Down and Up

"He was like a young prizefighter," wrote the New York Times's James Reston, "toying gracefully with his opponent, jabbing at will and casually waving to the crowd, when suddenly he was clipped on the chin. This has hurt him badly. The magic of the first two months has vanished." For President John F. Kennedy, it seemed that more than the magic had vanished--so had many of his most loyal rooters among the press.

Disaster in Cuba, irresolution in Laos, and humiliation in space--one after another the blows landed, and even such Kennedy enthusiasts as Columnist Walter Lippmann winced as they found flaws in their onetime hero; the background editorial music, so bright and lilting at inauguration time, turned dissonant and harsh. Columnist Doris Fleeson, a onetime Stevensonian who had been willing enough to cheer for the President, now decided that "golden boy" had responded to adversity with "something less than the grace expected of him."

Cause to Howl. Pundit Lippmann's cup of wormwood spilled over: "President Kennedy is in grave trouble. If, after the appalling mistake of judgment in the Cuban venture, he allows himself to be sucked into the quicksands of Laos, he will have compromised, perhaps irrevocably, his influence on events." For the architects of failure in Cuba, Lippmann hotly demanded expulsion ("The mistake can be purged and confidence can be restored only by the resignation of the key figures who had the primary responsibility"), and fingered the culprits: "Bissell and Dulles of the CIA, Lemnitzer and Burke of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Berle of the State Department."

But the laments of disillusioned New Frontiersmen paled before the assaults from less charitable quarters--where newsmen seemed almost relieved that Kennedy had at last given them cause to howl. In Chicago, the conservative Tribune reprinted a few Kennedy campaign promises--"I am not satisfied to be second to outer space," "I am not satisfied to have the deadly hand of Communism extend to our former good neighbor in Cuba"--and found those promises "very empty." Detroit's Republican-leaning Free Press pasted the President with scorn: "President Kennedy by his words and actions conveys the idea that he sits with his finger resting against the panic button and doesn't quite know how to draw it away." And both here and abroad, the cartoonists stung him with their sharpest barbs (see cuts).

Reflected Glory. Nor could Kennedy's most persistent critic, Columnist David Lawrence, resist an "I told you so." Wrote he: "Kennedy perhaps wishes he had not been so critical of the Eisen hower Administration a few months ago and probably regrets the demagoguery he put into those campaign speeches. Nobody will deny that Mr. Kennedy has an almost superhuman job on his hands. But he will not win cooperation by alibis attempting to shift responsibility to the press, nor by spending so much of his time at partisan political dinners or in conferences with political bosses." Even New York Herald Tribune Pundit Roscoe Drummond, carefully neutral to Kennedy up to last week, succumbed to angry and italicized vexation: "President Kennedy is certainly saying enough about averting the worst. But he isn't doing enough."

But by week's end, even more abruptly than it began, the Kennedy criticism was drowned in the thunder of cheers that ac companied Astronaut Alan B. Shepard Jr. on the U.S.'s first successful manned flight into space (see SCIENCE). In the reflected glory of this accomplishment, the beleaguered President could hope to regain some of his lost prestige.

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