Sublime

Just as Eisenhower’s selection of so many businessmen proved to be a clear signal of policies favoring less government regulation and influence, so Kennedy’s choice of so many highly intelligent, broad-minded men indicated that his presidency would be open to new ideas and inclined to break with conventional wisdom in search of more effective actio

The argument Johnson was advancing now was that Kennedy, needing to win on the first ballot if he was to win at all, would not be able to win enough primaries or enough delegates to win on that ballot—and he had convinced himself of that so completely that he discounted any suggestion to the contrary.

The sure touch the young President demonstrated on foreign affairs (a sure touch amounting to diplomatic genius in the Cuban Missile Crisis), the programs—the Peace Corps, the Alliance for Progress, the nuclear test ban treaty—which embodied an idealism that was the best of America, the mastery he showed on the podium and in press conferences, the

As William White was to put it, “Without rejecting outright a single MacArthur policy, without defending at a single point a single Truman policy, without accusing the General of anything whatever, the Senate’s investigation had largely ended his influence on policy-making. It had set in motion an intellectual counterforce to the emotional adulatio