The Presidency: Hugh Sidey History on His Shoulder

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The Presidency

Some time last Thursday the anniversary passed, and a memory etched 20 years ago came sharply back to mind. It was the day the Cuban missile crisis ended. Nikita Khrushchev's astonishing message about the weapons ("We instructed our officers to dismantle them, and to return them to the Soviet Union") lifted the clouds of crisis. John Kennedy, tired but quietly jubilant, stood in the bright October sun on the porch outside the Oval Office where he and his aides had fashioned a solution during 13 days of nail-biting cerebration. Kennedy thrust his hands deep into his coat pockets, a familiar tic that signaled he was back in high fettle. He ducked his head with the small self-conscious smile of the winner he always wanted to be, muttered something about not messing up the weekend entirely, and strode off to his helicopter for a few hours at his Virginia estate. That night the President talked with his brother Bobby about the crisis. As he had done so often over the past months, he mentioned the book The Guns of August and its accounts of arrogance and miscalculation that led to World War I. In all the subsequent analysis of the Cuban crisis, scholars and participants have dwelt on nuclear balances, geography and diplomatic tactics. It just could be that Barbara Tuchman, author of The Guns of August, was as important as the U.S. Navy. It could be, too, that Lord David Cecil, who wrote Kennedy's favorite book, Melbourne, the biography of the youthful Queen Victoria's Prime Minister, and Winston Churchill, in his role as chronicler of the life of his ancestor Marlborough, were as important as the trusted aides who kept long vigils in the White House that October.

What shouts to us over these years is that Kennedy saw the missile crisis in a worldwide tapestry of what had been, what was, and what would be. The lessons of history were always at the forefront of his mind. He called The Guns of August his presidential handbook, because nowhere else was there such a clear story of ignorance leading to misjudgment and then to catastrophe. When Kennedy first saw the pictures of the missiles in place, he felt that the U.S. would have to launch a full-scale assault on Cuba to destroy them. History, riding on his shoulder, held him back. First, learn more. Then communicate. Don't humiliate. Be patient. And strong.

Kennedy knew he was on history's stage. His hero Melbourne had played it the way Kennedy wanted to. Wrote Cecil about Melbourne: "He was acutely responsive to the romance of history in the making, to the drama of great events."

One of Kennedy's first acts in the White House was to order 200 books on the presidency put on his shelves for easy access. "Roosevelt got most of his ideas from talking to people," Kennedy told Historian James MacGregor Burns. "I get most of mine from reading."

Of Kennedy's ten favorite books, eight were history and biography. He devoured the 407-page Sir Robert Walpole: The Making of a Statesman in one evening. Eyeing China, J.F.K. called for two of Mao's books. Seeking insights into world trouble spots, he dug into Che Guevara's accounts of guerrilla war.