Table Of ContentKENNEDY: THE NEW FRONTIER REVISITED
Also by Mark J. White
THE CUBAN MISSILE CRISIS
MISSILES IN CUBA: Kennedy, Khrushchev, Castro and the 1962 Crisis
Kennedy: The New
Frontier Revisited
Edited by
Mark J. White
Assistant Professor in United States History
Eastern Illinois University
Charleston
Selection, editorial matter, Introduction and Chapters 2 and 8 © Mark J. White 1998
Chapters I, 3-7 © Macmillan Press Ltd 1998
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For Robert Frazier, Lloyd Gardner, David Healy,
and Warren Kimball
Contents
Notes on the Contributors viii
Introduction: A New Synthesis for the New Frontier
Mark J. White
Vietnam and the Question of What Might Have Been 19
Fredrik LogevaU
2 The Cuban Imbroglio: From the Bay of Pigs to the
Missile Crisis and Beyond 63
Mark J. White
3 The Berlin Crisis 91
Georg Schild
4 Meeting the European Challenge: The Common
Market and Trade Policy 132
Thomas W. Zeiler
5 Dealing with de Gaulle 160
Josephine Brain
6 Space: The Final Frontier of the New Frontier 193
Derek W. Elliott
7 John F. Kennedy as Domestic Leader: A Perspective
on the Literature 222
James N. Giglio
8 Behind Closed Doors: The Private Life of a Public Man 256
Mark J. White
Select Bibliography 277
Index 282
vii
Notes on the Contributors
Josephine Brain received her undergraduate degree from the Univer
sity of St Andrews and her MA from the University of Wisconsin
Milwaukee, where she was also a teaching assistant. She has received
various honors, including a research award from the Roosevelt Study
Center in Middelburg.
Derek W. Elliott is Assistant Professor of History at Tennessee State
University. He received his doctorate from George Washington Uni
versity, and is currently converting his doctoral dissertation, "Finding
an Appropriate Commitment: Space Policy Development under Eisen
hower and Kennedy, 1954 -1963," into a book. He has also published
articles and contributed to Air and Space History: An Annotated
Bibliography.
James N. Giglio is Professor of History at Southwest Missouri State
University. He earned his doctorate from the Ohio State University,
and is the author of The Presidency of John F. Kennedy (1991) and
John F. Kennedy: A Bibliography (1995), as well as H. M. Daugherty
and the Politics of Expediency, Truman in Cartoon and Caricature, and
many articles. He is currently working on a biography of Stan Musial,
the baseball legend.
Fredrik LogevaU is Assistant Professor of History at the University of
California at Santa Barbara. A native of Sweden, he received his PhD
from Yale University. He is author of Choosing War: The Long 1964
and the Lost Chance for Peace in Vietnam (forthcoming, 1998), as well
as articles in such journals as Diplomatic History, Pacific Historical
Review, and Journal of American-East Asian Relations. He is also the
recipient of the Stuart L. Bernath Article Prize from the Society for
Historians of American Foreign Relations.
Georg Schild is Wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter at the University of
Bonn, Germany. He received his PhD from the University of Mary
land at College Park and is the author of Between Ideology and
Realpolitik: Woodrow Wilson and the Russian Revolution (1995) and
Bretton Woods and Dumbarton Oaks: American Economic and Political
viii
Notes on the Contributors IX
Postwar Planning in the Summer of 1944 (1995), as well as a forth
coming book on Kennedy. His articles have appeared in a variety of
journals, including World Affairs.
Mark J. White is Assistant Professor of History at Eastern Illinois
University. He received his doctoral degree from Rutgers University,
and has taught previously at the University of St Andrews, Scotland.
He has published The Cuban Missile Crisis (1996) and Missiles in
Cuba: Kennedy, Khrushchev, Castro and the 1962 Crisis (1997). His
articles have appeared in Mid-America, Journal of Strategic Studies
and Illinois Historical Journal, amongst others. He is also the general
editor of the Longman History of America.
Thomas W. Zeiler is Assistant Professor of History at the University
of Colorado (at Boulder). Since receiving his doctorate from the
University of Massachusetts-Amherst, he has written American
Trade and Power in the 1960s (1992), and articles in such journals as
Diplomatic History and Business History Review. He has served on
committees of the Society for Historians of American Foreign Rela
tions and as a referee for various journals. He is currently writing a
history of the international trade system, focusing on GATT.
Introduction: A New
Synthesis for the New
Frontier
Mark J. White
"In many respects how Kennedy died is as important as how he
lived." That observation, made by historian James Giglio in 1991,
provides the key for understanding what has been the most conspicu
ous feature of the literature on John F. Kennedy - namely, its polar
ization between those works that lavish praise on JFK and those that
heap scorn. Of course, all historical debates generate a spectrum of
views. In the work on Kennedy, however, both the commendation
and the criticism have been exceptionally intemperate. I
Kennedy's assassination on 22 November 1963 ensured that the
American people's initial assessment of his life's work would be
glowing. Naturally enough, the American people came to terms with
the tragedy in Dallas by investing his life with a Lincolnesque sig
nificance - that is to say, a moral importance that transcended pol
itics. (This need to enlarge the meaning of his life applies equally to
his death; hence the proliferation of conspiracy theories over the
years.) In the wake of his assassination, therefore, Americans came
to view their slain president as a martyr, one who had died having
fought valiantly for noble causes - peace, freedom, and justice: peace
with his American University speech and the settlement of the Cuban
missile crisis, freedom for West Berliners, and justice for blacks
through civil-rights reform and for Latin Americans via the Alliance
for Progress.
The need to come to terms with the assassination was only one
reason why Americans came to regard Kennedy as a great leader. The
other was the tireless effort by JFK's family, friends, and political
aides to cultivate a positive image of the Kennedy presidency. Shortly
after her husband's death, Jacqueline Kennedy granted an interview
to journalist Theodore H. White in which she recalled that her hus
band had enjoyed listening to the musical Camelot, thereby connect
ing the Kennedy administration's reputation to the Arthurian legend.
White wrote up an article of the interview. The Camelot legend, the
