我們在諸如讀者文摘等讀過Joseph P. Kennedy, 不過那些太簡單了
Family Guy
December 21, 2012
H. F. Davis, Topical Press Agency/Getty Images
Ambassador Joseph P. Kennedy and his
wife, Rose, in London with five of their nine children. From left:
Kathleen, Edward, Patricia, Jean and Robert (September 1938).
The next time you land at Logan Airport
in Boston, pause a moment to reflect that you are standing on landfill
annexed to what was once Noddle’s Island. Here, sometime in the late
1840s, a young escapee from the Irish potato famine named Patrick
Kennedy first set foot in the New World. A cooper by trade, Patrick died
of cholera in 1858 at age 35. His grandson and near namesake, Joseph
Patrick Kennedy, was born in 1888 in a neighborhood now known as
unfashionable East Boston. The rest, as they say, is history. In the
hands of his biographer David Nasaw, it is riveting history. “The
Patriarch” is a book hard to put down, a garland not lightly bestowed on
a cinder block numbering 787 pages of text.
Nasaw is the Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. professor of history at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. Not quite as disinterested a credential as one might hope for in a Kennedy biographer, but Nasaw informs us that the family placed no restrictions on him, and allowed him unfettered access to the deepest recesses of the archive. This book is a formidable labor of six years.
Kennedyland is terrain notably susceptible to idolatry,
hatemongering, whitewash, conspiracy-thinking, sensationalism and other
agendas. Nasaw credibly avers that he has taken forensic pains to excise
anything that could not be confirmed by primary sources. I am no
historian, but the evidence appears to support his claim. His research
is Robert Caro-esque; barely a paragraph is not footnoted. And he is
unsparing about his subject’s shortcomings, which are numerous.
Given the extraordinary sweep of Kennedy’s life — banker, Wall Street speculator, real estate baron, liquor magnate (but not bootlegger), moviemaker, Washington administrator, ambassador, paterfamilias and dynastic founder — the miracle is that Nasaw was able to tell the whole damned story in only 787 pages.
The book’s subtitle, “The Remarkable Life and Turbulent Times,” is if anything an understatement. Joe Kennedy was personally involved in virtually all the history of his time. There has been no dearth of books about America’s royal family, but this one makes a solid case that the ur-Kennedy was the most fascinating of them all.
Fascinating, that is, as opposed to entirely admirable. Not that he wasn’t in ways, but boy was J.P.K. one complicated boyo. To paraphrase the heavyweight Sonny Liston’s manager: Joe Kennedy had his good points and his bad points. It’s his bad points that weren’t so good.
On the positive side of the ledger, he was an utterly devoted father. He adored his children and, when he was there — which wasn’t often — was a touchy-feely, hands-on daddy. When he wasn’t there, he regularly wrote them all copious letters. He superintended every aspect of their lives. And in his own highly idiosyncratic way, he was a devoted husband to his wife, Rose, a priggish, pious, humorless and deeply boring woman, while conducting conspicuous affairs with Gloria Swanson, Clare Boothe Luce and “hundreds” of other women.
Also on the positive side: he was a genius at management and organization; a Midas at moneymaking. He amassed his immense fortune without even seeming to break a sweat. As a Wall Street manipulator, he was involved in some shameful episodes; but he was also the first chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, and headed up the Maritime Commission at critical times in the nation’s history. At these enormous tasks he performed tirelessly and valiantly.
As for the not-so-good part: he was a deplorable and disastrous United States ambassador to the Court of St. James’s during the crucial prewar period. One ought to refrain from smug judgments on the commonplace biases of prior generations. Kennedy was culturally anti-Semitic, but over time his anti-Semitism metastasized into a grotesque and paranoid obsession.
His isolationism was formidable and adamant, but in that, too, he was hardly unique. A lot of Americans, notably Charles Lindbergh, wanted to keep America out of another European war. But Kennedy’s relentless drive to appease — indeed, reward — tyranny was monomaniacal, preposterous and dangerous. In his view, Hitler was really just another businessman with whom a deal could be struck. Here his business genius impelled him in a direction that would have led to hell.
But it was his profound defeatism, a trait seemingly contrary to his talent for rising to a challenge and getting things done, that was so — to quote from the subtitle — remarkable. At one point we see him fulminating at the Royal Air Force. Why, you may ask, is Ambassador Kennedy in such a rage? (“Yet another rage” would be more accurate, for you can open “The Patriarch” to almost any page and find him spluttering in fury, indignation or resentment. Or all three.) Well, the answer is that he was livid at the R.A.F. for winning the Battle of Britain and thus halting the German invasion of England. No, Nasaw is not making this up. You see, all that those brave young men in their Spitfires had really accomplished was “prolonging” Britain’s inevitable defeat. One rubs one’s eyes in disbelief. Next to Joe Kennedy, Cassandra was Pollyanna.
As the saying goes, to be Irish is to know that sooner or later the world will break your heart. Daniel Patrick Moynihan adduced this chestnut of Hibernian Weltschmerz on Nov. 22, 1963, upon the assassination of the patriarch’s son. Nevertheless, for someone on whom the gods had lavished every blessing — as well as one hell of a lot of the proverbial “luck of the Irish” — Joe Kennedy was possessed of a pessimism that ran deeper than the Mariana Trench. And yet — and yet — in the end, his suspicion that the cosmic deck was stacked against him was weirdly and tragically validated. When, in 1969, this vibrantly alive man, who over a lifetime generated more energy than a nuclear reactor, died after eight years as a drooling, stroke-afflicted paralytic able to utter only one word — “No!” — he had outlived four of his beloved nine children.
His firstborn son and namesake was taken from him by the war he had so desperately tried to avert. His most cherished daughter, Kathleen, known as Kick, went down in a private plane that had no business being aloft in dangerous weather (a recurring Kennedy tragic theme). Two more sons were gruesomely murdered in public. Then there was the daughter, also much loved, whose life was permanently destroyed by a botched, if well-intentioned, lobotomy that her father had authorized.
The invalid patriarch was told about the assassinations of his sons. Nasaw does not reveal whether he was told about his remaining son’s rendezvous with karma at Chappaquiddick. Probably not; and probably just as well. His devastation was already consummate. To whom the gods had given much, the gods had taken away much more.
The dominant animus in Joe Kennedy’s life was his Irish Catholic identity. (Identity, as distinct from his religious faith.) He was born into comfortable circumstances, went to Boston Latin and Harvard (Robert Benchley was a classmate and friend). But as a native of East Boston, he was permanently stamped as an outsider. He could never hope to aspire to the status of “proper Bostonian.” This exclusion, harnessed to a brilliant mind and steel determination, fired the dynamo of his ambition.
One of the more arresting sections of the book is the betrayal — and it was certainly that, in Joe Kennedy’s view — by the Roman Catholic Church when his son was trying to become the first Irish Catholic president. The Catholic press relentlessly criticized John, while the church higher-ups sat on their cassocks, murmuring orisons for a Quaker candidate.
Nasaw cites a 1966 oral history by Cardinal Richard Cushing of Boston, an intimate Kennedy friend and beneficiary: “Some of the hierarchy . . . were not in favor of John F. Kennedy being elected president. They feared the time had not arrived when a president who was a Catholic could be elected.” This reticence may remind some of the modern-day reservations expressed in quarters of the American Jewish community that a Jewish president might exacerbate and inflame anti-Semitism. Many blacks had similar reservations about Barack Obama when he first decided to run for president.
Kennedy’s Irish Catholicism, his outsider-ness, both paralleled and reinforced his anti-Semitism. He identified with Jews, to a degree. They, like the Irish, were an oppressed people who had also been persecuted for their religion. But in Kennedy’s view the Irish had fled their holocaust in Ireland and found haven in the New World. Now, in the 1930s, the Jews were trying to draw the entire world into a war.
Kennedy was not indifferent to the plight of European Jewry. Indeed, he tried hard to achieve some international consensus on establishing new Jewish homelands somewhere in the British Empire. His motives were more tactical than humanitarian: if European Jews could be removed from the equation, then perhaps Hitler would have his Lebensraum and . . . chill.
Back home, Kennedy shared the extremist consensus that Franklin Roosevelt was the captive of his cabal of left-wing Jewish advisers: Felix Frankfurter, Samuel Rosenman, Bernard Baruch, Eugene Meyer, Sidney Hillman and the whole schmear. (Brainwashed, as Mitt Romney’s father might have put it.) At war’s end, even as news of the Nazi death camps was emerging, Kennedy was pounding the table and railing at the overrepresentation of Jews in the government. Nasaw writes: “The more he found himself on the outside, scorned and criticized as an appeaser, a man out of touch with reality, a traitor to the Roosevelt cause, the more he blamed the Jews.” None of this is pleasant to learn.
Kennedy’s relationship with Franklin Roosevelt is on the other hand supremely pleasant; indeed, is the book’s pièce de résistance. Roosevelt’s supple handling of his volatile — make that combustible — ambassador and potential rival for the presidency in 1940 and 1944 constitutes political spectator sport of the highest order. Long before “The Godfather,” Roosevelt well grasped the idea of keeping one’s friends close, one’s enemies closer.
Roosevelt and Kennedy were “frenemies” on a grand stage, full of sound and fury, strutting and fretting, alternately cooing and hissing at each other. As president, Roosevelt held superior cards, but Kennedy played his hand craftily — up to a point. The epic poker game ended on a sad and sour note. We hear the president telling his son-in-law that all Joe really cared about deep down was preserving his vast fortune: “Sometimes I think I am 200 years older than he is.” What a tart bit of patroon snobisme. It would have confirmed Kennedy’s worst suspicions about “proper” WASP establishmentarians. Of Roosevelt’s death, Nasaw writes with Zen terseness: “The nation grieved. Joseph P. Kennedy did not.”
“Isolationist” seems a barely adequate description for Kennedy’s worldview. He opposed: the Truman Doctrine of containing Communism in Greece and Italy, the Marshall Plan, the Korean War, the creation of NATO and Congressional appropriations for military assistance overseas. Oh, and the cold war. His foreign policy essentially boiled down to: We ought to mind our own damn business. But in fairness, this debate is still going on. (See Paul, Ron.)
Perhaps most stunningly, his pessimism could not even be assuaged by . . . victory! After the war, we find him accosting Winston Churchill, someone he abhorred: “After all, what did we accomplish by this war?” Churchill was not a man at a loss for words, but even he was momentarily flummoxed. In Kennedy’s view, it was Churchill who had foxed (the Jew-controlled) Roosevelt into the war that had killed his son. Elsewhere we see him lambasting — again, Nasaw is not making this up — Dwight Eisenhower, who favored retaining American troops in Europe. Kennedy “was aggressive, relentless, without a hint of deference to the general, who was arguably the most popular and respected American on two continents.” Kennedy did not know Yiddish, but he did not lack for chutzpah.
And rage. Nasaw cites an oral history — though he advises that we approach it with caution — in which Kennedy is described as browbeating Harry Truman: “Harry, what the hell are you doing campaigning for that crippled son of a bitch that killed my son?”
(A strange omission in the book: Roosevelt’s son Elliott was on the bombing mission in which Joseph P. Kennedy Jr. was killed. Elliott’s plane was following behind Joe Jr.’s to photograph the operation when Joe Jr.’s bomber suddenly exploded, perhaps because of an electrical or radio signal malfunction. Surely this “Iliad”-level detail — Roosevelt’s son possibly witnessing the death of Kennedy’s son — was worth including?)
Kennedy was a man of uncanny abilities, but among them was a talent for snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. And here we — or rather, Kennedy’s perspicacious biographer — arrive at the crux and fatal flaw:“Joseph P. Kennedy had battled all his life to become an insider, to get inside the Boston banking establishment, inside Hollywood, inside the Roosevelt circle of trusted advisers. But he had never been able to accept the reality that being an ‘insider’ meant sacrificing something to the team. His sense of his own wisdom and unique talents was so overblown that he truly believed he could stake out an independent position for himself and still remain a trusted and vital part of the Roosevelt team.”
As his son indelibly put it some months before his father was struck down: “Ask not what your country can do for you — ask what you can do for your country.” One wonders what was going through the mind of the patriarch, sitting a few feet away listening to that soaring sentiment as a fourth-generation Kennedy became president of the United States. After coming to know him over the course of this brilliant, compelling book, the reader might suspect that he was thinking he had done more than enough for his country. But the gods would demand even more.
Nasaw is the Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. professor of history at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. Not quite as disinterested a credential as one might hope for in a Kennedy biographer, but Nasaw informs us that the family placed no restrictions on him, and allowed him unfettered access to the deepest recesses of the archive. This book is a formidable labor of six years.
按图放大
John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum
New Dealers, 1932: Franklin Roosevelt,
on the observation car, and Joseph P. Kennedy, the first man standing
outside the near rail.
Given the extraordinary sweep of Kennedy’s life — banker, Wall Street speculator, real estate baron, liquor magnate (but not bootlegger), moviemaker, Washington administrator, ambassador, paterfamilias and dynastic founder — the miracle is that Nasaw was able to tell the whole damned story in only 787 pages.
The book’s subtitle, “The Remarkable Life and Turbulent Times,” is if anything an understatement. Joe Kennedy was personally involved in virtually all the history of his time. There has been no dearth of books about America’s royal family, but this one makes a solid case that the ur-Kennedy was the most fascinating of them all.
Fascinating, that is, as opposed to entirely admirable. Not that he wasn’t in ways, but boy was J.P.K. one complicated boyo. To paraphrase the heavyweight Sonny Liston’s manager: Joe Kennedy had his good points and his bad points. It’s his bad points that weren’t so good.
On the positive side of the ledger, he was an utterly devoted father. He adored his children and, when he was there — which wasn’t often — was a touchy-feely, hands-on daddy. When he wasn’t there, he regularly wrote them all copious letters. He superintended every aspect of their lives. And in his own highly idiosyncratic way, he was a devoted husband to his wife, Rose, a priggish, pious, humorless and deeply boring woman, while conducting conspicuous affairs with Gloria Swanson, Clare Boothe Luce and “hundreds” of other women.
Also on the positive side: he was a genius at management and organization; a Midas at moneymaking. He amassed his immense fortune without even seeming to break a sweat. As a Wall Street manipulator, he was involved in some shameful episodes; but he was also the first chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, and headed up the Maritime Commission at critical times in the nation’s history. At these enormous tasks he performed tirelessly and valiantly.
As for the not-so-good part: he was a deplorable and disastrous United States ambassador to the Court of St. James’s during the crucial prewar period. One ought to refrain from smug judgments on the commonplace biases of prior generations. Kennedy was culturally anti-Semitic, but over time his anti-Semitism metastasized into a grotesque and paranoid obsession.
His isolationism was formidable and adamant, but in that, too, he was hardly unique. A lot of Americans, notably Charles Lindbergh, wanted to keep America out of another European war. But Kennedy’s relentless drive to appease — indeed, reward — tyranny was monomaniacal, preposterous and dangerous. In his view, Hitler was really just another businessman with whom a deal could be struck. Here his business genius impelled him in a direction that would have led to hell.
But it was his profound defeatism, a trait seemingly contrary to his talent for rising to a challenge and getting things done, that was so — to quote from the subtitle — remarkable. At one point we see him fulminating at the Royal Air Force. Why, you may ask, is Ambassador Kennedy in such a rage? (“Yet another rage” would be more accurate, for you can open “The Patriarch” to almost any page and find him spluttering in fury, indignation or resentment. Or all three.) Well, the answer is that he was livid at the R.A.F. for winning the Battle of Britain and thus halting the German invasion of England. No, Nasaw is not making this up. You see, all that those brave young men in their Spitfires had really accomplished was “prolonging” Britain’s inevitable defeat. One rubs one’s eyes in disbelief. Next to Joe Kennedy, Cassandra was Pollyanna.
As the saying goes, to be Irish is to know that sooner or later the world will break your heart. Daniel Patrick Moynihan adduced this chestnut of Hibernian Weltschmerz on Nov. 22, 1963, upon the assassination of the patriarch’s son. Nevertheless, for someone on whom the gods had lavished every blessing — as well as one hell of a lot of the proverbial “luck of the Irish” — Joe Kennedy was possessed of a pessimism that ran deeper than the Mariana Trench. And yet — and yet — in the end, his suspicion that the cosmic deck was stacked against him was weirdly and tragically validated. When, in 1969, this vibrantly alive man, who over a lifetime generated more energy than a nuclear reactor, died after eight years as a drooling, stroke-afflicted paralytic able to utter only one word — “No!” — he had outlived four of his beloved nine children.
His firstborn son and namesake was taken from him by the war he had so desperately tried to avert. His most cherished daughter, Kathleen, known as Kick, went down in a private plane that had no business being aloft in dangerous weather (a recurring Kennedy tragic theme). Two more sons were gruesomely murdered in public. Then there was the daughter, also much loved, whose life was permanently destroyed by a botched, if well-intentioned, lobotomy that her father had authorized.
The invalid patriarch was told about the assassinations of his sons. Nasaw does not reveal whether he was told about his remaining son’s rendezvous with karma at Chappaquiddick. Probably not; and probably just as well. His devastation was already consummate. To whom the gods had given much, the gods had taken away much more.
The dominant animus in Joe Kennedy’s life was his Irish Catholic identity. (Identity, as distinct from his religious faith.) He was born into comfortable circumstances, went to Boston Latin and Harvard (Robert Benchley was a classmate and friend). But as a native of East Boston, he was permanently stamped as an outsider. He could never hope to aspire to the status of “proper Bostonian.” This exclusion, harnessed to a brilliant mind and steel determination, fired the dynamo of his ambition.
One of the more arresting sections of the book is the betrayal — and it was certainly that, in Joe Kennedy’s view — by the Roman Catholic Church when his son was trying to become the first Irish Catholic president. The Catholic press relentlessly criticized John, while the church higher-ups sat on their cassocks, murmuring orisons for a Quaker candidate.
Nasaw cites a 1966 oral history by Cardinal Richard Cushing of Boston, an intimate Kennedy friend and beneficiary: “Some of the hierarchy . . . were not in favor of John F. Kennedy being elected president. They feared the time had not arrived when a president who was a Catholic could be elected.” This reticence may remind some of the modern-day reservations expressed in quarters of the American Jewish community that a Jewish president might exacerbate and inflame anti-Semitism. Many blacks had similar reservations about Barack Obama when he first decided to run for president.
Kennedy’s Irish Catholicism, his outsider-ness, both paralleled and reinforced his anti-Semitism. He identified with Jews, to a degree. They, like the Irish, were an oppressed people who had also been persecuted for their religion. But in Kennedy’s view the Irish had fled their holocaust in Ireland and found haven in the New World. Now, in the 1930s, the Jews were trying to draw the entire world into a war.
Kennedy was not indifferent to the plight of European Jewry. Indeed, he tried hard to achieve some international consensus on establishing new Jewish homelands somewhere in the British Empire. His motives were more tactical than humanitarian: if European Jews could be removed from the equation, then perhaps Hitler would have his Lebensraum and . . . chill.
Back home, Kennedy shared the extremist consensus that Franklin Roosevelt was the captive of his cabal of left-wing Jewish advisers: Felix Frankfurter, Samuel Rosenman, Bernard Baruch, Eugene Meyer, Sidney Hillman and the whole schmear. (Brainwashed, as Mitt Romney’s father might have put it.) At war’s end, even as news of the Nazi death camps was emerging, Kennedy was pounding the table and railing at the overrepresentation of Jews in the government. Nasaw writes: “The more he found himself on the outside, scorned and criticized as an appeaser, a man out of touch with reality, a traitor to the Roosevelt cause, the more he blamed the Jews.” None of this is pleasant to learn.
Kennedy’s relationship with Franklin Roosevelt is on the other hand supremely pleasant; indeed, is the book’s pièce de résistance. Roosevelt’s supple handling of his volatile — make that combustible — ambassador and potential rival for the presidency in 1940 and 1944 constitutes political spectator sport of the highest order. Long before “The Godfather,” Roosevelt well grasped the idea of keeping one’s friends close, one’s enemies closer.
Roosevelt and Kennedy were “frenemies” on a grand stage, full of sound and fury, strutting and fretting, alternately cooing and hissing at each other. As president, Roosevelt held superior cards, but Kennedy played his hand craftily — up to a point. The epic poker game ended on a sad and sour note. We hear the president telling his son-in-law that all Joe really cared about deep down was preserving his vast fortune: “Sometimes I think I am 200 years older than he is.” What a tart bit of patroon snobisme. It would have confirmed Kennedy’s worst suspicions about “proper” WASP establishmentarians. Of Roosevelt’s death, Nasaw writes with Zen terseness: “The nation grieved. Joseph P. Kennedy did not.”
“Isolationist” seems a barely adequate description for Kennedy’s worldview. He opposed: the Truman Doctrine of containing Communism in Greece and Italy, the Marshall Plan, the Korean War, the creation of NATO and Congressional appropriations for military assistance overseas. Oh, and the cold war. His foreign policy essentially boiled down to: We ought to mind our own damn business. But in fairness, this debate is still going on. (See Paul, Ron.)
Perhaps most stunningly, his pessimism could not even be assuaged by . . . victory! After the war, we find him accosting Winston Churchill, someone he abhorred: “After all, what did we accomplish by this war?” Churchill was not a man at a loss for words, but even he was momentarily flummoxed. In Kennedy’s view, it was Churchill who had foxed (the Jew-controlled) Roosevelt into the war that had killed his son. Elsewhere we see him lambasting — again, Nasaw is not making this up — Dwight Eisenhower, who favored retaining American troops in Europe. Kennedy “was aggressive, relentless, without a hint of deference to the general, who was arguably the most popular and respected American on two continents.” Kennedy did not know Yiddish, but he did not lack for chutzpah.
And rage. Nasaw cites an oral history — though he advises that we approach it with caution — in which Kennedy is described as browbeating Harry Truman: “Harry, what the hell are you doing campaigning for that crippled son of a bitch that killed my son?”
(A strange omission in the book: Roosevelt’s son Elliott was on the bombing mission in which Joseph P. Kennedy Jr. was killed. Elliott’s plane was following behind Joe Jr.’s to photograph the operation when Joe Jr.’s bomber suddenly exploded, perhaps because of an electrical or radio signal malfunction. Surely this “Iliad”-level detail — Roosevelt’s son possibly witnessing the death of Kennedy’s son — was worth including?)
Kennedy was a man of uncanny abilities, but among them was a talent for snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. And here we — or rather, Kennedy’s perspicacious biographer — arrive at the crux and fatal flaw:“Joseph P. Kennedy had battled all his life to become an insider, to get inside the Boston banking establishment, inside Hollywood, inside the Roosevelt circle of trusted advisers. But he had never been able to accept the reality that being an ‘insider’ meant sacrificing something to the team. His sense of his own wisdom and unique talents was so overblown that he truly believed he could stake out an independent position for himself and still remain a trusted and vital part of the Roosevelt team.”
As his son indelibly put it some months before his father was struck down: “Ask not what your country can do for you — ask what you can do for your country.” One wonders what was going through the mind of the patriarch, sitting a few feet away listening to that soaring sentiment as a fourth-generation Kennedy became president of the United States. After coming to know him over the course of this brilliant, compelling book, the reader might suspect that he was thinking he had done more than enough for his country. But the gods would demand even more.
Christopher Buckley’s latest novel is “They Eat Puppies, Don’t They?”
2012年度好書：有關肯尼迪家族最迷人的一部著作
2012年12月21日
H. F. Davis, Topical Press Agency/Getty Images
1938年9月：肯尼迪大使和他的妻子羅絲還有他們五個可愛的孩子。從左到右分別是：Kathleen, Edward, Patricia, Jean和Robert。
下次你降落在波士頓洛根機場時，停下來想想，你正站在被以前的諾德島吞併的垃圾填埋場
上。在這裡，大概在19世紀40年代末，愛爾蘭馬鈴薯大饑荒時期年輕的逃亡者，帕特里克·肯尼迪(Patrick
Kennedy)首次踏上了新世界的土地。帕特里克是一位制桶工人，1858年死於霍亂，年僅35歲。他的孫子、名字幾乎跟他一樣的約瑟夫·帕特里克·肯
尼迪(Joseph Patrick
Kennedy)1888年出生於現在已成老城區的東波士頓。餘下的如俗話所說，就是歷史了。
在他的傳記作者戴維·拿沙(David Nasaw)的筆下，那是一段引人入勝的歷史。《家長》(The Patriarch)是一部令人手不釋卷的書，是一個重重地放在787頁的磚頭厚圖書上的花環。
拿沙是紐約城市大學研究生中心小阿瑟·施萊辛格(Arthur M. Schlesinger)歷史學教授。對於給肯尼迪寫傳記，他這個身份並不像人們希望的那樣公正，但拿沙對我們說，肯尼迪的家人對他沒有做任何限制，允許他不受約束地使用最隱蔽的檔案。作者寫這本書辛勞了六年之久。
肯尼迪王朝是一個容易讓作者陷入偶像崇拜、煽動仇恨、粉飾、陰謀論和煽情的話題，這已是出了名的。拿沙非常肯定地說，他已經小心地排除了所有不能用
原始資料證實的東西。我不是歷史學家，但證據好像能夠支持他的說法。他的研究是羅伯特·卡羅(Robert
Caro)式的；幾乎每一段都帶腳註。他對傳主不計其數的缺點也沒留情面。
鑒於肯尼迪的一生波瀾壯闊——他做過銀行家、華爾街投機商人、地產大亨、酒業巨頭（但不是釀私酒的）、製片人、華盛頓的管理者、大使、家長和王朝的奠基人——令人感到驚奇的是，拿沙只用787頁便能講完他的一生。
該書的副標題“非凡的人生和動蕩的時代”還有些輕描淡寫。喬·肯尼迪親身參與了他那個時代所有的歷史。關於美國皇室的書浩如煙海，但這一本充分地證明，老肯尼迪是他們家族中最迷人的一位。
迷人，而非全然令人敬佩。不是說他許多方面做得不好，而是說男孩約瑟夫·肯尼迪是一個很複雜的人。用重量級拳擊冠軍桑尼·利斯頓(Sonny Liston)的話來說：喬·肯尼迪有優點也有缺點。他的缺點使他沒那麼好。
從肯定的方面來說，他是一個異常投入的父親。他喜歡他的孩子們，當他在家時——這樣的時候並不多——他是一個充滿慈愛、親力親為的爸爸。當他不在孩 子們身邊的時候，他定期給他們寫長信。他監督他們生活的各個方面。他以自己獨特的方式，一方面對妻子羅絲忠心耿耿——這是一個自負、虔誠、沒有幽默感、非 常乏味的女性——同時他又很招搖地跟格洛里亞·斯旺森(Gloria Swanson)、克萊爾·布斯·露絲(Clare Boothe Luce)等“數百個”女性有染。
他身上的其他優點包括：他是一位管理和組織天才；致富方面的邁達斯（Midas, 古希臘神話中點石成金的角色——編注）。他不費吹灰之力就積聚了大量財富。作為華爾街的操縱者，他捲入了一些不體面的事件；但他也是證券交易委員會的首任 主席，還在美國歷史上的關鍵時刻領導了戰時委員會。擔任這些艱巨的職務時，他表現得果決、孜孜不倦。
至於不那麼好的方面：他在戰前的關鍵時期擔任駐英大使，但工作做得很糟糕，可以說非常失敗。做人要盡量避免根據前輩留下的偏見來做出自以為是的判斷。肯尼迪在文化上反猶，但慢慢地他的反猶立場變成了荒誕、偏執的執念。
他的孤立主義強大而堅定，但即使在這一點上他也並非特例。許多美國人，著名的如查爾斯·林德伯格(Charles Lindbergh)，都希望美國置身於又一場歐洲戰爭之外。但肯尼迪不懈地姑息——實際上相當於鼓勵——獨裁者的衝動是偏執、荒謬且危險的。在他看來， 希特拉不過是又一個可以與之達成交易的商人。在這一點上，他的商業天才驅使他走上了一個通往地獄的方向。
但他身上更為引人注目的，是深切的失敗主義，這是一個看上去跟他喜歡迎接挑戰、完成使命的天分相反的性格。他曾經強烈地批評英國空軍。你可能會問， 肯尼迪大使為何會如此憤怒？（準確地說是“又一次憤怒”，因為翻到《家長》的任何一頁，你都會看到他暴怒、氣憤或不滿地吼叫。或三者兼而有之）答案是，英 國空軍打贏了不列顛之戰、阻止了德國對英格蘭的入侵令他感到憤怒。不，拿沙沒有瞎編。他認為那些駕駛噴火式戰鬥機的勇敢年輕人的所作所為不過是“延長”英 國不可避免的失敗。這種觀點令人大跌眼鏡。與他相比，悲觀女神都能算樂天派。
如諺語所說，身為愛爾蘭人就要懂得世界早晚會讓你傷心。1963年11月22日，丹尼爾·帕特里克·莫伊尼漢(Daniel Patrick Moynihan)刺殺了這位族長的兒子，證實了愛爾蘭人這句悲觀的老話。然而，對一個眾神慷慨地給予所有祝福——以及諺語中所說的“愛爾蘭人的運氣” ——的人來說，喬·肯尼迪的悲觀主義比馬里亞納海溝還深。但是——但是——最終，他對命運跟他作對的猜疑奇怪而悲劇性地得到了證實。1969年，當這個精 力充沛、一生中產生的能量比核反應堆還多的人流着口水、為中風所苦、癱瘓八年後去世時，他只能說出一個字——“不！”，他比他九個孩子中的四個活得還要 長。
他的長子，跟他同名的那個，被那場他拚命去避免的戰爭奪去了生命。他最心愛的女兒凱瑟琳，人稱琪珂，乘坐的私人飛機沒遇到惡劣天氣卻墜毀了（一個反 覆重演的肯尼迪家族悲劇主題）。還有兩個兒子令人震驚地遭當眾謀殺。之後還有一個女兒，也是備受寵愛，其一生被她父親好心批准卻以失敗告終的前腦葉白質切 除手術給永久地毀掉了。
這位病弱的家長被告知了他兩個兒子遇刺的消息。拿沙沒有披露他是否被告知他倖存的兒子在查帕奎迪克跟命運的約會。也許沒有；也許他得知了。他的損失已經到了極點。神給了他很多，從他那兒拿走的更多。
喬·肯尼迪一生中最憎恨的是他的愛爾蘭天主教徒身份（身份，而不是他的宗教信仰）。他出生於一個安逸的家庭，上了波士頓拉丁語學校和哈佛大學（羅伯 特·本奇利[Robert Benchley]是他的同學和朋友）。但作為東波士頓的本地人，他被永久地貼上了外來者的標籤。他永遠都無法希求得到“正統波士頓人”的身份。這種被加 到一個傑出的頭腦和鋼鐵般的決心上的排斥，激發了他的雄心。
該書最吸引人的部分之一是，他兒子努力成為首位愛爾蘭裔天主教徒總統時，羅馬天主教教會背叛了他們——在喬·肯尼迪看來這肯定是背叛。教會的報刊不遺餘力地批評約翰，教會的高層則穿着長袍，為一位貴格會教徒候選人祈禱。
拿沙引用了波士頓的紅衣主教理乍得·庫欣(Richard Cushing)1966年的口述歷史，庫欣是肯尼迪的密友和受俸牧師，他說：“教會中的一些高層不支持約翰·肯尼迪當總統。他們擔心天主教徒當總統的時 機還不成熟。”這種保留態度會讓人想起現在美國猶太人團體中的保留態度：一位猶太人總統會加重和激化反猶主義。當奧巴馬最初決定競選總統時，很多黑人也持 類似的保留態度。
肯尼迪的愛爾蘭天主教、他的外來身份，跟他的反猶主義並行，並強化了他的反猶主義。某種程度上，他認同猶太人。他們跟愛爾蘭人一樣，曾經因為他們的 信仰而受到壓迫。但在肯尼迪看來，愛爾蘭人在愛爾蘭逃掉了他們的大屠殺，在新世界找到了避難所。現在，在1930年代，猶太人在努力把整個世界拖進戰爭。
肯尼迪對歐洲猶太人的境況並非無動於衷。實際上，他努力爭取實現某種國際共識，在英帝國的某個地方建立新的猶太國家。他的動機更多的是出於策略而非人道主義的考慮：如果歐洲猶太人能夠被從綜合體中拿掉，也許希特拉會得到他的生存空間並冷靜下來。
在國內，肯尼迪同意這樣一種極端主義的共識：富蘭克林·羅斯福(Franklin Roosevelt)被他的極左猶太顧問們俘獲了，包括費利克斯·弗蘭克福特(Felix Frankfurter)、薩繆爾·羅森曼(Samuel Rosenman)、伯納德·巴魯(Bernard Baruch)、尤金·邁耶(Eugene Meyer)、西德尼·希爾曼(Sidney Hillman)等人（米特·羅姆尼的父親可能會說，他是被洗腦了）。戰爭結束時，哪怕納粹的死亡集中營被報道出來，肯尼迪仍捶桌子責罵政府中猶太人的代 表太多。拿沙寫道：“他越是發現自己遭排斥，發現別人蔑視和批評他說他是綏靖分子、是一個脫離現實的人、背叛了羅斯福的事業，他越指責猶太人。”知道這些 不會讓人高興。
另一方面，肯尼迪跟羅斯福的關係非常有趣；實際上，這也是這本書中給人印象最深刻的部分。1940到1944年之間，羅斯福靈活地應對他反覆無常的 大使和潛在競選對手的手法，是最精彩的政治賽事。早在《教父》(The Godfather)之前，羅斯福就準確地把握住了“親近你的朋友，更要親近你的敵人”這一理念。
羅斯福和肯尼迪在一個宏偉的、充滿喧嘩與騷動、得意與苦惱的舞台上亦敵亦友，相互之間時而輕言細語，時而惡語相向。身為總統，羅斯福一手好牌，但肯 尼迪一定程度上打得很巧妙。這場漫長的撲克比賽在令人悲傷、不快的氣氛中結束了。我們聽見總統對他女婿說，喬關心的只是保存他的巨額財富：“有時我覺得我 比他年長200歲。”多麼像一個尖刻、勢利的大莊園主說的話。這證實了肯尼迪對正統的WASP（祖先是英國新教徒的美國人——譯註）最壞的猜疑。對於羅斯 福的去世，拿沙的描述帶有禪宗式的精鍊：“舉國哀傷。約瑟夫·肯尼迪則不然。”
“孤立主義”好像不足以刻畫肯尼迪的世界觀。他反對的包括：遏制希臘和意大利共產主義的杜魯門主義、馬歇爾計劃、朝鮮戰爭、組建北約和海外援助軍火 分配委員會。哦，還有冷戰。他的外交政策的核心是：我們應該操心我們自己的事情。但公平地說，這場辯論還在繼續（看看保羅，還有羅恩）。
也許最令人吃驚的是，連勝利也不能減輕他的悲觀主義。戰後，我們看到他跟自己非常憎惡的丘吉爾攀談：“最後，通過這場戰爭我們達成了什麼呢？”丘吉 爾不是一個笨嘴拙舌的人，但連他一時間也無言以對。在肯尼迪看來，是丘吉爾誘騙（被猶太人控制）的羅斯福捲入了那場導致他兒子喪命的戰爭。我們還看到他斥 責（這也不是拿沙編造的）贊成在歐洲保留美國軍隊的艾森豪威爾。肯尼迪“咄咄逼人、毫不留情、一點也不尊重將軍，而後者堪稱在兩大洲都是最受歡迎、最受尊 敬的美國人”。肯尼迪不會說意地緒語，但一樣大膽放肆。
還有怒火。拿沙引用了一段口述歷史——雖然他建議我們要慎重看待這句話——說肯尼迪這樣恫嚇哈里·杜魯門(Harry Truman)：“哈里，你怎麼在為那個害死了我兒子的狗日的瘸子競選？”
（書中很奇怪地省略了這樣一個情節：羅斯福的兒子埃利奧特[Elliott]也參加了小約瑟夫·肯尼迪遇難的那次轟炸任務。埃利奧特乘坐的飛機跟在 小約瑟夫的後面，去拍攝那次行動，小約瑟夫的轟炸機突然爆炸，可能是由於電子或無線電信號失靈。羅斯福的兒子可能目睹了肯尼迪的兒子之死——這種“伊利亞 特”水準的細節，難道不值得寫到書里嗎？）
肯尼迪有着不同尋常的能力，包括總能功敗垂成的天賦。在這裡——毋寧說從肯尼迪有高超洞察力的傳記作者那裡——我們看到了他的癥結與致命缺陷：“約 瑟夫·P·肯尼迪終期一生一直在爭取成為一個局內人，進入波士頓銀行業的圈子、進入好萊塢、進入羅斯福信任的顧問的圈子。但是他一直都接受不了這樣一個現 實：成為局內人意味着要為團隊做出犧牲。他對自己的智慧和獨一無二的天賦的感覺過於誇張，以至於他真的相信他能夠要求一個獨立的位置，同時仍然是羅斯福團 隊中被信任的、關鍵人物。”
在他病倒前幾個月，他兒子說了一句令人難忘的話：“不要問你的國家能為你做什麼——要問你能為你的國家做些什麼。”人們不由得想知道，當肯尼迪家族 第四代中的一員成為美國總統時，這位坐在幾英尺之外聆聽這句響徹天際的話的人在想些什麼。在閱讀這部精彩的、引人入勝的書之後了解了他之後，讀者可能會猜 測，他想的是他已經為他的國家做得夠多的了。但神會要求更多。
在他的傳記作者戴維·拿沙(David Nasaw)的筆下，那是一段引人入勝的歷史。《家長》(The Patriarch)是一部令人手不釋卷的書，是一個重重地放在787頁的磚頭厚圖書上的花環。
拿沙是紐約城市大學研究生中心小阿瑟·施萊辛格(Arthur M. Schlesinger)歷史學教授。對於給肯尼迪寫傳記，他這個身份並不像人們希望的那樣公正，但拿沙對我們說，肯尼迪的家人對他沒有做任何限制，允許他不受約束地使用最隱蔽的檔案。作者寫這本書辛勞了六年之久。
鑒於肯尼迪的一生波瀾壯闊——他做過銀行家、華爾街投機商人、地產大亨、酒業巨頭（但不是釀私酒的）、製片人、華盛頓的管理者、大使、家長和王朝的奠基人——令人感到驚奇的是，拿沙只用787頁便能講完他的一生。
該書的副標題“非凡的人生和動蕩的時代”還有些輕描淡寫。喬·肯尼迪親身參與了他那個時代所有的歷史。關於美國皇室的書浩如煙海，但這一本充分地證明，老肯尼迪是他們家族中最迷人的一位。
迷人，而非全然令人敬佩。不是說他許多方面做得不好，而是說男孩約瑟夫·肯尼迪是一個很複雜的人。用重量級拳擊冠軍桑尼·利斯頓(Sonny Liston)的話來說：喬·肯尼迪有優點也有缺點。他的缺點使他沒那麼好。
從肯定的方面來說，他是一個異常投入的父親。他喜歡他的孩子們，當他在家時——這樣的時候並不多——他是一個充滿慈愛、親力親為的爸爸。當他不在孩 子們身邊的時候，他定期給他們寫長信。他監督他們生活的各個方面。他以自己獨特的方式，一方面對妻子羅絲忠心耿耿——這是一個自負、虔誠、沒有幽默感、非 常乏味的女性——同時他又很招搖地跟格洛里亞·斯旺森(Gloria Swanson)、克萊爾·布斯·露絲(Clare Boothe Luce)等“數百個”女性有染。
他身上的其他優點包括：他是一位管理和組織天才；致富方面的邁達斯（Midas, 古希臘神話中點石成金的角色——編注）。他不費吹灰之力就積聚了大量財富。作為華爾街的操縱者，他捲入了一些不體面的事件；但他也是證券交易委員會的首任 主席，還在美國歷史上的關鍵時刻領導了戰時委員會。擔任這些艱巨的職務時，他表現得果決、孜孜不倦。
至於不那麼好的方面：他在戰前的關鍵時期擔任駐英大使，但工作做得很糟糕，可以說非常失敗。做人要盡量避免根據前輩留下的偏見來做出自以為是的判斷。肯尼迪在文化上反猶，但慢慢地他的反猶立場變成了荒誕、偏執的執念。
他的孤立主義強大而堅定，但即使在這一點上他也並非特例。許多美國人，著名的如查爾斯·林德伯格(Charles Lindbergh)，都希望美國置身於又一場歐洲戰爭之外。但肯尼迪不懈地姑息——實際上相當於鼓勵——獨裁者的衝動是偏執、荒謬且危險的。在他看來， 希特拉不過是又一個可以與之達成交易的商人。在這一點上，他的商業天才驅使他走上了一個通往地獄的方向。
但他身上更為引人注目的，是深切的失敗主義，這是一個看上去跟他喜歡迎接挑戰、完成使命的天分相反的性格。他曾經強烈地批評英國空軍。你可能會問， 肯尼迪大使為何會如此憤怒？（準確地說是“又一次憤怒”，因為翻到《家長》的任何一頁，你都會看到他暴怒、氣憤或不滿地吼叫。或三者兼而有之）答案是，英 國空軍打贏了不列顛之戰、阻止了德國對英格蘭的入侵令他感到憤怒。不，拿沙沒有瞎編。他認為那些駕駛噴火式戰鬥機的勇敢年輕人的所作所為不過是“延長”英 國不可避免的失敗。這種觀點令人大跌眼鏡。與他相比，悲觀女神都能算樂天派。
如諺語所說，身為愛爾蘭人就要懂得世界早晚會讓你傷心。1963年11月22日，丹尼爾·帕特里克·莫伊尼漢(Daniel Patrick Moynihan)刺殺了這位族長的兒子，證實了愛爾蘭人這句悲觀的老話。然而，對一個眾神慷慨地給予所有祝福——以及諺語中所說的“愛爾蘭人的運氣” ——的人來說，喬·肯尼迪的悲觀主義比馬里亞納海溝還深。但是——但是——最終，他對命運跟他作對的猜疑奇怪而悲劇性地得到了證實。1969年，當這個精 力充沛、一生中產生的能量比核反應堆還多的人流着口水、為中風所苦、癱瘓八年後去世時，他只能說出一個字——“不！”，他比他九個孩子中的四個活得還要 長。
他的長子，跟他同名的那個，被那場他拚命去避免的戰爭奪去了生命。他最心愛的女兒凱瑟琳，人稱琪珂，乘坐的私人飛機沒遇到惡劣天氣卻墜毀了（一個反 覆重演的肯尼迪家族悲劇主題）。還有兩個兒子令人震驚地遭當眾謀殺。之後還有一個女兒，也是備受寵愛，其一生被她父親好心批准卻以失敗告終的前腦葉白質切 除手術給永久地毀掉了。
這位病弱的家長被告知了他兩個兒子遇刺的消息。拿沙沒有披露他是否被告知他倖存的兒子在查帕奎迪克跟命運的約會。也許沒有；也許他得知了。他的損失已經到了極點。神給了他很多，從他那兒拿走的更多。
喬·肯尼迪一生中最憎恨的是他的愛爾蘭天主教徒身份（身份，而不是他的宗教信仰）。他出生於一個安逸的家庭，上了波士頓拉丁語學校和哈佛大學（羅伯 特·本奇利[Robert Benchley]是他的同學和朋友）。但作為東波士頓的本地人，他被永久地貼上了外來者的標籤。他永遠都無法希求得到“正統波士頓人”的身份。這種被加 到一個傑出的頭腦和鋼鐵般的決心上的排斥，激發了他的雄心。
該書最吸引人的部分之一是，他兒子努力成為首位愛爾蘭裔天主教徒總統時，羅馬天主教教會背叛了他們——在喬·肯尼迪看來這肯定是背叛。教會的報刊不遺餘力地批評約翰，教會的高層則穿着長袍，為一位貴格會教徒候選人祈禱。
拿沙引用了波士頓的紅衣主教理乍得·庫欣(Richard Cushing)1966年的口述歷史，庫欣是肯尼迪的密友和受俸牧師，他說：“教會中的一些高層不支持約翰·肯尼迪當總統。他們擔心天主教徒當總統的時 機還不成熟。”這種保留態度會讓人想起現在美國猶太人團體中的保留態度：一位猶太人總統會加重和激化反猶主義。當奧巴馬最初決定競選總統時，很多黑人也持 類似的保留態度。
肯尼迪的愛爾蘭天主教、他的外來身份，跟他的反猶主義並行，並強化了他的反猶主義。某種程度上，他認同猶太人。他們跟愛爾蘭人一樣，曾經因為他們的 信仰而受到壓迫。但在肯尼迪看來，愛爾蘭人在愛爾蘭逃掉了他們的大屠殺，在新世界找到了避難所。現在，在1930年代，猶太人在努力把整個世界拖進戰爭。
肯尼迪對歐洲猶太人的境況並非無動於衷。實際上，他努力爭取實現某種國際共識，在英帝國的某個地方建立新的猶太國家。他的動機更多的是出於策略而非人道主義的考慮：如果歐洲猶太人能夠被從綜合體中拿掉，也許希特拉會得到他的生存空間並冷靜下來。
在國內，肯尼迪同意這樣一種極端主義的共識：富蘭克林·羅斯福(Franklin Roosevelt)被他的極左猶太顧問們俘獲了，包括費利克斯·弗蘭克福特(Felix Frankfurter)、薩繆爾·羅森曼(Samuel Rosenman)、伯納德·巴魯(Bernard Baruch)、尤金·邁耶(Eugene Meyer)、西德尼·希爾曼(Sidney Hillman)等人（米特·羅姆尼的父親可能會說，他是被洗腦了）。戰爭結束時，哪怕納粹的死亡集中營被報道出來，肯尼迪仍捶桌子責罵政府中猶太人的代 表太多。拿沙寫道：“他越是發現自己遭排斥，發現別人蔑視和批評他說他是綏靖分子、是一個脫離現實的人、背叛了羅斯福的事業，他越指責猶太人。”知道這些 不會讓人高興。
另一方面，肯尼迪跟羅斯福的關係非常有趣；實際上，這也是這本書中給人印象最深刻的部分。1940到1944年之間，羅斯福靈活地應對他反覆無常的 大使和潛在競選對手的手法，是最精彩的政治賽事。早在《教父》(The Godfather)之前，羅斯福就準確地把握住了“親近你的朋友，更要親近你的敵人”這一理念。
羅斯福和肯尼迪在一個宏偉的、充滿喧嘩與騷動、得意與苦惱的舞台上亦敵亦友，相互之間時而輕言細語，時而惡語相向。身為總統，羅斯福一手好牌，但肯 尼迪一定程度上打得很巧妙。這場漫長的撲克比賽在令人悲傷、不快的氣氛中結束了。我們聽見總統對他女婿說，喬關心的只是保存他的巨額財富：“有時我覺得我 比他年長200歲。”多麼像一個尖刻、勢利的大莊園主說的話。這證實了肯尼迪對正統的WASP（祖先是英國新教徒的美國人——譯註）最壞的猜疑。對於羅斯 福的去世，拿沙的描述帶有禪宗式的精鍊：“舉國哀傷。約瑟夫·肯尼迪則不然。”
“孤立主義”好像不足以刻畫肯尼迪的世界觀。他反對的包括：遏制希臘和意大利共產主義的杜魯門主義、馬歇爾計劃、朝鮮戰爭、組建北約和海外援助軍火 分配委員會。哦，還有冷戰。他的外交政策的核心是：我們應該操心我們自己的事情。但公平地說，這場辯論還在繼續（看看保羅，還有羅恩）。
也許最令人吃驚的是，連勝利也不能減輕他的悲觀主義。戰後，我們看到他跟自己非常憎惡的丘吉爾攀談：“最後，通過這場戰爭我們達成了什麼呢？”丘吉 爾不是一個笨嘴拙舌的人，但連他一時間也無言以對。在肯尼迪看來，是丘吉爾誘騙（被猶太人控制）的羅斯福捲入了那場導致他兒子喪命的戰爭。我們還看到他斥 責（這也不是拿沙編造的）贊成在歐洲保留美國軍隊的艾森豪威爾。肯尼迪“咄咄逼人、毫不留情、一點也不尊重將軍，而後者堪稱在兩大洲都是最受歡迎、最受尊 敬的美國人”。肯尼迪不會說意地緒語，但一樣大膽放肆。
還有怒火。拿沙引用了一段口述歷史——雖然他建議我們要慎重看待這句話——說肯尼迪這樣恫嚇哈里·杜魯門(Harry Truman)：“哈里，你怎麼在為那個害死了我兒子的狗日的瘸子競選？”
（書中很奇怪地省略了這樣一個情節：羅斯福的兒子埃利奧特[Elliott]也參加了小約瑟夫·肯尼迪遇難的那次轟炸任務。埃利奧特乘坐的飛機跟在 小約瑟夫的後面，去拍攝那次行動，小約瑟夫的轟炸機突然爆炸，可能是由於電子或無線電信號失靈。羅斯福的兒子可能目睹了肯尼迪的兒子之死——這種“伊利亞 特”水準的細節，難道不值得寫到書里嗎？）
肯尼迪有着不同尋常的能力，包括總能功敗垂成的天賦。在這裡——毋寧說從肯尼迪有高超洞察力的傳記作者那裡——我們看到了他的癥結與致命缺陷：“約 瑟夫·P·肯尼迪終期一生一直在爭取成為一個局內人，進入波士頓銀行業的圈子、進入好萊塢、進入羅斯福信任的顧問的圈子。但是他一直都接受不了這樣一個現 實：成為局內人意味着要為團隊做出犧牲。他對自己的智慧和獨一無二的天賦的感覺過於誇張，以至於他真的相信他能夠要求一個獨立的位置，同時仍然是羅斯福團 隊中被信任的、關鍵人物。”
在他病倒前幾個月，他兒子說了一句令人難忘的話：“不要問你的國家能為你做什麼——要問你能為你的國家做些什麼。”人們不由得想知道，當肯尼迪家族 第四代中的一員成為美國總統時，這位坐在幾英尺之外聆聽這句響徹天際的話的人在想些什麼。在閱讀這部精彩的、引人入勝的書之後了解了他之後，讀者可能會猜 測，他想的是他已經為他的國家做得夠多的了。但神會要求更多。
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