All the Way with JFK: An Alternate History of 1964

by F. C. Schaefer

  I learned later that one of the reasons I was selected to speak to this group of black civil rights activists was that someone high up in the campaign - whose exact identity has never been discovered-thought it would be a good idea if the speaker were “ethnic” in appearance since “those Negroes might relate to him better.” This was a reference the olive skin and jet black hair I inherited from my mother and a very good indicator of how badly out of touch some people were in the Kennedy campaign. I didn’t learn any of this until some years later, and I was more amused than insulted afterward.

  The Mississippi Freedom Party pressed ahead with their challenge despite a personal appeal from Senator Hubert Humphrey, who got about the same answer as was given me. Mrs. Hamer gave a compelling address to the Credentials Committee, one which would have made quite an impression if it had been covered on live TV as the networks originally planned, but it was suddenly preempted when President Kennedy went on TV from the White House to announce he had received word from Khrushchev that the Soviet leader had formally agreed in writing to attend a summit in Stockholm a week after the Presidential election in November. What the President didn’t say was that this note from Khrushchev arrived the day before and had been sitting on his desk since then. When the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party threatened to occupy the seats reserved for the regular Mississippi on the floor, the Sergeant at Arms let it be known that they would be detained by the Secret Service as a security risk; in the end, there was no walkout of Southern white regular Democrats.

  The Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party was a problem we could see coming, not so the arrival in Atlantic City of thousands of activists for the International Peace March on Wednesday, the 25th of August, the day Kennedy was officially nominated for a second term. It was led by professional agitator, David Dellinger and ivory tower academics from Harvard and Yale. Their beef was with everything the Kennedy Administration had done for the past six months starting with Cuba, specifically the invasion and overthrow of Castro. Their group was made up of college students, civil rights activists and fellow travelers; they numbered nearly five thousand when assembling just off the boardwalk at two in the afternoon. They were within three blocks of Boardwalk Hall before the street was hastily blocked by patrol cars of the Atlantic City PD, thus saving the Democratic Party from the debacle which would have occurred if the Peaceniks had crashed the hall just as Kennedy’s name was put in nomination by Governor Pat Brown of California.

  This nearly came to pass because Steve Smith and the Irish Mafia who were running things were caught with their pants down by a bunch of left-wing zealots, their bacon being saved only by the quick thinking of the local police chief. As it was, news footage of demonstrators waving placards calling JFK a murderer for his actions in Cuba, Vietnam and Korea made onto the evening newscasts. Almost every placard demanded the immediate release of Castro or a slogan which used some combination of “Imperialist,” “Colonialism,” and “Racism.” The President, who was still in DC, did not like what he saw and made a number of tense telephone calls to Atlantic City; Steve Smith put out a statement deriding the demonstrators as “hard-line Communists.” This was undermined when it was revealed that among those arrested was Dr. William Slone Coffin, the head of Yale, and Benjamin Spock, the renowned baby doctor.

  The convention was designed to be the roll out of the Kennedy campaign for the American people, a showcase for the President’s response to all the bullshit Barry Goldwater and his cohort had been telling the country for months. Over the main entrance to Boardwalk Hall was a huge placard bearing a headshot of a smiling JFK, looking slightly to the left, confidence beaming from his eyes; this despite the fact that JFK had never formally announced he was running for a second term. It was something I was not aware of until the opening day of the convention, when a public ceremony was scheduled at the White House where the President would stand in front of the microphones and declare himself.

  The drama, of course, was not if the President would run, but who would be his running mate, for ever since my first day with Kennedy ’64, there had been rumors that LBJ would not be on the ticket a second time. Back in the winter, when I first signed on, the Vice President’s stock had been so low within the campaign that his being dropped in favor someone else was considered a done deal.

  Two weeks before the convention, I was in a D.C. bar with some of the other guys who were working right under Steve Smith in the campaign, and one of them - who will remain nameless - told me, “Bobby Kennedy hates Old Cornpone’s guts like nobody else’s with the possible exception of Jimmy Hoffa, he’s going trump up all the shit from the Bobby Baker thing to send Johnson’s ass back to Texas before the convention. Moreover, just to ice the cake, there will be a Federal indictment against LBJ for taking bribes sometime in the New Year just to make sure he remains a political corpse. Bobby plays rough.” That was not all, according to my drinking buddy, it was down to Senators Humphrey and Jackson or Governor Sanford as who would be the new VP. It would all be decided just before the opening gavel in Atlantic City on August 23rd.

  So imagine my surprise on opening day, when, in a televised ceremony in the Rose Garden, John F. Kennedy stepped forward and formally announced that he would be a candidate for a second term; this was hardly news, but the sight of a beaming Lyndon Johnson at the President’s side was the photo which appeared above the fold on the front page of the New York Times the next day under a headline which proclaimed IT’S OFFICIAL: KENNEDY-JOHNSON AGAIN IN ’64. “The Vice President was an invaluable asset four years ago,” a self-assured sounding JFK declared to the assembled reporters, “he has been an invaluable asset for the past four years, and he will be an invaluable asset in the next four years.” When asked by Helen Thomas about all the rumors concerning Johnson being dumped, the President replied, “It’s been a boring race on the Democratic side this year, you reporters had to stir up something to make it interesting.” Then he and Johnson walked back inside the White House, ignoring completely the fact that all of those rumors originated from Kennedy’s own men.

  “Everybody was talking about replacing Johnson,” my drinking buddy explained later when I asked about his carved in stone prediction, “except for the President, and in the end, what he said was the only thing which counted.”

  One of my most vivid memories of the last night of the convention was being in a hallway when Jackie Kennedy passed by on her way to the VIP box; it was the closest I would ever get to her, and the beauty of the woman up close was stunning. The photos in the magazines did not begin to do her justice, the President was a supremely lucky man, and in light of later revelations, it was something he did not fully appreciate. My backstage vantage point proved to be the perfect spot from which view JFK and LBJ step back on the political stage for the ’64 campaign; it was the first time either of them had taken part in a purely political event since that trip to Dallas the previous November which almost ended in an unspeakable tragedy, and setting off a crisis which kept the President out of the political spotlight thereafter.

  Until the evening of August 27th, 1964, when John F. Kennedy strode onto the stage and took the podium, and in an acceptance speech clocking in at three quarters of an hour, offered up a spirited defense of his four years in office, a straight out rebuttal to Goldwater and the case for a second term. The President made the first point by paraphrasing his inaugural address, “We have paid the price, borne the burden, met the hardship, stood with our friends and turned back our foes to assure not only the survival of liberty, but its triumph.” This brought the entire hall-including the all-white segregationist Mississippi delegation - to its feet with the biggest sustained roar of approval of the night. He needled the Goldwaterites with, “I would remind our opponents that history has taught us that the extremist, the demagogue, and the fanatic are no lovers of liberty. I would also remind them that the virtue of moderation is not one and the same with cowardice and faintness of heart.” And he made the argument for his re-elect
ion with the statement, “We shall go forward as proud Americans in the 20th Century, with confidence gained through trials endured and challenges overcome, with the courage to face our enemies and look them in the eye; to not accept the notion that we are forever condemned to live in fear of a nuclear Armageddon, but to strive and reach the common ground where an enduring peace between all nations can be found; to not be forever bound by the hatreds and conflicts of our own past history, to instead commit ourselves to live in a nation where the dignity and worth of all citizens is recognized and respected by one and all.”

  Earlier, Vice President Johnson gave his own acceptance speech; nothing from it was memorable, except for one passage, “Four years ago, I put myself forward to be your nominee and asked you to go all the way with LBJ; you did not take me up on the offer, instead I had the high honor of becoming Vice President of the United States and serving under a great President. But I still have a fondness for my old campaign slogan and I think it’s time to take it out of the garage and put it back on the road, only I’d make one little change. This year, I’m going around this great country of ours, from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and I’m going to tell every fine American within the hearing of my voice that it’s time to go All the way with JFK!” The crowd knew its cue and immediately responded with a roaring chorus of “All the way with JFK!” It was even more spontaneous and thunderous when the President and Vice President along with their spouses stood before the convention with their hands raised high at the end of the evening. When they wrote their memoirs years later, some of the Kennedy men would claim the President was highly annoyed with Johnson for rephrasing and re-treading his old slogan and hated having to listen to it at every campaign event from then until November. It’s what they said later, but standing before a packed Boardwalk Hall on the night he accepted re-nomination for a second term in the White House, the John F. Kennedy I saw was truly a man fully enjoying his moment of high triumph.

  The convention ended on a high note with the fall campaign set to formally launch a little more than a week later with the President going up to Detroit and addressing a huge crowd of union members on Labor Day. I thought we had the election won easily, in no way could the millions of good Americans out there buy what Goldwater was selling; this optimistic notion took a beating when everyone with a paid position in the Kennedy ‘64 campaign got a call the day after we left Atlantic City informing them that there would be a meeting the next day, Saturday, at the National HQ a few blocks from the White House. At the meeting, we were addressed by Lawrence O’Brien, who told us he had quietly given up his Congressional duties and was now unofficially a co-campaign manager with Steve Smith. O’Brien’s main concern would be day to day operations and making sure strategy was being implemented. “If any of you think this race is going to be a cake-walk,” he told us, “then let me disabuse you of that notion right now.” He then backed up his words by producing a bunch of mimeographed handouts which contained a detailed analysis of the polling by Gallup, Roper, and Harris since the beginning of the year.

  The gist of it went like this: the President got consistently high approval ratings - 60% or better-during the winter and spring following the assassination attempt through the invasion of Cuba; the numbers started to decline with the first week of combat operations. “This was when the first flag-draped coffins started coming home,” O’Brien pointed out. The President’s support sagged further when the Soviets went into Iran, and the bombing operations were launched against Vietnam and Korea, but still the President’s numbers were above 50%, and he was beating Goldwater by ten points in hypothetical matchups. Then at the end of June, his ratings dropped a sudden five points almost overnight - that was when the Civil Rights Act was being debated in the Senate and right after the President was in New Delhi shaking hands with Chou. The point was made; JFK’s bold moves had cost him politically.

  We were then treated to a rundown of Goldwater’s numbers, which had steadily improved since March, edging up a point or two a month until he clinched the Republican nomination. O’Brien showed us where the race stood on the eve of the Democratic convention, with the President leading his opponent by 7 points in the Roper poll, 9 points according to Gallup, and 10 points according to Harris. This appeared to be a solid lead, but the state by state breakdowns painted a somewhat different picture in the Electoral College, which showed Kennedy-Johnson losing all of the Old Confederacy except for Florida, where they were tied; in all important Texas, LBJ’s home state, they were losing by 5 points. Illinois was a dead heat because Dirksen was on the Republican ticket; California, which should have been a lock for Kennedy now that Nixon was not running for the first time in over a decade, was a dead heat. What was even more worrisome were surveys which showed Goldwater’s fiery anti-Communism and his opposition to the Civil Rights Act were finding favor with ethnic blue collar Democrats in Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania.

  The enthusiasm for George Wallace I’d witnessed among blue collar Democrats in Wisconsin back in the spring was now proving to be a possible harbinger of trouble for us in the fall as all those WWII veterans on the assembly lines or out the fields began to take Goldwater seriously as the summer came to an end.

  Then O’Brien outlined our response. “We are going to win back every wayward Democratic vote - every single one. How will this be accomplished? We will mobilize our unions and make sure every single household of a member is contacted and reminded of Senator Goldwater’s labor record. Our message will be blunt: do they want a man who opposes the very concept of collective bargaining in the White House? Do they want a man opposed to the concept of a 40 hour work week and overtime pay proposing laws from the Oval Office? I think we know how that conversation will go?”

  O’Brien then went on to say what the campaign’s main argument for the re-election of John F. Kennedy would be: it comes down to a choice between whose finger could best be trusted with the nuclear button. The argument would go something like this: events had forced this President to the brink of a world war multiple times, but his leadership had prevented the world from going over the brink; he had stood up to the Communists in Cuba and turned them back, yet had journeyed to New Delhi to find a path to peace with our most committed rivals. That was true statesmanship, not the cravenness and appeasement charged by Senator Goldwater, a warmongering gunslinger who if given the opportunity, would fire off A-Bombs as if they were rounds in a revolver. On the issue of Civil Rights, our strategy would be simple and our message clear: if you elect Barry Goldwater President, he will then govern America the same as if he was Jefferson Davis. This we would say all day, every day, until Election Day.

  Mr. O’Brien ended his talk with the announcement that the President and Goldwater had agreed to conduct three debates during the fall campaign, the first one being in San Francisco on September 17th. It was the second debate which caught everyone’s attention for its choice of location: Dallas, Texas on October 1st. It would be Kennedy’s first trip back to the scene of the attempted assassination since the crime had occurred.

  My job did not change with the ending of the convention or the changes at the top of re-election committee; after the meeting, Mr. O’Brien sought me out and shook my hand, saying he’d heard great things about my work and for me to keep it up. “You’ll have your hands more than full between now and November,” he said.

  I accompanied the President up to Boston on the Monday after we left Atlantic City for an “unofficial” campaign event in his home-town at Fenway Park. The stadium was packed to capacity as wildly enthusiastic crowd greeted the President and Mrs. Kennedy. “This may well be my last quest for elective office,” the President told them, “and I’ll always be grateful to you who made this all possible.” There were not many dry eyes when the President was finished. Three days later, there was another “unofficial” event, this time in Florida, when the President flew down to Miami to greet one of the first Army units rotated out of Cuba, where fighting was still flaring up as Cas
tro’s fanatics refused to give up. While he was in town, the President made an appearance at a rally organized by his old friend, Florida Senator George Smathers. Everyone was concerned as to how it would go; Florida, after all, was still part of the South, and there had been a lot of fear and resentment stirred up by the influx of refugees from Cuba, though the torrent from the spring had slowed to a trickle by late summer.

  Our fears proved to be groundless, for when the President took the stage before a crowd of Florida Democrats, they stood and cheered for five minutes. His remarks were brief and general, but when Kennedy said, “Let it be said we did not cower before tyrants, and we did not stand by while a free people were subjugated,” the roar of approval was loud and clear.

  Those first days of September, just before the Presidential campaign kicked into high gear, were the best, the polls coming out of the Democratic convention were good, showing the President up by two or three points and in a good position nationally to fend off the Republicans; we were told that John F. Kennedy would begin his quest for a second term by effectively rebutting Goldwater’s appeal to blue collar voters when he spoke in Detroit on Labor Day.

  I was told it was a great speech, one of the best Ted Sorenson ever wrote for the President; too bad he never got to give it before the audience for whom it was intended.

  On a Friday evening marking the beginning of Labor Day weekend, 1964, a black motorist in the Watts neighborhood of South Los Angeles was pulled over for drunk driving by members of the LAPD. The driver resisted arrest and was struck upside the head with a nightstick by a zealous officer; by then a crowd from the neighborhood had gathered in the street and what began as heckling of the police quickly escalated to bottle and rock throwing. The arrival of backup units served to make things worse as long-standing resentment among black citizens of the predominately working class community over police brutality and discriminatory housing practices erupted into violence. Within minutes the streets were choked with rioters and the LAPD was forced to retreat.