Kennedy: The Classic Biography (52 page)

While that may have been overly optimistic, the dedication of his associates to his success did in fact produce an unusual degree of unity—and Kennedy was proud of it. There were no cliques, much less cabals, in the Cabinet. To be sure, the six department heads not on the NSC felt somewhat neglected during the Cuban crisis. Those whose budgets were cut back to help make room for the tax cut were not enthusiastic about its proposal. Those less often invited to share the Kennedys’ social life after hours may have felt some envy of the McNamaras and Dillons—or if they didn’t, their wives no doubt did. But there were no clear or continuing splits along political or philosophical lines.

More than good feeling and good fellowship, however, was required to mold nearly three million civilian and military men and women on the Federal payroll into a smooth-running governmental machine. Three special Kennedy approaches deserve mention: (1) reorganization of the executive decision-making forces; (2) the clearance and coordination of public statements; and (3) personnel changes.

THE DECISION-MAKING PROCESS

Kennedy brought to the White House unusual firsthand knowledge of the foreign, domestic, legislative and political arenas but no experience in the Executive Branch. He was always more interested in policy than in administration, and would later admit that “it is a tremendous change to go from being a Senator to being President. In the first months it is very difficult.” He continued to reshape executive procedures throughout his term, but from the outset he abandoned the notion of a collective, institutionalized Presidency. He ignored Eisenhower’s farewell recommendation to create a First Secretary of the Government to oversee all foreign affairs agencies. He abandoned the practice of the Cabinet’s and the National Security Council’s making group decisions like corporate boards of directors. He abolished the practice of White House staff meetings and weekly Cabinet meetings. He abolished the pyramid structure of the White House staff, the Assistant President-Sherman Adams-type job, the Staff Secretary, the Cabinet Secretariat, the NSC Planning Board and the Operations Coordinating Board, all of which imposed, in his view, needless paperwork and machinery between the President and his responsible officers. He abolished several dozen interdepartmental committees which specialized in group recommendations on outmoded problems. He paid little attention to organization charts and chains of command which diluted and distributed his authority. He was not interested in unanimous committee recommendations which stifled alternatives to find the lowest common denominator of compromise.

He relied instead on informal meetings and direct contacts—on a personal White House staff, the Budget Bureau and
ad hoc
task forces to probe and define issues for his decision—on special Presidential emissaries and constant Presidential phone calls and memoranda—on placing Kennedy men in each strategic spot. Particularly in 1961 and particularly on National Security matters, he talked at the White House or by telephone to lower-level officers and experts with firsthand knowledge or responsibility. (At least one State Department subordinate was embarrassed by the profanely skeptical reply he gave when the voice on the other end of the line announced itself as the President’s.) “The President can’t administer a department,” Kennedy said when asked about this practice,

but at least he can be a stimulant…. There is a great tendency in government to have papers stay on desks too long…. One of the functions of the President is to try to have it move with more speed. Otherwise you can wait while the world collapses.

Abolishing the Operations Coordinating Board, he made clear his intention to strengthen departmental responsibility “without extensive formal machinery” and to maintain

direct communication with the responsible agencies, so that everyone will know what I have decided, while I in turn keep fully informed of the actions taken to carry out decisions. We of course expect that the policy of the White House will be the policy of the Executive Branch as a whole, and we shall take such steps as are needed to ensure this result.

A reporter compared the Eisenhower-Kennedy methods of obtaining teamwork with the differences between football and basketball. The Eisenhower football method relied on regular huddles and rigid assignments. In the Kennedy administration all team members were constantly on the move.

Kennedy called huddles, but only when necessary and only with those necessary, those whose official views he required or whose unofficial judgment he desired, regardless of protocol or precedent. Attendance varied with each subject, but it was not haphazard. McGeorge Bundy made certain that no responsible officer or point of view was omitted from meetings on foreign policy, and I tried to do the same on domestic. For example, if Walter Heller and George Ball wanted to meet with the President on the balance of payments, I made certain Dillon was also invited. The President’s own accessibility, and his insistence on dealing with subordinates as well as chiefs, made certain that he was not denied any relevant counsel or criticism, and both he and his staff improved our ability to use channels and coordinate decisions during those first crucial months. But he never altered his view that any meeting larger than necessary was less flexible, less secret and less hard-hitting.

As a result, with few exceptions, he held Cabinet meetings only because “I suppose we should—it’s been several weeks since the last one,” and with few exceptions these meetings bored him. He rarely made any attempt at such sessions, as President Roosevelt had, to engage Cabinet members in light banter, to seek their political advice, to suggest that they volunteer problems or to call on them one by one for discussion.

No decisions of importance were made at Kennedy’s Cabinet meetings and few subjects of importance, particularly in foreign affairs, were ever seriously discussed. The Cabinet as a body was convened largely as a symbol, to be informed, not consulted, to help keep the channels of communication open, to help maintain the
esprit de corps
of the members and to prevent the charge that Kennedy had abolished the Cabinet. There were no high-level debates, or elaborate presentations, or materials circulated in advance.
⁸

Kennedy relied considerably on his Cabinet officers, but not on the Cabinet as a body. On the contrary, he thought

general Cabinet meetings…to be unnecessary and involve a waste of time…. All these problems Cabinet officers deal with are very specialized. I see all the Cabinet officers every week, but we don’t have a general meeting. There really isn’t much use spending a morning talking about the Post Office budget and tying up Secretary Freeman, who has agriculture responsibilites…. If we have a problem involving labor-management…it is much better for me to meet with Secretary Hodges from Commerce and Secretary Goldberg from Labor…. I think we will find the Cabinet perhaps more important than it has ever been but Cabinet meetings not as important.

He also felt, but could not add, that he usually had little interest in the views of Cabinet members on matters outside their jurisdiction. He summoned former Under Secretary of State Dillon to most major meetings on foreign policy and former Ford President McNamara to advise on the steel price dispute. But he did not want McNamara’s advice on debt management or Dillon’s advice on Nike-Zeus. In his opinion, that only wasted his time and theirs.

Problems involving all Cabinet members, and thus appropriate to Cabinet discussion, were few and far between: Civil Service and patronage, the Budget outlook, legislative relations and somewhat superficial briefings, not consultations, on administration policy and current events. Occasionally more important matters appeared on the agenda—the responsibility of Cabinet officers for advancing civil rights or accelerating Federal projects during the recession, for example—but more typical by far was this Cabinet agenda for December 10, 1962, set forth here in its entirety:

1. Review of Foreign Situation—The Secretary of State
   

2. Review of Economic Situation and Outlook—Honorable Walter Heller
   

3. Status Report on 1963 Legislative Program—Honorable T. C. Sorensen
   

While Heller and I were often asked to make presentations of this kind—as were O’Brien, the Budget Director and the Civil Service Chairman—only the ten department heads (and Ambassador Stevenson, when in town) sat at the long Cabinet table. None of them brought any staff or subordinates with them and most of them said comparatively little. The Cabinet Assistant, the Budget Director, the Science Adviser, the Economic Adviser and I sat behind the President, who kept the meetings as brief as decorum permitted. Often he would cut discussion short. Occasionally he would ask the Vice President to “chair” the meeting during his temporary absence—and then disappear permanently into his office.

Much the same was true of the large formal meetings of the National Security Council, which dealt exclusively with foreign affairs. It had a more significant agenda prepared by McGeorge Bundy, papers were circulated in advance and the meetings were more interesting to the President. He ran them in every sense of the word, first asking the CIA Director for the intelligence summaries on the situation under study, then asking the Secretary of State to give his recommendations, and then throwing it open to Defense and others. (Usually the senior official was addressed by the President as “Mr. Secretary” or “Mr. Dulles,” but his own aides by their first names.)

At times he made minor decisions in full NSC meetings or
pretended
to make major ones actually settled earlier. Attendance was generally kept well below the level of previous administrations, but still well above the statutory requirements. He strongly preferred to make all major decisions with far fewer people present, often only the officer to whom he was communicating the decision. “We have averaged three or four meetings a week with the Secretaries of Defense and State, McGeorge Bundy, the head of the CIA and the Vice President,” he said in 1961. “But formal meetings of the Security Council which include a much wider group are not as effective. It is more difficult to decide matters involving high national security if there is a wider group present.”

For brief periods of time, during or after a crisis, the President would hold NSC meetings somewhat more regularly, partly as a means of getting on record the views of every responsible officer (who might otherwise complain that he wasn’t consulted and wouldn’t have approved), but mostly to silence outside critics who equated machinery with efficiency. “The National Security Council,” he said, when asked about various positions reportedly taken by its members in the Cuban missile crisis, “is an advisory body to the President. In the final analysis, the President of the United States must make the decision. And it is his decision. It’s not the decision of the National Security Council or any collective decision.” This he meant quite literally, for he often overruled the principal NSC members and on at least one occasion overruled all of them.

There were some complaints about the Kennedy approach to organizational machinery. Secretary Hodges grumbled publicly that there should be more Cabinet meetings. State Department aides grumbled privately that their prestige suffered if they were not present for key decisions. Secretary Rusk complained that he did not like to offer his views in meetings at which “people like Sorensen and Kaysen with no responsibility were making academic comments.” He preferred to save his arguments for the President’s ear only. But in general the department heads concurred with Willard Wirtz’s conclusion that, without many formal meetings, there had been an “extraordinary degree” of close communication, both ways, “between the President and his Cabinet…and among the Cabinet members.”

SPEECH AND STATEMENT CLEARANCES

The President’s standing rule requiring White House clearance for all major speeches and Congressional testimony was rarely enforced except in critical periods. Salinger and his staff and Ted Reardon checked routine speech drafts, and my staff and Bundy’s checked major statements on domestic and foreign policy respectively. The President reviewed some speeches on his own. Occasionally he would ask us to coordinate in advance and monitor in progress all Congressional testimony by administration witnesses with differing points of view on a sensitive issue under hearing—the Cuban missile crisis or the 1962 economic and tax outlook, for example.

Some important gains resulted. Several Defense Department speeches were rendered less “missile-rattling.” A State Department aide was informed that he could not assert his own visionary proposals for civil rights. But it was an imperfect system. Several controversial high-level statements were given without clearance, and there was no way to clear answers to press or Congressional questions.

The speeches most difficult to check—and most dangerous to leave unchecked—were those by high-ranking military officers, whose remarks had not always reflected the President’s point of view about peace. When it became known in Kennedy’s first week that a strong anti-Soviet speech by Chief of Naval Operations Arleigh Burke had been toned down in the White House lest it disrupt the release of the RB-47 fliers, a great hue and cry arose about “muzzling” the military. Actually, Admiral Burke had voluntarily submitted the speech and the procedure was not unusual. But it was clearer than ever that military officers on active duty were not to undermine the final decisions of their Commander in Chief in their speeches or legislative testimony, not to confuse the world about the nature of America’s foreign policy, and not to undertake as an official responsibility the political indoctrination of either their troops or public opinion.