'Kennedy was out of his depth’

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32663, 20 July 1971, Page 13

'Kennedy was out of his depth’

(N.Z. Press Association—Copyright)

NEW YORK, July 19.

The former American Secretary of State, Mr Dean Acheson, believed that President Kennedy was not incisive, and that he was really out of his depth as President, the magazine, “Life,” reports.

“I hate to say this, because I know it is going to be misunderstood, but his reputation is greater because of the tragedy of his death than it would have been if he had lived out two terms,” Mr Acheson is quoted as saying of the assassinated American leader.

“Kennedy was a most attractive person,” Mr Acheson is quoted as saying. “He had real charm, but he did not seem to be in any sense a great man. I did not think he knew a great deal about the matters that it is desirable that a head of State or a President of the United States should know about; he was not decisive.” Mr Acheson, who is 78, recalled the Cuban missile crisis thus: “The President asked me to come and see him, and I talked with him for quite a while about it. He seemed to me to be repeating some of his brother’s cliches that I had opposed rather vigorously in council.

“One of them was that if we bombed those Russian missiles, this would be, as Bob Kennedy put it, ‘Pearl Harbour in reverse.’ I said both then and when I talked with the President in private,

that I thought this was a silly way to analyse a problem. “Pearl Harbour came out of an unprovoked, sudden attack by the Japanese on our passive fleet, which was doing nothing. What we were now faced with was the introduction of nuclear weapons into Cuba, and what were we going to do about it.

“To talk about that as a ‘Pearl Harbour in reverse’ seemed to me high-school thought that was unworthy of people charged with the Government of a great country; and I said: ‘You ought not to be saying things like this. It is unworthy of you to talk that way.’

“And I remember the President walking over to the French windows that look out on to the rose garden of the White House, and he looked out there for a long time. He turned around to me and said: ‘I think I’d better earn my salary this week.’ “Well, your heart went out to him—but it didn’t seem to me greatness. This is not really what I was looking for in the leadership of my country at this point.”