Sublime

vicissitudes

Critics of the Kennedy-Johnson administration and of the subsequent U.S. involvement in Vietnam often fault Kennedy’s revival of America’s limited war capability. By having the troops available to intervene incrementally, it was easier for the president to intervene incrementally. As Secretary of State Madeleine Albright put it (in a different cont

American leadership proved pivotal. Elected president in November 1952, Eisenhower had decided that the unification of Europe and its joint defense, including the Federal Republic of Germany, was, in the words of one historian, a kind of skeleton key, unlocking the solution to a number of problems at once, and most important, providing a type of ‘d

The Democratic candidate seemed to regard the Arab-Israeli conflict as a root of Middle Eastern disputes and Arab-Israel peace as the key to regional stability.

parlous

Richard Rhodes’s The Making of the Atomic Bomb; Thomas L. Friedman’s From Beirut to Jerusalem;

What Johnson was offering Humphrey now was power—the first power Humphrey had had in the Senate. Those “other fellows” would be told that if they wanted something from their party’s Leader (and of course they would all, at one time or another, want something from the Leader), they would have to ask Humphrey to approach him on their behalf. Humphrey

The dawn had just broken in Boston, and after a long, tense night, young John Fitzgerald Kennedy had just learned that he had defeated Henry Cabot Lodge Jr., when he got a call and Kennedy aide Lawrence F. O’Brien heard him say, “Well, thank you, Senator, thank you very much.” Putting down the phone, he told O’Brien, with what O’Brien described as