ジャンル: ノンフィクション
英語難易度: ★★★
オススメ度: ★★☆☆☆
中途半端に知識がある人やそこそこ頭の良い人は、なまじ実力があり自信過剰になりがちで周りの人も異論を挟みにくいために、ずぶの素人が携わったケースと比べて失敗した時の悪影響は甚大となる、そんな見本例のような話でした。
「ベスト・アンド・ブライテスト」それは、最も優秀で頭脳明晰なドリームチームに与えられる称号。 そんな、誰よりも優れているはずの選りすぐりのスタッフが、取り返しのつかない泥沼となるベトナム戦争という大失敗を起こしてしまった。 ケネディ政権からジョンソン政権に渡るアメリカ政治の迷走を描いています。 自分たちは他の人よりも頭が良く優れていると思っているベスト・スタッフたちによる過信が招いた地獄。いけいけどんどん、は危険なのです。
本作、かなりの長編で力作であることは間違いないのですが、全体としてはとても読みづらい文章でしんどかったですね。 登場人物が多いのも理由の一つでしょうが、読み手に負荷をかけるタイプの簡潔でない文章で、ダラダラと書き連ねたように感じました。 しかし歴史的に価値のあるノンフィクションであることは間違いないでしょう。
(1972年発刊)
メモポイント
⚫︎ 第35代米国大統領とはJFKのこと。彼は政治信条よりも自身のスタイルを重んじた。
the thirty-fifth President of the United States paid great attention to style; style for him and for those around him came perilously close to substance. He did not like people who were messy and caused problems, nor did he like issues that were messy and caused problems.
⚫︎ 悪名高いマッカーシーの杜撰な赤狩り。こんないい加減な主張が通ってしまうとは。世間の良識など、さほど当てにはならない好例。
On February 9, 1950, McCarthy flew into Wheeling, West Virginia, where he made the first of his major Red-baiting Communist-conspiracy charges: “While I cannot take the time to name all the men in the State Department who have been named as members of the Communist party and members of a spy ring, I have here in my hand a list of two hundred and five that were known to the Secretary of State as being members of the Communist party and who, nevertheless, are still working and shaping policy in the State Department . .
(中略)
It was like a circus; he was always on the move, his figures varied, his work was erratic and sloppy, he seemed to have no genuine interest in any true nature of security.
(中略)
Democratic party, victim of his charges, did not fight as an institution, nor use its real force, but the Republicans were worse. They welcomed him; the more he assaulted the Democrats, the better for them; the Democrats were on the defensive, and the Republicans were the beneficiaries. He was, in the words of one observer, “like a pig in a minefield for them.” “Joe,” said John Bricker, one of the more traditional Republican conservatives, a candidate for Vice-President in 1944, “you’re a real SOB. But sometimes it’s useful to have SOBs around to do the dirty work.”
⚫︎ この本を読むとケネディとはなんでイヤなやつなんだろうと思えてくるが、もっといただけないのはケネディ暗殺後に後任に着いたジョンソン大統領。俗物根性の塊。みんな病んでいる感じ。自己肥大、本を読まないことを誇る。粗野なギャグ、庶民派の出自を強調して伝説を作ろうとする。
Thus the inner circle had to be secure, truly secure; particularly a man with as profound a sense of his own weaknesses and vulnerabilities as Lyndon Johnson wanted men around he could trust.
“How loyal is that man?” he asked a White House staffer about a potential hand.
“Well, he seems quite loyal, Mr. President,” said the staffer.
“I don’t want loyalty. I want loyalty. I want him to kiss my ass in Macy’s window at high noon and tell me it smells like roses. I want his pecker in my pocket.”
⚫︎ ジョンソン大統領のエピソード。 訪問客には貧乏で田舎者である出自をことさら強調するが、皆の前で自分の母親にネタバレされる。「リンドン、どうして事実と異なることを言うのですか。あなたは町にもほど近い裕福な家庭で育ったじゃありませんか」 これはイタイ!
He liked to think of himself as something of an Abe Lincoln, the country boy learning by oil lamps, and later, as President, loved to feed his own legend and richly embellished it, taking visitors around the old homestead, describing how simple it had been, a tiny little shack, until finally his mother interrupted him in front of several visitors, and said, “Why, Lyndon, you know that’s not true, you know you were born and brought up in a perfectly nice house much closer to town.”
⚫︎ あまりにも狭量なジョンソン大統領。副大統領のハンフリーは辛かったろうな。 たくさんあるホワイトハウス専用機を使う場合でも、ハンフリーは、いちいちジョンソンにお伺いを立てねばならなかったとは。 これがケネディの副大統領であったジョンソンが、自身の副大統領ハンフリーに対する態度だった。自身がケネディ時代に冷遇されていたからこそ、その辛さが分かりそうなものなのに。
It was not just humiliation on Vietnam which was vested upon Humphrey, but it appeared in many other forms as well. There was the time when Johnson was cruising on the Potomac in his presidential yacht, and when he saw Humphrey entertaining reporters on his yacht, Johnson had his captain call up Humphrey’s captain demanding to know who was on board. Thereafter, by a new rule, Humphrey could not take out a yacht without first clearing it with Marvin Watson, who was in charge of important matters like that. Nor could Humphrey use one of the many planes available to the White House without his air attaché first writing a memo to Johnson’s air attaché requesting the plane; Johnson’s air attaché would then pass the memo to Marvin Watson, who would write a memo for Johnson’s overnight box requesting the President’s approval. Such is the treatment of Vice-Presidents by former Vice-Presidents.
⚫︎ ジョンソン、権力に魅せられたが、権力に見放された大統領。自身の政治家としての基盤を築こうと焦るあまり、ベトナム戦争の混乱を見て見ぬ振りをした。 「ベスト・アンド・ブライテスト」スタッフたちの暴走を止めることもできなかった。
But it was Lyndon Johnson who had lost the most. He had always known this, even in the turbulent days of 1964 and 1965 when the decisions on the war seemed to press on him; even then he was more dubious than those around him, knowing that of them, he had the most to lose. And he lost it, so much of his reputation, so much of his dreams. He could not go to the 1968 Democratic convention, it was all too painful and explosive; nor did he attend the 1972 convention either. There at Miami Beach the Democrats had hung huge portraits of their heroes of the past in the main hall, photos of Presidents and national candidates. But Lyndon Johnson’s photo was not among them, rather it could be found in a smaller room where photos of past congressional leaders hung. He had always dreamed of being the greatest domestic President in this century, and he had become, without being able to stop it, a war President, and not a very good one at that.
ケネディもジョンソンも、国が危険な方向に舵を切っていることを知りつつもコントロールできなくなっていました。 本作を読むと、第二次大戦中の日本の軍部の独走の歴史が重なります。城山三郎の「War Criminal (落日燃ゆ)」(165冊目)がオススメです。
