John F. Kennedy We are all mortal

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LILLIAN CUNNINGHAM: America. 1963.

MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR CLIP: I'm happy to talk with you today in what will go down in history as the greatest demonstration for freedom in the history of our nation.

JOHN F. KENNEDY CLIP: I realize the pursuit of peace is not as dramatic as the pursuit of war. And frequently, the words of the pursuers fall on deaf ears. But we have no more urgent task.

MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR CLIP: Five score years ago, a great American in whose symbolic shadow we stand today signed the Emancipation Proclamation.

JOHN F. KENNEDY CLIP: It ought to be possible, in short, for every American to enjoy the privileges of being American without regard to his race or his color. In short, every American ought to have the right to be treated as he would wish to be treated -- as one would wish his children to be treated. But this is not the case.

MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR CLIP: This momentous decree came as a grand beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of their captivity. But 100 years later, the Negro still is not free. One hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination.

JOHN F. KENNEDY CLIP: Those who do nothing are inviting shame as well as violence. Those who act boldly are recognizing rights as well as reality.

MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR CLIP: I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. I have a dream today.

NEWS CLIP: It's not known for sure, but it is believed that President Kennedy has been shot. President Kennedy was in a motocade en route to the trademark where he was to address a

Presidential podcast wapo.st/presidential 1 gathering shortly after noon today.

LILLIAN CUNNINGHAM: I'm Lillian Cunningham The Washington Post and this is the 34th episode of “Presidential.”

PRESIDENTIAL THEME MUSIC

LILLIAN CUNNINGHAM: This episode is about JFK and death, but not his assassination.

Our whole episode this week is basically going to focus on John F. Kennedy before 1963. In fact, even before 1961, when he takes over the presidency. We're going to focus on three experiences he had confronting death earlier in his life, and how those shaped the man and the president he would become.

The first is when he confronted his own mortality because of his sicknesses since childhood. The second is when he confronted the mortality of those close to him, particularly with the death of his older brother. And the third is when he confronted the mortality of the wider human race, highlighted by his experience in war. To cover all this there are three great JFK experts who are going to talk with us this week: Michael Beschloss, Robert Dallek and Fredrik Logevall.

So, we're going to start by talking about Kennedy's own personal sense of mortality and his poor health. And for this, I went to visit Robert Dallek at his home in Washington, D.C.

LILLIAN CUNNINGHAM: Hi, so nice to meet you.

ROBERT DALLEK: Me too.

LILLIAN CUNNINGHAM: Thanks. I actually live on the other side of the park.

ROBERT DALLEK: Do you?

LILLIAN CUNNINGHAM: Bob wrote the iconic Kennedy biography called 'An Unfinished Life,' in which he uncovered many of JFK's illnesses that had been kept from the public for decades. I asked him to tell me the story about how he discovered this hidden part of Kennedy's personal life.

ROBERT DALLEK: I was in the Kennedy Library doing research. I asked the archivist about the Kennedy medical materials -- because there were allegations since 1960 that he had Addison's disease, that he had a variety of ailments. And Bobby Kennedy -- he denied it. The campaign denied it. And it was not something that came up all that much during his presidency. So, the archivist woman named Megan Desnoyers said to me, 'Yes, there are medical records, but they're locked up. And there is a committee that oversees them -- three people on that committee.' She said, 'You could apply, but nobody's been given access [even] 40 years after his death.'

So, I said, 'Well, I guess there's nothing to lose.’ So, I applied and there was a former Kennedy administration official, who was a professor at Harvard; another one who was a professor at Yale. And both of them gave me permission. And Ted Sorensen -- speechwriter, principal adviser to Kennedy -- he was the third party, and he was reluctant. So, I went to New York and I talked him into opening the medical records to me. He later regretted it very much because the medical

Presidential podcast wapo.st/presidential 2 records were not entirely flattering.

Well, Ted Kennedy read the book and said he didn't know about his brother's health issues as well -- as fully -- as I detailed them in the book. And Arthur Schlesinger, who was White House intellectual historian, also found it very attractive what I did, because they both felt that I'd made Kennedy look heroic. I didn't do it purposely, but there was that element to it.

He had such a variety of ailments. He, as a boy, had what's called spastic colitis. He was sent to the Mayo Clinic when he was 17-years old, and they didn't know how to treat it at the time. When steroids became available, which was in 1938, he was at Harvard as an undergraduate. And they didn't know how to dose, so they gave him more than they should've been giving him. And while it reined in the colitis when they gave him these steroids, what it did was it triggered his back problems. People thought the back problems were the result of an accident during World War II, when his PT boat was cut in half and he had to swim and rescue one of his men and go to an island.

In fact, it was the steroids that were causing osteoporosis of the lumbar spine. And he lived with terrible pain and misery and was on all sorts of painkillers. Well, when they told me I could see the medical records, I took a man named Jeffrey Kellman with me to Boston because he is a brilliant physician. They rolled out these 10 boxes -- they were cartons. See, normally, presidential papers are in these beautifully appointed gold and blue and yellow boxes, and these were in old, beat-up cartons. And I said to him, 'Jeff, I think we may have hit pa dirt here. These have never been looked at.’

So, we opened it up, and what we found to begin with was that in the 1950s, before he even ran for president, he had been hospitalized 19 times for a variety of ailments -- the Addison's Disease, which is the malfunctioning of the adrenal gland; the terrible back problems; he had some back surgeries; he also had some sinusitis and prostatitis. He was just someone who had a constant series of ailments. And it was hidden from the public.

LILLIAN CUNNINGHAM: Do you think that the fact that he had to hide so much of his medical problems did anything to make him feel a sense of always being a performer?

ROBERT DALLEK: You know, all these presidents are actors on a world stage. And, of course, the larger the stage as we move through the 20th century, the more they feel compelled to be great actors. Franklin Roosevelt said to Orson Welles, the great Hollywood actor, he said to him at one point, 'Orson, you and I are the two greatest actors in America.'

Kennedy understood that the public persona was something that was different from the private man.

LILLIAN CUNNINGHAM: Do you think that a sense of his own mortality shaped him?

ROBERT DALLEK: John Kennedy lived with a sense of mortality, a sense that his life might be full of grief. And, of course, it's ironic because it's true -- he died at the age of 46, but not because of his health problems, because of being assassinated. But still, he had a sort of fatalistic feeling.

LILLIAN CUNNINGHAM: From a young age, one of JFK's favorite poems was, 'I have a rendezvous with death,' by Alan Seeger. This is how it goes:

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I have a rendezvous with death at some disputed barricade, when spring comes back with rustling shade and apple blossoms fill the air – I have a rendezvous with death when spring brings back blue days and fair.

It might be he shall take my hand and lead me into his dark land and close my eyes and quenched my breath -- It may be I shall pass him still. I have a rendezvous with death on some scarred slope of battered hill when spring comes round again this year and the first meadow-flowers appear.

God knows ‘twere better to be deep pillowed in silk and scented down, where love throbs out in blissful sleep, Pulse nigh to pulse, and breath to breath, where hushed awakenings are dear… But I have a rendezvous with death at midnight in some flaming town, when spring trips north again this year, and I to my pledged word am true, I shall not fail that rendezvous.

MICHAEL BESCHLOSS: I think one of the central things to know about JFK is that there's every sign that, for most of his life, he thought that he would not live out a normal span of life.

LILLIAN CUNNINGHAM: This is historian and biographer Michael Beschloss on the phone with me now.

MICHAEL BESCHLOSS: Robert Kennedy once said that something like half of his days on Earth were spent in intense physical pain. And the result was that this is someone who made an effort to sort of live every minute, and almost every second. You know, if you're going to do something, you'd better do it now because you might not have the chance tomorrow.

And that, I think, until he was well into the presidency, led to this sort of immediate thinking. He was very short-term, very crisis-oriented. And that's something that he even admitted himself in private. For instance, civil rights in 1961: Rather than going to Congress and saying, you know, 'I'm going to send a bill to Congress that's going to eliminate segregation in this country, whether it passes or not,’ he thought that you could go for at least a couple of years and just sort of deal with crisis after crisis -- you know, offenses that were being committed against African-Americans in the South -- and didn't need to do it by legislation.

By 1963, he finally realized that you couldn't deal with civil rights simply in terms of short-term thinking, and the same thing was true in foreign policy. Early 1961 -- if you would ask Kennedy, 'Do

Presidential podcast wapo.st/presidential 4 you think that you should try to negotiate with the Soviets a full test ban treaty?' He would have thought it was probably impossible, and he would've thought that that's the kind of approach to the Cold War that's not very effective -- instead, you know, deal with crisis after crisis.

After the Cuban Missile Crisis, which was October of 1962, in which much of the human race very nearly was incinerated because of the showdown between Moscow and Washington, he realized that more long-term thinking was needed.

LILLIAN CUNNINGHAM: OK, let's wind back the clock again now and explore another aspect of his childhood. JFK grew up in a big Catholic family. They first lived in Massachusetts and then moved around to various other spots in the Northeast. And it was a time in the country when there was a lot of anti-Catholic sentiment. There were signs in shop windows that said things like ‘Catholics need not apply.’

But JFK's family was extremely wealthy and also very political. His mother's father had been mayor of Boston, and JFK's own father had made a lot of money in the stock exchange and other exploits and eventually himself served as ambassador to Britain under FDR.

So, here's where we're going to start talking about another experience JFK has earlier in his life confronting mortality, and that's with the death of his older brother. His older brother Joe, Jr. was being groomed for political office. And Jack was constantly compared against him throughout their childhood.

So, here now I'm going to talk with Fredrik Logevall, who's a professor at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government and who is finishing up his own comprehensive biography of JFK. First of all, thank you so much for doing this.

FREDRIK LOGEVALL: It's a pleasure to be involved.

LILLIAN CUNNINGHAM: You know, tell me about the family he's born into -- maybe starting with what his mother and father were like.

FREDRIK LOGEVALL: It was, in many respects, a loving family -- if somewhat dysfunctional. Joe, who's the father, and Rose, the mother, came ultimately to lead separate lives. And so, they had a difficult marriage. But I think it should also be said, the kids -- including Jack, who was second in the order to Joe, Jr., who was the first born -- they experienced a lot of love in this family.

Rose, the mom -- she withheld emotional attachment, to a degree. But I wouldn't want to exaggerate this because she was, in many respects, a quite remarkable woman. And Joe, the father, for all of his faults -- and they were many -- was, I think, a deeply loving father. I think, in some respects, he actually lived for the kids. And it was this environment in which the kids grew up -- in a very competitive atmosphere -- one in which placing second was drilled into them was never good enough. You had to strive to be number one.

LILLIAN CUNNINGHAM: So, FDR was another president, who we saw who grew up in a lot of privilege, but he was essentially an only child. And so, he was completely exclusively doted on. Jack, on the other hand, was one of nine children. So, how do you think being part of such a large family shaped his sense of self?

Presidential podcast wapo.st/presidential 5 FREDRIK LOGEVALL: The older kids and the boys in the family -- more was expected of them, but more was also given to them in terms of authority within the household and in terms of the opportunities they could pursue. That was not the case with the girls and with the younger kids.

Joe Jr., who was the oldest of the children, became almost a kind of second father figure, even. And, to a lesser extent, I think that was true of Jack. They were expected to take care of, to help nurture, to help mold the younger kids.

And I think you see in later life, including in the presidency, the degree to which this is a family. These were kids who did, in fact, stick together. Whatever dysfunctionality might have existed, there was a closeness to this family that I think existed from start to finish.

LILLIAN CUNNINGHAM: Do you want to say a little bit more about what some of the dysfunction was? And also what Jack's relationship with his father looked like earlier in his life?

FREDRIK LOGEVALL: Yeah. The emphasis on winning, really winning at all costs -- I think that it was traumatic. It was difficult, in many respects, especially of course when they didn't succeed. And I think it introduced stresses into the dynamic that wouldn't have been there otherwise.

The relationship that Jack had with his father and that Joe, Jr. had with his father was a strong one in many respects. I think it was complicated. The boys saw the philandering by the father, by Joe -- saw the affairs that he had that he spoke, by the way, quite openly with his sons about. To a degree, he even challenged them to match him in that area.

That's a distressing thing for a biographer to uncover and to see. He was really quite brazen, not only with the sons, but the other older kids also saw this, of course. And Rose, his wife, had to endure -- had to put up with – this, which was something she also had to see up close and personal with her own father.

LILLIAN CUNNINGHAM: What sort of character traits stand out to you in Jack in his youth? Like, what sort of interests and proclivities did he have early on? What were some of like the natural skills that showed themselves?

FREDRIK LOGEVALL: From an early age, we see in Jack a very thoughtful boy, a very thoughtful young man. Uncommonly so -- more so, I would say, than than Joe, Jr., his older brother with whom he was constantly compared, of course.

So, that's a trait that he develops in part because of his illnesses, which keep him bedridden for long stretches of time. He develops an interest in reading and, in particular, in history and in biography. That's evident from an early point, and I think it’s actually important in shaping him and contributes to the kind of decisionmaker he will be later, both as a lawmaker in Congress and in the Senate and then also as president of the United States.

One can detect an appreciation by JFK of the vicissitudes of history, of the degree to which it doesn't follow in clear paths, the degree to which the unexpected will interfere with even the best-laid plans. I think he had a sense that there were limits to what even great military powers can achieve by military means. And that comes in part, I think, from his reading of history. You also see, from an early point, a kind of ironic sense of humor, a really winning sense of humor, which again I think his older brother doesn't quite share.

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Jack is the funnier one. He is very charming. And this is a trait that he uses to great effect, you know, when he goes off to college and then beyond -- in addition to a certain absent-minded sloppiness. He's not too good about getting work done in school. He's an indifferent student. Those things you see, as well. All of it producing, of course, the later JFK.

LILLIAN CUNNINGHAM: What would it be like to go on a blind date with JFK?

FREDRIK LOGEVALL: To go on a blind date with JFK…

LILLIAN CUNNINGHAM: You had mentioned how much he loved reading and how thoughtful he was, and yet also how funny and charming. So, I mean, do you see him as more of an extrovert than an introvert, or an interesting combination of both? How naturally outgoing was he?

FREDRIK LOGEVALL: He was -- notwithstanding the charm and the sense of humor and this curiosity that he had -- he was, in some ways, a little bit detached. Withdrawn is the wrong word. But he was not as extroverted as Joe, Jr. His older brother was more ebullient and more brash. That's not a word that I would use with JFK. He was a little bit more shy.

One of the reasons he was not a very effective politician early on -- in fact, he was quite terrible in terms of being on the stump and in terms of campaigning and as a public speaker -- was because he was reticent socially. And so, you needed to have a certain setting, I think, for this this kind of quiet charisma and this charm to come out. But it existed alongside this reserve that I think he also showed. To some extent, I think he got it from his mother. In some ways, he was more like his mom than like his father in terms of his personality.

LILLIAN CUNNINGHAM: And so, then, what does the womanizing piece of his story tell you about him?

FREDRIK LOGEVALL: I think it's certainly, at least in part, a function of what he observed in his father, who was very open about his womanizing not least with his two older boys and made quite clear he expected them to behave in the same way. But, you know, we're ultimately responsible for our own actions. And so, it certainly cannot be said that this is all about Joe, Sr. -- about the father.

I think that Jack came to engage in this in a sort of serial way -- not a sort of serial way, in a serial way. And, you know, it's been suggested by some that it is connected to his sense that he did not have a long life -- that because of his various illnesses, he was destined to die earlier than others and that, therefore, life was fleeting. He needed to be constantly engaged and stimulated.

I don't know. As a biographer, I would say this -- that I think it matters to the degree that it helps us explain him as a public figure. It helps us explain his decisions ultimately as president. Does it show a recklessness on his part that has potential implications for how he conducts himself as president? That's important.

LILLIAN CUNNINGHAM: So, I mean, people always talk about how it was the oldest brother, Joe, who was the one being groomed by the family for the presidency. What effect do you think that had on Jack? I mean, do you think that early on it planted a desire in him as well to be president and have political ambition? Or do you think it initially made him feel like that wasn't his fate and

Presidential podcast wapo.st/presidential 7 he should direct his ambitions elsewhere?

FREDRIK LOGEVALL: Yeah. He's a very smart and observant young man. I think seeing Joe, Jr.'s personal political ambitions and seeing the father's emphasis on what Joe should be doing and the hopes that that Joe, Sr. had for Joe, Jr. -- I think it made Jack, on some level at least, determined to strike his own path and determined to find a different vocation, a different career.

For a while, he was thinking about perhaps being a college professor. He thought about being a historian, a journalist. He considered, I think, various other paths in part because, again, Joe, Jr. seemed so set on and seemed almost pre-determined for political office.

LILLIAN CUNNINGHAM: When World War II came around, Joe, Jr. ended up a pilot and Jack ended up in the Navy. And here's how Robert Dallek told me the story of what exactly caused Joe, Jr.'s death.

ROBERT DALLEK: John Kennedy I don't think ever would've become a politician, ever would've become president, if his older brother hadn't been killed in World War II. His brother was killed on a special mission. And I discovered some interesting information about the brother – he was flying with a co-pilot, and they were supposed to bail out as they got to the English Channel and the planes were to be put on automatic pilot.

They were loaded with a huge amounts of explosives. They were supposed to fly into the German V-2 rockets launches that were on the Belgian and French coast. So, the idea was to knock out these rocket launching sites with this plane that was going to be flying automatic pilot. Now, what happened was -- and this was told to me by a British army officer -- the American radar installations were told to turn off as Joseph Kennedy's plane flew over before he and his co-pilot bailed out at the English channel. And they've got until the British radar signs. And so when that plane came within range of those British radar signs, it triggered the mechanisms -- the electronics -- that touched off the explosions. And so their plane exploded, and they never found any of Joseph Kennedy's body parts. It was just, such a huge explosion.

LILLIAN CUNNINGHAM: The story goes that it was really after Joe's death that the father switched his focus to John's rise to the presidency. What did this actually look like? I mean, was it an outright pushing of him up the political ladder? Or was this just a subtler sense that JFK got that the obligation fell to him?

FREDRIK LOGEVALL: The question of when JFK decided to run for political office and for what reasons has obviously generated a lot of discussion and a lot of debate among historians. It's a little bit hard -- at least I find -- to pin down. I think Jack, for his own reasons, begins, even in 1944, to a degree at least, he begins to do this even before Joe, Jr. is killed -- to muse about potentially seeking political office. I think he's become fascinated by politics.

That said, I think there's no question that Joe, Sr. also sees now that Jack is the sort of heir apparent or the successor to Joe -- because he had placed so much faith in Joe, Jr.'s future in politics. He said to many, many people, 'My son, Joe, Jr. is going to be pursuing political office, and he's destined for great things. Just you watch.'

And I do think that for him, after Joe, Jr. is killed, it falls to Jack to fulfill this family destiny.

Presidential podcast wapo.st/presidential 8 LILLIAN CUNNINGHAM: The death of his brother switched JFK's own life course. It's in 1944 that Joe, Jr. dies. And by 1946, JFK has won a seat in Congress, representing a district in Boston. But as Michael Beschloss is about to describe in more detail, Jack had not been groomed for politics his whole life the way that Joe, Jr. had. And so, there were some important political skills that he initially lacked.

MICHAEL BESCHLOSS: I think at the beginning of his aspiration for political life, running for Congress, this is not someone who felt at ease as a political candidate. His original speeches were awful and he oftentimes said, 'You know, my brother Joe would have done so much better at this.'

He was not particularly extroverted, as his older brother had been, so he had to learn what he called a street personality. That was not easy for him. But one thing that Jackie Kennedy said in her memoirs, which I edited for publication, she said -- and she was reflecting what Jack had told her – ‘I think that Joe, Jr. might have made it to the Senate level but would never have become president.’ You know, he was very good in terms of having a great personality and connecting with people, but didn't have the breadth and perhaps the intelligence that JFK did.

And so, oddly enough, although Joe Kennedy in 1946 thought his son Jack was a poor substitute for Joe, Jr., I think [Jackie Kennedy] wasn't wrong that by 1960 he had grown way beyond.

LILLIAN CUNNINGHAM: What stands out to you as some of the smartest or most strategic ways that JFK and his wider family set him up for the presidency?

MICHAEL BESCHLOSS: JFK had an enormous amount of help from his father. Joe Kennedy once said, 'For the Kennedys, it's either the White House or the outhouse. No in between.' His father opened his checkbook. Spent a lot of money. One estimate was even $10 or 15 million in 1960 money. That was an advantage that no other candidate had. Joe Kennedy had all sorts of relationships with all sorts of powerful people all over the country. That all helped.

But I think to look at Jack as just sort of the product of a father or the product of brothers and sisters -- you know, that would not happen unless you had a candidate of extremely strong will and talent. And it was the combination that helped him to win in 1960.

LILLIAN CUNNINGHAM: OK, so here are 10 assorted major things that you probably know about JFK, but we're going to tick through them just as a reminder since we're not going to dive into these deeply in the episode.

Number one: his political career. He won three elections to Congress and was elected twice to the Senate. He also tried for the vice presidential slot in the 1956 election but didn't get it.

Two: His marriage. He married Jackie when he was 36-years old and they had two children who essentially died at birth and then two who survived into adulthood.

Three: His book 'Profiles in Courage.' This is a book about senators in American history who took brave but unpopular stands, and it won JFK the Pulitzer Prize. He worked on it while he was a senator himself, and he was recovering from a back surgery.

Four: The Berlin Wall was built by the Soviet Union and East Berlin during JFK's administration.

Presidential podcast wapo.st/presidential 9 Five: The Bay of Pigs invasion. This was in his first few months as president that JFK ordered the invasion of Cuba, and it was supposed to start an uprising that would overthrow Fidel Castro, but it ended up failing hugely and publicly.

Six: the Cuban missile crisis. This one goes better. So, this is in 1962. The CIA learned that the Soviets were building missile sites in Cuba. But Kennedy successfully negotiated with Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev to end the showdown.

Seven: The U.S., the U.K. and the Soviet Union signed on to a nuclear test ban treaty under Kennedy that would mostly stop atomic testing.

Eight: The Peace Corps was established by Kennedy as one of his first acts in office.

Nine: civil rights. So, in 1963, Kennedy issued a set of proposals that would come to form the basis of the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964, which was passed after his death.

;And 10: While he was serving in the Pacific during World War II, JFK's PT boat sank and he helped to rescue a bunch of his crew mates. Now there's some debate over what exactly happened, but he received the Navy and Marine Corps Medal for heroism.

And that takes us now to chapter three of our episode, which is the way that JFK's experiences overseas, particularly seeing the devastation of war, shaped the later president he would become.

Here's Fred Logevall.

FREDRIK LOGEVALL: He begins to travel in the second half of the 1930s. So, by this point, he is late teens, early 20s. And crucial here are some trips to Europe, including when his father is ambassador in London. They really open JFK's eyes to, obviously, the turmoil in Europe. And the fact that he's there as the war clouds in Europe begin to gather, I think, is extremely important because he sees so much of this up close. He then writes his senior thesis about some of this – and it becomes a kind of minor bestseller as a book, if you can imagine, for an undergraduate thesis.

And then going from there to serving in the Pacific in World War II -- I think a kind of foundational experience for Jack -- it, over the long term, affects his view of war. I think it makes him deeply skeptical of warfare in general as a solution to political problems. I think he has seen what war can do up close. And there is an abhorrence --not only on his part, of course, but of a great many Americans and others who served in this conflict -- a kind of abhorrance of war and a determination to try to to avoid it. I think that's there.

It's there in his letters home. And, by the way, those letters are, I think, an extraordinary resource because what they show is kind of awakening of a guy who's already, I would argue, quite thoughtful -- but a kind of awakening in these letters home from the war talking about his experiences. A skepticism also comes through in these letters of military higher-ups, even a cynicism about what his superiors in some cases will order and the decisions that they make. It comes through in these letters. And there's no question -- I think even critics of JFK would say that the experience in the Pacific shaped who he was, shaped a whole generation who served.

And when he runs for Congress just a year after war's end, that World War II experience is central to his candidacy -- central to his appeal. And it will be for the rest of his life.

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LILLIAN CUNNINGHAM: When you look at the type of decisions that he made on foreign affairs while president, where do you see these experiences playing out?

FREDRIK LOGEVALL: What he sees in combat affects his decision-making as president in a few different ways. I do think it helps to cement a skepticism about the military instrument.

He understands, I think, from his own experience that it's a very blunt instrument -- that it can sometimes be important to use. He's certainly no pacifist as president. And he's willing to use that instrument. But I think it does make him leery of it.

And I think on the great counterfactual question regarding Vietnam -- what would a surviving President Kennedy, if he had returned from Dallas alive in November of 1963, what would he have done in Vietnam? -- we can't know, of course, but I think what we see in his decisions on Vietnam as president and his pronouncements on Vietnam prior to becoming president is we see skepticism about the use of ground forces and an unwillingness, even when his advisers push for him to commit ground forces to Southeast Asia, he's unwilling to do so as president.

And I think that gives us some reason to believe that a surviving John F. Kennedy would likely not have Americanized the war in the way that his successor did. And in several ways, we see this earlier Kennedy, I think, come through as a decision-maker when he is in the Oval Office.

LILLIAN CUNNINGHAM: So I asked Robert Dallek about this, too -- what he sees as an example of the way that Kennedy's war experience shaped him as president.

ROBERT DALLEK: When he became president, he instructed McGeorge Bundy, who became his national security adviser, to find out from the Pentagon what the nuclear war plan was. They go into a room in the White House, they set up easels. And what they show Kennedy is that in case of a nuclear war, they could kill, they said, 270 million Russians and Eastern Europeans with nuclear weapons we had. It was Kennedy who said, "With these 30,000 nuclear bombs, how many of these did you need?"

Now, when Kennedy walked out of that room with his secretary of state, Dean Rusk, after that briefing on the nuclear war plan, he said to Rusk, "And we call ourselves the human race." So, he was terrified of the thought of using those nuclear weapons. He understood that it entailed a kind of inhumanity -- a kind of destructiveness that would leave a black mark against the United States forever thereafter.

LILLIAN CUNNINGHAM: On Friday November 22, 1963, JFK was shot and killed while riding in his motorcade in Dallas, Texas. His body was flown back to the White House overnight that night, and Jacqueline Kennedy refused to take off her blood-soaked pink outfit until his body was back there at rest. His body was put in the East Room of the White House, which is the same room where Lincoln's body had lain after his assassination.

All that next day after he was killed, it rained.

Though we focused this episode on his earlier life, I did ask each of our guests what they see as Kennedy's most enduring legacy -- the way that he most profoundly shaped the office of the American presidency.

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Here's Michael Beschloss.

MICHAEL BESCHLOSS: A lot of the things that we see about presidential politics now, to some extent, date to John Kennedy -- the use of television; the fact that you have a candidate who raises a lot of money and uses it; and particularly the fact that after Kennedy, it was very hard again to have a person running for president who was not able to speak to people in a way that moved them.

For most of American history until the early 20th century, for instance, it didn't matter if Chester Arthur couldn't give a speech or didn't look great because not many people would see him in person. Kennedy was sort of the moment where that all changed, and the result was that a different kind of person was more likely to be a presidential nominee.

LILLIAN CUNNINGHAM: In a way, is it sort of what we talk about when we talk about charisma?

MICHAEL BESCHLOSS: It's more than just that. People now feel that they need to connect with a leader who becomes president. It doesn't mean that, as it's so often said, they need to have a beer with him or her. I think, more than that, it is that they have to feel that they understand the person's soul. When that president is making all sorts of decisions, you have to have some comfort that that president is going to do the right thing. I think that's what we're getting at when we're talking about connecting with a human being who might become president.

LILLIAN CUNNINGHAM: Here's Fredrik Logevall.

FREDRIK LOGEVALL: It was to further a belief -- to instill a conviction on the part of a great many Americans and a great many people overseas -- regarding what public affairs can accomplish, regarding what politics can accomplish. It’s a belief that Kennedy maybe more than anybody else generated, which is that politics won't solve all our problems by any means, but politics and government have a very, very important role, not only in this society but elsewhere -- and that a call to public service and to participate in the affairs of a nation, your nation, whatever nation that is, is something to strive for.

To some extent, I think it's a belief that flickers -- that is flagging -- in our own day. But I think it's still there underneath. So, I hope. And that's what JFK, in part, represents.

LILLIAN CUNNINGHAM: Here's Robert Dallek.

He was only there for 1,000 days. It's the seventh briefest presidency in American history. So why does he continue to have this enduring hold on the public's imagination? I think it has a lot to do with the fact that he had a vision -- the fact that America thinks of itself still as a country in process. It's growing, it's changing. It's moving on to a new frontier, always. It's ambitious. It's not stuck in some old world vision of itself. It's sort of like this idea that anybody can become president in America. We're all equal. This is the view which, I think, attaches to him.

And Kennedy is the modern man. And that's why I think even the womanizing doesn't hurt him. They see him as a kind of modern man who, in a way, represents the up-to-date, so to speak, in America. So, he has a hold on the public's imagination, and I don't think anyone's going to take his place in the forseeable future.

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LILLIAN CUNNINGHAM: Let's end not with his death, but with words of Kennedy's from a speech he gave that summer of 1963. Kennedy spoke at American University in Washington, D.C. and his address there came to be known as his peace speech. Here are the lines that most struck me that I want to share with you:

“For the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children's future, and we are all mortal.”

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