bout de papier, Vol. 29, No. 1 (2015), pp. 16–17
In Two Days in June, renowne
fresh insight into the political and his talented circle of advisc
overkill, and the prose may s
Empathetic and deeply admiring, Cohen never descends into hagiography. The facts are allowed to speak for themselves. We see, moment to moment, Kennedy’s performance and that of brother (Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy), speechwriter Ted Sorensen, and other reformers of the post-war generation as they come to grips with the need for real reform, at home and abroad, in the shadow of the atomic bomb and a history of racial prejudice. We see the synergy of talent, leadership and conviction needed to bring about deep-seated change that we almost take for granted now.
By implication, the book also invites the reader to contrast the quality of such leadership with today. Two Days in June is indispensable reading for those who may despair about national and international leadership coming to grips with our own great macro challenges, such as climate change. But Cohen also reminds us, at a more personal level, that everyone “educated in freedom” should reflect on our own duties. Citing Robert Kennedy:
In the light of a truly freed mind no prejudice can disguise itself as zeal, no bullying can masquerade as leadership, no pettiness can pose as importance. The freed mind will never confuse a sentimentality with a true emotion, an act of violence with an act of heroism, a slogan with a cause…
Fifty years later the work of Kennedy’s generation is far from complete and “freed minds” (what else should skilled diplomats possess?) still must accept our responsibilities. Cohen reminds us that an earlier generation proved unequivocally that mediocrity need not prevail.
We see the synergy of talent, leadership and conviction needed
to bring about deep-seated change that we almost take for granted now.
The implied question Cohen puts to us: do we measure up today?
BOUT: Simply put, why should Canadian diplomats (and more broadly our foreign policy community) read your book?
AC: For the same reasons, I hope, that the general public would read it. I invite readers to observe a president, up close, as he pivots dramatically over 48 feverish hours on the two great issues of his time — nuclear arms and civil rights. To understand why he does it, largely ignoring his advisors, without taking polls or assembling focus groups, and the making of a brave and moral choice. To see how he does it, mobilizing language in the two greatest speeches of his eloquent presidency. To see that something real comes from his lyrical appeal — a pioneering treaty and a landmark law. And, I hope, to draw a parallel between then and now on how we approach race and the Russians.
BOUT: Although Two Days is about Kennedy and his team, the book reads like an enquiry into the fundamentals of political leadership — to paraphrase your own words: not to contour events, but to shape them. What are some of the lessons of Kennedy’s presidency for coming to grips with the great challenges and events of our own day, say climate change, ISIS, or nuclear negotiations with Iran?
AC: Kennedy became president in the heat of the Cold War, in lily-white, apartheid America. Both seemed intractable in the spring of 1963. How to advance racial equality? How to slow the arms race? Kennedy found a way to address both, seizing the power of the bully pulpit. While he was unimpressed with diplomats — he thought that they did not have to take the risks of politicians — he believed in diplomacy. He believed in dialogue. He used back channels, such as the Vatican, to establish a conversation with the Russians. It led to “the Peace Speech” on June 10, 1963 and six weeks later, the Limited Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, the first of the arms control treaties of the Cold War. Few thought it could be done, but he did. Today, were JFK dealing with Putin, he would treat him as he did Nikita Krushchev during the Cuban Missile Crisis and beyond — with patience, restraint and
While he was unimpressed with diplomats — he thought that they
did not have to take the risks
of politicians — he believed in diplomacy. He believed in dialogue.
He used back channels, such as
the Vatican, to establish a
conversation with the Russians.
empathy. However much they disagreed, he would never appear triumphalist and never “rub his nose in it.” Curiously, some of the doubts expressed by critics today on an agreement with a nuclear Iran — the Iranians cannot be trusted, that they will cheat — are much the same as what critics said in coming to terms with the Russians in banning the testing of nuclear weapons. BOUT: What do the Kennedy years teach us about the handling of the Canada-US relationship. Do you see any parallels between those years and today’s awkwardness?
AC: Kennedy and Diefenbaker loathed each other, not that Kennedy spent much time thinking about Diefenbaker, who was just a nuisance to him; he reminded JFK of blustering American prairie populists. He had bigger things to worry about. Today, Obama and Harper are also said to dislike each other, though not as intensely. Yet as the relationship did not fall apart in the 1960s, whatever the personal strains, it has not fallen apart today. Personal relations do matter, and when Lester Pearson was elected in April 1963, Kennedy was delighted and immediately invited him to Cape Cod. Things improved, but they were not perfect. Then, as now, the Americans had their interests, and we had ours.
…Canada, America’s neighbor, historically, and largest trading partner, was also seething on the sidelines. In 1963, its ambassador was Charles Stewart Almon Ritchie, a hawk-nosed, dapper blue blood from Nova Scotia, with a mid-Atlantic accent, a sharp ear, and a gifted pen. In 1938, having read history and literature at Oxford, he joined Canada’s fledgling foreign service, which, in 1959, Senator Kennedy deemed “probably unequalled by any other nation”. Ritchie served in Ottawa, London, Bonn, and New York. He was the personification of the “golden age of Canadian diplomacy”, when Canada, by virtue of its disproportionate military and financial contribution to the Second World War, had some influence in the postwar world. Ritchie was one of the constellation of stars who helped Canada play a role in the making of the new international architecture, including the establishment of the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the United Nations, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, and particularly the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. The best of them was Lester B. Pearson, ambassador, foreign minister, Nobel Laureate, and future Prime Minister…
…Ritchie had the misfortune to represent a country led by John George Diefenbaker. The relationship between the Conservative prime minister and the Democratic president (historically a mismatch) had started badly when the Kennedys visited Ottawa in March 1961 and never recovered. Diefenbaker thought Kennedy elitist, imperious, and too enamored of Lester Pearson’s Liberals; Kennedy thought Diefenbaker ornery, pompous, and bloviating, reminding him of swaggering prairie populists. Both Jackie and Bobby later maintained that JFK “hated” Diefenbaker, who nursed a spirited anti- Americanism. When Ritchie presented his credentials to Kennedy in the Oval Office on May 26, 1962, he found Kennedy “civil” but “distinctly cool”, and “deliberately creating a distance”, which Ritchie thought reflected his antipathy for the prime minister. Their conversation was strained — banalities punctuated by long pauses — which was unnatural for two natural conversationalists. “No, it was not ‘a click’ with the President”, an embarrassed Ritchie wrote in his unpublished diary. “I felt ineffective… and nervous. That’s what occasions are for — to rise to them. This was one I didn’t rise to.”
For the next year or so, Ritchie was shunned. He felt the administration distrusted Canada’s “self-righteousness and self-centeredness”. They “think we are a small-time bunch who don’t belong in the big league.” It did not help that a suspicious Diefenbaker had been slow to support the United States during the Cuban Missile Crisis, prompting Bobby’s cutting wisecrack: “Canada offers all aid short of help.” Sure, Ritchie was able to see McGeorge Bundy, whom he liked but did not understand, and Dean Rusk, who looked like “Buddha” or “a Chinaman — a short one.”… In February 1963, Ritchie acknowledged his isolation: “Having virtually given up on the Kennedys, I have now… resigned myself to having a housemaid’s keyhole view of them. But even if I boast, as I now do, of being OUT, I still find it tiresome to be treated from that moment as if] am not only OUT but non-existent.”
That began to change — if not personally, at least politically — when Pearson became prime minister on April 22, 1963. Kennedy knew and liked “Mike” Pearson, whom he welcomed to the White House with the other Nobel Laureates in 1962, and whose published collection of speeches he had reviewed admiringly in 1959. Kennedy immediately invited Pearson to Hyannis Port. Ritchie tagged along and found the meeting “an ordeal”, because he worried about putting a foot wrong with Kennedy.
(excerpt printed with permission; 2014, McClelland & Stewart, pp.404)
Originally published in bout de papier, Vol. 29, No. 1 (2015), pp. 16–17. Read the rest of this issue →
