An Unfinished Life
Robert Dallek
(Sr. Associate Reviewer - Dr. Alma Bond)
2003 Little, Brown & Co.
ISBN: 0316172383
John F. Kennedy, 1917-1963. An authoritative single-volume biography of our 35th President, drawn upon first-hand sources, freshly unearthed documents, & never-before-opened archives, revealing more than we ever knew about Jack Kennedy.
Sr. Associate Reviewer Dr. Alma Bond writes:
An Unfinished Life has the feel of greatness about it. There is no question that this biography book by Robert Dallek, Boston University History Professor & one of the most highly regarded historians in America, is the deepest, best researched, & most revealing work yet written on the life of John F. Kennedy.
Dallek had many sources open to him which previously had been off limits to biographers. For example, he was the first biographer since Doris Kearns Goodwin to be granted unrestricted access to basic Kennedy family papers, particularly those concerning Joseph & Rose Kennedy, in the JFK Library. He also located a great deal of important information from the files of JFK's doctors, friends, & colleagues. This material has served him well in writing a solid, informative history of Kennedy's actions, thinking & character, & breaks new ground on his health, politics, personal recklessness & love affairs.
An excerpt from the book, published in Atlantic in December, 2002, revealed much hitherto secret information on Kennedy's health, based on previously unavailable medical files of Kennedy's personal physician. The data is expanded on in the book, so that the full extent of the medical cover-up mandated by the Kennedy family is disclosed, a cover-up so mind- boggling that it included the destruction of medical records after JFK was in his grave.
From an early age, not a year went by that Jack did not suffer from some physical affliction, starting with a virulent case of scarlet fever three months before his third birthday. His many childhood illnesses forced Jack to spend a great deal of time in bed. At Canterbury by age 13, he began to suffer from an undiagnosed illness, which seriously restricted his activities. This was followed by an appendectomy, which required that he return home for a year & study with a tutor. Several confinements in the infirmary marked his first year at Choate. “Eyes, ears, teeth, knees, arches, from the top of his head to the tip of his toes, Jack needed attention,” the headmaster's wife Clara St. John wrote to Rose (p. 35).
After Jack's junior year at Choate, Joe sent him to the famed Mayo Clinic for a month, where he was diagnosed with a spastic colon. There is a suspicion that his doctors, unable to determine the cause of his illness, placed him on steroids, which can have long-term deleterious chronic effects, such as osteoporosis with spinal column deterioration.
Another illness necessitated Jack's dropping out of his first year at Princeton. The next year, he enrolled instead at Harvard, where his fragile health continued. He was diagnosed with colitis when he was only seventeen. His back problems, which began the next year, remained a constant source of pain for the rest of his life. His Addison's disease, like the ulcer, osteoporosis, & degeneration of his spinal column in all likelihood were due to the hormones he had been taking since the 30s. One hesitates to think of the scandal that would have resulted, had this information erupted during Kennedy's lifetime. How Kennedy ever managed to function throughout the catastrophic events of his lifetime, the unbelievable heroism of his PT boat rescues, the extensive grueling campaigning, & the persistent pain he suffered, I, for one, cannot imagine.
The psychologist in me has to wonder if at least some of Jack's illnesses were precipitated by inadequate mothering. Jackie told Theodore White that Jack had been “a lonely, sick boy” & that “His mother really didn't love him” (p. 70). Rose frequently left the family for trips. When Jack was almost six, his mother announced she was leaving for a six-week trip to California. Jack remarked, “Gee, you're a great mother to go away & leave your children all alone.” (p. 69). This irritated Rose, who retaliated by becoming even more distant. He did better to “take it in stride,” as he told his friend LeMoyne Billings. One child seeking sympathy from his mother for an injury he suffered, fell to the floor & began to whine. Rose ordered, “On Your feet.” The child arose & practically stood at attention. “Now you know how to behave,” his mother said. (p. 73) Illness apparently brought no more pity from Jack's father than his mother. Joe, who also was irritated by his son's constant ailments, was overheard remarking to his girlfriend, “Why don't you get a live one?” (p. 37)
Dallek's political revelations are equally stunning. For example, from a Kennedy ‘friend,' the author obtained details of the massive organization & the enormous sum of Kennedy money used to ‘buy' the West Virginia primary in 1960. It was six times the amount Tip O'Neill spent six years later to win Jack's open seat. They hired a public relations firm, which covered the district with billboard, subway, newspaper, radio ads, & direct mailings, paid for polls that stressed Jack's war heroism, & staged elaborate fancy parties. Joe Kennedy is supposed to have said, “With what I'm spending I could elect my chauffeur.” (p. 130). The flamboyant spending was typical of all Kennedy's campaigns. When he ran against Hubert Humphrey for the Democratic nomination for president, Humphrey said, he “felt like a corner grocer running against a chain store.” (p. 250)
Dallek also supplied new evidence on Jack's philandering, both the extent of it & the conclusion that Kennedy's dalliances did not interfere with the efficiency of the presidency. According to Richard Reeves, a historian quoted by Dallek, Kennedy's womanizing generally “took less time than tennis” (p. 480). Dallek was more concerned with the recklessness with which Kennedy conducted his affairs than the sheer number of them. For example, when he invited an under-age cheerleader to a tête-a-tête in his hotel room, he risked the election as well as all the millions his father spent on the 1960 campaign. Jack worried that the poor state of his health would result in an early death. Perhaps this anxiety contributed to his womanizing, as he tried to pack as much pleasure as he could into the short time he felt was left to him.
Most of the biography covers Kennedy's truncated presidency. Foreign policy was his long-standing area of expertise. From the time he was a young man, his natural instincts led him deeply into politics & world relationships. Three topics predominate in the story of John Fitzgerald Kennedy's presidency. The first is Cuba, the second, Vietnam, & the third, his battles with Khrushchev, the Soviet Premier. According to Dallek, “the Bay of Pigs failure followed by repeated discussions of how to topple Fidel Castro show Kennedy at his worst--inexperienced & driven by Cold War imperatives that helped bring the world to the edge of a disastrous nuclear war” (p. 709). But Kennedy's caution & restraint during the Cuban Missile Crisis despite the contrary advice of most of the Chiefs of Staff, was “a model of wise statesmanship in a dire situation.” Indeed, we (& our descendants) may have Kennedy to thank for the fact that we are alive at all. Despite his conventional thinking about the cold war, he refused to be drawn into intensifying American ground forces in Vietnam & risking a nuclear war, & never would have expanded the war, as President Johnson did. Kennedy's greatest achievement, according to Dallek, was “his management of Soviet-American relations & his effectiveness in discouraging a U.S. military mind-set that accepted the possibility -- indeed, even likelihood, of a nuclear war with Moscow.” (p. 710)
While it sounds like nit-picking to criticize so brilliant a book, in my opinion, An Unfinished Life is more of a man's book than a women's. I would have preferred more about Jackie, his marriage & relationship with his wife. In this respect, even though it is not as thorough or deep a work, I enjoyed Lawrence Leamer's The Kennedy Men more than An Unfinished Life. But then, I love reading about Jackie, & Dallek all but ignores her. He gives much more space to Kennedy's paramours than to his brilliant & lovely wife.
Speaking of an unfinished life, my favorite part of the book is its ending. Who among us has not asked What if..?
What if Kennedy had not been assassinated?
What if he had been permitted to live out the rest of his term of office?
What if he had been re-elected?
I think that part of the hold Kennedy still has on Americans 40 years after his death, is that our “what ifs” about him have not been answered. Dallek takes a chance & finishes An Unfinished Life for us.
According to this author, if Kennedy had lived, he would have brought about his major initiatives of reform, the tax cut, federal aid to education, Medicare, & Civil Rights. All of his significant reform proposals came to fruition under President Johnson. Dallek writes, “The most important of the Great Society measures deserve to be described as Kennedy-Johnson achievements.” (p. 708) Kennedy handled Kruschev well, in his calm & rational approach to the possibility of nuclear warfare. The crises over Berlin & Cuba opened the way to a test ban treaty that reduced fallout & led to the possibility of a Soviet-American pact.
No one can say what would have come about as a result of Kennedy's second term of office, but it is quite possible that had he not had to answer to American voters, a Cuban-American accommodation would have been brought about. & who is to say that two full terms of his presidency would not have eased the Cold War between the United States & the USSR? The bullet that killed Kennedy set off a tragedy unlike any other in our history. Since his death, the sun has shone a bit less bright for people all over the world.
Robert Dallek's Franklin D. Roosevelt & American Foreign Policy won the 1980 Bancroft Prize & was nominated for an American Book Award, & American Style of Foreign Policy was a 1983 New York Times Notable Book of the Year.
(06/22/03)
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