A Rational Choice?

In my 1970 book The Decision to Go to the Moon, I portrayed Kennedy’s 1961 decision to enter a space race with the Soviet Union as closely resem­bling the rational choice model of decision-making, in which a decision­maker identifies a desirable goal to be achieved or a problem to be addressed, assesses various options for achieving that objective, and selects the option with the best ratio of benefits to costs. It is important to note that what makes this decision process “rational” is the purposeful evaluation of alter­natives to achieve a stated goal and the choice of the alternative that embod­ies the best relationship between benefits and costs; the goal itself is a matter of judgment, and must be evaluated on the quality of that judgment. My reconstruction of the decision process in April and May 1961 suggested that

John Kennedy made the following judgments, each of which could be open to debate:

• Kennedy defined the U. S. national interest as requiring this country to be superior to any rival in every aspect of national power.

• This conviction reflected a Cold War interpretation of the international situation in which there was a zero-sum contest for global power and influ­ence conducted between two sharply opposed social and political systems, one led by the United States and the other by the Soviet Union, with an uncommitted “Third World,” and perhaps even more developed countries, deciding with which system it was better to associate.

• National prestige, Kennedy thought, was an important element of national power. As image-conscious as he was, Kennedy judged that what other nations thought about American power and resolve to use it was as impor­tant, if not more important, than the reality of that power. Kennedy once wondered aloud “What is prestige? Is it the shadow of power or the sub­stance of power?” He concluded that prestige was a real factor in acquiring and exercising national power.7

• Kennedy’s own analysis, the answers he got from the many people he que­ried in the weeks following the April 12 launch of Yuri Gagarin, his assess­ment of the national and international reaction to that feat, and the advice he received from people like Lyndon Johnson and James Webb convinced the president that dramatic space achievements were closely tied to national prestige and thus “part of the battle along the fluid front of the cold war.” In addition, Kennedy judged that the potential contributions of space capabilities to military power justified a significant investment in develop­ing those capabilities, albeit through a peaceful, civilian-led effort.

Once these judgments were made, the choice of sending Americans to the Moon emerged from a rapid but searching assessment of what space activity would best achieve a dramatic space “first” before the Soviet Union, thereby both enhancing U. S. prestige and serving as the focal point for the devel­opment of various space capabilities. It was this decision process that can best be characterized as rational. For example, veteran budget official Willis Shapley, who had been observing national security policy choices since he joined the BOB in 1942, commented that “after having been through quite a few major decisions, there was never a major decision like this made with the same degree of eyes-open, knowing-what-you’re getting-in-for” character. Science adviser Jerome Wiesner agreed, saying that he and Kennedy “talked a lot about do we have to do this. He said to me, ‘Well, it’s your fault. If you had a scientific spectacular on this earth that would be more useful—say desalting the ocean—or something that is just as dramatic and convincing as space, then we would do it.’ We talked about a lot of things where we could make a dramatic demonstration—like nation building—and the answer was that there were so many military overtones as well as other things to the space program that you couldn’t make another choice.” Wiesner added that “if Kennedy could have opted out of a big space program without hurting the country in his judgment, he would have.” Also, “these rockets were a surrogate for military power. He had no real options. We couldn’t quit the space race, and we couldn’t condemn ourselves to be second.” Time/Life reporter Hugh Sidey suggests that the Moon project “was a classic Kennedy challenge. If it hadn’t been started, he might have invented it all, since it combined all those elements of intelligence, courage, and teamwork that so intrigued John Kennedy.” Some years later, the admiring Sidey added that in deciding to go to the Moon, Kennedy “heard the poets. He was beyond politics and dollars.”8

The final words on why he decided to go to the Moon belong to President Kennedy himself. We have in the tape recording of his November 21, 1962, meeting with his space and budgetary advisers an uncensored record of his thinking on the reasons behind his commitment. Then he said:

• “This is important for political reasons, international political reasons. This is, whether we like it or not, in a sense a race.”

• “I would certainly not favor spending six or seven billion dollars to find out about space no matter how on the schedule we’re doing. . . Why are we spending seven million dollars on getting fresh water from salt water, when we’re spending seven billion dollars to find out about space? Obviously you wouldn’t put it on that priority except for the defense implications. And the second point is the fact that the Soviet Union has made this a test of the system. So that’s why we’re doing it. So I think we’ve got to take the view that this is the key program. Everything we do ought really to be tied to getting on the Moon ahead of the Russians.”

• “ We’re talking about these fantastic expenditures which wreck our budget and all these other domestic programs and the only justification for it in my opinion to do it in this time or fashion is because we hope to beat them and demonstrate that starting behind, as we did by a couple of years, by God, we passed them.”

• “ I’m not that interested in space.”

The public rhetoric of President Kennedy, particularly the memorable September 1962 speech at Rice University, created the impression that Kennedy was motivated in his support of Apollo by other reasons, and par­ticularly by a long range vision of space exploration. One clear conclusion of this study is that Kennedy was not a space visionary. Rather, he was a prag­matic decision-maker who came to the conclusion that “whatever mankind must undertake, free men must fully share.”