The Presidency: Hopes & Misgivings

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The fledgling President of the U.S. was readying himself to fly off this week for conferences with 1) France's President Charles de Gaulle in Paris, 2) Russia's Premier Nikita Khrushchev in Vienna, and 3) Britain's Prime Minister Harold Macmillan in London. Within a week after his leavetaking, President John Kennedy plans to be back home—pretty quick work.

Indeed the President's first overseas quest for new understandings in the old cold war seemed to have growed like Topsy. First, it was to be a visit with De Gaulle. Then Khrushchev was added, and then Macmillan. Even as President Kennedy was packing his brief case, his trip was still arousing questions. Had he blunted the meaning of each of his three major confrontations by more or less tossing them together, rather than taking on De Gaulle, Khrushchev and Macmillan in reasonably separate order? Was it wise for him to meet with Khrushchev when recent events—some of his own doing—had weakened his hand in the cold war? Most important, should Kennedy have decided to meet with Khrushchev without any hope or intention of finding cold war solutions?

Plus & Minus. President Kennedy had plainly and publicly let it be known that his main aim was to size up Khrushchev, to take the Russian's personal measure as the U.S.'s mightiest cold war adversary. But the proposition carried with it the fact that Khrushchev at the same time would be taking measure of President Kennedy and, through him, of the U.S.

What was the state of the U.S.?

The economy was strong, having righted itself from recession. President Kennedy had used the powers of his office and his own political acumen to push along his legislative programs: he was doing better than any President since the early Franklin Roosevelt in achieving success on Capitol Hill. He had received bullish reports from Vice President Lyndon Johnson, just back from Southeast Asia, on prospects in that beleaguered area.

But the U.S. attempt to topple Castro's Communism in Cuba had been bungled—and last week, by urging U.S. citizens to accede to a Castro extortion demand, the President did not improve matters. The U.S. South was again aflame on the issue of integration—and, however skillfully handled by the Administration, the U.S. Government had once more been forced to intervene forcibly. In Geneva, U.S. efforts, at separate conferences, to achieve an agreement on nuclear test suspension and a neutral Laos were bogged.

Such plus and minus national imbalance could only stir U.S. uneasiness as the President headed abroad. Kennedy apparently sensed that uneasiness, and revealed his own anxiety by motoring up to Capitol Hill for an extraordinary occasion: a drastically revised version of the State of the Union message that he had delivered only four months before. Last week's speech, while coolly received by Congress, had in it the possibilities for positive national progress. Urging more monies for military programs, foreign aid and civil defense (see following story), the President was on the right track. But it seemed odd that he should confuse those aims by giving top priority to landing a man on the moon.