It Seems Like Only Yesterday: Memoirs of Writing, Presidential Politics & the Diplomatic Life

by John Bartlow Martin

Martin, John Bartlow

Hardcover

First published September 1, 1986

About the author

John Bartlow Martin was an American journalist, diplomat and author. The American Ambassador to the Dominican Republic from 1962 until 1964, he was a speechwriter and confidant to many American Democratic politicians including Adlai Stevenson, John F. Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, and Hubert Humphrey.

Reviews

[Liquidlasagna · Rating 5 out of 5]

Former U.S. Ambassador to the Dominican Republic

speechwriter/confidant to:

Adlai Stevenson
John F. Kennedy
Robert F. Kennedy
Lyndon B. Johnson
Hubert Humphrey

also did a two volume biography of Adlai Stevenson

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Political career

Martin was hired in 1952 as a speechwriter by Illinois Governor Adlai Stevenson, and later worked on the Kennedy presidential campaign. Martin was sent by Kennedy on a fact-finding mission to the Dominican Republic after the assassination of the dictator Rafael Trujillo in May 1961, and delivered his report in September. In gratitude for his analysis, he became the U.S. Ambassador to the Dominican Republic, serving from 9 March 1962 to 25 September 1963.

As Ambassador, Martin was an unrelenting critic of the new president, Juan Bosch. According to the historian Stephen G. Rabe, Martin "fancied himself a Roman consul whose word should be law in the Dominican Republic." Martin resigned shortly after the Kennedy assassination, on the very day in which Bosch was toppled in a coup d'etat, but he returned to the Dominican Republic as a special envoy in 1965 during the invasion dispatched by Johnson.