The American Political Character in 21st Century Retrospect
John F. Kennedy
By Alecsander S. Zapata
“The Presidency is not merely an administrative office. That’s the least of it. It is more than an engineering job, efficient or inefficient. It is pre-eminently a place of moral leadership. All our great Presidents were leaders of thought at times when certain historic ideas in the life of the nation had to be clarified.”
— Franklin D. Roosevelt, September 11, 1932
Robert Dallek’s An Unfinished Life: John F. Kennedy, 1917-1963 (2003) is separated into four sections. The fourth, subtitled “The President,” opens with the FDR quote above. It’s so fascinating that a biography’s longest section—over half of the novel—should cover by far the shortest portion of John F. Kennedy’s life. And yet, what seems an imbalanced distribution on Dallek’s part may actually be an accurate reflection of the rising interest in the political character. Coming right off the heels of the Trump administration, the moral fiber of the president of the United States is under more scrutiny now than ever before. FDR’s poignant commentary on the non-administrative influence of the position sheds light on the cultural power of those unique presidents who have been seen more as political characters than as pure politicians.
As such, An Unfinished Life still feels fresh despite the eighteen years that have passed since its publication. Not only because Kennedy is among those few former presidents who notably embodied the political character –– Ronald Reagan and Donald Trump being perhaps the other two –– but also because of Dallek’s unrelenting dedication to intimacy. Dallek is chiefly concerned with who President Kennedy was rather than what President Kennedy did and his focus rarely wavers, to which the biography owes much of its longevity.
John F. Kennedy shaking hands in Miami, Florida
The book opens with the histories of his fabulously wealthy father, his distant mother, and their own respective parents. Moving on from that we are introduced to two key framing devices which are crucial to engaging the audience with the overarching narrative of its subject, John F. Kennedy.
The first one is the examination of the two Kennedy brothers most impactful to Kennedy’s life: the older, talented, and dominant Joe Jr. and the younger, brash, and loyal Bobby. With Joe Jr., Dallek does a masterful job of creating an unlikely underdog story for a man who history recognizes as having had every privilege and advantage possible in his rise through American politics. Following Joe Jr.’s death, the narrative fills that void with Bobby, exhibiting a keen attention to all the ways in which he was instrumental to John’s success. John’s father and his many advisors are key players throughout, but Joe Jr. and Bobby are more crucial in that they serve as guiding figures throughout John’s evolution and provide the book with a neat symmetry.
The second framing device is Kennedy’s medical history. Dallek’s handling of the topic is his most impressive and distinct authorial contribution, in both its thoroughness and implementation. In the pursuit of uncovering the character behind the politics, Dallek spares no detail in relating the visceral nature of President Kennedy’s turbulent health. Structurally, the investigation into the President’s medical history is deftly woven throughout the book’s 723 pages and the audience is certainly invited to vicariously feel worn down by his harsh, seemingly constant battles against his own treacherous constitution. This deep dive is not only innovative, but also vital to Dallek’s objective. The reader is brought extremely, uncomfortably close to its subject’s most vulnerable moments. The frequent bouts of diarrhea, nausea, and crippling back pain brought about by his ailments (now understood as a form of Addison’s disease) carve out a window into President Kennedy’s person that had never been available prior, and has only been made possible by Dallek’s vociferous pursuit of previously undisclosed medical records. Through this lens we are introduced to the President’s self-deprecating outlook and humility. If the biography is at all trying to garner admiration for the endearing and genuinely impressive aspects of President Kennedy’s character, it is earned here.
However, where Dallek succeeds in objective, he mostly falters in purpose, and it is in one of these episodes documenting President Kennedy’s health that Dallek’s chief authorial error is exposed. Dallek relates a scene taking place the day after winning the 1960 election in which then President-elect Kennedy suffers from campaign exhaustion augmented significantly by his health problems. Despite the thorough discussion of the extent to which the President’s health affected him throughout his entire campaign, there is no mention of the questionable morality of hiding this information from the public until this point in the book. Dallek seems to pull out his own teeth as he is forced to at least mention the issue:
“When he ran for and won the presidency, Kennedy was gambling that his health problems would not prevent him from handling the job. By hiding the extent of his ailments, he had denied voters the chance to decide whether they wanted to join him in this bet.”
From there Dallek begins to describe President Kennedy’s plan for diverging his own administration from Eisenhower’s, yet this moral issue of concealment, worthy of serious discussion and strong criticism, is never brought up again. It becomes evident throughout the biography that wherever Dallek can defend his subject, he does so thoroughly, slowing down the book to a meditative pace. Wherever Dallek recognizes an indefensible revelation, he moves along with notable quickness, hoping that the reader won’t notice it, or at least not dwell on it for too long.
Compare this to Dallek spending over a page arguing for the promise and underrated quality of President Kennedy’s senior thesis at Harvard—which most scholars agree is largely unimpressive—and at various points describing his “natural sincerity” and “compassion.” However, the following excerpt, taken from a letter to college friend Lem Billings by a 23-year-old JFK, gets no commentary whatsoever:
“I don’t think anyone really realizes that nothing stands between us and the defeat of our Christian crusade against Paganism except a lot of Chinks who never heard of God and a lot of Russians who have heard about him and don’t want Him.”
Rather than acknowledging the offensive nature of Kennedy’s comment—2003 was hardly so long ago that this would go unnoticed—or even trying to place it within the context of Kennedy’s youth and immaturity, given the fact that he did, admittedly, change his outlook on religion and minority groups in his later years, Dallek tries to sweep it under the rug. Any commentary whatsoever, even a harsh criticism, would have at least in some way benefited the biography. Instead Dallek comes across equally guilty, covering-up for his subject. It is because of this weakness that the reader feels a natural skepticism toward the author begin to mount. When Dallek describes Kennedy weeping in agony for the captured rebels after the failure of the Bay of Pigs invasion, the reader is left questioning the reason behind the anecdote’s inclusion. Is it to show genuine humanity from a larger-than-life figure or to soften the blow of Kennedy’s biggest failure? Every detail is now subject to question. Through this lens, even Dallek’s stylistic choice to often refer to President Kennedy as “Jack” comes across as an almost affectionate, protective measure.
John F. Kennedy and Caroline Kennedy aboard the "Honey Fitz,” August 1963
To the author’s credit, some of his bias may have been subconscious to a certain degree. An Unfinished Life has been touted as an objective project, and the author himself wrote that his mission was to “balance” the good and the bad to create a fair portrait of his subject. John F. Kennedy, being the colossal historic fragment that he is, mythologized by his celebrity and immortalized in death, has been the subject of many works “debunking” his persona and legacy. It is likely that Dallek paid too much attention to the debunking attempts that came before, resulting in his own biography coming across as a response to those particular works rather than as a truly neutral record in its own right.
The questionable objectivity of the author continues in his record of Kennedy’s presidency all the way to his death, albeit in varying degrees. Like John F. Kennedy’s own character and presidential career, An Unfinished Life is difficult to evaluate. In its aim to provide the most intimate and personal portrait of one of the biggest political characters in American history, it is undeniably successful, even if it often fails its promise of neutrality. However, for the very reasons FDR professed back in 1932, it’s hard to imagine this biography becoming irrelevant any time soon. The United States continues its love affair with the political character, and there is obviously no character in American politics more interesting than the president himself.
Alecsander S. Zapata has devoted his life to the storytelling craft as a writer, editor, and reviewer of fiction. He follows two core tenets which frame his philosophy on literature: one, that it is the question minus the answer, and two, that it can be found anywhere. He is soon to graduate from the University of San Francisco with degrees in English and Spanish.