The Symbolic Role of Space

John Kennedy laid out his basic argument for his candidacy in one of his early campaign speeches. He told an audience in Portland, Oregon, that

Other countries of the free world—troubled and restless—are looking for new leadership from the United States, and I believe they are willing to accept and respect the leadership of an administration that will move vigorously on these five fronts:

1. An administration that moves rapidly to rebuild our defenses, until America is once again first in military power across the board;

2. An administration that moves rapidly to revamp our goals in education and research, until American science and learning are once again preeminent;

3. An administration that moves rapidly to reshape our image here at home, until it is clear to all the world that the revolution for equal rights is still the American revolution;

4. An administration that moves rapidly to renew our leadership for peace, until we have brought to that universal pursuit the same concentration of resources and efforts that we have brought to the preparation of war; and

5. Finally, an administration that moves rapidly to remold our attitudes toward the aspirations of other nations, until we have a fuller understanding of their problems, their requirements, and their fundamental values.16

Theodore Sorensen notes that there was a single theme that Kennedy stressed throughout the campaign: “the challenge of the sixties to America’s security, America’s prestige, America’s progress.” Kennedy on the campaign trail proclaimed over and over again that “it is time to get this country moving again.” Eventually that phrase or a variation of it appeared in every campaign speech. By the end of October, “the issue of slipping prestige had become the dominant one of the campaign”; according to the polls, Kennedy had a substantial lead over his Republican opponent, Richard M. Nixon, on this issue.17

It was in this context that Kennedy made frequent references to the space program in his campaign appearances. For example:

If the Soviet Union was first in outer space, that is the most serious defeat the United States has suffered in many, many years. . . Because we failed to recognize the impact that being first in outer space would have, the impres­sion began to move around the world that the Soviet Union was on the march, that it had definite goals, that it knew how to accomplish them, that it was moving and we were standing still. This is what we have to overcome, that

psychological feeling in the world that the United States has reached maturity,

that maybe our high noon has passed. . . and that now we are going into the

long, slow afternoon.18

Although a speech devoted solely to space issues was drafted for Kennedy’s campaign use, it was never delivered.19

Kennedy’s campaign rhetoric with respect to the loss of U. S. prestige because of the Soviet space successes was reinforced by a classified U. S. Information Agency report that was leaked to The Washington Post. The title of the October 10 report was “The World Reaction to the United States and Soviet Space Programs—A Summary Assessment.” The report was based on polls taken in Great Britain, France, West Germany, Italy, and Norway. On the basis of the results of these surveys, the report concluded that “in antici­pation of future U. S.-U. S.S. R. standing, foreign public opinion. . . appears to have declining confidence in the U. S. as the ‘wave of the future’ in a number of critical areas.”20

Vice presidential candidate Lyndon B. Johnson in his campaign appear­ances did not stress the space issue as strongly or as frequently as did Kennedy, even though from the launch of Sputnik 1 on October 4, 1957 on, Johnson had taken the lead in the Senate on space issues. In late October 1960, in response to Richard Nixon’s defense of the space record of the Eisenhower administration, Johnson released a “white paper” prepared by the staff of the Senate space committee, which he chaired. Johnson criticized the admin­istration’s space policy but stressed that both Democrats and Republicans in Congress had recognized the need for a strong space effort. The paper contended that “The sad truth is that U. S. progress in space has been con­tinually hampered by the Republican administration’s blind refusal to rec­ognize that we have been engaged in a space and missile race with the Soviet Union and to act accordingly.” In a statement released with his white paper, Johnson echoed the sentiments of Kennedy’s October 10 statement regard­ing the strategic significance of space: “It is a fact that if any nation succeeds in securing control of outer space, it will have the capability of controlling the earth itself.”21

Throughout the campaign, Kennedy frequently linked the Eisenhower administration’s failures in space to its allowing the Soviet Union to achieve a significant advantage vis-a-vis the United States with respect to the devel­opment and deployment of ballistic missiles—the so-called “missile gap.” On July 23, after the Democratic convention, candidate Kennedy had a highly classified briefing from the director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), Allen Dulles. A wide variety of topics were covered, including “an analysis of Soviet strategic attack capabilities in missiles.” Kennedy asked Dulles “how we ourselves stood in the missile race.” Dulles told him that “the Defense Department was the competent authority on this question.” After subsequent meetings with defense officials, Kennedy told Sorensen that the briefings “were largely superficial” and “contained little he had not read in The New York Times.”22

The reality was that at the time of the Dulles briefing, there was limited information available to the U. S. leadership on Soviet deployment of intercon­tinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs). The missions flown by the U-2 spy plane prior to the May 1, 1960, downing of a flight over Russia piloted by Francis Gary Powers had suggested that there had been very limited deployment of the initial Soviet ICBM, and thus that a prospective “missile gap” was not likely to emerge. The first successful U. S. spy satellite mission was not launched until August 18, 1960, after Kennedy’s CIA briefing, and it took several additional missions later in 1960 and in early 1961 to confirm that the indications from the U-2 flights were correct. (In fact, only four of the original ICBMs were ever deployed; it took some twenty hours to prepare the rocket for launch, making it an unwieldy military weapon. Its main role turned out to be as the workhorse launch vehicle for early Soviet space missions.23)

According to Sorensen, the U-2 evidence was not made available to Kennedy in the various intelligence briefings he received during the cam­paign. Also, from Kennedy’s September 1960 question to Trevor Gardner about whether the United States or the Soviet Union would be first to have a reconnaissance satellite, it appears Kennedy was not briefed on the CORONA intelligence satellite program that Eisenhower had approved in February 1958; its existence was known to very few people within the Congress. Even so, Eisenhower was “reportedly furious” that Kennedy continued to raise the missile gap issue throughout the campaign, while his opponent, Richard Nixon, could not provide information that would counter Kennedy’s claims because of its highly classified nature.24