The Presidency: A Moving Experience

“The trip was for me a moving experience,” said President Kennedy in a brief taped TV report to the nation last week. “I found in every country a deep conviction in our common goals, the unity of the West, the freedom of man, the necessity for peace . . . Today, we can be more confident than ever that the Old World and the New are partners for progress and partners for peace.”

After the emotional welcome in Germany and the sentimental flood in Ireland, the rest of the President’s European journey was mixed. He met with Harold Macmillan for a day of low-key talks at the British Prime Minister’s country home near Brighton, and they reached an essentially negative agreement: the projected multilateral NATO nuclear force would be allowed to die. In Italy, the President’s reception, the day after Pope Paul’s coronation, was something like Grand Rapids on a rainy day. Rome’s blase millions stayed away in droves. Overeager Italian security cops pushed people around, even roughed up White House Staffers McGeorge Bundy and Ted Sorensen.

But the President had warm talks with Italy’s Prime Minister and President, and told leading Italians at a formal dinner: “The siren temptations of those with the seemingly swift and easy answers on the far right and far left will always be great. But I am convinced that Italy and the United States will draw even more closely together.”

The highlight of the Kennedy stay in Italy was an act that many politicians not long ago would have considered foolhardy for a Catholic President—a call on the new Pope. Kennedy bowed to Paul, shook hands (as a visiting head of state, he did not kneel and kiss the Pontiff’s ring), and accompanied the Pope into his library for a private 18-minute chat, mostly about the quest for an enduring world peace. Addressing the Kennedy party later, the Pope recalled that he had met the President and his family at a papal audience 25 years ago, when, as Monsignor Montini, he was Substitute Secretary of State for Ordinary Affairs to Pope Pius XII. Paul praised the U.S. and—in a highly topical note—wished well the forces seeking equality for the Negro.

As the President left for home from Naples, he ended the trip as he had begun it in Germany—in a surge of acclaim. The Neapolitans choked the streets in tens of thousands; they cheered and they mobbed and they climbed all over the presidential cavalcade. The finale was a fitting reminder that as a public appearance and speaking tour, the trip was a success. Whether it would have more lasting effects on progress and peace remained to be seen.