The Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys. - book reviews

Washington Monthly, May, 1987 by Charles Peters

The Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys

Doris Kearns Goodwin's recent book aboutthe Kennedys* illuminates the family legend with new fact and fresh insight, and it is a marvelous read. I would be astounded if it fails to win the Pulitzer Prize for biography.

* The Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys. Doris Kearns Goodwin.Simon & Schuster, $22.95.

That being said, I have two problems--oneminor, the other major.

The minor one involves the minor inaccuracies.Having been seduced by the opening pages, I was a benign reader of the remainder of the book, definitely not looking for errors. So I can't help suspecting that the four I noticed are the tip of an iceberg.

"The most celebrated architect in Palm Beach'was not Harry but Addison Mizner. The Battle of Britain began not on September 7, 1940 but a month earlier. The Homestead is in Hot Springs, Virginia, not Arkansas. FDR's victory over Willkie in 1940 was not by "a narrow margin.' Roosevelt's popular vote exceeded Willkie's by five million. He led in electoral votes 449 to 82.

The book's major flaw is its failure to understandthe Kennedy hustle and its significance for the country, although to Goodwin's credit I must concede she lays out much of the evidence needed to arrive at this understanding.

The Kennedys have been America's royal familyin the second half of this century, even more than the Roosevelts had been in the first half. They have been emulated, either consciously or unconsciously, by millions of their countrymen. And their influence continues to this day.

The Kennedy hustle was the way they acquiredthat influence. It was a manipulative approach to the media and the public, based on exploitation of the financial and social insecurities of the rest of us.

Joseph Kennedy discovered what the presscould do when he was 28 and the Hearst papers ran a feature story that billed him as "the youngest bank president.' Suddenly he was known not just in Boston but all around the country. Kennedy learned the lesson of this experience well enough so that in 1923 he seized an opportunity to win the eternal gratitude of Walter Hovey, the editor of the Boston American, by salvaging Hovey's life savings from an investment that was threatened with disaster. For the rest of his days, Kennedy sought to manipulate the press, serving as puppeteer for, among others, Arthur Krock, a dominant figure at The New York Times for more than 30 years.

In 1952 Kennedy learned that John Fox, thepublisher of the Boston Post, was preparing to endorse Henry Cabot Lodge, who was running for the Senate against John F. Kennedy. Fox happened to be in deep financial trouble at the time. Joseph Kennedy immediately loaned him $500,000. The Post endorsed John F. Kennedy, who now knew the lesson himself and proceeded to apply it with skill and subtlety the rest of his life. His main targets were the publishers and editors of the large newspapers and of the most powerful magazines of the fifties and early sixties --Life, Look, Time, and Newsweek. He spent his last weekend with Benjamin C. Bradlee.

John Kennedy was attracted to Bradlee notonly because of Bradlee's role in the media--he was the Washington bureau chief for Newsweek --but because Bradlee's social credentials were edged in gilt. A central fact about the Kennedys is that they were both the exploiters and the victims of snobbery. They could con others by inviting them to Hyannis or Hickory Hill, but they were equally connable by an invitation from Lady Astor. This may explain why the British, themselves no slouches at this sort of hustle, may have selected the elegant David Ormsby-Gore (later Lord Harlech) to be their ambassador to the New Frontier. At any rate, Ormsby-Gore quickly established himself as John Kennedy's favorite diplomat and was a frequent White House guest.

Victims of the cruel prejudice of Boston'sWASPs, the Irish Catholic Kennedys had had to survive one obvious snub after another. It was bad enough to cause Joseph Kennedy to move his family from Boston to New York--and to fuel his desire to make it socially.

Kennedy became adept at climbing the ladder.He impressed Hollywood producers by getting them invited to lecture at Harvard Business School. He impressed Palm Beach society by arranging the appearance at a benefit ball of the reigning film queen, Gloria Swanson, who also happened to be his mistress. He impressed every Irishman in America by gaining social acceptance from the British elite while he was ambassador to the Court of St. James. The Irish, after all, had been spat upon by the Brits for centuries.

Most of all, he sought acceptance for hischildren. Goodwin observes, with a perceptiveness that shows what she might have accomplished had she pursued this theme more diligently:

"Having scrambled for his wealth, Kennedywanted his children to start life on the heights. Freeing them from material concerns, he hoped to instill in them that natural confidence possible only to people who never had cause to doubt their social position. With three mansions and a retinue of servants and cooks, he hoped to create in his children that aristocratic ease of manner that he had first observed among the Brahmin students at Harvard when he was a freshman.'