The job of U.S. president "is essentially reactive," author and syndicated columnist Richard Reeves told a standing-room-only crowd Tuesday in Filene Auditorium.
In a lecture titled "Presidential Leadership: John F. Kennedy, Richard Nixon, and Ronald Reagan," Reeves summarized his findings on the complex duties of American presidents.
Reeves, a former chief political correspondent for The New York Times, began by providing a stirring account of a day in the life of President Kennedy.
June 11, 1963 began for Kennedy with a flight the preceding night from Hawaii to San Francisco, where he met speechwriter Ted Sorensen. On the flight back to Washington, while going over a speech with Sorensen that he was to deliver that morning at American University, Kennedy learned that the governor of Alabama, George Wallace, was standing in the door of the University of Alabama, preventing two students from becoming the first African-Americans to enroll at the university.
Reeves acknowledged that "Kennedy was no giant on civil rights" and that he largely wanted to avoid the issue during his presidency. When his advisers informed him that both sides of the segregation issue believed that Kennedy was on their side and that the violence would continue until he chose a side, Kennedy resolved to make a speech that night on national television to discuss the day's events.
Improvising on live television, Kennedy gave "one of the greatest speeches in American history," Reeves said. Kennedy decided to support desegregation wholeheartedly, asserting that "this is not a political crisis, this is not a regional crisis, this is not a legal crisis, this is a moral crisis. This is a question of whether we show we are who we say we are. This is a question of what kind of people we are."
Reeves argued that Kennedy "put the government of the United States, the greatest democracy in the world, on the side of the minority -- no small thing."
He noted that presidents are not remembered for the mundane tasks they perform, such as drafting budgets, but for the two or three major problems or events of their presidency. Civil rights issues helped define Kennedy's presidency.
Reeves has written several critically-acclaimed presidential biographies, including President Kennedy: Profile of Power, which was named the best non-fiction book of 1993 by Time magazine and Book of the Year by the Washington Monthly, and President Nixon: Alone in the White House. He has also created several award-winning documentary films, and his syndicated column appears in over 100 newspapers twice per week.
Reeves is currently writing a book on the presidency of Ronald Reagan. In an interview with The Dartmouth, he argued that Reagan was "an enormously effective president, whether you agreed with what he did or not," and that 20 to 30 books are published each year "in a battle for Reagan's place in history."
"He knew how to be president," and there is "a lot to be settled about his history," Reeves said.
When asked about the upcoming presidential election, Reeves noted that "elections with an incumbent president running are referenda on the incumbent." The election "is about George Bush and whether he is going to be rehired."
Reeves estimated that Bush and John Kerry each have the firm support of 45 percent of the electorate and that "the election then becomes about the last 10 percent and about whether events sustain or undermine President Bush" in the months leading up to the election.
Reeves also downplayed the impact of the media on the race, contending that substantive differences between the Republican and Democratic parties diminish the "leeway and influence the press has."
"People feel strongly about things like Medicare and war, and they don't need the press to tell them about that," Reeves said.
Offering advice to students interested in journalism, Reeves suggested that they "read a lot" and "find a job writing" so they can "learn that trade under supervision and scrutiny." He also stressed the importance of accumulating a portfolio of news clips to show potential employers.