Althouse: "He came back over to the White House to his bedroom and he started to cry, just with me."

September 12, 2011

"He came back over to the White House to his bedroom and he started to cry, just with me."

"He came back over to the White House to his bedroom and he started to cry, just with me. You know, just for one -- just put his head in his hands and sort of wept... It was so sad, because all his first 100 days and all his dreams, and then this awful thing to happen. And he cared so much."

14 comments:

edutcher said...: The crying jag, of course, was brought on by the first of many incidents resulting from the fact Jack Kennedy was as much a lightweight as GodZero is now.

PS Interesting he wanted to dump Hoover. If it weren't for Hoover, he probably wouldn't have been POTUS.

Joe had gotten Jack a cushy job on Embassy Row and Hoover learned he was letting a lot of classified info slip across too many pillows (he was always a Kennedy). J Edgar confronted FDR MacArthur-style, "You do something about it or I will", and so Jack found himself in the Solomons.; 9/12/11, 10:33 AM
Wince said...: "He came back over to the White House to his bedroom and he started to cry, just with me."

Hmmm.; 9/12/11, 10:39 AM
traditionalguy said...: JFK had PTSD from 1942.

A superior force wiping out a smaller force was a trigger of many memories for him. The Free Cuban force actually had a better chance than the PT Boats had against the Tokyo Express.

But both forces were expendable tokens that went in anyway.

Memories don't go away. They just hide.; 9/12/11, 10:39 AM
Fred4Pres said...: Interesting what could have beens. Note that getting out of Vietnam was not high on his priority list around then.; 9/12/11, 10:40 AM
Steve M. Galbraith said...: Arthur Schlesinger wrote that when he say JFK the day after the disaster that he (AS) was stunned at how the President looked.

The Bay of Pigs debacle deeply affected Kennedy because he knew that they, the Cuban who landed, were all going to be dead men. Tortured and shot. Men that we had promised to support.

I don't think that shows a weakness on his part; I think it shows that JFK knew what would happen. And he grieved over it.; 9/12/11, 10:44 AM
Steve M. Galbraith said...: From Wikipedia on the aftermath of the invasion:

"On 19 April 1961, at least seven Cubans plus two CIA-hired US citizens (Angus K. McNair and Howard F. Anderson) were executed in Pinar del Rio province, after a two-day trial. On 20 April, Humberto Sorí Marin was executed at Fortaleza de la Cabaña, having been arrested on 18 March following infiltration into Cuba with 14 tons of explosives. His fellow conspirators Rogelio Gonzalez Corzo (alias 'Francisco Gutierrez'), Rafael Diaz Hanscom, Eufemio Fernandez, Arturo Hernandez Tellaheche and Manuel Lorenzo Puig Miyar were also executed.
Between April and October 1961, hundreds of executions took place in response to the invasion. They took place at various prisons, including the Fortaleza de la Cabaña and El Morro Castle. Infiltration team leaders Antonio Diaz Pou and Raimundo E. Lopez, as well as underground students Virgilio Campaneria, Alberto Tapia Ruano, and more than one hundred other insurgents were executed."

JFK knew all that was going to happen to them.

And that's why, I think, he grieved.; 9/12/11, 10:48 AM
pm317 said...: OMG, Michelle Obama or Obama handlers will come up with something to top this..; 9/12/11, 10:56 AM
edutcher said...: traditionalguy said...

JFK had PTSD from 1942.

A superior force wiping out a smaller force was a trigger of many memories for him. The Free Cuban force actually had a better chance than the PT Boats had against the Tokyo Express.

Jack didn't hit the Solomons until '43, and the PTs did fine there, as they did against worse odds at Leyte Gulf a year later. He could be an inept commander. He did a good job pulling the Para Marines off Choiseul, but he wasn't alone there

I remember at the time the movie came out, many who were there said if anyone else had pulled the stunt in Blackett Strait he did, it would have been an instant court martial; 9/12/11, 11:00 AM
AllenS said...: JFK read too many books.; 9/12/11, 11:19 AM
traditionalguy said...: Edutcher is right that Kennedy was in the fighting in 1943 instead of 1942.

But that changes little in my memory. A Pt Boat patrolling at night to hinder barge and destroyer re-supply of the Japanese held islands were up against a Japanese Navy with no air cover at night.

They were expendable.; 9/12/11, 11:25 AM
MayBee said...: "He came back over to the White House to his bedroom and he started to cry, just with me."

Hmmm.

Just from memory, I believe a big deal was made that the Fords would be the first (recent) President and First Lady to share a WH bedroom.; 9/12/11, 11:37 AM
edutcher said...: Everybody was, tg.

Besides, the PTs were fast and maneuverable and could use the element of surprise.

It was the heavier ships, the BB and CAs, that took a pounding.; 9/12/11, 11:41 AM
Jose_K said...: It is sexist but i will quote the mother of the last califa of Cordoba:dont cry as a woman what you were unable to defend as a man.; 9/12/11, 3:25 PM
Peter said...: Pardon me for not feeling too sorry for his tears. Driving a boat along with everyone on deck having his head up his ass instead of watching his sector ain't exactly heroic. The heros of PT109 were the ones off watch that night when that bumbling fool ran his boat in the path of an effin' big Destroyer.

And the bunch of real smart guys he brought in who gave us a ten year war which they had no intent to win, well, if it hadn't of been guarded I would have pissed on his grave. I do hope I can piss on MacNamara's grave before I die, like I did on LBJ's.

I wouldn't have minded my tours in Viet Nam so much if all of my "betters" hadn't got out of serving with phoney deferments or like Gore and Kerry, safe jobs with no jungle rot and gook sore scars, much less months in the tender mercies of military hospitals like the rest of us.; 9/13/11, 1:34 AM