Transcripts For CSPAN2 Book TV 20121210 : vimarsana.com

CSPAN2 Book TV December 10, 2012

David nasaw recounts the life of joseph p. Kennedy patriarch of the political family that included president john f. Kennedy and senators robert f. Kennedy and edward kennedy. The author examines Joseph Kennedys career in business and politics, which included ventures in wall street, hollywood and the founding chairman of the securities and Exchange Commission. This is a little under an hour. [applause] thank you, all. Delighted to be here. As i tell my history students at the City University of new york in the ph. D. Program thank you. [laughter] as i tell my history students until they want to choke me the past is a foreign country. We can visit, try to learn the customs and the white smith the fragrances, recoil at the foul odors but we are foreigners in a strange land. This is true as much in the recent past as it is of colonial america or 12th century venice. Writing about the recent past is not easy as it is this time around. First there are people you have to talk to. And while i was blessed from beginning to end by having some fascinating people to talk to about joe kennedy including large numbers of committees, i much prefer working from written documents to listening to people talk and try to figure out whats real, whats imagined, what they know, what they think they know because someone told them what they think they know they dont know at all. The difficulty is that it is not always easy to establish to construct the path that is so close to us and yet this is what historians have to do. Our job is to complicate to take apart our common sense to interrogate what we think we know to demystify, demythologize, move beyond the cliche about winners and losers, saints and sinners, about the wisdom and courage of the forefathers especially those of the greatest generation. Our job as historians is totally different story, the grounded benevolence, the life of joseph p. Kennedy was an antique from house which if i looked at it long enough to reflect back to me often in pc and in distinct distorted form images of the events of people and places which organize and a range the story of 20th century america. As a historian im interested to tell you that the origin is of this book he introduced me to the Kennedy Family [inaudible] jean kennedy and investors that for the first time i was finishing up my first book and in my first biography i have used a treasure trove of materials that Jean Kennedy Smiths daughter who is writing a collection was compiling a letters from her father to france and uncles had put me onto as in that treasure trove of materials, letters from Randolph Hearst to Joseph Kennedy backandforth on a glimpse of a man who was different from everything i have heard about him and so i told Jean Kennedy Smith at some point that her daughter should write a biography of her grandfather, and if the man was absolutely fascinated. Its a good word to use when you dont know if you are going to be writing about. Was fascinating i said and somebody should do a biography about a year later so Jean Kennedy Smith again approached me and said the family wanted me to do it, to write that biography that they recognized there was the need for such a biography. And i said im in the midst of writing another book about Andrew Carnegie and she said when are you going to be finished . We cant say no to the kennedy fisa i dont know, six months maybe. Six months to the day we got a call at home from someone i was convinced was a ted kennedy impersonator. I dont know if any of you grew up in new york or listened to don imus. He had a kennedy impersonator and sounded just like this and so i listened to the message and after listening to it the second or third time i realized it wasnt an impersonator, it was the senator asking me to come to washington to talk to him about doing a biography of his father. I went to washington and the senator and i and his two dogs have lunch together on monday since the dogs came to the senate with him because the senate wasnt in session and they could of rome and play. Was a weird sight, believe me. We were brought into the tiny little conference room, the two dogs, the senator and me with a card table in the middle, and the senator who was always on a diet. He would feel better the center he was head the biggest sand which id ever seen like a sliver of tuna fish that looked as old as he was and on a piece of bread. I had two pieces of bread and potato chips and we talked for three or four hours. And what i remember saying over and over and over again is you dont want me to write this book because i am a historian, and i went find stuff, and whenever i find im going to put in the book and who knows, by the time this book comes out there might be a kennedy running for office. Little did i know that that kennedys naim what the joseph p. Kennedy iii who ran for the most elected in congress. Now the election came before my book came out, and i was worried. I thought it was a legitimate concern in the senate. He said dont worry. He said Everybody Knows my father had an affair with Gloria Swanson, and she said i know my father was an antisemite and what ever you find come and what ever you write is going to be true to the man i knew and loved than what is out there. So i said okay. I want full access to everything. I want full access to the family, to all of the documents, to everything that is stored at the Kennedy Library in boston but close to researchers, and you will see the book coming you into the family and your lawyers and representatives will see the book when its between hard covers, and i wont be coming back to you for permission to decide anything whatever i find im going to use in the book. He said okay then it took 18 months to get this in writing and i was off and running. And i found a more remarkable story than i had imagined. I found the story of a man who spent his life moving backandforth from being an outsider to an insider to an outsider to an insider. I found the story of an Irish Catholic who wasnt ashamed of his heritage but didnt want to be defined by eight. Of a thirdgeneration immigrant who cared little about the country, his grandparents had been born, who had no desire to visit ireland or to read about it, who considered themselves 100 american and couldnt understand why anyone would think of him as less than that, a catholic who went to mass every sunday and went to confession, and the Catholic Church in boston was the anchor of his existence and everywhere he went, she would find out where the church was. When he went on vacation in New Hampshire he sent a note to feet innkeeper who was a friend of his and said find out when they have the confession on friday and also find out if he was married at that time, if they are going to be around. This pitfall happy in one sentence. He grew up with some of the very respective businessman and board leader in each boston. He was the ultimate insider, and even when he went to harvard because half of his class went from him to boston to harvard, and there were about 10 of the students were catholic and a much larger percentage from Public Schools in and around boston he still considered himself an insider. They didnt let him into some of their clubs. But that didnt bother him nearly as much as the fact that he was too slow to make the varsity baseball team. He got his letter but was never a starter. He graduated from harvard, and his life began she wanted to go banking and finance, and he discovered every door was closed to him because he was an Irish Catholic from each boston whose father had been a leader. His friends, his classmates got interviews, got jobs at the major banks, the major Financial Institutions. He does nothing. Nothing. Alana an answer, not an interview, nothing. She was still going to go into banking savitt took a Soulful Service exam and became an assistant Bank Examiner and he traveled around the state examining the books of the banks and learned more about the banks as he ever would have to make enough money so he could leave every one of his children money he had to foot dhaka options, he had to raise money for the Larger Industries in and around boston. And again he worked as an Irish Catholic she didnt have the connection and he would never have the connection in the Major Industries and what did he do, he looked ahead and she realized that Financial Institution who paid no attention to the industry the was about to take off moving pictures they paid no attention they are now paying attention to the pictures so she moved in so he began making his own deals and contracts when the roof was still in boston he tried to put babe ruth and moving picture but that didnt work but he demanded to be paid up front and kennedy never paid anybody up front but every other deal went through but he ended up in hollywood as the owner, as the studio had of what was a minor studio but that wasnt going to stop them but they realize and recognize and how they could convert his outside status county could make it an advantage benefit rather than a liability. So what did he do when he arrived in hollywood . She positioned himself as the non nonjew. At the time when the small towns and cities all over the country aided and abetted by a lot of rabblerousers were beginning to see the movies for dangerous. Theyre dangerous because the control by these alien, they dont understand christian morality and if and towns all across the country and states all across the country were beginning to institute censorship laws and hollywood had brought in will rogers who had been in the harding cabinet mr. Protestant, and kennedy now positioned himself as a nonjew, and studio after studio hired, at one point he ran for major studios, and that each of those she demanded to be paid in stock options. By the time he left hollywood after only a couple of years he was a multimillionaire because he knew how to manipulate the stock options. He knew how to turn those pieces of paper into dollars, millions of dollars coming and he did come and having learned how to make an advantage of a disadvantage at age 50, he had those millions and millions of dollars at age 50 the way the stock market worked and the stock and bonds retreated, and he knew a crash was coming and he pulled out all of his money so that when the crash did come he was left with his millions in an extraordinary position. Yet with that crashed we are suffering from a recession now and a lot of people are suffering. We all know people who suffer. But it doesnt compare to the depression of the 50s. Kennedy was scared that everything the country he left because it had given him lots of opportunities that he had converted into dollars he was convinced that unless something was done to right the economy, capitalism was going to go down, and with capitalism democracy and with democracy, everything that made this country great. And he was convinced the only man who could write the ship, who could save capitalism and democracy in the nation was Franklin Roosevelt so in 1932 she signed on to the Franklin Roosevelt and was only one of the bankers to do so she was one of the only catholics to and he was one of the only hollywood men with hollywood connections he was solidly republican and loved herbert hoover. The all cider was on his way to becoming an insider and yet he refused to play by the rules to become part of the roosevelt team. He refused to to our madrassa at lycee what a4a you and your brain trust want to do i will back it, i am with you. Yet he was so important to roosevelt as a banker and as an Irish Catholic and as an incredibly smart man that roosevelt appointed him the first chairman of the securities and Exchange Commission at a time roosevelts colleagues and the new deal was, you know, why are you putting a fox in control of the chickens. And Joseph Kennedy was the greatest chairman of the sec that we have ever seen. He knew every trick of the trade, and he passed so many regulations and so many tough regulations that when he was finished, she had to get out of the market. Because every device he used to make his millions he had outlawed. From the moment that he left the sec, he began investing in real estate like the merchandise market in chicago, the largest building outside of the pentagon and the country, and he bought a block after block in new york, i dont think in philadelphia. He was concentrated in new york and chicago in westchester and albany. He wasnt yet where she needed to be. She demanded much from roosevelt and roosevelt gave it to him and named him the first ambassador, the first Irish Catholic ambassador to the port of saint james to Great Britain and was one of the worst decisions that roosevelt had ever made but he somehow believed he could keep kennedy in check, but he couldnt. He couldnt. Kennedy was to men when he talked to his children he was a cheerleader, she was on optimist he was an optimist in the relationship into the 20th century, she was a having made his pile of money, he was convinced that it was going to be taken from him. He was convinced that democracy and capitalism would be taken from the United States. If the end United States entered the war, entered world war ii on behalf of the british. Nothing was more important to him than making sure that there was no war and then keeping the United States out of the war and he did everything he possibly could. He violated critical. He didnt follow orders. He met secretly with german diplomats to be that he was convinced that as a businessman, she knew how to negotiate a deal, and that if he were put into a room with hitler, the two of them would negotiate a deal. He refused to see that hitler was a madman. That hitler didnt care about the german people. Hitler had other features that drove him. He believed hitler would be a rational actor. He told the leader of the Zionist Community and the first president to israel. He said im going to go meet with him and work it out. He became so into churchill, and a british comic antiwar effort that the british opened a fire on him and spied on him called the kennedy and in the german archives there were records of his conversations with the german diplomats wanting to get to berlin to negotiate an end to the war, to negotiate a settlement the would prevent the war and rescue of refugees again and not for the first time, she would go from an insider to an outsider because he didnt know how to be a team player. He returned to the country in disgrace it was all that roosevelt wanted for him and wife roosevelt did not fire as he should have. She retired and he kept blabbing away giving an interview in boston image he said they were finished. This was during the battle of britain. The britisher finished. Any money you give the british, it is wasted and thrown away. And then, she went to hollywood, she was invited by jack warner to speak at the studio about the future of the films and what was the film going to do, what with the film company is going to do if they couldnt export to europe. But instead of talking about that, he lashed out an audience that was almost all jewish, he lashed out on him and he said you are a must stop making interest of the lead to a hitler from the great dictator, as he stopped making and a german, and i hit local antinazi films, you are going to cause the next war millions of american boys arent bickel and blood will be spilled and will be the worst outbreak of antisemitism that this world has ever seen because everybody is going to win a remedy in this country is going to blame the jews. By 1940 he was a total absolute praia nobody wanted to touch him. Nobody could join the first immunity and sign up with lynn burba but he didnt want to do that because he knew that if he did that, there would be no place in politics for his children ever, ever, ever. So he didnt. He stayed quiet. The marrec was part of the stories, the part im not going to be able to tell you the you will have to read in 1940 he was the kennedy name was dirty. It was dirt among the isolationists because kennedy didnt come out against roosevelt. Again because he wanted to protect his children so they could be insiders among the new dealers, the jews, everyone who wanted or believe that americans had to support the british in the war effort and 20 years later his son was elected president of the United States. Once again the outsider had performed magic and had become the ultimate insider, the father to the president of the United States. Thank you. [applause] and i am delighted to take questions. [applause] theres a microphone here so hold your hand, and dont speak until you get a microphone. Wonderful speech. Isnt it true that roosevelt sent him to england to get rid of him because he considered him such a pain in the nec . In part. Its a great question. And part. But he also roosevelt didnt trust anybody come and roosevelt was a brilliant charmer and come niger, the greatest president that we have ever had. But roosevelt always said three people to do one job, place them against each other. And he believed that she needed kennedy because kennedy would immediately break the report to him directly rather than to the state department and she was smart enough to be his eyes and his years but he didnt realize kennedy would quickly develop this obsession that made him useless as a reporter on the conditions in europe, and roosevelt for the next two years would send over a variety of personal representatives to do the job that kennedy should have been doing and report on the principle preparedness, whether mussolini was calling to enter the war on the side of the germans and the stuff that he hoped kennedy would do. He kept them there, ho

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