The Best and the Brightest: Kennedy-Johnson Administrations (Modern Library)

by David Halberstam

somewhat sympathetic to the Vietminh but being realistic about Europe,

despite all its commitments to freedom, independence and anticolonialism, had permitted an ally to start a bitter and foolish colonial war.

McNamara

Ambassador Frederick Nolting,

They had all been pushing hard, willing to commit troops, in effect go to war if necessary, but they had given little or no thought

to what the other side might do. Now they had no answers, nothing to say.)

“It will fall into our lap like a rotten apple”).

to believe six impossible things before breakfast.

Michael Forrestal,

John F. Kennedy. He had been to Indochina twice, in 1951 and 1953, once as a congressman and once as a senator:

pessimism was considerable, the Vietminh were winning the war, and the French were not giving any real form of independence to the Vietnamese

was a reflection of his almost Anglicized nature, his distaste for colonial callousness and vulgarity.

He did not like the French colonial officials; they seemed stupid and insensitive, trying to hold

on to something in a world which had al...

They were bad politicians and they were living in the past;

British had done in India, leaving when they should, with none of the worst predicted consequences taking place.

The speech was a good one, and it went against the

traditional foreign policy of supporting the French blindly no matter what they did, on the grounds that our oldest ally was also a weak oldest ally, given to great internal division and lack of fiber, and thus might come apart at the slightest prod of an American finger.

Adlai Stevenson,

Dean Acheson.

Yet his overall view on colonialism was now clearly stated, it was above all rational and

thirty-fifth President of the United States paid great attention to style; style for him and for those around him came

perilously close to substance.

have the same basic symmetry of survival and thus the same basic symmetry of rationality:

Kennedy was almost British in his style. Grace under pressure was that much-quoted phrase describing a quality which Kennedy so admired, and so wanted as a description of his own behavior.

was very much a British quality: to undergo great hardship and stress and never flinch, never show emotion.

Weaker, less worthy Mediterranean peoples showed emotion when pressure was applied, but the British kept both t...

but he could not forgive him for his lack of style and class in permitting Pat Nixon to

Kennedy himself was always uneasy with emotion;

For the thirty-fifth President of the United States was a classic expression of the democratic-elitist

As the country expanded, the old elites in the East had opened up their universities to the best qualified of the new elites, and his education had been superb.

Democratic party had been the natural home of the newer immigran...

he was at once very rich without seeming rich or snobbish and he spent his money wisely and judiciously, allowing it to make his political way easier, yet using it in ways which were carefully designed not to offend his

In a country which prized men who were successful

and got ahead, he had always been marvelously successful, and he had gotten ahead.

Each move had always been weighed with the future in mind.

With television emerging in American politics as the main

arbiter of candidates, his looks were striking on the screen, and he was catapulted forward in his career by his capacity to handle the new medium, thus to be projected into millions of Protestant homes without looking like a Catholic.

still very ...

he had all the advantages of the rich, with none of t...

Rockefeller, the one candidate who probably could have beaten him in 1960, the Brahmin WASP Republican with all the advantages of Kennedy, just as photogenic, just as rich, perhaps not quite as bright, was above all a Rockefeller and thus lacked the particular hunger,

the edge, the requisite totality of desire for the office,

Lack of hunger was a problem which might affect subsequent gene...

Nelson Rockefeller’s father had never had to leave one city and move to another because he felt there was too little ...

Joseph Kennedy had moved from Boston to Bronxville for pr...

Lyndon Johnson, product of a poor and maligned section of the country, may never have lost his feeling of insecurity about his Texas background;

Richard Nixon, poor and graceless and unaccepted as a young man, the classic

excluded from the top Boston social circles

he had never met a man who took such a great pleasure in simply being himself and had as little insecurity as Kennedy (which allowed him to accept the failure of the Bay of Pigs, without trying to pass the blame).

“Because I know who I am and I don’t have to worry about adapting and changing. All I have to do at each stop is be myself.