A profile in secret courage

John F. Kennedy had the intellect of James Madison and the libido of James Brown. He had charm, wit, a remarkable wife, a fortunate face and a special style. But judged on substance and accomplishment, he does not rank in the company of our greatest presidents: George Washington, Abraham Lincoln and FDR. He had only those 1,000 days in the White House. Yet the public’s interest in him seems to keep growing rather than fading with the passage of time. He will be dead 40 years this November, but the books keep coming.

“An Unfinished Life,” by presidential historian Robert Dallek, is among the best: comprehensive, judicious, evenhanded, original. It has the sober judgment and nuanced accuracy that makes it ring true in all the controversial and tricky parts. It contains original material from the archives of Dr. Janet Travell on JFK’s multiple health problems, which were more severe than we realized and that caused him tremendous pain. He had to take a pharmacy of medications every day. Kennedy kept his maladies secret and even lied about them, but he was also his own secret profile in courage in the way he applied his iron will to coping with chronic suffering.

The book also contains new information about JFK’s erotic escapades, which, Dallek concludes, “were no impediment to his being an effective president.” (I quibble with this assessment. JFK’s dangerous liaisons with Judith Exner, who was also mob boss Sam Giancana’s mistress, and with East German call girl Ellen Rometsch, who may have been a security risk, made the president vulnerable to that master blackmailer J. Edgar Hoover, who wanted to keep his job.)

“An Unfinished Life” advances our knowledge of Kennedy through Dallek’s access to previously sealed medical records as well as to oral histories, letters, White House tapes and the archives at the Kennedy Library. He has done the follow-up interviewing necessary to flesh out these archival scoops. The prose style, however, is only serviceable. Dallek’s writing lacks the evocative lyricism of Robert Caro, Richard Reeves, Marshall Frady and Taylor Branch. The sentences walk but don’t fly.

This biography, however, reminds us of why we remain so fascinated with the martyred leader, who, before his death, was just discovering his stride. We tend to take it for granted now, but JFK was America’s first Roman Catholic president, and his life touched the soul of Irish Americans by breaking a barrier of bigotry. As the great sportswriter Jimmy Cannon once wrote, “I stopped feeling like a mick that day Kennedy was elected president.”

Second, Kennedy died young, with unfulfilled and untested potential. When he was murdered, he still had unresolved conflicts and dramas involving Cuba, civil rights, Vietnam and the Cold War. And he left us with the tantalizing what-if of a second term dangling like an unfinished song. There is still that sense of “We hardly knew ye,” as the Irish say. American popular culture seems obsessed with a pantheon of artists who died young: James Dean, Marilyn Monroe, Bruce Lee, Tupac Shakur, Sam Cooke, Hank Williams, Bob Marley, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin. As the handsome young president, JFK remains the biggest star in the industry of tragic fame.

Also, JFK’s true measure as a leader is problematic. Who was this cool, reckless president who so brilliantly averted nuclear war with artful diplomacy during the Cuban missile crisis but who also appointed segregationist judges in the South during the civil rights movement? Why didn’t he fully embrace racial equality and voting rights until his televised speech in June 1963?

In February 1966, Robert F. Kennedy was preparing for an appearance on “Meet the Press” by having Arthur Schlesinger and Fred Dutton impersonate reporters and ask him sharp questions about Vietnam. During this rehearsal Schlesinger asked Kennedy to assess JFK’s responsibility for the origins of America’s involvement. “I don’t know what would be best,” RFK began, “to say he didn’t spend much time thinking about Vietnam or to say that he did and messed it up.” Then RFK thrust his hand up towards heaven and asked, “Which, brother? Which?”

Dallek tries to answer RFK’s anguished, perplexed question by arguing that JFK was planning to gradually withdraw from Vietnam during his second term. Relying on newly available documents, a tape JFK made in the Oval Office on Nov. 4, 1963, and a deep reading of the existing record, Dallek believes JFK was thinking of “a carefully managed stand-down from the sort of involvement that occurred under LBJ.” In a September 1963 interview, JFK had said of the South Vietnamese that “in the final analysis it is their war to win or lose.” Dallek reports that JFK “ordered” Defense Secretary Robert McNamara “to begin planning a U.S. military exit from Vietnam” in the fall of 1962. He quotes McNamara’s deputy, Roswell Gilpatrick, as saying the president “made it clear to McNamara and me that he wanted to not only hold the level of U.S. military presence in Vietnam down, but he wanted to reverse the flow.” McNamara, who was unusually close to JFK, then drew up a three-year plan “for the reduction of U.S. forces in Vietnam.”

In November 1963 there was a U.S.-backed coup against the Diem government that ended with the unanticipated murder of Ngo Dinh Diem and his wife. JFK ratified the coup but was deeply shaken by the murders. On the Nov. 4, 1963, tape (which seems to have been a tormented soliloquy), JFK blamed himself for the deaths. This coup by generals, which spun out of control in Saigon, seems to have increased JFK’s skepticism about whether the new Saigon government would be stable and cohesive enough to prosecute the war effort. Dallek also reveals that on Nov. 21, 1963, JFK told Mike Forrestal, the State Department official most responsible for Vietnam policy, that he wanted him “to organize an in-depth study of every possible option we’ve got in Vietnam, including how to get out of there.”

Dallek’s case is persuasive but not irrefutable. If RFK did not know his brother’s real intentions, even the best historian can offer only an informed interpretation. But from the available records it does seem that JFK would not have Americanized the war, committed ground troops or begun a massive bombing campaign.

In 1960 there was an attempt to steal JFK’s medical records from two New York doctors. This was most likely an early warning of just how shrewd and lawless Richard Nixon was. If Nixon had gotten his hands on JFK’s medical history up to that point, he probably would have won the 1960 election.

For me, the most revealing parts of “An Unfinished Life” are about Kennedy’s illnesses and medications, which were kept secret until long after his death. The release of Travell’s private files to Dallek gives us a fuller appreciation of how much pain JFK suffered throughout his life. These sections make him look stoic and heroic. They also disclose how much he hid from the press and from even his closest aides. Kennedy was a master at manipulating his image; he knew that if even a portion of this material became public, it would prevent his election and destroy his carefully manufactured image of robust vigor, as a sunburst of youth and energy arriving after the Eisenhower years of complacent torpor.

JFK’s medication regimen is staggering: “oral and implanted cortisone for the Addison’s [disease] and massive doses of penicillin and other antibiotics to combat the prostatitis and abscesses [in his back]. He also received anesthetic injections of procaine at trigger points to relieve back pain, antispasmodics -- principally Lomotil and trasentine -- to control the colitis, testosterone to bulk him up or keep up his weight (which fell with each bout of colitis and diarrhea), and Nembutal to help him sleep. He had terribly elevated cholesterol -- 410 in one testing -- apparently caused by the testosterone, which also may have heightened his libido, and added to his stomach and prostate problems.”

Kennedy also took highly secret injections of amphetamines and painkillers from the notorious New York doctor Max Jacobson, known as “Dr. Feelgood.” They began in 1960 and were supposed to combat depression and fatigue. These cocktail concoctions were so mysterious that RFK once had them tested in a military lab to make sure they were safe.

If Nixon’s original platoon of plumbers had successfully stolen Kennedy’s files, they would have found that between May 1955 and October 1957, JFK had been secretly hospitalized nine times for a total of 43 days. These hospitalizations were for acute back pain, a chronic abscess at the site of earlier back surgeries, dehydration, fevers, abdominal cramps and “prostatitis marked by pain when urinating and ejaculating.” (In 1962 all of JFK’s medical records were placed in a vault.) It appears that JFK also took large doses of steroids, which weakened his bones and made his backaches even worse. These passages dramatize how Kennedy’s courage, secrecy, recklessness and will to win were as powerful as a great athlete’s.

There have now been three generations of Kennedy books. First came the Camelot wave of biographies romanticizing JFK. Then came the debunking backlash that lacked proportion and emphasized sex over substance. The third wave, beginning with Richard Reeves’ 1993 biography, “Profile of Power,” began to provide serious scholarship, new information and a more detached perspective. “An Unfinished Life” adds even more shadings, details and intimacy to the portrait. It gets to the bone and shows us the pain. Johnny, we know ye better now, thanks to this thoughtful and truthful biography.