As President Biden shifts foreign policy from “America First” to the decadeslong push for world democratization, it’s almost as if the late Sen. Edward Kennedy is whispering in his ear.
“Maybe he does,” said Lawrence Haas, author of the upcoming book The Kennedys in the World, and others on Washington and world politics.
“I think he is beginning to refashion America’s global roll back in that direction. So, I am both an enthusiast about the Kennedys on that front, and I am very enthused about Biden for the very same reason,” he told Secrets.
While there have been hundreds of books written on President John F. Kennedy, Sen. Robert Kennedy, and their younger brother, Ted, the latest from Haas uniquely portrays the trio as designers and practitioners of pro-democracy American foreign policy.
It stitches together their history from the days of debating policy as children at the dinner table to Ted’s clash with President George W. Bush over the war in Iraq. And even though he never sat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Haas said that Ted was far more influential on policies touching Vietnam, South America, Northern Ireland, and the Mideast than a past chairman of that panel, Biden.
“Any president would be at a loss not having Kennedy around,” said Haas. But, he added, in Biden, there is a return to the Kennedy school of being an international influencer for good.
“In fairness, it’s not just Trump, but Obama. America has not really had a strong voice on freedom and democracy around the world, I would argue, since the latter stages of the second Bush term that is around the period of, you know, since around 2007-ish,” said Haas. “We’re seeing something different with Biden, and I’m actually very enthused about it.”
Haas isn’t just any biographer. He is a longtime Washingtonian who worked as a journalist for the policy-heavy National Journal, as a communications aide for former Vice President Al Gore and the Clinton budget office, and as a transition executive to former President Barack Obama. He has also been a public affairs consultant for groups ranging from the Urban League to the Brookings Institution.
A student of how Washington works, he’s written books on George H.W. Bush, Harry Truman, and human rights.
Haas said he has long been interested in JFK and the role of the U.S. in the world. And when he saw Teddy take Bush on over Iraq, the idea for the book, subtitled “How Jack, Bobby, and Ted Remade America’s Empire,” came together.
“I became interested in this question of all three brothers, their interest in America’s global role, their obvious interests and their obvious influence, and what ties them together. That was kind of the beginning of my research, and I was interested in them and what their experience said really about the larger story of America’s global role in the post-war period,” he explained.
The result was a history of America from the Cold War to the War on Terror told through the eyes of the most influential family in modern politics.
“The brothers feared war, favored diplomacy, and sought to control the world’s deadliest weapons,” he wrote. “Beyond the words they used, the brothers also sounded like one another, speaking in similar cadences and issuing similar calls to action. At times one could read a Kennedy speech and not know who had delivered it,” he added.
Since his death in 2009, Haas said nobody has filled the void left by Kennedy. But, he added, there really isn’t anybody who had Kennedy’s history.
“I don’t know whether somebody could have fully embraced the Kennedy role because there was certainly a uniqueness to the influence that is rooted in more than 60 years of American history. So it’s not simply the case of, well, Ted is no longer here, so I’m going to take this role. I mean, part of taking the role, and to have influence, is to have an audience. And I’m not convinced that somebody else could easily have done that,” said Haas.
