The Kennedy Imprisonment: A Second Look

By: Thomas G Jewusiak

Narrated by: Virtual Voice

Garry Wills begins his meditation not with John F. Kennedy, but with the architect of the myth: Joseph P. Kennedy. The elder Kennedy, Wills argues, was not merely a financier or political strategist; he was a mythmaker-in-chief, a man who understood that in America, power is not seized but staged. “Joe Kennedy,” Wills writes, “was not content to buy success; he had to buy the illusion of virtue.” This illusion would become the scaffolding for Camelot; a palace built not on truth, but on editorial collusion.
Joseph Kennedy’s orchestration of JFK’s image was meticulous. He funded ghostwriters to produce Why England Slept, a book attributed to JFK but largely written by others. He manipulated press coverage, secured flattering profiles, and even lobbied for the Pulitzer Prize that JFK received for Profiles in Courage; a book Wills exposes as “a tissue of ghostwriting and fabrication.” The elder Kennedy’s mythmaking was not benign, it was a desecration of merit, a laundering of privilege into populist charisma.
Scholars like David Nasaw (The Patriarch) and Richard Reeves (President Kennedy: Profile of Power) corroborate Wills’ indictment. They document how Joseph Kennedy’s wealth and influence shaped not only JFK’s career but the very editorial landscape that would later sanctify him. The press didn’t merely report on Kennedy; they became part of the Kennedy apparatus, trading their own integrity for access, truth for proximity to power.
This is the first imprisonment: the entrapment of public discourse in a mythic machinery that refuses complexity and demands obedience to image.
Wills does not flinch in his portrait of John F. Kennedy. He calls him “a sociopath in the classical sense,” not to sensationalize, but to confront the ethical void behind the charm. JFK’s compulsive lying, sexual predation, and emotional detachment were not private flaws; they were political tools, wielded to maintain control and project virility.
Kennedy’s war record, often cited as proof of heroism, is dissected by Wills as a fabricated narrative. The PT-109 incident, while real, was mythologized beyond recognition. Wills shows how JFK’s recklessness contributed to the boat’s destruction, and how the rescue was exaggerated to fit the mold of cinematic valor. “He was not a hero,” Wills writes, “but a man who needed heroism to mask his emptiness.”
This emptiness extended to policy. Wills argues that JFK’s obsession with appearing strong led to disastrous decisions: the Bay of Pigs invasion, the escalation in Vietnam, and the reckless brinkmanship of the Cuban Missile Crisis. These were not strategic miscalculations—they were performances, staged to reinforce the image of masculine control.
Scholars like Robert Dallek and Seymour Hersh have echoed Wills’ critique, documenting JFK’s compulsive womanizing, his reliance on amphetamines, and his disregard for ethical boundaries. But Wills goes further: he shows how these behaviors were not aberrations but manifestations of a deeper pathology, one that the press refused to confront.
This is the second imprisonment: the entrapment of leadership in the performance of virility, where ethical fire is replaced by editorial fog.
Wills devotes an entire section to the Kennedy court, a circle of journalists, lawyers, and academics who became “honorary Kennedys” by virtue of their loyalty to the myth. These figures—Arthur Schlesinger Jr., Theodore Sorensen, Pierre Salinger—did not merely serve the administration. They curated its image, suppressing inconvenient truths and amplifying heroic fictions.
Schlesinger’s A Thousand Days is a prime example. Wills critiques it as “hagiography masquerading as history,” a book that romanticizes JFK’s presidency while ignoring its ethical failures. Sorensen, JFK’s speechwriter and confidant, admitted to ghostwriting Profiles in Courage, yet continued to defend its authenticity.