Kennedy's young warriors

John Groser

The Best and the Brightest, David Halberstam (Barrie and Jenkins V1.50).

Conditioned as we are by the political pipe dream — the white heat ot the tech nological revolution turning out to be little more than the grey, tepid gurgle of a Whitehall cistern or then again open government finding its reality somewhere between the classified file and the freedom of the press of the Third Reich — it is difficult perhaps to understand the American preoccupation with political myth, with dynasty, with the business of power in government.

Not so long ago, in New England on a Sunday morning, the very church where John F. Kennedy had taken Jackie for his wife, was pointed out to me with reverence and awe by my Rhode Island hosts. Newport is still, after all these years, after all the pain, proud of that dynasty, taken in by (almost part of) the myth.

Now, of course, with this Watergate business, for the Kennedy people, those who looked towards the new frontier with such optimism and declared that Richard Nixon was tricky beyond credit the myth seems very real again. The shining belief they held in the dynasty is once more justified. It is not, for them, a matter of Democrats being above such shabby behaviour as has been exhibited by Nixon's Republicians. It is the certain knowledge that the Kennedy Administration and, as part of the legacy, the Johnson one too, was served by all that was good and • bright.

Whether Mr Halberstam's book will shake them in their belief remains to be seen. It is a considerable work, indeed a monumental book. Nearly 700 pages long, with no pictures to distract the serious student, it is a fascinating and very personal document. It is not history. Mr Halberstam's style is certainly not to stand back and impartially to appraise events and situations. He is a journalist who won the Pulitzer Prize for his coverage of the Vietnam War. Yet, somehow, this book is not journalism. There is too much needle in it, too much Mr Halberstam, and altogether far too much conscience.

Rather it is an essay. It started as an essay about McGeorge Bundy (whom Mr Halberstam does not like) "who was after all the most glistening of the Kennedy-Johnsop intellectuals" and turned into a longer essay on all the intellectuals (some not all that clever) who flocked to Washington in those early days of hope to help the new, young President run America. The best and the brightest men were summoned by Kennedy (and, it is suggested, by the Establishment) from the campuses, from industry, from glittering law firms, and they answered the call of destiny. In his author's note, which comes (shrewdly) at the end of the book, Mr Halberstam explains that he set out to study these men and their decisions. So it became, in the end, a book about America, and in particular about power and success in America, what the country was, who the leadership was, how they got ahead, what the perceptions were about themselves, about the country and about their mission.

Mr Halberstam goes on to explain that the book is largely the product of his own interviews compiled over a period of two and a half years. Originally, he had intended to list it the end the names of all the people he ha.d interviewed.

However, I recently changed my mind because of circumstances: the political climate is somewhat sensitive these days, and the relationship of reporter to source is 'very much under attack. . . Even on this book my rights as a reporter have been diminished; I was subpoenaed by a grand jury in the Ellsberg case, although I made it clear to the government that I knew nothing of the passing of the papers. My freedom as a reporter was impaired by the very subpoena of the grand jury and the need to appear there. I will therefore list no names. If that is a revealing passage, the tell-tale, conscience line has yet to come. And it does, a page later: Like almost everyone else I know who has been involved in Vietnam, I am haunted by it. by the fact that somehow I was not better, that somehow it was all able to happen. 1 doubt very much if the general American conscience, or for that matter the consciences of non-American readers of the book are as finely tuned as Mr Halberstam's.

Mr Halberstam's knowledge and understanding of and his feeling for the Vietnam issue are well known and wholly commendable. The Making of a Quagmire, which he wrote in 1965, is a fine and sensitive study of the war in South-east Asia. My own colleagues who have worked with him in Africa,. in Europe and in Vietnam testify to the fact. that he is an outstanding journalist. The scope and the breadth of his vision in undertaking this book are staggering. And yet. . . .

Of course war is bad. Of course, as an American, he has the right to feel special shame about the war in Vietnam. Of course, in an essay. or even in a report, perhaps even in a history, he has the right to hold his own mirror, the shadow of his conscience, up to the American people and say shame on you for being thus led. The trouble is that in his indefatigable research (I am sure that had he been, working for the Washington Post he would have dug up Watergate long before

squeezed what he calls "the Establishrrle

now), Mr Halberstam has turned up the carpet, whiffed the occasional nasty mystique," and then indicted the servants, two Administrations for allowing the trage°' of Vietnam to take place. •

At no point does he consider the possibilit;1 that, historically, the same dreadful evell;' might have come about if the men of the u ministrations had been less good and bright or had not been to Groton and Harvao and Yale. For a Harvard man, Mr Halbersia, has a fearful complex about the old school t; and I dread to think, at that level, what"; would make of recent Governments in titio country being responsible for the war in

i „d

ster. It s true that Harold Wilson and Edbo'd Heath were not at Eton (the " Groton vs America" as it was once described to me bY Bostonian) but they both went to Oxford. The obsession about school and C,1?,60;

nections plays a crucial part in the

Mr Halberstam makes of the ability ot best and the brightest men. McGeorge ButikW; to whom Mr Halberstam takes not so scalpel as a broad sword, comes in for the iu treatment: • the He attended Groton, the greatest prep school in, nation,, where the American upper class sen05_,) sons to instill the classic values: discipline, hnoriii belief in the existing values and the ngsi ness of them. Coincidentally it is at Groton 11106. one starts to meet the right people, and wherefol nections which will serve well later on — be It ros Street or Washington — are first forged; one les er awtaGshro. ton, above all, the rules of the game and evai a special language: what washes and what does"

Bundy graduated from Groton " stall cum laude, of course," Mr Halberstam saY From there he went to Yale:

The very choice of Yale was somewhat WrrIll° Uox, since Bostonians usually sent their Chllore'ded Harvard after Groton, but the Bundys had deg tit that after both Boston and Groton, Yale Mig"' the somewhat broadening. And so on and so on, of Bundy and Orliipe others who joined the new Administration.'15 spite of their Boston accents and their schoc;,0 and universities, Mr Halberstam finds hit' obliged to concede that the new (earn "'to " style and excitement." Even so, he has say: da0 But their image was of virility; they played 544 and handball to stay in. shape, wrote bookswytir won prizes (even the President had won a PO'clds Prize), climbed mountains to clear their fOtA Many of them read poetry and some were $t"" be ableto qiiote it Of the Bay of Pigs fiasco, Mr Halbersta.til, makes a great deal. Of the much later frontation between Kennedy and Kruscnry over the blockading of Cuba, he makes v!te little. He tries to be genuinely dispassiont'e about the meeting of Kennedy and krusellhe in Vienna and quotes James Reston of ,t"1,,, New York Times, on his subsequent inters° with the President.

The greater the pity, then, that he doeS 'as try to be equally unbiased elsewhere. It istlie interesting argument of Reston's that lin bullying of Kennedy by the Russian leadersi. Vienna became a crucial fa'ctor in the Preo dent's decision subsequently to send I8'mr advisory and support troops to Vietnatr.try Halberstam makes much of this " spective view." Though it is of course A ton's view and is not all that new either. „ro With care and deliberation, Mr Halberstlif describes the growing involvement of Arleo can forces in South east Asia. Then Dallas,ratie .Kennedy's "mixed legacy" to Johnson•Jes, chickens did not come home to roost for re nedy. "But instead they would come h01".er, for Lyndon Johnson." Johnson the hese, Johnson the man with an abundance of Johnson the unfortunate legatee of a drea full will and testament. s Mr Halberstam claims that Johnson via „,s, awe of these good and bright young With them he went after the same Pt,th grammes that Kennedy had wanted, but VI'

more force. He then takes the story beyond Johnson's own election into the new era of the Dean Rusks of the Johnson Administration.

As the war in Vietnam escalates, so Mr Halberstam's account becomes more personal, tnore bitter. It is as though the two Administrations achieved but one thing — the appalling involvement in Vietnam. Nothing is said of the bright ideas of the young men with Boston accents in the domestic field. Little even of Johnson's very considerable achieveInents on the home front.

Then, in 1966, "doubters and critics began to surface." Surely Mr Halberstam knows that the doubts and the criticisms, even in Kennedy's own mind as long ago as 1962, Were already there. tieing isolated as a war correspondent in Asia, perhaps he has some excuse not being personally in touch with the Main stream of much, very sophisticated thinking, during the early and middle years of the decade.

But did he not, during those two and a half Years of interviews, discover that much else was going on in American politics?Some of it, the race issue for example, almost as deplorable as Vietnam. Some of it good and Wholesome and positive. The picture is too ' black, the theme of the essay too narrow (a Contrived narrowness to preserve and increase the blackness) for the book to be " about America."

The'book is essentially about the futility of the war in Vietnam. No one is better qualified than Mr Halberstam to write such a book. His feeling for and understanding of the Vietnamese dilemma are magnificent. His research has unearthed new material on the build-up and involvement. His personal experience gives the book a sureness of touch, a readability, which are at times genuinely moving. Now that President Nixon has pulled American troops out of Vietnam, I look forward to a third volume on the war. If he writes it, and if It is as good as The Making of a Quagmire and The Best and the Brightest, it will comPlete a remarkable trilogy.

But Mr Halberstam insists in his author's note that this book is notabout Vietnam. He Prefers to think of it in terms of cause and effect. If, then, he is really suggesting that Vietnam happened (in the way it did and on the scale it did) because the Kennedy men Were the best and the brightest of their era,

then I must wonder if the horrors of the South east Asian war have genuinely impaired Mr lialberstam's judgement.

John Groser is on the political staff of The Times.