Amb. John Bartlow Martin's "Six Months in a Quandary" Letter

Amb. John Bartlow Martin's "Six Months in a Quandary" Letter

"[Bosch] is a lousy president, and it is to be seriously doubted that he will significantly improve with 3-1/2 years more of on-the-job training. He makes irresponsible public statements and denunciations (as of South Puerto Rico Sugar). He concentrates on the unimportant (reviving Dominican folklore). He dissipates his energies--and deflates the value of his own utterances-- in profitless public quarrels (with minor politicians who attack him). He is distracted by plots, some imaginary (he has confided a great many to me that I have simply never bothered to report). He refuses to delegate authority (considering his cabinet, this may be a blessing). He is surrounded by too many incompetents, crooks, sycophants, and foolish relatives. He falls prey to bad and grandiose schemes. Insecure, if pressed to "do something," he may do almost anything. He trusts no one fully. He is inclined to be erratic, difficult, dictatorial, fear-ridden, and not wholly trustworthy. He has lied. He wastes time-- hours and hours and hours. He seems to have lost some of the great political skill he showed as a candidate. Though he has created an image of himself as a professor-intellectual, the fact is he never finished high school, and he is self-educated and half-educated, and much of what he knows is wrong. But he considers himself expert in many, perhaps all, fields, and frequently ignores expert advice. I could go on, but I doubt that my readers from more than a year ago need little convincing of my belief that, because of inherent character defects, Bosch really may, before his term ends, fail to control the powerful forces in the Republic, fail to satisfy the aspirations of the people who elected him, fail, in a word, to govern. And, so, fall" (Martin, p. 2).

American Ambassador to the Dominican Republic John Bartlow Martin details his prescient view of Bosch's presidency and movements in the Dominican Republic as the potential coup looms.

John Bartlow Martin

John F. Kennedy Presidential Library & Museum

22 September 1963