Most Presidents tend to have a low view of their immediate predecessors. Eisenhower, the methodical staff officer executive, disliked FDR's chaotic, secretive style, and he was disgusted by Truman's use of cronies. It was Ike who switched off the British Empire for good at the time of Suez. In "secret," Britain, France and Israel attacked Egypt, ostensibly to recover the Suez Canal which Nasser had rudely seized. Ike and Prime Minister Anthony Eden (recorded by a "dead key"--someone listening in on the telephone) provided a poignant last post for Eden, Suez and the ghost of the Raj. The beginning of their talk is superb and sets the tone. Eisenhower: "This is a very clear connection." Eden: "I can just hear you." Was it not ever thus between slave and master? Ike has ordered a cease-fire at Suez. An edgy Eden sounds as if he has to go to the bathroom; actually, he is due in "my" Parliament in five minutes. Eden takes down his orders; then Ike says, "Now that we know connections are so good, you can call me anytime you please." Eden: "If I survive here tonight I will call you tomorrow." Three months later Eden was, as they say nowadays, toast.

Kennedy was the least prepared of the Presidents whom Doyle deals with. He quickly demonstrated his inability to execute a coherent policy at the Bay of Pigs, a misadventure cooked up by his predecessor that he had then made his very own, with disastrous results. Although Kennedy had a sharp mind, he was not used to hard work of any sort other than the haphazard barnstorming of politics. After the Cuban disaster, McGeorge Bundy wrote him a memo, placing the blame firmly, if tactfully, on Kennedy's management style, to the extent that he could be said to have one. "We can't get you to sit still.... Truman and Eisenhower did their daily dozen in foreign affairs the first thing in the morning, and a couple of weeks ago you asked me to begin to meet you on this basis. I have succeeded in catching you on three mornings, for a total of about eight minutes, and I conclude this is not really how you like to begin the day." Although the Kennedy promiscuity has been much discussed, far more important for the state was his bad health. He was in bed a good deal of the time, and the cortisone injections he was obliged to take did not concentrate his mind.

In the summer of 1962 Kennedy installed the most thorough recording system of all, wiring the Oval Office, Cabinet room, parts of the living quarters. In his office, a button controlled the recording switch. When it was on, others did most of the talking while the self-conscious President was laconic, grave, noncommittal. Doyle gives us the dialogue with the Governor of Mississippi when the university was being integrated and civil war seemed a possibility, at least in Oxford, Mississippi. Kennedy expertly maneuvers the Governor into place. He's learning.

On October 16, 1962, McGeorge Bundy informs the President that the Soviets have placed missiles in Cuba. Crucially, military intelligence is certain that the missiles do not have nuclear warheads. Oddly, no one really questions the absolute certainty of the team that brought us the Bay of Pigs. It was only a few years ago that we learned that the missiles were indeed so equipped and that if Cuba was attacked, the Russians were willing to take out a number of American cities as far north as Seattle. The dialogue is chilling in light of what we now know. Shall the missiles be taken out with an airstrike, promptly followed by invasion? General Taylor notes that the United States is vulnerable from the south. Ambassador Thompson comes up with a compromise--a blockade. But Air Force Chief of Staff Curtis LeMay ("Bomb 'em back to the Stone Age") is all for some serious bombing. It has been reported that LeMay's presence at any meeting with Kennedy was sufficient to give the President "fits." LeMay is ready for an all-out war over Cuba; Berlin, too, if we're not chicken. This does not play well in the Oval Office. In the end, Kennedy's political instinct was classic: When in doubt, do nothing, particularly if the something that you do could end life on the planet. When Khrushchev helped Kennedy end the crisis, JFK was heard to say: "If they want this job, fuck 'em. They can have it--it's no great joy to me."

President Johnson started installing recording devices his first day in office. Johnson is perhaps the only great comic figure to have occupied the White House. He was not only a master of the Lincolnian crossroads and outhouse humor but he was a deadly mimic. He recorded, between November 1963 and 1968, some 700 hours of White House meetings and phone calls: well worth a CD of his very own. When Johnson names the venerable Senator Richard Russell to the Warren Commission investigating Kennedy's murder, they meet. Russell is furious.

Russell: Well, Mr. President, you ought to have told me you were going to name me.
LBJ: I told you. I told you the other day I was going to name the chief justice. I called you.
Russell: You did not. You talked about getting somebody from Supreme Court. You didn't tell me you were going to name [both Warren and me] .... Mr. President, please now....
* * *
LBJ: I just want to counsel with you and I just want your judgment and your wisdom, 'cause I haven't got any Daddy and you're going to be it....
* * *
Russell: Well, I'm not going to say anything more, Mr. President. I'm at your command.
LBJ: You damned sure going to be at my command. You're going to be at my command as long as I'm here.

The most startling revelation is how clearly--and early--LBJ understood that the Vietnam War was unwinnable. As of 1964, he is again confiding in Russell.

LBJ: What do you think of this Vietnam thing?
Russell: I don't see how we're ever going to get out of it, without getting in a major war with the Chinese and all of them down there in those rice paddies and jungles. I just don't see it. It's--I--I--just don't know what to do.
LBJ: Well, that's the way I've been feeling for six months.... I spend all my days with Rusk and McNamara and Bundy and Harriman and Vance and all those folks that are dealing with it and I would say that it pretty well adds up to them now that we've got to show some force.... I don't think that the American people are for it.... You don't have any doubt that if we go in there, and get them up against a wall, the Chinese Communists are going to come in?
Russell: No doubt at all.
LBJ: That's my judgment, and my people don't think so....
Russell: I guess going in there with all the troops, I tell you it'll be the most expensive adventure that this country ever went into.

Doyle quotes C. Douglas Dillon to the effect that LBJ so frightened everybody that no one dared tell him the truth about the extent of defeats until the Tet Offensive. But it is clear from what's on record that he had a perfectly clear view of how he had been trapped by his inherited Kennedy advisers, to a man vain and blinkered, and by his own innate cowardice, which allowed him to be turned into a disastrous war-President instead of what he was born to be, the completer of the New Deal.

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