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October 12, 2003
Review: The medical ordeals of JFK
“THE great enemy of truth” President Kennedy once remarked “is very often not the lie, but the myth.” Little did we know that the picture of his excellent health that was portrayed during his tenure in office was one such myth and therefore a humongous lie.
In a landmark work of investigative historical biography, Robert Dallek’s An Unfinished Life provides a lot of new information that was not known before. This book breaks new ground on a range of issues relating to President Kennedy’s health, politics and reckless sexual escapades.
Robert Dallek is one of the most highly respected historians in America, and the author of six books, including the acclaimed two-volume on Lyndon Johnson, Lone Star Rising and Flawed Giant. His Franklin D. Roosevelt and American Foreign Policy won the 1980 Bancroft Prize.
Drawing upon previously unavailable material and never-before-opened archives to tell Kennedy’s story, Dallek exposes for the first time just how sick Kennedy was, what medications he took and concealed from all but a few, and how severely his medical condition affected his actions as President.
From newly available medical records, it is revealed that the steroid treatments Kennedy may have received as a young man could have compounded both the Addison’s disease and the degenerative back trouble that plagued him later in life. From May of 1955 to October of 1957, Kennedy was hospitalized nine times, for a total of forty-five days. The record of these two and half years reads like the ordeal of an old man, not someone in his youth.
An Unfinished Life is packed with revelations large and small. Apart from exposing Kennedy’s ill health and the extent of the medical cover-up and the destruction of medical records organized by the Kennedy family, the book reveals for the first time the real story of how Bobby was selected as Attorney General. Dallek reveals exactly what Jack’s father did to help his election to the presidency, and he follows previously unknown evidence to show what path JFK would have taken in the Vietnam entanglement had he survived.
A truly damaging revelation is details of the massive organization and the enormous sum of Kennedy money used to ‘buy’ the West Virginia primary in 1960. They hired a public relations firm, which covered the district with billboard, subway, newspaper, radio ads, and direct mailings, paid for polls that stressed Jack’s war heroism, and staged elaborate fancy parties. Joe Kennedy is supposed to have said, “With what I’m spending I could elect my chauffeur.” The extravagant spending was typical of all of Kennedy’s campaigns. When Hubert Humphrey ran against Kennedy for the Democratic nomination for president, Humphrey said, he “felt like a corner grocer running against a chain store.”
Equally damagingm — though this information is already public knowledge — was Kennedy’s womanizing. Dallek supplies new evidence on Jack’s philandering, both the extent of it and the conclusion that Kennedy’s dalliances did not interfere with the efficiency of the presidency. According to Richard Reeves, a historian quoted by Dallek, Kennedy’s womanizing generally “took less time than tennis.” Dallek was more concerned with the recklessness with which Kennedy conducted his affairs than the sheer number of them.
For example, when he invited an under-age cheerleader to his hotel room, he risked the election as well as all the millions his father spent on the 1960 campaign. According to Dallek, Kennedy worried that the poor state of his health would result in an early death. Perhaps this anxiety contributed to his womanizing, as he tried to pack as much pleasure as he could into what he assumed would be a short life.
Finally, Dallek deals with Kennedy’s foreign policy. Three themes predominate — Cuba, Vietnam and the battles with Khrushchev. According to Dallek, “the Bay of Pigs failure followed by repeated discussions of how to topple Fidel Castro show Kennedy at his worst—inexperienced and driven by cold war imperatives that helped bring the world to the edge of a disastrous nuclear war.” But Kennedy’s caution during the Cuban missile crisis despite the alarmist advice of most of his associates, was “a model of wise statesmanship in a dire situation”.
In sum this is a well researched and exhaustive work of narrative history. The figures who surrounded Kennedy and shaped his life — Joe, Jackie, McNamara, Marilyn, Bobby, LBJ, MLK, Schlesinger, Sorenson and others — are presented here with a richness and accuracy which is impressive. From elementary school, to Harvard, to Washington, to the White House, to Dallas, here is the full epic story. Never reluctant to expose Kennedy’s weaknesses, the author also brilliantly lays bare his strengths. It was truly a heroic character who withstood such miserable health and physical pain and yet triumphed in his presidency. What Kennedy endured and what he hid from the public, both complicates and enlarges our understanding of his character.
Oswald killed Kennedy before the president’s medical condition could. But Dallek suggests that Kennedy’s physical condition contributed to his demise. On November 22, 1963, Kennedy was, as always, wearing a corset-like back brace as he rode through Dallas. Oswald’s first bullet struck him in the back of the neck. Were it not for the back brace, which held him erect, the second, fatal shot to the head might not have found its mark.
An Unfinished Life: John F. Kennedy (1917-1963)
By Robert Dallek
Little, Brown and Company. Available with Liberty Books (Pvt) Ltd, 3 Rafiq Plaza, M.R. Kayani Road, Saddar, Karachi
Tel: 021-5683026
Email: libooks@cyber.net.pk Website:
www.libertybooks.com
ISBN 0-316-17238-3
838pp. Rs1,800
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