The Making of a President

If the rule of reason brings you to the position that happens to be the liberal position, it is the one you have to take, but not just because it is liberal. In 1960 that is my position. It was Roosevelt's in 1932.

Thus, amid the changing winds of the 1960 presidential campaign, Democrat John Kennedy paused for a moment of political self-analysis. At that point, Kennedy's acute sense of political reason told him that the path of liberalism was the one most likely to lead him to the White House--and he was running as a liberal who wholeheartedly endorsed the liberal Democratic Party platform.

Natural Questions. But Kennedy's close presidential victory could by no means be taken as a liberal mandate. And had it not been for the constitutional prohibition against a third term, middle-road Republican Dwight Eisenhower could obviously have licked Kennedy and any other two Democratic candidates combined. Therefore, ever since Nov. 8, 1960, Kennedy has talked and behaved as a far less than dedicated liberal. And the questions have naturally arisen: Is Jack Kennedy a liberal? Is he a conservative?

The answer was somewhere in between, and some distance from ideology. To those who had not sensed it during the campaign, Kennedy was making clearer every day that while he is full of ideas, he is far from a doctrinaire ideologist; that he possesses political skills and instincts that would delight his personal political hero, F.D.R.

Almost from the day of his election, Kennedy has marked up an enviable record in tailoring ideology to practical purpose. His appointments add up as fascinating evidence. In the State Department, Leading Liberals Adlai Stevenson, Chester Bowles and G. Mennen ("Soapy") Williams all got important jobs--but all will be working under mild-mannered, hard-minded State Secretary Dean Rusk, who last week made it clear to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that the Kennedy Administration will not be setting any new foreign policy worlds afire come Jan. 21. Again, as chairman of his Council of Economic Advisers Kennedy chose Liberal Walter Heller--but the new Treasury Secretary will be Republican Douglas Dillon, who last week warned Congressmen not to expect any revolutionary New Frontier economic policies (see BUSINESS). Indeed, in almost every area of Government, Kennedy has selected the wilder-eyed liberals to fill second ary posts--and placed them under the thumbs of able moderates.

Modesty for Moderates. Hardly a day has passed in the last month without Kennedy receiving a bright new program from a study group of his own choosing. First came the recommendations of a committee headed by Missouri's Senator Stuart Symington for a sweeping Pentagon reorganization. Later came a free-spending economic report from M.I.T. Professor Paul Samuelson, then big and costly proposals for aid to depressed areas, housing and education. Kennedy received all these reports with smiling thanks--and committed himself to nothing. And the five-point legislative program (including housing, medical-care, minimum-wage, depressed-areas and education bills) that he actually intended to urge upon Congress was modest enough to please any moderate.

Most of all, it is by the just-plain-political rules of reason that Jack Kennedy has proved his pragmatic skills. The youngest President ever to be elected in U.S. history, he has taken good care to associate himself in friendly ways with the three living men who have been U.S. Presidents--Herbert Hoover, Harry Truman and Dwight Eisenhower. At his own request, he was scheduled to meet for a second time with Ike this week, on the eve of his inauguration.

"Labels Stay the Same." In the past few weeks Kennedy has been reading Presidential Power--The Politics of Leadership, a book written especially for the man who would take over the White House on Jan. 20. It was authored by Richard E. Neustadt, a Columbia University government professor with considerable bureaucratic experience in Washington. It has an appraisal of the political climate that the President-elect and his New Frontiersmen apparently have taken to heart:

"We deal as we have done [in the past two Administrations] in terms of cold war, of an arms race, of a competition overseas, of danger from inflation, and of damage from recession. We skirmish on the frontiers of the Welfare State and in the borderlands of race relations. Aspects change, but labels stay the same. So do dilemmas. Everything remains unfinished business."

But all this--the reading, the appointments, the reports from the task forces--was preparation. By the end of this week, John Fitzgerald Kennedy would have full powers to act in any and every capacity he saw fit.

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