snapped to his staff. "I'm not going to leave until I know more." He found out more. At that final session Khrushchev growled that his decision to sign a peace treaty with East Germany by the end of December was "firm" and "irrevocable." "If that is true," replied Kennedy, "it is going to be a cold winter."

High over the Atlantic Ocean, flying back to the U.S. the next night, John Kennedy sat in his shorts, surrounded by his key aides. He was dead tired; his eyes were red and watery; he throbbed with the ache of a back injury that the nation did not yet know about but that had forced him to endure agonies on his European trip. Several times he stared down at his feet, shook his head and muttered how unbending Khrushchev had been. He hugged his bare legs and wondered what would come next.

Aides in the White House agree that August and September were the most critical months so far in the personal and political life of John Kennedy. The first thing that Kennedy did when he got back to the White House was to call for an estimate of the number of Americans who might die in an atomic war; it was 70 million. Kennedy and those close to him felt that war was a very real possibility. The President became moody, withdrawn, often fell into deep thought in the midst of festive occasions with family and friends. He sat up late in the White House and talked about war. To one intimate associate he said: "It really doesn't matter as far as you and I are concerned. What really matters is all the children."

But at some point, in some way, the President passed through his period of personal crisis. He decided that words could be effective only when backed by the plain willingness to perform deeds. "We do not want to fight," he told the U.S., "but we have fought before. We cannot and will not permit the Communists to drive us out of Berlin, either gradually or by force."

Kennedy had uttered such bold words before—but this time he intended to support them with action. The Communist Wall in Berlin caught the U.S. by surprise, and President Kennedy had no ready response. "There's no reason why we should do everything," he said. But he did decide, even if it meant war, to insist upon the maintenance of three basic Allied rights in Berlin: 1) the presence