John F.Kennedy on Leadership The Lessons and Legacy of a President JOHN A.BARNES AMACOM American Management Association NEW YORK • ATLANTA • BRUSSELS • CHICAGO • MEXICO CITY • SAN FRANCISCO SHANGHAI • TOKYO • TORONTO • WASHINGTON, D. C. ................. 11186$ $$FM 02-10-05 08:21:39 PS PAGE i Special discounts on bulk quantities of AMACOM books are available to corporations, professional associations, and other organizations. For details, contact Special Sales Department, AMACOM, a division of American Management Association, Broadway, New York, NY . Tel.: --. Fax: --. Web site: www.amacombooks.org This publication is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information in regard to the subject matter covered. It is sold with the understanding that the publisher is not engaged in rendering legal, accounting, or other professional service. If legal advice or other expert assistance is required, the services of a competent professional person should be sought. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Barnes, John A., – John F. Kennedy on leadership : the lessons and legacy of a president / John A. Barnes. p. cm. Includes index. ISBN --- . Leadership—Case studies. Communication in management—Case studies. Teams in the workplace—Case studies. Decision making—Case studies. Crisis management—Case studies. Kennedy, John F. (John Fitzgerald), –. I. Title. HM.B .Ј—dc ᭧ John A. Barnes. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. This publication may not be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in whole or in part, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of AMACOM, a division of American Management Association, Broadway, New York, NY . Printing number ................. 11186$ $$FM 02-10-05 08:21:39 PS PAGE ii For Mary Elisabeth Our Mimi ................. 11186$ $$FM 02-10-05 08:21:40 PS PAGE iii This page intentionally left blank ................. 11186$ $$FM 02-10-05 08:21:40 PS PAGE iv Contents Preface vi Prelude: June , Vision: Let the Word Go Forth Breaking the Rules: Question the Status Quo Resilience: Turn Liabilities into Pluses Charisma: Set a Style Communication: Present Your Ideas Effectively Speechwriting: Master the Art of Delivering Your Message Commitment to Learning: Challenge Your Assumptions Team Building: Find Your ‘‘Bobby’’ Decision Making: The Buck Stops with You Miscalculations and Misjudgments: Make the Best of Them Crisis Management: Be the Coolest Man in the Room Faults and Failings: How JFK Nearly Destroyed Himself Bibliography Index ................. 11186$ CNTS 02-10-05 08:21:47 PS PAGE v Preface Another book on John F. Kennedy? What is there left to be studied that hasn’t been studied already? His leadership. Remarkably, given the spate of ‘‘leadership’’ books that have been published in the decade since Donald Phillips’s Lincoln on Leader- ship created the genre, no one has attempted a book examining the leadership style of the modern American president who is probably most closely identi- fied with the term. You don’t have to look far for the evidence of the imprint Kennedy has left on American life and politics. From the day of his death, virtually every president and presidential candidate since has, to varying degrees, sought to portray himself as the heir to the Kennedy legacy. Lyndon Johnson was ob- sessed with living in Kennedy’s shadow. Richard Nixon was immensely jeal- ous of the man he also thought of as his friend. Jimmy Carter reveled in being described by Time magazine as ‘‘Kennedyesque’’ during his cam- paign. Ronald Reagan invoked Kennedy’s tough stance toward the Soviet Union and his tax-cutting economic strategy to buttress his own efforts in these realms. A sixteen-year-old Bill Clinton famously was photographed— with a beatific look on his face—shaking Kennedy’s hand in the Rose Gar- den. John F. Kerry (with the same initials and from the same state) took the comparisons to extremes at times, windsurfing off Nantucket Island in seemingly conscious emulation of Kennedy sailing off Hyannis. Perhaps the politicians sense something that the political science profes- sors—who have tended not to rate Kennedy’s presidency very highly— don’t: Even four decades after his death, JFK remains extraordinarily popular. An ABC News poll taken over President’s Day weekend in listed JFK as the second-greatest president of all time. A Zogby poll showed an almost ................. 11186$ PREF 02-10-05 08:21:51 PS PAGE vi Preface vii identical result. Although recentness and nostalgia no doubt play a major role in such results, the fact is that at the time of his death, Kennedy had the highest average approval rating of any president ever measured by the Gallup polling organization: percent. Cynics have looked back at Kennedy’s career and proclaimed that he was the spoiled son of a wealthy father whose success was inevitable. Such a conclusion sells Kennedy seriously short. There were plenty of talented, handsome, well-off, and politically ambitious young men in America in the s and they did not all become president, much less an icon of the age for millions of their fellow citizens. Advantages JFK certainly enjoyed, but they were offset by considerable disadvantages that he had to labor mightily to overcome. John F. Kennedy on Leadership, I believe, will demonstrate how the modern executive—or merely the interested reader—can profit from learning how Kennedy went about this process of leadership development. Kennedy, for example, gave us the ‘‘look’’ of the modern presidency. If Franklin D. Roosevelt created the ‘‘imperial presidency,’’ it was Kennedy who gave it its royal trappings. Kennedy took the boxy, functional presiden- tial aircraft; hired a top industrial designer to repaint it; and christened the result Air Force One, to descend majestically from the skies as the very sym- bol of presidential power. No longer would American presidents greet their foreign visitors prosaically at the airport. Instead, the visitor would be whisked to the White House for a grand ‘‘welcoming ceremony’’ on the South Lawn. State dinners, which had been fairly staid affairs for decades, were transformed into spectacular events with men in white ties and women in evening dresses. The White House itself, after being a fairly down-at-the- heels mansion from one administration to the next, would now glitter in grand style. And the supposedly plebeian American public loved it. Kennedy was also, in the words of biographer Geoffrey Perret, the first ‘‘celebrity president.’’ This may be a good or bad thing, but starting with Kennedy, Pennsylvania Avenue intersected with Sunset Boulevard and has never looked back. Kennedy had other notable leadership accomplishments to his credit: ➟ He made his own rules. When he ran for Congress in without hav- ing held any previous office, old-line Boston pols grumbled that he was cutting the line. Kennedy didn’t care. He just built his own organiza- ................. 11186$ PREF 02-10-05 08:21:51 PS PAGE vii viii Preface tion, a practice he would retain throughout his career. Today, virtually all ambitious politicians rely on their own organizations, rather than on party organizations, to win elections. ➟ He started early. In , he began laying the groundwork to take on the wealthy, handsome, and popular Republican incumbent U.S. sena- tor from Massachusetts, Henry Cabot Lodge Jr., in what was certain to be the Republican year of . Kennedy traveled the state, never tak- ing a single vote for granted. He began running for president in and declared his candidacy in January , both of which were consid- ered absurdly early at the time. Now, the early start is standard operating procedure. ➟ He mastered TV. The political debate form had all but died by the early s. But Kennedy thought that if he could hold his own in a televised debate, it would help him. His theory proved correct against both Lodge and Nixon. Today, entire cable television networks are devoted to nothing but political debate. ➟ He made friends of the press corps. Kennedy was the first president to answer questions from journalists on live television. (‘‘The dumbest idea since the hula hoop,’’ groused New York Times columnist James Reston at the time.) The live presidential press conference, of course, is now an institution. ➟ He made policy makers of the White House staff. Under the Kennedy ad- ministration, the cabinet was eclipsed as a major decision-making body by the White House staff, which moved to the fore as the chief execu- tive’s primary advisers and instruments. And all the while, Kennedy made it look effortless. However, although the public saw the finished product, it did not see the hard work—as well as real pain and discomfort—that lay behind the polished image. Neither did Kennedy’s opponents—to their cost. Conventional wisdom, for example, has it that Kennedy was a ‘‘natural’’ on TV, but he was not. His early appearances before the camera were ner- vous, hesitant, halting. Kennedy worked extensively on his television pres- ence. Those ‘‘spontaneous’’ press conference appearances as president, in ................. 11186$ PREF 02-10-05 08:21:51 PS PAGE viii Preface ix which Kennedy affected the manner of someone who had almost inciden- tally dropped by, were preceded by hours of rehearsal. Kennedy won his famous first debate with Nixon in because he prepped hard and steered the debate toward his own strengths. Nixon, in spite of his own positive experiences with television (most notably the ‘‘Checkers Speech’’), oddly, did not prepare. Nor did the outside world see Kennedy’s extensive health problems. A persistent back injury from before World War II, which was exacerbated by the PT- incident, often caused him to hobble around on crutches in private. Addison’s disease nearly killed him three times and would plague him to the end of his life.