An Unfinished Life: John F. Kennedy 1917-1963 (109 page)

Kennedy also failed to see that even the most committed segregationist senators and congressmen and the great majority of southern whites would accept a congressionally mandated civil rights bill. In August 1963, no less than Bonnie Faubus Salcido wrote him “to give you hope in the fight for civil rights. I want you to know there are many in the South who are for you tho [
sic
] are afraid to speak out. I am the sister of [Orval Faubus] the Governor of Arkansas. . . . Five of my brothers and sisters are for you also.” Having fought and lost the civil war over slavery and states rights, most southerners were not about to urge another secession crisis in response to federal imposition of the Constitution’s equal protection clauses. Except for a tiny minority of racist extremists, they could imagine nothing less than a unified nation in the face of an international communist threat.

Moreover, Kennedy did not fully understand what Johnson was telling him about the importance of taking a moral stand on civil rights and leading a crusade for something that could be defined as fundamental American values. To be sure, Kennedy’s June appeals for civil rights legislation rested on forceful statements of this kind. But his willingness to reach compromises with various congressional groups undermined his ability to press the issue. It did not need to be so. As Kennedy himself said in one of his conversations in October, while polls showed that most Americans were not ready to have Negroes living next door to them, they did support a defense of constitutional rights. With majority sentiment thus favoring congressional action if couched correctly, Kennedy could have taken the moral high ground and invoked the dangers to the national well-being from a failure to enact a bill that could largely ensure equal treatment under the law. His attempt to find a middle ground made him less effective in a fight that required unqualified expressions of faith in the righteousness of the cause. Since civil rights—more so than any other national issue confronting him—raised fundamental ethical questions, he certainly could have made it the one great domestic moral cause of his presidency.

BY CONTRAST WITH
his uncertain handling of civil rights, Kennedy had no doubts about the wisdom of landing a man on the moon by the end of the decade. Budget deficits and demands for greater spending on domestic programs could not deter him from a commitment he believed essential to America’s international prestige. In June 1962, after the successful orbital flights by Alan Shepard and John Glenn, Kennedy told a press conference that he had no intention of diverting money from space programs. “I do not think the United States can afford to become second in space because I think that space has too many implications militarily, politically, psychologically, and all the rest.” He cited a survey of French students, two-thirds of whom regarded the Soviet Union as being first in science and technology. “I think the fact that the Soviet Union was . . . first in space in the fifties had a tremendous impact upon a good many people who were attempting to make a determination as to whether they could meet their economic problems without engaging in a Marxist form of government. I think the United States cannot permit the Soviet Union to become dominant in the sea of space.” Kennedy partly justified the lunar program’s costs by citing its “many industrial benefits.” “No one can tell me that the United States cannot afford to do what the Soviet Union has done so successfully with a national income of less than half of ours,” he said.

In 1962, a double orbit by two Soviet cosmonauts and continuing advantages in the “size and total of weights placed in orbit, in the thrust of their operational rocket engines, and in the development of” space rendezvousing techniques strengthened Kennedy’s commitment to the Apollo program. Surveys of West European opinion on the Soviet-American space competition showed a growing regard for U.S. capabilities, further bolstering Kennedy’s determination to advance the lunar landing. In August, to counter allegations that Apollo primarily aimed to give the United States a military advantage in space, Kennedy directed the National Security Council to encourage public understanding of America’s peaceful intentions. (The NSC was a peculiar choice as spokesman for the administration’s opposition to militarizing space.)

Kennedy also urged NASA officials to consider accelerating the manned lunar mission by diverting monies from other space projects. At a meeting with budget advisers in November, he clashed with NASA head Jim Webb, who opposed putting more money into the lunar program to advance the landing date. A forceful, overbearing character who did not like being contradicted, Webb bristled at Kennedy’s policy directives, interrupting and speaking over the president. Webb urged a balanced program of space exploration that did not overemphasize the lunar probes. He described the moon walk as just one of several space priorities and invoked the authority of scientists, who “think the highest priority is to understand the environment of space.”

Believing that public support for his space program would weaken without clearly tying it to the Soviet-American competition for space dominance, Kennedy rejected Webb’s advice. While only 33 percent of the public endorsed the expenditure of $40 billion on the manned moon mission, Kennedy saw a well-defined and dramatic achievement as essential to sustain national backing. And he saw that backing as vital to a larger national security goal. “Everything we do ought to really be tied in to getting on to the moon ahead of the Russians,” he told Webb. “Otherwise we shouldn’t be spending that kind of money, because I’m not interested in space. . . . [The costs] wreck our budget on all these other domestic programs, and the only justification for it . . . is because we hope to beat them to demonstrate that instead of being behind by a couple of years, by God we passed them.”

“Do you still have the same enthusiasm and high hopes for the results of the vast outlays we have undertaken in the space projects . . . [as] when you first started into these?” a reporter asked Kennedy in December 1962. He acknowledged that $5 billion in the coming year was a lot to spend on the program but pointed to the “tremendous effect” that
Sputnik
had in the fifties. It made people everywhere believe that Moscow had “the secret of the organization of society.” He also urged the reporters to keep in mind that space expenditures translated into new industries and new technical skills.

Kennedy’s commitment to the moon landing did not insulate the administration from growing complaints about the “moon-doggle,” as critics began calling it. U.S. scientists were among the most outspoken critics. They asserted that “large-scale applied research ought to concentrate on problems ‘here on earth’: Medicine, Third World development, urban renewal” were all more worthy of investment and study than the moon program. Liberals joined the attack by pointing out that space spending could be funding valuable social programs. On the other side of the fence, Republicans, led by Eisenhower, weighed in with complaints that Kennedy’s moon project was too focused on America’s international prestige and too little on gaining military advantages in space. Eisenhower said that spending a total of $40 billion to reach the moon was “just nuts.”

In the spring of 1963, Kennedy launched an aggressive response to his critics. In April, he asked Johnson to tell him what technical and scientific accomplishments might result from space exploration. At the same time, Kennedy told the press that nothing had changed his mind about “the desirability of continuing this program. Now, some people say that we should take the money we are putting into space and put it into housing or education,” but, Kennedy asserted, if they “cut the space program . . . you would not get additional funds for education.” Instead, the Congress would use the monies to balance budgets. Slowing or eliminating the manned moon mission would only produce later recriminations over our failure to keep up with the Soviets.

At the end of July, to blunt continuing attacks on Apollo, Kennedy wanted Johnson to tell him whether the Eisenhower administration had ever had a moon program, what its time schedule was, and how much they had planned to spend on it. He also asked Johnson to report on how much of the space program was militarily useful. The vice president replied that Eisenhower had no moon program and that it was impossible “to ascribe a quantitative measure to the military spin-offs from the non-military portion of the space program.” However, Johnson confidently asserted that everything they were doing in space was both directly and indirectly of military value, concluding that the “space program is expensive, but it can be justified as a solid investment which will give ample returns in security, prestige, knowledge, and material benefits.”

When reports about Soviet second thoughts on a manned moon mission surfaced in the summer, Kennedy came under additional pressure to reconsider the U.S. program. He refused. He continued to see substantial Soviet gains in prestige from space exploration. According to a USIA worldwide opinion survey asking which country was “ahead in space developments,” people everywhere believed the Soviets had the advantage. In Japan, 69 percent of the poll saw Moscow in the lead, while only 6 percent said the United States; in Britain, the split was 59 to 13, and in France, opinion ran 68 percent to 5 percent against the U.S.; in Argentina, Brazil, and Venezuela, only 10 to 18 percent believed that the United States was winning the space race. “Are we going to divert ourselves from our effort in an area where the Soviet Union has a lead, is making every effort to maintain that lead, in an area which could affect our national security as well as great peaceful development?” Kennedy rhetorically asked reporters in July.

To increase public support for Apollo, Kennedy emphasized the idealistic as well as the practical advantages of his policy. In particular, he publicly urged Soviet-American cooperation in outer space. In a September 20, 1963, speech before the United Nations General Assembly, he underscored the rising hopes for peace resulting from reduced tensions over Berlin, Laos, and the Congo and the test ban treaty. “In a field where the United States and Soviet Union have a special capacity—in the field of space—there is room for new cooperation,” Kennedy declared, “for further joint efforts in the regulation and exploration of space. I include among these possibilities a joint expedition to the moon. . . . Why . . . should man’s first flight to the moon be a matter of national competition?” There was no need for the immense duplication of research, construction, and expenditure. “Surely we should explore whether the scientists and astronauts of our two countries—indeed of all the world—cannot work together in the conquest of space, sending some day in this decade to the moon not the representatives of a single nation, but the representatives of all of our countries.” Though Khrushchev gave no response to Kennedy’s proposal, in November, JFK instructed Webb personally to assume responsibility for exploring possibilities of Soviet-American cooperation and to report back to him on “the progress of our planning by December 15.”

At the end of October, when Khrushchev told journalists that they were “not at present planning flight by cosmonauts to the moon,” American newspapers gave his remarks front-page coverage. (Khrushchev reflected Soviet ambivalence about a manned moon mission; it was not until 1964 that Russian leaders formally committed themselves to enter this competition.) But Kennedy refused to take Khrushchev’s statement as an excuse to quit the moon race. “I would not make any bets at all upon Soviet intentions,” he told the press. When Khrushchev confirmed to reporters that Moscow had not dropped out of the moon race, Kennedy accepted it as vindication of his policy. “An energetic continuation of our strong space effort is essential,” Kennedy told Congressman Albert Thomas. “In the larger sense, this is not merely an effort to put a man on the moon; it is a means and a stimulus for all the advances in technology, in understanding and in experience, which can move us forward toward man’s mastery of space.”

As demonstrated by a 1965 survey showing 58 percent of Americans endorsing the country’s moon mission, Kennedy accurately assessed a shift toward increased public backing for the expensive space effort. As important, the success of the manned moon landing program by 1969—the end of the decade, as Kennedy had promised—ensured an enduring U.S. commitment to space exploration. He had indeed helped open a new frontier.

IN 1963,
along with the battle to keep the moon mission on track, Kennedy struggled to find answers to continuing difficulties with Cuba and South Vietnam. At the center of his policies toward both countries was a search for effective compromises that would free his administration to focus on bigger challenges from Moscow and at home, where a presidential campaign was certain to consume considerable energy, and his plans for a tax cut, civil rights, Medicare, and aid to education had been stalled.

Cuba, which had been a constant concern since January 1961, seemed especially in need of some fresh thinking. Kennedy’s eagerness to settle the Cuban problem without overt military action had been evident since the Bay of Pigs and was as apparent during the missile crisis. His affinity for finding compromises on Cuba surfaced again in November 1962, when he agreed to give up on-site inspections in return for removal of the IL-28s.

But tensions remained. Khrushchev wanted an unqualified noninvasion pledge, but the best he could get, Kennedy told him on November 21, was that “there need be no fear of any invasion of Cuba while matters take their present favorable course.” In response, Khrushchev asked Kennedy to “clearly confirm . . . the pledge of non-invasion of Cuba by the United States and your allies.” Kennedy replied on December 14 that “it is clearly in the interest of both sides that we reach agreement on how finally to dispose of the Cuban crisis. . . . We have never wanted to be driven by the acts of others into war in Cuba. The other side of the coin, however, is that we do need to have adequate assurances that all offensive weapons are removed from Cuba and are not reintroduced, and that Cuba itself commits no aggressive acts against any of the nations of the Western Hemisphere.”