Kennedy and Roosevelt: The Uneasy Alliance

 

Kennedy and Roosevelt: The Uneasy Alliance by Michael R. Beschloss

I came across a book by this same author with a similar context on the relationship between John F. Kennedy (not the ‘Kennedy’ of this book) and Nikita Khrushchev. That book was one of the best historical books I have ever read.  Whenever I come across a book that moves me such as that one did, I feel the urge to read more of the author’s work.  Because I’m somewhat obsessive-compulsive, I like to start at the beginning and read the author’s output chronologically.  This particular book is the author’s first effort.

What I found incredibly interesting is that this book was released in 1980 when the author was 25. This means that he probably started writing the thing when he was 22 or 23.   When **I** was 22 years old, I wasn’t even shaving every day yet.   I mention this because it’s too easy to dismiss this book and come away feeling disappointed after reading later works by the author, but this criticism is unfair.  We shouldn’t expect someone so young to come up with a Pulitzer Prize effort on their first effort.  So although this book was very well written, it simply didn’t captivate me as much as the aforementioned work.

This book deals with the ongoing arduous relationship between Joseph Kennedy and Franklin Roosevelt. These two men were undoubtedly two of the biggest movers and shakers of the first half of the twentieth century. They both accomplished great things, yet this book shows us that much of what these men did in their careers was more self-centered than it was philanthropic.  These were two men obsessively driven by their egos to get as far up the mountain as they could possibly go. In order to accomplish said goals, these two men badly needed each other.  They didn’t like each other, but they needed each other.   What’s painfully obvious is that whenever we read about these two men and their frequent interactions, it’s VERY obvious that there’s a mutual distaste of the two, yet we see them cautiously dance around their words and actions so they don’t push or offend the other guy too much.  It’s rather uncomfortable, yet I suppose this is somewhat the norm when one harbors such dangerous goals and desires.

This book doesn’t serve as a biography of either man, yet we do get a brief history of their early histories and their rise to notoriety.  Since Roosevelt actually becomes President (with a lot of help from Kennedy), we see that he always has a slight upper hand in the ongoing bickering-filled relationship.  Kennedy is always jockeying for high placement within the Roosevelt administration, yet never really feels like he is appreciated nor utilized as he should be.  We read about some of his appointments during Roosevelt’s 12-year term such as SEC Chairman and Ambassador to Britain, and it always seems as though Kennedy is desperately trying to free himself from Roosevelt’s leash and implement his own policies and procedures.  This is painfully obvious during Kennedy’s ambassadorship to England in 1939 with a world war brewing.  Kennedy seems to think there’s no way that Germany will fail to prevail, so why not cozy up to Hitler and make life easier for himself and the many wealthy Americans akin to his position?

Although this book (in hardback format) is only about 280 pages, the pages are packed and the print is small.  This is a book where your mind can’t wander for a sentence or two, as you’ll miss critical information.  So I guess you could say it’s good that the author kept the length of the book somewhat manageable, but I can’t help wonder if he shouldn’t have added another 100 pages or so and let the material breath a bit more so it could be a bit more digestible.  He also needed to work on educating his readers a bit more when introducing popular policies that were either initiated or in vogue at the time.  For example:  About ¾ through the book, the author mentions and starts pontificating on the “Lend-Lease Program”, yet doesn’t bother stating what it actually was.  Uninformed readers might need enlightenment, and it would have been nice to have a paragraph or two to the give the person a bit of the basics.  This seems especially obvious in hindsight since readers didn’t have a handy tool such as Wikipedia or the internet at their fingertips.

I then have to ask myself if such a book is really necessary.  I can’t honestly say that I learned anything new within these pages.  True, I’ve read extensive bios of both of these figures, and this book WAS written 40 years ago, so it could be that such revelations that the author puts forth might have been more “book worthy” at the time.  Still, though, this is an incredible accomplishment for an author of such a young age.   I still plan on reading much more by this author, and I highly recommend him.