Did US Presidency take a nose dive after JFK?

THE origin of what historian Arthur Schlesinger called the Imperial Presidency now expanding the American empire under George W Bush can be traced back to the 1960s and Vietnam, but might never have emerged if JFK had survived Dallas.

The irony, of course, is that Kennedy, who visited Ireland 40 years ago this yearsanctioned the build-up of American forces in South-East Asia, thus sowing the seeds of the hubris that was to transform the Presidency. Not on his watch though.

There is reason to believe that by the time he came to Ireland in June 1963, JFK was already having a rethink about the American involvement in Vietnam, and anticipating a second term in the White House was preparing the way for a withdrawal of US forces. sanctioned the build-up of American forces in South-East Asia, thus sowing the seeds of the hubris that was to transform the Presidency. Not on his watch though.

There is reason to believe that by the time he came to Ireland in June 1963, JFK was already having a rethink about the American involvement in Vietnam, and anticipating a second term in the White House was preparing the way for a withdrawal of US forces. Senator William Fulbright was one of those who saw where the Presidency was going after Dallas: "The world has no need for a new imperial power."

In the aftermath of JFK's assassination on November 22, 1963, it was his successor, Lyndon B Johnson, and the man who followed him in 1969, Richard M Nixon, who used Vietnam to extend the powers of the Presidency to the point where until the debacle of Watergate not even the Constitution itself could contain or limit the prerogatives of the Oval Office.

In his acclaimed book on American foreign policy, Rise to Globalism, Stephen E Ambrose, argues that Kennedy drew back from an imperial concept of his office.

His survival might have meant the bequeathing of a less godlike concept of the American Presidency and less arrogant sense of American power, and therefore the avoidance of the kind of malevolent anti-Americanism that culminated in the awful destruction of the Twin Towers on September 11. Who can tell?

In his 1995 book, In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam, Robert S McNamara, who served as Secretary of Defence for both Kennedy and Johnson, attests to the chastening of Kennedy, and to the latter's growing awareness that being President was not a licence to act like an emperor.

On the 29th anniversary of Dallas, I asked JFK's former White House aide Dave Powers whether he believed JFK would have ordered a withdrawal from Vietnam in a second term? His answer was as brief as it was unequivocal: "Yes."

This view is supported by the historian John M Newman of the University of Maryland in his book JFK and Vietnam.

"The tragedy in Texas brought about the outcome Kennedy had opposed throughout his Presidency: full-scale American intervention in Vietnam."

More than Vietnam, it was the Cuban missile crisis of October 1962 that taught Kennedy vital lessons about the limitations and dangers of expansionism and brinkmanship in a thermonuclear age.

After the crisis, in a speech at the American University, he showed how much he had learned.

"In the final analysis," he said, "our most basic common link is the fact that we all inhabit this planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children's future. And we are all mortal."

The visit to Ireland in mid-1963 was largely an occasion for sentiment, nostalgia and photo opportunities.

Those old enough to remember the three-day visit like myself tend to single out the film star good looks of the youthful President along with the easy wit and the unforced sophistication.

It had little or no policy significance, though no doubt it was good PR in America for Ireland Inc.

State papers from the Lemass period in office up to 1966, released under the 30-year rule, show that Kennedy had little or no interest in partition or in the Northern Ireland situation.

A second term, of course, would have seen him still in the White House in 1968, when things started to seriously unravel in the North. By then, who knows?

A Kennedy critic, Garry Wills of Newsweek, who felt the Presidency was more style than substance, nevertheless acknowledged that the best had yet to come.

"There is no way of knowing what President Kennedy might have done had he lived."

Norman Mailer's verdict has stood the test of time.

"There can be no doubt that Kennedy's magic was not alone that of wealth and youth and good looks, or even of all these things joined to intelligence and will. It was, more than this, the hope that he could redeem American politics from its various bondages to orthodoxy."

KENNEDY'S death in 1963, and the manner of it, sent shock waves across the globe. The young, still wrapped in innocence, felt his death most of all, because for them he embodied that most energising of all human virtues hope.

And even today, 40 years on from his visit to Ireland and his death months later, the appeal of Kennedy defies all attempts to diminish his Presidency and besmirch his legacy by an over-emphasis on his many affairs.

In a February 2002 poll conducted for ABC News, Kennedy came second to Abraham Lincoln. The sense of unfilled promise endures.