6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
An Engrossing Account of Tumultous Diplomacy, May 21, 2008
Dr. Swift has constructed through prodigious research a fascinating composite of information which he presents as a highly engrossing narrative of the role of Joseph P. Kennedy as U.S. ambassador to Great Britain on the eve of World War II.
Swift's keen appraisal of Ambassador Kennedy's actions and motivations and the reprecussions thereof, along with a fresh look at the challenges and opposition confronting Kennedy from both sides of the Atlantic at the time, serves to cast the controversial father of a future U.S. president in a more appealing and admirable light than he is usually afforded.
Throughout his intriguing report on Kennedy's endeavors in pre-war diplomacy, Swift skillfully limns artful profiles of the high level players in the saga, including Neville Chamberlain, Winston Churchill, King George VI and Franklin Roosevelt, with their reactions and interactions during their continual assessments of the ambassador's merit vis-a-vis their own agendas. In sum, Dr. Swift's scholarly book, spiced with titilating material on the personal lives of Ambassador Kennedy and his wife and children as well as accounts of the foibles and vagaries of other participating political luminaries of the era constitutes a compelling read.
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
very entertaining, June 11, 2008
It is hard to go wrong with a book about the Kennedys, and this one is a gem. From the politically naive and inept father, the Ambassador, to chubby Teddy, age 6, writing charming notes to his father, to Jack bedding Marlene Dietrich as a young Harvard student, the stories are all fascinating. I especially enjoyed learning about Kathleen, who shared Jack's wit without his sizable brainpower, and Joe, Jr., a fearless guy who, brought up in the competitiveness Joe, Sr., glorified, but not as bright, witty or successful as a war hero as Jack, blew himself up in a suicide bomb run near the end of World War II. Joe, Jr., like his father suffered from political myopia and lack of vision, and stuck to extreme isolationism long after it was clearly untenable for a successful Democratic politician to do so.
Not to mention seeing Rosemary, the tragic one, attend elegant high society dances in London with her sisters, without any serious problems, and function well as an arts and crafts teacher in England, totally lose it when she returned to the US, causing Joe, Sr., to agree to a lobotomy, which turned her into a vegetable. And mother Rose, who probably spent as much money on fancy French couture as Joe did on his mistresses.
The book also contains lots of wonderful cameos, from King George VI and Queen Elizabeth, to their daughter, the current Queen, to the Lindberghs,
who, with their own rarified brand of politicial naivete, were about to move permanently to Nazi Germany when the war began (!), to Jack's wonderful gay best friend, Lem Billings, and the gay American Ambassador in Paris, Wlliam Bullitt, who lived openly with his partner.
One persistent theme of the book is to criticize FDR's failure to explain his foreign policy to Joe Kennedy. This criticism is, I believe, misplaced. Joe Kennedy knew next to nothing about foreign policy when he asked for the job as the first American Irish Ambassador to the King, and less when he was forced to quit. FDR rightly did not trust Kennedy, and wanted Kennedy out of the country during the 1940 Presidential election. Joe, Sr., lacked the political sophistication to understand his role, or to adjust to FDR's policies and changing public opinion in the US, which moved towards supporting intervention before Pearl Harbor left people with no other option than to fight. FDR could not have clarified his foreign policy to Kennedy because FDR was hiding his own interventionist views from a public and a Congress (and a London Ambassador) who were stuck on neutrality and isolationism. Kennedy made the additional mistake of befriending Neville Chamberlain, a very small-minded and naive politician like himself, who made the near-fatal mistake of thinking Hitler would keep his promises. Kennedy and Chamberlain were two peas in a pod.
In addition, Joe, Sr., a successful businessman, made the mistake of thinking economics controlled the bloodthirsty ideologues of the Nazi regime.
Joe Sr's reward was to see his political career destroyed; he never held any political office after he left London.
On the other hand, Jack, Bobby, Ted, all of them far better politicians and strategists than their father, never made the mistake of hanging on to extreme positions, or giving disastrously candid interviews to reporters, such as Louis Lyons, who actually and courageously reported the crazy things Joe said after his return to the US. The cosmopolitanism and friends the family developed in England just before the war, however, proved a great benefit, especially to Jack. Without the Kennedys' experiences in England, could Camelot have existed?
The book is also full of witty stories and interesting analogies, such as the fact that FDR, like Obama, had trouble with the Irish Catholic working class voters of his day.
FDR achieved his goal of keeping Joe, Sr. out of the 1940 presidential campaign; at Rose Kennedy's urging, aided by some blarney from FDR, Joe even gave a nationwide radio address before the election endorsing FDR. The important job in the government which FDR, in a staged meeting at the White House, promised Kennedy, of course never materialized.
Joe's reward, as we all know, was an amazingly talented and fascinating family. Whatever his other faults, Joe seems to have been a genuinely good father, treating his children with respect, discussing issues at the dinner table and providing support when needed. When he was not around he wrote personalized letters to each of the children. Even the tragedies, such as Rosemary's problems, often had wonderful trajectories, such as the Special Olympics which Eunice and others developed following Rosemary's tragedy.
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