Perhaps it was there, as Kennedy sat with his advisors and doodled, that he remembered a passage from another book he’d read, by the strategist B. H. Liddell Hart, on nuclear strategy. In Kennedy’s review of Hart’s book for the Saturday Review of Literature a few years before, he quoted this passage: Keep strong, if possible. In any case, keep cool. Have unlimited patience. Never corner an opponent, and always assist him to save face. Put yourself in his shoes—so as to see things through his eyes. Avoid self-righteousness like the devil—nothing is so self-blinding.
