An Unfinished Life: John F. Kennedy, 1917 - 1963 Paperback – May 4, 2004

Robert Dallek's biography on John F. Kennedy is very well titled. It is a work that leaves you a little unsatisfied. Not because Dallek did a bad job, quite the contrary it is a very good book, but in the end you just feel like you watched a really good movie that ends suddenly and very incomplete. There is a lot of huff made in comparing Kennedy to President Lincoln, in the years they were elected, names of their vice presidents/successors, etc, etc. However, it is important to note the major difference of Lincoln serving a full term plus, and Kennedy's dying at the start of his re-election bid. Lincoln's story climaxes at the Gettysburg Address and concludes at his second inaugural, when he is later murdered by John Wilkes Booth, the mission that he started had already been completed beyond his, Lincoln's, wildest dreams. The Union had been saved and slavery, which he wanted to put on the path to destruction, was destroyed; Lincoln had fulfilled his place in history. Kennedy had been able to complete a good deal of the ground work that he needed to accomplish in his historic mission. The bill that would become the Civil Rights Act of 1964 had been proposed to the Congress; Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. had stated was the most powerful civil rights legislation ever proposed by a president. To help settle some of the political damage that it was going to cause in the South, Kennedy went to campaign in Dallas, Texas where he would lose his life.Dallek's story begins with the history of the two families that would create John F. Kennedy, the Kennedys and the Fitzgeralds. Joseph P. Kennedy marries Rose Fitzgerald the daughter of Mayor John 'Honey Fitz' Fitzgerald uniting their two families. They would name their second son after his maternal grandfather. Everyone in the family expected a lot of John's older brother, Joe, Jr., who John was very close to growing up. His other brothers were far too young for him to have much of a relationship with. Kennedy's youth, although blessed with wealth, was cursed by a lack of health; he was always ill and spent a great deal of time with doctors. Throughout the whole misadventure Kennedy would maintain good humor about his situation."More puzzling medical problems punctuated Jack's second year at Choate. In January and February 1933, 'flu-like symptoms' plagued him, as well as almost constant pain in his knees. 'Jack's winter term sounded like a hospital report,' a fiftieth-anniversary remembrance of his attendance at the school recounted, 'with correspondence flying back and forth between Rose Kennedy and Clara St. John [the headmaster's wife]. Again, eyes, ears, teeth, knees, arches, from the top of his head to the tip of his toes, Jack needed attention.' X-rays showed no pathology in his knees, and so his doctor attributed his difficulties to growing pains and recommended exercises and 'built up' shoes." p.34-5Nevertheless he would through sheer determination, get himself in shape enough to join the Navy and serve as a P.T. boat captain. He would famously captain the PT-109 and would get his most of his crew to safety when an enemy destroyed their boat. Unfortunately, for the Kennedy family they would suffer two tremendous tragedies during the war. The first, which took place before JFK's command, was his sister Rosemary's botched lobotomy that took her personhood. The second was the death of Joseph P. Kennedy, Jr. who was killed on a secret mission.When the war was over JFK, began to pursue his own political career, his father's ended the moment he misjudged the political situation of World War II, going as far to praise the German Dictator Adolph Hitler. The young Kennedy, however, was going to rise and rise fast. Kennedy wrote a book, Why England Slept, in which he separated himself from his father's opinion of World War II. He would be elected to the United States House of Representatives in 1946. There he would befriend another freshman Congressman, named Richard M. Nixon. A pure status-type of politician Congressman Kennedy became bored of the House and, in 1952, ran for the United States Senate against the incumbent Henry Cabot Lodge II, whose grandfather for whom he was named, helped bring down Woodrow Wilson's League of Nations proposal. Kennedy would win and would enter the Senate that would soon be ruled by an all-powerful majority leader named Lyndon B. Johnson. Kennedy's eight years in the Senate were rather unremarkable but he did find the time to write, or at least be the leader chief editor, for the Pulitzer Prize winning book Profiles in Courage.In 1960, John F. Kennedy changed history by running for president, not just being the first Catholic to win the office, but he changed the way presidents were nominated. Kennedy took the primaries more seriously than any candidate in the past; enough so that when the convention started Kennedy was able to capture it on the first ballot. The master of the Senate, much to the suffering of the candidate's younger brother, Robert F. Kennedy, was going to be on the ticket for vice president. Kennedy would go the general election facing his old friend Vice President Richard M. Nixon. Together they were going to participate in the first televised presidential debates. Nixon seemed to win on substance but Kennedy would win on style. When Election Day, came Kennedy would prevail in one of the closet elections on record and would take office on January 20, 1961."In the final analysis, the most important question is not why Kennedy won but why his victory was so narrow. Harry Truman was amazed at the closeness of the race. "Why, even our friend Adlai would have had a landslide running against Nixon,' he told Senator William Benton of Connecticut. Given the majority status of the Democrats, the discontent over the state of the economy and international affairs, and Kennedy's superior campaign and campaigning, he should have gained at least 52 or 53 percent of the popular vote. Everyone on his staff had predicted a victory of between 53 and 57 percent. The small margin shocked them. What they missed was the unyielding fear of having a Catholic in the White House. Although about 46 percent of Protestants voted for Kennedy, millions of them in Ohio, Wisconsin, and across the South made his religion a decisive consideration. It was the first time a candidate had won the presidency with a minority of Protestant voters." p.296Kennedy's presidency has been described as Camelot and there certainly was that feel. A new young President and his family had moved into the White House and things were going to be different. Kennedy's administration would change the nation in a number of ways; this presidency saw an increase of national support for NASA and the moon program. In addition, there were some real highs and lows of the Cold War. The botched Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba was a national embarrassment but more importantly President Kennedy saw us through the scary Cuban Missile Crisis."The Peace Corps proved to be one of the enduring legacies of Kennedy's presidency. As with some American domestic institutions like Social Security and Medicare, the Peace Corps became a fixture that Democratic and Republican administrations alike would continue to finance for over forty years. It made far more friends than enemies and, as Kennedy had hoped, convinced millions of people abroad that the United States was eager to help developing nations raise standards of living."p.340On Civil Rights, like Lincoln a hundred years before him, he would be pressured from all over the political spectrum, to the advocates on the ground he was too slow and to conservatives he was too fast and radical. The first two years of his presidency, Kennedy wanted to move slowly though executive actions rather then fight for legislation. Later the President began to take more forceful action on that front, but he not live to finish the job. That would be carried on by his successor President Lyndon B. Johnson*.Assassination creates secular saints and when Lee Harvey Oswald, murdered the President on November 22, 1963, Kennedy's martyred image would aid the new administration in establishing the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and would be an asset to what President Johnson called the Great Society. Dallek does an incredible job detailing a great deal of these events, and I strongly recommend this book.*That is something Lincoln did not have, his replacement, President Andrew Johnson, caused all sorts of problems during his incompetent stay as the nation's chief executive.

On this day, the 47th anniversary of his death of which he would have been 93 years old, I write this review of an extraordinary biography written about one of America's most popular presidents by Robert Dallek.Some people play the game of looking back and seeing what president was in office when they were born.For me, it was Kennedy, a man of many talents and enigmas. I don't have any cognitive relationship to him as I was all of one year old when he was killed so I was not able to see him in action while he was alive.I've had to rely on the historical document to review his life and times and wanted something more concrete to assess his accomplishments. Yet, there remains some crazy connection, some unknown draw, an affinity if you like, with him which I can't explain even now, an uncanny relationship to him which may sound bizarre, and trust me, not weird nor pathological but is present in my awareness on a consistent basis nonetheless, more spiritual I guess, than anything else. Robert Dallek has written perhaps one of the better biographies of John F. Kennedy that remains in print today.Kennedy as you may or may not know had many things to hide from the American public, many of which would have effectively nixed his election had they been fully exposed to the American public at the time when he was running for office.This book covers much of what remained unsaid then and even now when referring to him. Namely his medical issues of which there were several.Had he not been assassinated he most likely would have been dead already given his medical conditions and medical knowledge at the time.Dead at 46 he may have lasted another twenty years at most if he was lucky which puts his natural death at about 1983 or there about.Death at sixty six or even more given medical advancement, a ripe old 70, would have been tops in my estimation given the medical history included in Dallek's book.This man had plenty wrong with him and it would have taken its toll plus the extreme toll the presidency had and took on him for even that short a time.The book itself looks at his entire life even his families before he was conceived. It reaches back to the dirt of Ireland and the farm land he sprang from.His father had something to say about his life, we all know that, but his individualism,his slacking at school and the effect it all had on him as a person are examined. A significant psychoanalytical look at his childhood from a non psychological bent will help the reader who thirsts for more to understand the psyche and push Kennedy developed under those conditions.Yes, it mentions the famous South Pacific years of the war. The coconut,PT 109 and the effect the navy had on him.Politically there is much to say and is said in a consistant chronological timeline. Reading this book one can't help but feel that you are right along side JFK as he grows up. Almost a fly on the wall as you follow his political learning and career forward to the presidency some would say his father bought for him and some may be right. But once in office he truly tried to maintain the delicate balance between policy both foreign and domestic,truly a tough act to do. Reading about his trials and tribulations while in office would dissuade one from ever trying to obtain it given the pressures and limitations inherent in the office of president of the United States.Not a job for the weak or wishy washy but a constant bother and a job one would gladly turn down. He wanted it so bad and worked rather hard to get there he couldn't turn it down but sometimes wanted to effecting him in ways which can only be fully understood after reading this book.Most interesting for me was the nearly full disclosure of his many and varied medical conditions something I had limited knowledge of prior to reading this tome.Now, seeing the full range of medical issues he faced on a daily basis gives me even more sympathy for him as his life was far from comfortable from a physico/medico point of view, truly a dynamic challenge to overcome,maintain and sustain privately.His foreign policy as well as the long term ramifications which his decisions made were astounding. He had grace and goal oriented thinking, a true concern for the worlds health as well as America's.He labored over his inaugural speech and felt he should try to address what he put forth while dealing with the issue which scared him the most, Communism and the takeover of the Pacific rim, South America and possibly the world if not stemmed somehow.We now know that Communism was destined to fail as is any attempt at socialism in a powerful nation, for they just don't seem work do they?Then, Kennedy could not have known this and fretted until he was anemic. J.F.Kennedy had his brother Robert F. Kennedy, a healthy assistant, sometimes a bother but a trusted confidant .We all know what happened as well. Kennedy managed to avert a nuclear war and for that point alone he should be admired if for nothing else maintaining our power position in the world against those big, bad Soviets who wanted to eat us alive but never could, could they?He could not have realized that for all he did he was creating the atmosphere for his own death especially when he began to consider the withdrawal of troops from Vietnam. Had he lived he would have probably done it forever changing the course of America's history.His death by assassination either by Oswald or by others sanctioned by the government in tandem with the power elite is yours to wrestle with and is not addressed in the book other than the cold facts.But it shouldn't be.His life ends with those rifle shots and that's that.For those who want a significant, real, honest history of JFK than this is it. Sure there are hundreds, perhaps thousands of other books you could read but this one is different and should at least be included in your exploration of this mans' life and times. You won't be sorry and will feel that you know just about all you need to upon conclusion.Dallek has nailed it and the Kennedy family have concurred as to his sensitive and professional treatment of facts which were damaging then and avoided but have a significant basis in the shaping of and ultimate character development of one of our most popular yet tragic presidential stories since Lincoln.As a medical person I found his constant lifelong battles with conditions known and unknown,procedures,operations, drug use and his general lament that some people complain about this or that but are not thankful that they are healthy, the one thing he could not attain despite his wealth and power to be both fascinating and enlightening when the full measure of his medical history is reviewed. What he managed to accomplish despite living with several debilitating conditions is amazing.Listen, I'm no expert in presidents or history, just an armchair reader.I like Washington, Lincoln and Kennedy.Of these three I can boast some modest level of expertise.This book by Dallek is for you, the Kennedy enthusiast, the interested fan,the beginning historian.For a well rounded look and understanding of J.F. Kennedy and please forgive me, as I said I'm no great historian, trust me, you won't be disappointed. In my humble opinion you will be far better off than before.I had several reviews to write and couldn't decide which to write first. I asked my young son, gave him the choices and he picked this one, "do the Kennedy first" he said. Why, I asked? and he thought about it a little and said, "it's his birthday?".Nooo, I said, he thought some more, "today was the day he was killed wasn't it". Yes I said it was."Wow,he said see I was right, do the Kennedy first".The karma was right and the choice made. Requiescate In Pace,President Kennedy.

I appriciate the fact that it contained recently declassified information that Kennedy worked with organized crime to assassinate people who got in his way. He used American idols like Frank Sinatra to help him constantly cheat and embarrass his wife. Mostly it was his addiction to pain killers that made him vulnerable to bribery. . He was NOT the wonderful president history has made him out to be. This book is well written, well sourced, and very informative. I do not condone assassination, but when you play by the sword you will die by the sword. Recommended reading for any scholar of presidential history.