Season 3, Episode 9: Monika Wiesak, America's Last President: What the World Lost When It Lost John F. Kennedy

Join Professor Jeffrey Sachs and Monika Wiesak as they discuss one of America's most iconic leaders in, America's Last President: What the World Lost When It Lost John F. Kennedy. Listen in as they delve into the thrilling saga of a young, audacious visionary who dared to challenge the status quo and redefine the course of history.

Together, they uncover the untold story of courage and sacrifice of JFK’s legacy—one where he embarked on a daring mission to reshape the world order, advocating for decentralized power, global peace, and the rights of every citizen. JFK’s relentless pursuit of justice led him into epic battles against entrenched interests, culminating in a showdown that changed the course of nations. From his crusade for civil rights to his groundbreaking efforts in arms control, JFK’s unwavering commitment to a brighter future for all inspires us to confront deep questions about what it all means for our world today.

The Book Club with Jeffrey Sachs is brought to you by the SDG Academy, the flagship education initiative of the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network. Learn more and get involved at bookclubwithjeffreysachs.org.

Footnotes:

• John F. Kennedy 
• Poland’s Fall of Communism
• JFK Civil Rights Speech
• George W Bush Weapons of Mass Destruction 
• JFK’s Peace Speech
• Nuclear Test Ban Treaty
• Civil Rights Act
• “Peace is a Process, a Way of Solving Problems”
• Bob Dylan - Murder Most Foul
• Character Assassination of JFK
• Ted Sorensen
• Khrushchev’s Knot
• Khrushchev and Kennedy Letters
• Anti-Colonialist
• War Mongers
• CIA
• Vietnam and JFK
• JFK Assassination
• Public trust in government during JFK

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Transcript

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SPEAKER_01 0:00

Hello, I'm Jeffrey Sachs. Welcome to Book Club, a monthly conversation with world-leading authors who have written scintillating, inspiring, and remarkably important books about history, social justices, and the challenges of building a decent world. Hello, welcome to Book Club with Jeffrey Sachs. Today I'm absolutely delighted to meet, for me, the first time with Monica Pisak. Actually, I even need to find out how to pronounce your name properly, but you've written a wonderful book, uh, America's Last President, What the World Lost When It Lost John F. Kennedy. Uh, and Kennedy is one of my heroes, and uh I know from reading your wonderful book that he's one of yours as well. So uh kindred spirits, and I look forward to uh speaking with you. So, first let me get your name uh right uh actually for everything.

SPEAKER_00 0:57

Right, so kind of both ways. So it's Monica Wiesak in English, but it's Wiesak in Polish. So it sounded like you kind of said it both ways. Yeah. So my mom says she loves you because you did a lot of amazing work in Poland after the fall of communism.

SPEAKER_01 1:10

I was uh there as the advisor to the first post-communist government uh back 35 years ago. It was a very uh remarkable period. Uh Poland did great, uh, and I was uh very happy to be part of that. Are you American born?

SPEAKER_00 1:25

No, I was born in Poland. I moved here when I was five. So I remember the long lines to get food, and then my mom said after you came in to help Poland, the shelves were full, the store shelves were full. So I thought you'd appreciate that.

SPEAKER_01 1:36

It's interesting that you mentioned that because for me, I came in 1989, which was the year of transition, and I came actually the day that the communist government signed the so-called roundtable agreement with the Solidarity Trade Union movement. It was in April 1989, and just the image of Warsaw, long lines and empty shelves, and it was very, very sad. So that was exactly the start for me uh in uh the economic reform as well. Well, it's a it's a pleasure to meet you, and your book is wonderful. So I want people to read it uh and to uh understand President Kennedy through your eyes. President Kennedy uh for me was uh and remains a a great figure, a statesman uh where we don't have statesmen as presidents uh and haven't really since. And so your subtitle or your title that he's America's last president really unfortunately resonates with me that uh because uh he had uh stature that was something something different. But you were born in Poland, grew up in Poland, came to the United States. How did you discover President Kennedy uh individually? And and uh you're not a professional historian, uh I gather, though the though the book is extremely well written and documented, so I really appreciate that. But tell me a little bit about how you came to this uh knowledge and admiration of President Kennedy.

SPEAKER_00 3:10

Yeah, so we moved to the States when I was five, and I remember this was in 1985, and I remember during that time period, like late 80s into the 90s, I had seen a few clips of President Kennedy speaking, which I was really, really impressed by, especially his civil rights speech, because he came off as really sincere, compassionate, genuine. But then during that time period, there was also a lot of, I guess, gossip or negative stories about him. The press was always talking about, you know, he was making deals with the mob, he was trying to kill Castro, he was having all these affairs. So I had this dichotomy of these two separate images of him. And it seemed like people either loved him or hated him. And so I didn't know where the truth lay, whether it lay somewhere in the middle or one side was right or the other side was right. And so in my mind, from when I was a child, there was this curiosity in the back of my mind of who is this person? But you know, I was a child, so I didn't dig into it. I wasn't reading any books or anything like that. And then as I got older, I started to realize that things just didn't seem quite right. I think the first time my eyes opened was during the Iraq war because I remember every time I turned on the TV, it was weapons of mass destruction, weapons of mass destruction, weapons of mass destruction. And I had no idea what was going on. I had no idea if there were or were not weapons of mass destruction. But I felt like someone was trying to sell me something. And it felt bigger than just George Bush, because I was like, George Bush is not this sophisticated to get all the media to, you know, repeat this phrase over and over. So that's the first time I started to wonder like, how is this country really governed or how was it run? Um and then as time went on, you know, more and more things happened.

SPEAKER_01 4:49

Very astute, by the way. I I can tell you, uh in those days of the launch of the Iraq War, I was skeptical because I had already reached conclusions about how our country is run, uh, with uh a tremendous amount of propaganda and narrative and uh uh and the role of the CIA and so forth in in all of this. And so I I was almost alone uh among the mainstream uh community, you know, as I appeared on television, in saying, I don't feel this is right, you know, this doesn't this is s making a pitch to us. Uh you you had it exactly right.

SPEAKER_00 5:30

Yeah, because I didn't obviously I didn't know the truth, but I felt someone was trying to sell me something, and that made me very uneasy. You know, it says, and why are they trying to sell this, or why is there no discuss more more discussion on this topic? And as time went on, you know, there were more and more topics where I kind of got that same vibe. And it seemed like we went from Democrat to Republican to Democrat to Republican, and not much seemed to change. I mean, some things changed, obviously, but the bigger picture, like the wars continued, you know, like overall it didn't seem like there was a change. In every election, it was this is the most important election of our lifetime. And in the back of my mind, I was like, is it really? Is much going to change? You know, so with time, I started, I think 2008 was the first book about JFK I read. And I thought, oh, I'll just read a book and I'll learn a little more. And the reason I went back to him is he had always impressed me so much as a child, and I was so unimpressed kind of by today's leadership that I thought, let me go back and study a little bit about him because maybe that'll give me a better understanding of why things are the way they are and why the world is the way it is today. Maybe I'll understand better if I understand Kennedy. And so I thought I'll just read a book or two. And then I read that and I was interested. And I said, let me read more. And then I was like, okay, that's kind of interesting. I was like, let me read more. And so before I knew it, I had read like 50 books, and I was listening to his press conferences and his speeches. And you know, like the further I went down the rabbit hole, the faster I kind of sunk down it. And I still had no intention whatsoever of writing a book. This was purely from my own understanding, because I felt he gave me so much insight into today, and I was finally understanding oh, why were they repeating weapons of mass destruction on TV all day long? You know, it was giving me a lot of insight that I wouldn't have had otherwise if I didn't study him.

SPEAKER_01 7:16

Well, what was your professional life at that point, by the way?

SPEAKER_00 7:18

Oh, I work in IT. So I work in IT systems, software systems. I was a math major in math and economics. So, you know, I wasn't into not a writer by any means or a historian.

SPEAKER_01 7:29

You weren't uh doing professional history, you weren't, but you became absolutely interested uh in how Kennedy could uh shed light on uh our current travails. I think it's uh fantastic. I I had a similar feeling, of course. I I'm older. I I uh was a young person when Kennedy was uh killed in November 1963. I was nine years old. I remember, of course, uh, as everybody does, uh all of the circumstances of that. I was inspired by Kennedy, profoundly inspired by his brother, because I was uh a bit older with Robert's campaign in 1968 and his assassination. I became quite friendly with Senator uh Edward Kennedy and with many other dear friends in the Kennedy family till today. But it was also around the same time uh as you that I started also to take a very deep dive into this because I was asked in, I think it was 2007, possibly 2008, to give the BBC Wreath Lectures, which are uh lectures that you give one lecturer every two years, and it's a it's a big honor and a big opportunity. And I decided to devote one of them to Kennedy's speech on peace that he gave uh on June 10, 1963, uh which of course you know well. And I loved the speech, and I thought it was so deep, so profound, that I went down the same rabbit hole of listening to speeches, making my family listen to speeches. We had a few years where we were listening to John F. Kennedy's speeches all over uh the time. And by the way, when you uh opened up with the civil rights speech, just to add a footnote that you know, but I'd like people to know, Kennedy's peace speech, which I regard as the greatest foreign policy speech ever given by an American president, I'd say bar none.

SPEAKER_00 9:31

I would agree, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 9:32

Was June 10, 1963. And the civil rights speech was June 11, 1963, and it certainly is one of the greatest speeches of modern history as well. It's back to back in two days. And what you probably know about the June 11th speech, uh, I'm sure you do, but I learned along the way, was it was cobbled together so rapidly because he was giving two major back-to-back speeches, didn't even know he was going to give the uh civil rights speech because events were proceeding so rapidly in the civil rights crisis in the South that the speech was not finished when the cameras went on. I think it was 7 p.m. The cameras flipped on, and there was John F. Kennedy with notes in front of him that had been kind of thrown in place by Ted Sorensen and by uh his secretary and so on, and he gave the most dazzling, mesmerizing, inspiring speech about civil rights imaginable.

SPEAKER_00 10:35

Yeah, and I think what's really amazing about those two speeches is they led to change. The first one led to the nuclear test ban treaty, and the second one led to the civil rights bill. So a lot of times when you think of speeches, you just think, oh, it's rhetoric, it doesn't mean anything. But those speeches actually led to massive policy changes.

SPEAKER_01 10:52

It's a wonderful point and led to them not only because they were good ideas, but because of the eloquence as well. You know, when it comes to the peace speech, uh, which I I wrote about in a in a book ten years ago uh called To Move the World, JFK's Quest for Peace, the speech is so dazzling and clever in its advocacy because it it's a speech about making peace with the Soviet Union that doesn't criticize the Soviet Union at all, only praises the Soviet Union at the height of the Cold War. And when Khrushchev, uh Nikita Khrushchev, the chairman of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union at the time, our adversary, heard the speech, he was so dazzled by it that he immediately called the U.S. envoy in Moscow, Avril Harriman, and said, I want to make peace with your president. So it's exactly like you say, the speech led directly to the success of the treaty. And I think it's the case with the civil rights speech. Well, I know that Martin Luther King was just also dazzled by it, and this was a great, great breakthrough in being able to move forward with the civil rights bill.

SPEAKER_00 12:08

Yeah, no, they were both so impactful. And I loved how he made peace very practical. You know, he said this isn't utopian, this is like peace is a process, you know, was his kind of message in that speech is you have to work to make peace. You have to build the institutions that will create peace. And you have to, you know, approach it practically. Because I think a lot of people think of peace as this utopian thing that can never be achieved. But he was saying, no, it's not utopian, it's a reality that we can work towards.

SPEAKER_01 12:36

Yeah, his line is uh peace is a process, a way, a way of solving problems. I endlessly quote that it's a way of solving problems.

SPEAKER_00 12:44

Exactly.

SPEAKER_01 12:45

You make an observation so good, I said, whoa, right at the beginning of the book. And it's what you referred to uh when we started the conversation, and that is uh the Bob Dylan song Murder Most Foul, which is so painful and so powerful. Again, Bob Dylan, my icon uh as as a youth uh for uh um America's Change in Culture, has the line in Murder Most Foul, they killed him once and they killed him twice. And uh I thought it was kind of a rhetorical flourish, but you make this powerful meaning of it saying that they assassinated him and then they character assassinated him.

SPEAKER_00 13:30

Yeah, because when I was growing up, I didn't hear much positive stuff about Kennedy. I mean, I did some, again, there was that dichotomy of people loved him or hated him, but I didn't I don't remember learning much about him in school, which is part of the reason I wrote my book, is I wanted to create like a quick 101 crash course for people to get a really broad exposure to JFK's policies domestic for and, you know, get a little bit of as much of his policies as I could into the book. Because when I was in high school, I think we learned almost nothing about Kennedy from what I remember.

SPEAKER_01 14:02

That's amazing for me to hear. Understandable in a way, but amazing and shocking for me, but uh a really important point.

SPEAKER_00 14:10

Aaron Powell So that's what I mean in the sense that they killed him twice. It was the character assassination by focusing on, you know, things like affairs and mob deals or whatever, but it was also the fact that they weren't really talking about his policies. It was obscuring his policies. I didn't know anything about Africa, I didn't know anything about his Latin American policies, about his domestic economic policies. I think maybe the only thing I learned in school was the Cuban Missile Crisis, if that, even. Yes. You know, from what I remember.

SPEAKER_01 14:36

Your book is really wonderful because it's um first, it's a very insightful and accurate tour of the horizon of all of these issues that Kennedy faced. So there are separate chapters about Vietnam, about Africa, not what people necessarily uh know or associate with Kennedy, about Israel, which uh was very eye-opening for me because even though I thought I knew all of it, uh I learned a lot from uh that chapter. Of course, the Cuban Missile Crisis, the partial nuclear test ban treaty. And a second uh point that makes the book, I think, really work is you really let Kennedy speak. And uh the book is filled with the quotations of Kennedy's speeches, and my God, those speeches, one after another, are dazzling. And they're dazzling, I think, for three reasons I would say. One is Kennedy had wonderful depth and ideas. Second, uh, he had a wonderful personality and flair, and three, he had the greatest speechwriter of all time, in my view, which is Ted Sorensen. I knew Ted Sorensen uh as a friend and someone I profoundly admired and had a chance to speak with him about these speeches. Sorensen did not put words in Kennedy's mouth, so this was a team effort completely. And um the ideas are Kennedy's, the depth, and they're Sorensen's as well. But it was a wonderful duo that could write speeches like no other case in modern American history. I uh there are times when Roosevelt, of course, has this uh stunning eloquence and saves the world in in some ways uh through that eloquence. But Kennedy is right up there, and you let him speak in the text. And so uh, even as I was reading it, there were speeches I didn't know about, uh, like a 1957 speech about Israel and the Palestinians and the refugee. I had to go back, whoa, that's an interesting talk. He was a senator. It wasn't a presidential campaign, it was just an incredibly sensitive speech about an issue that, alas, we are now almost 70 years since that speech and now trapped in the worst cycles of violence that Kennedy wanted to break way back in 1957.

SPEAKER_00 17:08

Yes, he was very concerned about, you know, peace in the Middle East, and he wanted to find a solution that, you know, would be very respectful and considerate to both sides, both the Israelis and the Palestinians. And he did push um Palestinian right of return, but he did it in a way where he worked with this guy named Joe Johnson, where they wanted to give each refugee the choice of either, you know, go back home, be compensated, or move to another Arab nation and be compensated. But because compensation was sort of in favor of not going back, they expected only maybe 10% of refugees to go back. And so it was a way to sort of appease both sides to say, you know, we're gonna give Palestinians the right of return, we're gonna give them a choice, but we're also gonna compensate them so well and so fairly that Israel won't feel like they're being flooded with, you know, a massive amount of refugees that they feel they can't handle. And so he was really good at trying to find solutions that really catered to the needs of both sides, which I think is missing today.

SPEAKER_01 18:06

That is his humanity, he respected both sides, even when he was one side, like the Cuban Missile Crisis, he respected the other side, saved the world by doing so. Yes, because he had the sense, well, there are human beings on the other side, what are they thinking? They also don't want to blow up the world. Yeah, yeah. And one of the things you mentioned, and quote the wonderful quotation, that Kennedy came to realize at the height of the Cuban Missile Crisis is the world was uh on the brink of uh nuclear annihilation, and uh the US and Soviet Union were facing off uh against each other, and Kennedy's advisors almost to a person were advising uh Kennedy, you know, we've got to have a military strike, we have to invade Cuba, we have to take out uh these missiles. And Kennedy suddenly has this realization, seems that's what it seems to me, that Khrushchev is in the same situation I am. We're the two people trapped in this. We have to find a way to reach out to overcome our own advisors so that we don't stumble into the worst global disaster imaginable.

SPEAKER_00 19:19

Yeah, in some ways I think he realized he had more in common with Khrushchev than he did with his own military advisors. You know, and then like you said, him and Khrushchev were in the same place. They were each trying to push back on their own military advisors. And you're right, I think Khrushchev wrote in his letter, you know, it's like we've tied this knot. We can't tie it so tight that it can't be untied. The two of us have to work together to loosen that knot so that, you know, we can peacefully resolve this. And I think Kennedy knew his military did not want a peaceful resolution, and he knew Khrushchev's military did not want a peaceful resolution. So it really was up to him and Khrushchev.

SPEAKER_01 19:56

By the way, what a wonderful letter for people who uh aren't aware. Before the days of Zoom uh and uh instant calls, communications between the White House and the Kremlin were very difficult, and they were very much subject to all these forces of militarism, and even the president didn't feel that he had the ability so easily to communicate directly with his counterpart. So he and Khrushchev worked out a kind of back channel of private letters. Uh, it's a remarkable set of communications, sometimes unbelievably frank, you know, virtually yelling at each other in the letters, uh, or Khrushchev yelling at Kennedy. You lied to me, you know, for example, during the Bay of Pigs uh invasion when Kennedy did lie to Khrushchev uh in one of those uh early and really awful uh incidents at the beginning of Kennedy's administration. But that back channel in a way saved the world. And you quote this wonderful letter of Khrushchev at the height of the missile crisis using the metaphor uh or the simile that we're two intertwined strands in a knot, and the more we pull, the harder it is to unravel that knot, and it can become so so taut, so tight, so fixed, that the only way we're going to address it is by cutting it, and God knows what's going to happen when that happens. So please, Mr. President, ease up. Don't pull so hard, don't tighten the knot. Isn't that amazing?

SPEAKER_00 21:35

Yeah, I thought it was like one of the greatest analogies ever. I think in some ways that analogy gave me a greater understanding of war than anything anyone has ever said, because it really makes sense. Once you make it that knot so tight, you can't get out of that situation. You know, once the military starts going, you can't really stop it. It's not easy to stop.

SPEAKER_01 21:56

And that wisdom of Kennedy and Khrushchev to not pull. So hard on the knot. We don't see that right now at all.

SPEAKER_00 22:03

It scares me. It horrifies me. Studying Kennedy's presidency and seeing what's happening, you know, in Ukraine and Gaza, even Taiwan, it's just horrifying. Because you don't, I don't know if there's anyone who's cautious to get out of those things.

SPEAKER_01 22:17

Yes, and you can't imagine, especially when you look at how Kennedy comported himself, he would never, never publicly call Khrushchev, you know, vulgar names.

SPEAKER_00 22:28

Oh, absolutely. I agree. Yes.

SPEAKER_01 22:31

Unthinkable because you don't pull the knot so tight that you can't resolve it.

SPEAKER_00 22:36

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 22:37

And yet, we're in name-calling right now that I regard as I say it's childish. My wife tells me, don't insult children. You know, they know better.

SPEAKER_00 22:48

Yeah, no, it is. It is almost like childish. And that that was part of the reason I went back to study Kennedy, is because it did feel like our politicians were almost like children in a like a playground fighting. I it's hard to explain. It was, I don't know, it was like professional wrestling or something, but it just seemed so childish. And, you know, I was like, has American leadership always been this way? Or did we once have, you know, like you said, great statesmen, really dignified statesmen, really thoughtful statesmen? And that was part of my impetus to study Kennedy, is it just everything did seem so childish.

SPEAKER_01 23:22

You know, at the beginning of the book, you lay out a wonderful, I think, very astute and very accurate explanation of Kennedy's worldview as uh essentially being anti-colonial. And we have to remember uh also, by the way, that back in the 1950s and 1960s, this question of European colonialism or American colonialism was the day-by-day set of crises. And Kennedy quite deeply, from the time of being a young man, took the position that the freedom of peoples everywhere was the powerful trend of the world, and we should be on the right side of that. Not fighting the wars of colonial powers like France uh trying to maintain its hold on Vietnam. Let's stay away from that. Could you say something about how you picture that broad world view? Because then it infuses all of the subsequent discussion in the book.

SPEAKER_00 24:23

Yeah, I think a lot of people, so Kennedy's a lot of times portrayed as a cold warrior. And it is true that, you know, he did not like communism, he was not a fan of communism, he did not want to see communism expand. So, in that sense, yes, you could call him a cold warrior, but there's a lot of nuance to his views that I think people miss. More than being a cold warrior, he was, like you said, an anti-colonialist. So he he in 1957, in a speech about Algeria, compared American imperialism and Western imperialism to Soviet imperialism. And he says, we don't want either one. In an interview when he was campaigning, he compared the need for Algeria to have independence from France to Cuba needing to be independent from the Soviet Union. And he always said, you know, in Vietnam, we can't fight communism unless we support nationalism. These people in Vietnam don't want to fight on behalf of an empire, they want to fight on behalf of themselves. You know, so if we don't want to see communism in Vietnam, we have to support the people locally. And that was the same in Africa, that was the same in Latin America, and that's why he had programs like the Alliance for Progress to help Latin America. That's why he gave so much assistance to Africa. Because he wanted all of these countries to be independent and self-sufficient. That would prevent Soviet expansion, which is the Cold Warrior part. But I think people often miss the part that he didn't want America expanding and controlling those lands either, or Europe expanding and controlling those lands either. So I would argue that he was at core an anti-colonialist, and that's where his views against communism came from, not the other way around, if that makes sense.

SPEAKER_01 25:59

I think it's uh I think it's uh very, very perceptive and very right and fascinating because in the 1950s, when he was saying these things, he was not popular for saying these things among his colleagues. Uh you point out that Adlai Stevenson asked him in 1956, maybe don't speak for me during uh my election campaign about foreign policy, because Kennedy was taking a radical position. Yeah. A radical anti-imperialist, anti-colonial position. Aaron Powell, Jr.

SPEAKER_00 26:31

Yes, it was very radical. And I think, you know, when he gave that Algeria speech, there was a lot of outrage over that speech of him comparing, you know, American or European imperialism to Soviet imperialism. But people have to remember he's Irish. He doesn't want to see imperialism or colonialism anywhere of any sort. And I think he realized that's not healthy.

SPEAKER_01 26:52

And just for everybody, uh, because we have listeners from all over the world remembering that Ireland was under British imperial rule, and uh a very harsh one for many centuries. And so being Irish, and Kennedy, uh you quote him saying that it's it's just two generations basically for him since uh this uh colonial imposition by Britain, so his family knows it deeply, feels it deeply. I think this is uh really uh an extraordinarily correct and interesting view. I'd add, and just uh your thoughts and uh wisdom on it, his wartime experience in World War II fighting in the Asia Pacific uh against Japan, that also informed his views uh during the rest of his life.

SPEAKER_00 27:44

Yeah, I think the main goal of his presidency was to prevent World War III. You know, I think he made the comment, you know, I guess World War II wasn't horrific enough because people seem to want World War III. And to him, it was just there was no, there should always be a way to compromise out of war. And if you need to have war, it needs to be very strategic, very that's why he increased military spending. You know, people have a lot of confusion about him because he pushed for disarmament, but he increased military spending. So on the surface, those seem like contradictory things, but they weren't contradictory to him because number one, he didn't want to unilaterally disarm, you know, in order to disarm, he wanted to do it via treaties like the nuclear test ban treaty, but he also wanted to diversify the defense establishment so that his only response was not gonna be dropping a nuclear bomb, that he could have very limited, small responses and give the other side opportunity to back off and, you know, to end the war quickly. So I think his whole goal was to prevent World War III. And if he couldn't prevent war, he was gonna do it very small, very gradual, very strategic, and not do anything more than absolutely had to be done. And you see, today that's not happening at all. You know, we just resort to just bombing people and that's escalation.

SPEAKER_01 28:59

Yeah. As easy as just as casually as possible, and flying around, oh, we don't have to be afraid of nuclear war, we don't have to be afraid of escalation, we have no red lines. It's amazing compared to the caution that Kennedy was expressing. And Kennedy was profoundly fearful of accidents and mistakes and stumbling for him having experienced war and also having studied war, even as a student, but as a politician, and he was also a great fan of the historian Barbara Tuckman and her writing, uh The Guns of August, about how Europe fell into World War I, into absolute devastation. And Kennedy came to office completely intent on preventing it. It's so sobering for me, by the way, that that was his deepest view, and yet the world almost stumbled into complete disaster despite that. And it's in part because of the deep state of the U.S., uh, which is that he was surrounded by warmongers. Yeah. He was surrounded by the CIA, by Curtis LeMay and uh the U.S. Air Force. Most of Kennedy's team, because that was America, expected war, planned for war, thought you could fight a nuclear war and win it. And that was uh Kennedy's own horror with his own side.

SPEAKER_00 30:31

Yeah, and I think that's why he was pushing for nuclear disarmament so hard as he was, because he just saw how little control he had. And he's like, My God, like this is gonna happen with whoever the president is, without them even wanting this war. It's gonna happen one day. And I think he said, you know, weapons don't get created that aren't eventually used. And so he wanted to push back and get rid of those weapons, you know, before we got to a point where they would one day be used. Because you don't have much control as one person, even president, to stop wars.

SPEAKER_01 31:01

Yeah, I think this is so important. Can you say a word in that context about Vietnam and how he viewed that and what was lost with his assassination regarding America's staying out of a ground war in Southeast Asia?

SPEAKER_00 31:16

Yeah, so in Laos he had done a neutralized solution where basically there was a coalition government with the communists. And from people in his administration, that looks like where he was headed with Vietnam. Now, there's a lot of confusion because he did increase the number of advisors that were in Vietnam from the Eisenhower days. But people have to understand he wasn't under massive, massive pressure starting in 1961 to send large volumes of combat troops to Vietnam, which he refused to do. He did send the advisors, and I think he told someone, you know, I've already had the Bay of Pigs, I've already had Laos, I can't defend, I think politically defend another loss to the communists in the same year. So he went ahead and sent some advisors. And you can criticize him for that using politics to help make decisions. But then a few months later, he sent Galbrieth out there and basically told him to write up a report about why it's such a bad idea for America to be militarily involved in this. And really, starting from that point, he started to make moves to try to get those advisors withdrawn from Vietnam. And he did put the first order for withdrawal in October 1963. So he was looking to withdraw the advisors, and he certainly would have never ever sent combat troops. Because, like I said earlier, he understood this was not an American war. This was a nationalist war. These, you know, South Vietnam had to fight for itself. And he said that many times, even publicly, you know, he said, they have to win it or lose it. We can't, we can help them, we can give them advisors, we can give them equipment, but it's their wars and they're their war, and they're the ones that are gonna have to win it or lose it. So he would have never, ever, ever in a million years sent 500,000 combat troops into Vietnam. I just, that's unfathomable to me because again, he was pressured since 1961. It was clear he was trying to move towards a neutralized solution, but he had did have to play it very cautiously politically because there was a lot of, you know, propaganda during that era and a lot of media pressure and a lot of pressure from the CIA, the military to expand in Vietnam. So he had to be very cautious, you know, how he talked about it and how he maneuvered that situation.

SPEAKER_01 33:20

That is, by the way, I think also something very uh remarkable when you and I have gone back to look at these uh episodes. Kennedy's adroitness at being a visionary and statesman, but at the same time being an absolutely grounded ward politician, you know, watching his base, thinking always about the domestic politics. I think FDR was like that as well. These were canny politicians, but they were canny politicians in the interest and service of really grand ideas, not simply in the ideas of re-election. And this is something quite powerful. When Kennedy negotiated with Khrushchev the partial nuclear test ban treaty, he was so much aware, how am I going to get this ratified through the Senate? So he was domestic politician at the same moment that he was grand global statesman, and he never forgot one role versus the other. He never let domestic politics undo his deep vision, and he never neglected domestic politics because of that deep vision.

SPEAKER_00 34:36

Yeah, he called himself an idealist without illusions, and I think that's the best description of him. You know, because some people say, oh, he's this great idealist. Others say he's this great practical person. He was both at the same time. You know, he had his, he was an amazing idealist, but he knew also that he wanted to achieve those ideals, and the only way to do it was to be as practical as possible. So he was both at the same time, which is quite an extraordinary combination in a person, I think.

SPEAKER_01 35:03

Yeah, makes him uh absolutely astounding. Well, your book covers uh many chapters uh that I'm going to praise but urge our listeners to read on uh Laos and Vietnam, on Africa, which is a fascinating discussion, on Israel, on the Cuban Missile Crisis, on the nuclear test ban treaty. I want to turn to the subtitle of your book uh in closing, What the World Lost When It Lost John F. Kennedy. If you could give some thoughts to that. Maybe to start, I'll go back to uh Bob Dylan's Murder Most Foul, because two lines in that that always gripped me were I said the soul of a nation had been torn away, and it's the beginning to go into a slow decay. And one senses that the assassination, JFK's assassination in November 1963, did tear the soul of the nation away. And we see in many ways that it was a turning point in America. Just uh would love your thoughts on that.

SPEAKER_00 36:11

Yeah, no, absolutely, because here you had this young, dynamic, articulate leader who was promoting peace, who was promoting unity, who was doing a lot of work to create like a robust, productive economy in the United States, who was doing a lot to support third world nationalism, who was doing a lot to promote um self-determination. So you really had, in my view, at least my ideological view, that's like an ideal world: peace, self-determination, a robust economy, you know, a really thoughtful leader. I don't know what more you could ask for really out of a politician. And so we went from that to kind of where we are today, where we have Trump and Biden just duking it out, and neither holds a candle to Kennedy, and it's just wars and corruption, and it seems like our economic policies, you know, cater to the wealthiest in the country, and it seems like we don't care about treating other countries, building genuine friendships with other countries. We want to dominate them instead. And it just seems like the polar opposite of JFK, and I think for the average American, the world under JFK was a much better world than the world under our current leadership.

SPEAKER_01 37:23

I went back to look at uh the data on uh public trust in government because we have long time series of that. And uh in the Kennedy period, about 80% of the public expressed trust in government. And it's uh just at the point of the assassination, of course, followed by Johnson's buildup of the war in Vietnam, which was another deception and disaster, that the slide comes in trust in government. Then it's followed by Watergate, by uh so many other scandals and crises. By the mid-1970s, trust in government is basically half of what it was, around 40 percent. And then it continues uh with some ups and downs depending on events, to a little over 20 percent today. So it shows in the data just what you said. What the average American, what the typical American has felt is a dramatic change over the course of this period from Kennedy till now, of essentially a collapse of trust in government.

SPEAKER_00 38:39

Yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 38:40

It's stunning and it's worrying. But I have to say that your impulse of bringing Kennedy's words uh back to life, but also to our present realities is uh so much on target. Um it's what we need because uh maybe young people haven't had the experience of an inspiring leader, but you help to show them what that is and so well uh and uh across so many areas. It's it's just a tremendous service, Monica. It's it's a wonderful book.

SPEAKER_00 39:16

Thank you, and thank you for reading it. I'm really honored that you read it.

SPEAKER_01 39:19

Ah, reading it is uh, of course, for my benefit, but uh I want to make sure that it's for everybody's benefit. I know we have only a short time today to talk, but I'm grateful, so happy to meet you. Uh, and uh we share so many uh of uh the same views of then and now and about what President John F. Kennedy can teach us. We've been speaking with Monica Visak and uh her wonderful book, America's Last President, What the World Lost When It Lost John F. Kennedy. And I just want to add uh what it can gain by remembering John F. Kennedy. Thank you, Monica, for being with us on Book Club with Jeffrey Sachs.

SPEAKER_00 40:04

Thank you for having me on.

SPEAKER_01 40:06

Great to be with you. Thank you for joining in the conversation. Please subscribe, rate, and write a review on whatever platform you listen for your podcast.