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Nowhere has the Kennedy system seemed more like madness than in Latin America. While searching around for a strong Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs, Kennedy left Ike-appointed Thomas Mann in temporary charge of the State Department desk, but gave policy shaping to Old New Dealer Adolf Berle, 66, chairman of a special Latin America task force. Kennedy also assigned Arthur Schlesinger as a one-man presidential troubleshooter for the continent, later gave Speechwriter Richard Goodwin, 29, responsibility for Cuban affairs. At the time of the Bay of Pigs debacle, Kennedy called Rostow and Bundy away from their paper planning on Laos to give advice on Cuba; Nitze and Attorney General Robert Kennedy added their potent voices in council. Fortnight ago, the President created still another Latin America specialist, sent U.N. Ambassador Adlai Stevenson on a prestige-building, length-of-the-continent trip. Inevitably, the efficiency of the State Department regulars has suffered. Since January, four of the top Latin American experts in the Foreign Service have resigned or transferred to less morale-cracking posts; more than 21 qualified men turned down the Assistant Secretaryship for Inter-American Affairs before Ambassador to Chile Robert Woodward finally accepted the job.
As a student of history and as a politician long fascinated by the techniques of power, John Kennedy should know the consequences of failure. "The greatest danger to a President's potential influence," wrote Columbia Professor Richard Neustadt in Presidential Power (a book Kennedy liked so well that he hired Neustadt as a consultant on Government organization), "is not the show of incapacity he makes today, but its apparent kinship to what happened yesterday, last month, last year. For if his failures seem to form a pattern, the consequence is bound to be a loss of faith in his effectiveness 'next time.' "
Young & Searching. Kennedy's Administration is still young, still searching for the right formulas. Despite the failure of the Cuban invasion and the foolish uncertainty over the tractor deal, there will be other "next times'' for John Kennedy to redeem his reputation as a political leader of potential greatness. Yet if the pattern persists, there will be a clear and present danger that President Kennedy, surrounded as he is by a din of conflicting advisory voices, may lose the confidence necessary to guide the nation through such coming struggles as Berlin.