Free The Story of Henri Tod by William F. Buckley Page A

would be grateful if Jamison would examine an applicant who was there under unusual circumstances.
    Three years later, with an advanced degree in philosophy, Henri Tod recrossed the Channel he had only once before crossed, as a frightened fifteen-year-old sick at heart at leaving his sister who, however, had promised him she would be seeing him soon, very, very soon.

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    John Fitzgerald Kennedy sat in the Oval Office. He had one hour before he would need to go upstairs to dress for the state dinner for what’s-his-name, the little hypocrite. Dulles told me he’s stolen maybe forty, maybe fifty million, and he is always poor-mouthing about his people. Damn right they’re poor. He stays in power another ten years, what’s-his-name (he must make it a serious point to get his name straight before dinner—why aren’t they all called Gonzalez? I mean, most of them are as it is), ten more years and his “people” will have nothing at all left. Ah, but if only the worst problems were Latin American. Chiquita Banana, da-da-da da-da—how does it go? … But he was putting off what he had scheduled for himself—more hard thought on Khrushchev, the bastard, and Berlin. He couldn’t remember whether his dad had told him that all communist chiefs of state, like all businessmen, were s.o.b.’s. Maybe he thought I’d simply take that for granted. Nobody knows what Khrushchev’s after and nobody’s going to find out, not even Arthur.… (Arthur! That might be fun! Say in 1986, on the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Bay of Pigs. I’ll be … almost sixty-nine. We’ll arrange a big public seminar, and someone will say, “Mr. President, in his study of your presidency, Professor Schlesinger writes that you were said to have simply shrugged off the Bay of Pigs as just one of those misjudgments that occasionally happen. Would you comment on that?” I’ll pause … look a little pained. Then I’ll say, “Oh dear. I was afraid someone would ask me about that book someday. The trouble is, Arthur really never understood.…”) He stopped and hooted, just audibly. Cut it out, Jack. I mean, Mr. President—back to the problem. It was true that no one had understood how deeply he felt about the screw-up at the Bay of Pigs. For their sake and his. Yes, he had said publicly it was his fault. Yes, he had got plenty of people friendly to him, in plenty of places, to suggest it was really the fault of the CIA, and the Pentagon, and Ike, and Tricky Dick, and Sagittarius, and Marilyn Monroe. But let’s face it, it really was my fault. I know I’m as bright as anybody. Nobody, really, is any brighter than I am. But being bright isn’t enough. You need to make the correct decisions, and sometimes dumb people can make sounder decisions than bright people, I mean, look at Ike on the one hand, Adlai on the other hand … God, what will they talk to each other about in eternity—Joe McCarthy? That’s about the only distaste they have in common.… In two weeks he would have met with Khrushchev. Was there any human being who had met Khrushchev, studied Khrushchev, defected from Khrushchev, that he, the President of the United States, hadn’t either a) spoken to, b) read the works of, or c) been lectured to by? Was it possible to count the number of hours he had spent with Dean Acheson? Good old Dean, he wants just one little world war before he dies. On the other hand I could take Walter Lippmann’s advice, in exchange for which Khrushchev can have Europe. I’ve talked to every ambassador alive who has ever served in Moscow. What do they say? Pretty much the same thing, give or take this emphasis by Bohlen, that emphasis by Kennan. I’ve studied the minutes of—what? God. Geneva summit 1955—I wonder what that one solved. Then there was Camp David 1959. And Paris 1960—he aborted the damn thing on account of