Kennedy

Kennedy by Ted Sorenson

When I was 13 years old, I was fortunate enough to take a trip with my family to Walt Disneyworld.  It was a wonderful, magical experience that has stayed with me for decades ever since.  The only downside to that excursion was that anytime that I have ever visited any other theme park (Six Flags, Opryland, Astorworld, etc.), it’s been a major letdown.  Nothing can ever compare to the Magic Kingdom in Orlando, Florida.

The reason say this, is that I can’t help but wonder if reading the mega volume series on Lyndon Johnson by Robert Caro has potentially done the same thing to my literal tastebuds.  Those books were so enriching, that I’m thinking that every thing else that I’ll read on similar subject matters won’t have the same effect.  Sadly, when I read Ted Sorenson’s Kennedy, this is exactly what I felt like.  It just didn’t compare.  It just couldn’t compare.

Ironically, it was the references to JFK in the latter two Robert Caro volumes that started my interest in LBJ’s predecessor.  I wanted to learn more about the man, the nation’s 35 president.  What was it that made him tick?  And how did he come from relative obscurity in the late 1950’s to be, arguably, the most popular president of the 20th century?

To be fair, this book has several, what I would call, disadvantages from the start.  First, the piece was written in 1964, shortly after Kennedy was tragically murdered.  Also, the book was written by one of his closest insiders and speechmakers, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but this book is horribly biased.  Horribly biased.

Oh how it’s biased.  It doesn’t help when Sorenson includes a ridiculous weak forward to a 2009 reissue of this book that could have been better written by a high school sophomore.  In this new puerile forward, Sorenson essentially says that Kennedy was a great, flawless president, and every other president we’ve had since (and he goes through them in detail) has sucked.  Well, this ridiculous rant is almost enough to turn you off from the main body of work immediately, but fortunately the main piece isn’t as juvenile.  Perhaps the author was getting senile.  Sadly, though, the book is simply too one-sided.  Sorenson was obviously a disciple that thought Kennedy was some sort of god, and would probably gladly drink the man’s bathwater if it was asked of him.  Some of the syrupy praise that he lauds on the man over and over again is simply too much to stomach.

It’s not that you really want the book to be a slinger of mud, I’m not sure a book such as that could have been released and/or accepted so shortly after the abrupt end of Camelot.  The public really didn’t want to read about stolen elections, Carlos Marcello and the mafia, nor Marilyn Monroe at this point, so it’s perfectly acceptable that Sorenson stays clear of the darker side of the man’s life.  It’s simply that every event in the man’s presidency tries to show that Kennedy was simply infallible, and even The Bay of Pigs disaster is blamed on everyone else except Kennedy himself  (to JFK’s credit, he takes much of the blame for the fiasco in this retrospective, but Sorenson will hear nothing of it.)

Then there’s the shear volume of this work.  Since I read it on a Kindle, I can’t accurately state the page length, but I believe the printed work was over 900 pages.  Sorenson could have easily trimmed this by about one third.  He simply goes into too much detail.  Speaking of detail, this book really isn’t about the life of Kennedy, but rather the life of President Kennedy.  There’s very little about the man’s past here, which makes the length more unbearable.  I don’t think anyone could successfully write a book  over 900 pages detailing only three years of a presidency.

I have to concede, though, that maybe this is how books were written back in 1964.  I’m guessing that authors didn’t have to necessarily have their printed words singing and dancing in front of a reader keeping their attention.  In other words, people were more content reading a long, drawn out volume, simply because there wasn’t much else to do back in 1964. so news sources and books like this didn’t have to be too concerned with keeping the reader’s undivided focus.

At times, I didn’t feel like I was reading a biography, I felt like I was reading a 900 page Wikipedia article.  It’s amazing just how bored a reader can be trying to digest entire, drawn out chapters that discuss Kennedy’s influence and involvement in the U.S. Steel industry.  This brings new meaning to the word “dull”.

And everything is covered here that the man had his hand in from 1960-1963.  Everything.  Some of the more newsworthy events, such as The Cuban Missile Crises, actually do make a refreshing read.  Perhaps because this event is so predominant in people’s minds, even 50 years after the fact.  Since Sorenson goes into so much detail, this would be an excellent source for a student’s research paper.

It’s interesting to read about the involvement and references to Vietnam.  Remember, no one really knew what or where Vietnam was in 1964,and it certainly didn’t bring up the same connotations as it does now, so I found these portions a good read as well.   Again, it’s very clear that Kennedy was not as “Dove-ish” as some would have you believe, and he was well prepared to do whatever it took to keep the communists out of South Vietnam.  Still, although there are some that don’t like to entertain such a notion, we simply don’t know what Kennedy would have done in Southeast Asia had he lived.  

Another interesting thing about this book is that since Ted Sorenson was a professional speechwriter, there are many portions of Kennedy’s actual speeches sprinkled through the pages - as well as some of his entire speeches.  This doesn’t really hinder the book, it just seems a bit strange since this is not a norm in historical biographies such as this.  In fact, many of Kennedy’s amusing anecdotes that he would quip during his presidency are included here, and the man simply had a strong way with words when illustrating key points, or responding to criticism from an opponent.

Overall, I didn’t think this book was that great, and thought it could have been much better.  This is, however, a great compendium of Kennedy’s accomplishments and overall comings and goings of the three years in his office.  I just wish the author would have practiced the art of summarizing a bit more.