Chapter 24 America's New Generation

On February 11, the Viet Cong attacked Qui Nhon again.This time, Johnson didn't do anything for 48 hours.However, once he took action, it was a big step on the road to escalation of the war.Since then, the United States' air retaliation has not been limited to one-on-one, you come and go.Johnson ordered continued bombing of North Vietnam, regardless of provocation. America's New Generation Richard Nixon's farewell week to Washington was bitterly cold; on Thursday, January 19, the day before Kennedy's inauguration, a fresh snowfall fell.At dusk, when government offices close, the roads and sidewalks turn white.In the long dark blue twilight of winter, the snowflakes are scattered, connected into one piece, and pressed down.By 8 p.m., when the president-elect and his wife attended a concert at Constitution Hall, the entire District of Columbia was already huddled under the snow, even the brave New Frontiers could not help but be afraid of it up.The snow kept falling, sprinkled on the frozen red faces of a group of soldiers who were using flamethrowers to melt the ice around the inauguration platform on the east side of the Congress; snow covered many squares and squares around the Congress On the circular square; snow, with a shining silver thread, laces the eaves of the administrative building and the triangular federal agency buildings one by one.In order to melt the ice and snow and facilitate transportation, fires were lit along the Linyin Square, but because they could not burn too much, the effect was small; there were always gusts of wind and snowflakes roaring from the Potomac River and Chaowan Park , Before the biting cold arrives, a piece of white silver sand is sprinkled first.Shortly after the president-elect returned to his Georgetown residence at 3:45 a.m., the snow stopped, but the bitter cold continued to rage in the city.Snow piled up in the back alleys of the black district in northeast Washington, and the small oil-fired boilers in the Cleveland Garden area burned out one by one as if infected.

At noon on Friday, the temperature reached (Fahrenheit) 20 degrees above zero (note: about minus 6.7 degrees Celsius), and the wind was still very strong. Twenty minutes later, the shivering crowd immediately cheered when they saw the new president appear on the stage, hoping to hear his speech soon.But they didn't hear it right away, and had to shudder for a while while Cardinal Richard Cushing finished his seemingly endless prayers over the loudspeaker.Like so many other chapters in Kennedy's life, the inauguration began in disarray.Just after the cardinal gave his blessing, the wires short-circuited again, and a puff of blue smoke rose from under the podium.The Chief of Secret Service panicked, thinking that the entire ceremony stage was going to be on fire.He tried three times to order everyone to go away, but finally held back.Then the smoke stopped, and then another bad thing happened.Robert Frost got up to read a poem, but the reflection from the snow blinded his eyes, so he had to put away the poem and recite it from memory.Finally, Chief Justice Warren finally presided over the oath ceremony at 12:51.After taking the oath, the situation was very different: the vigorous young president, bareheaded and without a coat, with a voice quivering slightly in the cold, with a stiff Boston accent, set the tone for the new administration:

Let friends and foes alike hear my message here and now: The torch has been passed to a new generation in America . be proud. Sam Rayburn later said: "He gave a better speech than Lincoln's." Of course, what is said on this occasion is always a bit exaggerated.After a peaceful recuperation period under Eisenhower, the capital is now seeing the opening of its first reformed government since Franklin Roosevelt.Now, as in the past, it emphasizes that those in power must be young.The first lady was born in the year of the stock market crash, young and stunningly beautiful.She stood with her husband on Capitol Hill after he had finished speaking, touched his face lightly, and said in her breathless voice, "Oh, Jack, what a day!"

The period after the first few weeks was also quite beautiful.John Swallow Wright, in a memoir about the rock and roll generation, said of the Kennedy administration: "He was our president, the first president of this century, the youngest president ever elected. One of the best, and we can say with certainty, the best." For the New Frontierists, this conviction was absolutely unshakable: never had a man been so confident in his succession as commander-in-chief . John Fitzgerald Kennedy was elected president by 34221463 Americans, accounting for 49.7% of the actual voters. After his death in November 1963, national polls reported that 65 percent of people remembered that they had voted for him; that is, more than 10 million voters changed what they actually thought on election day.In fact, before he went to Dallas, they began to change their minds. A poll in June 1963 found that 59 percent said they had voted Democratic three years earlier.

This phenomenon is by no means accidental.When Kennedy took office, he was determined to expand his base of supporters across the country.During the time between his election and his inauguration, he read Richard Neustadter's academic book "The Power of the President", in which he wrote: The public's impression of the executive head, "as far as most voters For example, it was formed the first time they saw him as president (which is a whole different thing than seeing him as a presidential candidate)."Kennedy was determined that Americans would see him hard at work the first time they saw him as president.

He noticed during his inauguration parade that there were no blacks among the Coast Guard cadets, and he sent for a formal investigation on the spot.He arrived early the next morning in his simply furnished office, presided over the swearing-in ceremony of the cabinet, shook Harry Truman's hand warmly (truman's first time since leaving the White House), issued the first Executive order to double free food for four million poor Americans.In the weeks that followed, the new president moved on, full of energy.He would often pace the corridors while quickly dictating, standing reading the papers, rushing out of the house for a brisk walk, and then walking back almost as quickly as a sprint, slapping and slapping his fingers all the time. Torreya play.James Reston wrote of a typical day in his early days: "Today he did everything but climb the Washington Monument."

The rest of Washington had to catch up with him.Under the Kennedy administration, "the day before yesterday was the deadline for everything," said new Labor Secretary Arthur Goldberg.Charles Pollan said: "I have never heard of a president who wants to know everything like him." .The chairman of a congressional committee complained: "He may have two hours to use himself, but I have no time at all." Ambassador to the Soviet Union Llewellyn Thompson rarely spent more than ten minutes alone with Eisenhower in the past. Now I've had four two-hour conversations with Kennedy.This kind of conversation is not small talk.Says one senator: "When you see the president, you have to get in your car and get back to Congress, before he gets his memorandum commenting on your briefing."

On a certain day, someone calculated that a total of 100 people visited Kennedy's West Hall office.At one time a meeting was held there and 17 instructions were given.Kennedy delivered 32 State of the Union addresses and legislative proposals in the two months after he was sworn in (Eisenhower issued only five in his first two months in office), while delivering 12 speeches, issuing 22 executive orders and Announcement, sent 28 letters to foreign heads of state, held seven press conferences.Reporters were simply mesmerized by him: More people attended than any press conference given by any president before or since.A wisecracker in Washington put it this way: The new president seemed determined not only to be his Secretary of State but also to be his own Mrs. Roosevelt.He seemed to think that no detail was trivial.At an early press conference, he answered questions with confidence about the U.S. proposal to import $12 million in molasses from Cuba, which was only the tail end of a departmental report four days earlier Mentioned once.Noticing that Army Special Forces had removed the Green Berets, he ordered their restoration.While discussing strategy in Southeast Asia with the generals, he also tried out carbines destined for Vietnam.In his first spring after taking office, he found cricket grass growing on the rejuvenating lawn of the White House, and he personally told the gardener to get rid of it.

He seeks to enlarge his very important base.The people are what he needs, they are watching him, and he wants to make them happy.His bare-headed, coat-less drive helps a lot.Americans have always liked people who have initiative.Let reporters report that the new president is completely in charge; let people tell each other, for example, that the president gave Dean Acheson only four days to draft a detailed report on NATO. good.Of course, the first few televised meetings with the White House press corps were crucial.One of these, the third, was watched by 21.5 million households, and about 65 million people in total; all such television programs were broadcast live.Kennedy had to be not only his own Mrs. Roosevelt, but also his own Robert Montgomery. — translator.And he did, McLuhan called him a master showman.The wisdom of Neustadt's argument is now also reflected in the poll's research.Kennedy changed the views of a large proportion of voters as soon as he made a move.These people, who had voted for Nixon in the past, changed their minds and quickly believed that they had always supported Kennedy.This can be said to be a political miracle: the foundation of the new president is as strong as Ike's.

Douglas Carter said: "The presidency, like many French restaurants, has its own flavor." Caroline is like Greenaway Kate Greenaway (Kate Greenaway, 1846 ~ 1901), a British painter, good at drawing children's book illustrations. ——The characters in the translator's pen are so cute, including the eloquence of the president when he delivered a speech, the football on the desk of the attorney general, and the new idealism.The rhetoric of the previous administration—“dollars for two,” “cyclical readjustment,” “painful revaluation,” etc.—was no longer heard.Instead, there is a national recognition that there will soon be a dynamic course of action.A typical example is the new Labor Secretary who settled a strike within 24 hours of taking office.Every single member of the new cabinet seemed to be suffering from Kennedy mania, running back and forth, working 12-hour days, just like the overwhelmed senator.Of course, this is mostly an illusion, and one day someone is bound to feel disillusioned.But it is undeniable that at the time it was still very impressive.A minister was seen signing documents while listening to the phone while using a simple signal to convey instructions from above to his aides.Another minister is said to have trained himself to sleep only six hours a day; and another cabinet member, Robert McNamara, stunned Pentagon guards by arriving at work at 7:30 every morning.

Reinstating the Green Berets of the Special Forces showed that Kennedy advocated getting ahead in everything.David Halberstam Halberstam is a reporter for The New York Times and the author of "Ho Chi Minh" and "Best of the Best". ——When the translator later wrote about the early days of Kennedy's administration, he said that the members of Kennedy's team "give people a feeling of American-style talentism, which is exciting." —Talentism was not yet a curse word at the time—“It was felt that the best minds from all parts of the country had been assembled to realize this ideal in a new spirit of American nationalism and to give our country a strong presence in world affairs. Add a new and powerful spirit of initiative to the historical role in the book." Examples of this abound, especially in the recruitment of eminent scholars, a large number of whom hail from Cambridge, Massachusetts.There was a popular saying at the time that was tantamount to giving a new definition to "failure": a Yale graduate, driving an Edsel car with a Nixon sticker on it.Someone asked Orville Freeman how he chose him to be Secretary of Agriculture. He said, "I can't tell, but I think it may have something to do with Harvard's lack of an agricultural school." Freeman did not have Harvard's degree, but more importantly to this administration, he graduated summa cum laude from the University of Minnesota and was elected to the fraternity.Mauldin depicted the fraternity key as the new key to the capital in a cartoon.The contempt and even contempt for intellectuals that was felt everywhere in Washington eight years ago has now been swept away.In order to establish this new ethos, the New Frontiers parties try not to say things that don't quite fit, for example, their president's love of golf.In addition, his two favorite songs "Bill Bailey" and "Heart of My Heart" are not classical works.However, it is appropriate to describe him as the son of a famous family.Truman liked generals, Eisenhower liked corporate titans, Kennedy liked bachelors.Among his advisers, led by the Secretary of State, were fifteen Rhodes Scholars and four historians.The secretary of defense, the head of the Internal Revenue Service, the chairman of the Civil Service Commission, and ambassadors to India, Japan, and Yugoslavia all taught at universities.The president's gold expert is also a professor.The president's military adviser, General Maxwell Taylor, was from the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts.Meanwhile, for the first time in history, the White House has a cultural adviser. Halberstam later called them "the best of the best" when he later railed against their foreign policy failures.His assessment was made 11 years later and largely blamed them for their role in the Vietnam War.No doubt it was the worst thing they ever did, but it was not their only misfortune.This is an issue that cannot be ignored when looking at the Kennedy years.In fact, the new government has already wrestled.The responsibility for their first outstanding failure can never be entirely theirs, for they merely carried out the plans laid down by the previous administration.Of course, they should have thought carefully about the plan in advance.Their failure to do so shows how fallible even the brightest politicians are.Their mistake is to confuse imagination with reality.Robert Kennedy mused, looking back on the first weeks of his new administration: "Back then, because we kept hearing about how hard people were working, we thought we were on our way to victory." So they could spot mistakes, It should be attributed to one of the most absurd adventures in American history, that is, the incident named after the Bay of Pigs in Cuba. Of that fiasco, Halberstam later wrote: "A president who seemed so zeitgeist-approving of a plan that was clearly bound to fail, a plan with so little understanding of current conditions, It's amazing!" Kennedy himself later asked Ted Sorensen: "How could I have been so flippant? I've never been superstitious in my life. How could I have been so stupid as to let them do it? Arthur Schlesinger wrote: The Remorseful President "refers to the Bay of Pigs again and again in disbelief, incomprehensible how a rational, responsible government could be involved in such a doomed affair." Go on an adventure." Of course, these are afterthoughts.The plan didn't look so rash at first.The president-elect first heard of the plan from Allen Dulles on November 29, 1960.Two days after the president's inauguration, Dulles and Gen. Lyman Lanitzer, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, briefed the key members of the new administration—Rusk, McNamara, Robert Kennedy. On January 28, the President convened the first White House meeting to discuss the future of the Cuban brigade.Kennedy's "response was measured and reserved," Schlesinger said.The CIA men told their new chief not to worry, and they assured him there would be no loopholes, and that everything was tight. Kennedy had just been president for a week.He needed time to think the matter over, but the CIA said time was running out, and for the Cuban brigade, if the opportunity at hand was missed, there was no hope.Castro is going to get some Mi-Gal planes packed in boxes from Russia. As soon as June 1st, a sufficient number of planes can be assembled and put into active service. They will be piloted by Cuban pilots who are currently training in Czechoslovakia. The Cuban brigade was completely wiped out on the beach.In addition, President Idigoras said that those trained would not be able to stay in Guatemala after April.Because it was the rainy season and the Sierra Madre became a swamp, it was impossible to train there anymore.The CIA also reported that the Cuban brigade was ready and eager to fight.The liberation of Cuba is only waiting for a word from the president. He still hesitates, and the pressure mounts.Allen Dulles put it bluntly to him: If he did not approve the plan, he would not allow those freedom-loving exiles to liberate their homeland from the Communist dictatorship, and would encourage Cuba to subvert the democratic governments of Latin America. , and created a problem for the 1964 presidential election campaign, because the disbanded and disillusioned Cuban brigade, funded by the Republican Party, would travel the United States to expose how Kennedy had turned his back on them and the anti-communist cause.Dulles asked the President if he was going to tell the whole group of "fine young men" who asked "only for the chance to restore free government in their own country" that they "have no sympathy, support, or assistance from the United States." "· Kennedy asked what the chances of success were.Dulles reminded him that the CIA had overthrown Guatemala's Marxist government in June 1954."I was standing here, by Ike's desk, and I told him I was sure our Guatemala Action Plan would be successful," he said. "And now, Mr. President, our plan is even more promising than that." Good." The Joint Chiefs of Staff also unanimously approved the plan. In late February, Kennedy consulted the Joint Chiefs of Staff for a second time.They sent a survey team to the base in Guatemala.General Lanitzel, after reading the report and studying the Cuban brigade's operational plan, again predicted this would happen, as did Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Arleigh Burke.In order to solicit opinions more widely, Kennedy sent a Marine Corps colonel with illustrious military exploits to Guatemala to investigate.Here are his estimates: My observations strengthened my confidence that this force was capable not only of its initial mission but also of its ultimate goal of overthrowing Castro.The brigade and battalion commanders were now fully informed about the details of the plan, and emotions were high.According to the investigation, the CIA had not actually explained the plan to any of them at this time. ——Translator These officers are young, strong, intelligent, fanatically eager to fight... They said they knew their own people well enough to believe that if they dealt a heavy blow to the other side's armies, they would fall apart and immediately abandon Castro, whom they had no intention of supporting.They say it is a Cuban tradition to side with whoever wins.No matter how much power Castro can exert, they are absolutely sure of victory.