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Salient: Victoria University Students' Paper. Vol. 30, No. 1. 1967.

Manchester's sad saga

Manchester's sad saga

As a writer closes in on the events he is recording, his chances of remaining emotionally and intellectually detached from his subject narrow to nothing at all. In history, objectivity is always a relative matter, a state of mind. When the historian chooses to submerge himself in the process he can confidently be assumed no longer master of his soul.

Such is the sad saga of William Manchester. Manchester, a reporter and writer of history, became a victim of the vortex of the Kennedy legend. He is known to regard Kennedy, and the complete court and regalia, with an uncritical bias amounting to assinine devotion. Not one of the old school of critical historians.

Manchester is. of course, the party "commissioned" by the Kennedy family to produce the "definitive" and cul-minatory account of the events surrounding the assassination of President Kennedy. Prior to his undertaking this assignment, similar advances were made to two journalist-historians (Theodore White and Walter Lord), who circumspectly declined the commission with its implied elements of control.

Manchester emerged

Some health-destroying and laborious months later, Manchester emerged from the gossip-factory that is Washington, and took his manuscripts of "Death of a President" to the editorial panel of four, selected by the Kennedys to exercise their right of review. Many of the modifications which Manchester duly deleted in his revised version concerned factual inaccuracies and signs of political leanings on his part.

Things proceeded sufficiently smoothly for Manchester to arrange publication and to hawk his product for serialisation. The profits to himself, even after deductions for the Kennedy Memorial, were obviously going to be substantial.

Then, as everyone now knows, Mrs. Kennedy entered the scene in a rather devastating fashion. Decrying the book (which she had apparently not read) as a "tasteless and distorted" invasion of the family privacy, she proceeded to sue the publishers to stop publication.

After the agonised negotiations which apparently followed, the Authorised Version appeared in a gratifying blaze of publicity. Finally even the German magazine Stern, the joker in the pack, bent before the prevailing wind and deleted appropriate passages in the serialisation.

classical tragedy

Possibly, as in a classical tragedy, the piece has no villain. The whole affair was certainly avoidable. The Kennedys emerge from the fray with their least desirable side, an obsession with control and manipulation, facing to the light. Obviously they considered this book to be theirs to print if. as and when they saw fit. Manchester. on the other hand, held his to be an independent professional assignment—without financial assistance from the Kennedys —and treated it as such.

The Kennedys' motives behind this inspired piece of mishandling were two-pronged. First, there was Mrs. Kennedy, who located in the grisly work certain heartfelt confidences she released to Manchester as background material in the disturbing months after the assassination. Such passages, presumably, are not of such historical relevance that we cannot do without them.

Senator Robert Kennedy hinted, by his off-centre involvement in the affair, at a second more interesting purpose for the intervention.

The book, so the inside-dopesters disclosed, contains hair-curling descriptions of the insensitive department of Lyndon Johnson in the confusion after the events in Dallas, including his rather unseemly alacrity in taking the Presidential mantle upon himself on the return flight to Washington.

Robert Kennedy followed his initial reaction of wanting such vivid descriptions kept within the camp. The more commendable course of action here would have been to issue a forthright dissent from these passages in the book when it appeared, and a strong assertion of his own position in the matter. However, that chance is now lost for ever, and the open eruption of what resembles a dynastic feud is still on the cards.

ambiguously placed

Kennedy is at present rather ambiguously placed on the political scene. No one seems to doubt that his most immediate mission is to see another Kennedy installed in the White House as soon as, or before, it is humanly possible. President Johnson has a chronic record of cardiac troubles.

Assuming the worst. Vice-President Humphrey could: ascend upwards into the White House, shuttine Robert out in the cold until the late 70s. But if Kennedy could contrive to substitute for Humphrey's his own nomination in 1968. this solves both his own problem and that of the re-election of President Johnson.

popular adulation

In terms of political selling-power. Kennedy's greatest asset is the legacy of indiscriminate popular adulation of the late President. In his absence, the electorate chases his ghost, in the substantial form of Robert. The Manchester affair, we hear, caused concern and disillusion to the camp-followers, as shown by a substantial decline in the weekly (daily?) poll rating of the Kennedys.

The legend tells of an arclit, sparkling, loquacious era in the days of John F. Kennedy, one to be applauded, [unclear: ulated], execrated, [unclear: envied] desired. His winsome [unclear: sonallty], his style, his [unclear: atory] and writing, his spirt-[unclear: al] kinship with intellectuals [unclear: id] youth were unprecedented American leadership.

bility and charm

Then, suddenly as in this [unclear: se], the stone is lifted a little [unclear: reveal] what people had psslbly feared all along. The [unclear: yth], built around a man of [unclear: doubted] ability and charm, [unclear: d] been assiduously propa-[unclear: ed] from the start, as a [unclear: tally] new technique in esidential electioneering and nsensus-forming.

Kennedy, aspiring to the [unclear: esldency], had the effusive [unclear: id] skilled support of much [unclear: lent], most of all Joseph [unclear: ennedy]. a campaign fighter [unclear: the] days of the political [unclear: achines], and all his wealth [unclear: back] the most expensive [unclear: impaign] in American [unclear: his-iy]. The efforts in those [unclear: rly] days were channelled [unclear: activating] massive support, [unclear: id] high poll ratings, for a [unclear: an] who was both young and Catholic, and an unlikely voice for the doubters among the politicians and convention delegates.

television appearances

The trick here was to present the Democratic convention with the cut and dried choice of the people. With the nomination thus in the bag. Kennedy used the resources of the mass-media with consumate skill to monopolise the electoral limelight. Finally his acceptance in his early period of office, helped no end by his persuasive and photogenic television apeparances, snowballed out of all proportion to the election returns.

legislative log jam

Kennedy, in his short term, showed undoubted talent as a diplomatic negotiator and military strategist of some perception. Yet he lacked on the domestic front that mysterious rapport which President Johnson possesses. His record in breaking the legislative log-jam provided as a hurdle by the American system of separation of powers was not impressive.

Kennedy became imprisoned in the myth he created, a sort of folk-hero who is still around. The mass of the legend at some point became critical and thenceforward acquired a spontaneous chain-reaction of its own.

At times, through the nonsense and psychopnancy which dogged the President, there is revealed a glimpse of an easy-going and agreeable, rather indolent and snobbish personality to whom success had come too easily, and who required a challenge to bring out his best. If such is the man, then it is fitting to his memory, and to the American tradition of equality and self-respect, that his legend be levelled and its foundations sown with salt. Manchester has not helped.

Unfortunately, if this comes to pass, Robert Kennedy would start from scratch. Perhaps he would relish it.

Peter Quennell