All the Way with JFK: An Alternate History of 1964

by F. C. Schaefer

  No account of October 1964 can leave out the other major foreign policy crisis’s that erupted simultaneously, when only days after the coup in Moscow, a human wave assault was launched against the headquarters of the 1st Marine Battalion outside Kontum in the Central Highlands of South Vietnam; the resulting battle cost 25 Marines their lives with three times as many wounded. The following day a report from General Westmorland revealed that at least two full divisions of the North Vietnamese Army had moved into the South in the previous weeks; clearly, the North was preparing to wage all-out war.

  The NSC meeting on the situation was short, and the decision was unanimous; because we were now dealing with a new and hard-line leadership in Moscow, America could not afford to appear weak and indecisive, not within days of the Moscow coup. Those were the expressed views of Secretaries Rusk and McNamera, along with McGeorge Bundy, the NSC head. It was also the view of Attorney General Robert Kennedy, who said, “We can’t afford to let Vietnam become our Achilles Heel.” At no time did the current domestic political situation come up in the meeting, there was no mention of any possible fallout at the polls for the President as a consequence for any action taken.

  At 9:00 p.m., President Kennedy gave the necessary authorization for Admiral Sharp, the CINC in the Pacific, to order the F-8’s to resume bombing on North Vietnamese military targets. Those orders were issued from Honolulu to the Bon Homme Richard, an aircraft carrier patrolling off the coast of South Vietnam, within the within the hour. Before the sun rose on Washington DC the next day, the bombs were falling.

  “I want to know what happens next,” the President said after he read the first report on the success of the bombing raids. “The last thing I want to do is to go into Vietnam without a plan.”

  There was another event that week which did not receive near the attention it should have in Washington: on October 17th, the Ayatollah Khomeini entered Teheran, proclaimed Iran freed from “the infidel and the Zionist puppet” since it was now an Islamic Republic and promptly put a bounty on the head of the Shah.

  Dorothy Brennan

  October 1964

  On the flight out of Dallas, I seriously considered resigning my position with the Goldwater campaign; the events at the Adolphus Hotel had revealed to me a side of political life in America, which in my youthful naiveté, I had no idea existed. I also understood that I had allowed myself to become involved in things which could have a negative impact on my future if even a whiff of it ever became public; my mind was filled with images of me being chased by mobs of reporters. I was only one newspaper story away from becoming a house-hold name…and not in a good way. These thoughts made me want to move to Alaska and get a job waitressing under an assumed name.

  But running away was not an option, done was done. Besides, the reason I became involved in politics in the first place was still very valid: I still believed Barry Goldwater was undoubtedly the best man to lead America in these trying times and none of the disgrace of that evening at the Adolphus tarnished him in any way.

  When we got back to Phoenix, I went about my duties as if nothing had ever happened. I made a point to steer clear of Wade Harbinson, which turned out the be not a problem as the man seemed bent on avoiding me as much as I wanted to avoid him. He flew out to the West Coast two days after the Dallas debate, ostensibly to coordinate fundraising with some of Senator Goldwater’s biggest and most wealthy backers for the final days of the campaign, which were now upon us.

  We knew damn well it was going to be a tough fight against the Kennedy machine, but we all took inspiration from what the Senator himself told us in one meeting three weeks before election day, “Taking Omaha Beach was an uphill battle all the way, but they took it and kept it, no damn reasons why we can’t do the same thing to the White House.”

  The Kennedy campaign hit us hard on TV and the radio with ads where decorated veterans put on their combat medals and denounced Goldwater as a warmonger who would start WWIII; senior citizens claimed President Goldwater would abolish Social Security; factory workers outside of an auto assembly plant warned that a Goldwater Administration would abolish the 40 hour work week along with the minimum wage.

  Those ads were effective, no one could deny it, but we had ammunition of our own with which to return fire. It was just a matter of finding the most effective way to use it. This is where the genius of Clif White showed itself again. He saw the real potential of drawing a stark contrast between the present day reality in America and the possible future depending on who was elected on November 3rd and commissioned the “What kind of country do you want?” ads, which were the product of some guys at the marketing department at Warner Brothers who had been recommended by Jack Warner himself.

  We hit Kennedy back with a one-minute ad contrasting footage of the lawlessness the whole country saw on their TV sets during the Los Angeles riots with footage of the peaceful and orderly neighborhoods that all real Americans aspired to live in. At the end, the voter is presented with a simple statement, “Which country do you want? The choice is yours November 3rd: Vote Goldwater-Dirksen.”

  Clif White made sure that ad ran in every major market across the country, especially in the big Northeastern and Midwestern cities where the Democrats were supposed to have an advantage. Some of the Arizona Mafia were not too keen on this approach at first; Dean Burch made a point of saying it was “crude.” Mr. White replied that this was simply taking the battle right to the heart of the Kennedy constituency, “We are showing the people in Chicago, Kansas City, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Jersey City just what life is going to be like if they vote this man back in for another four years.” There were others where we took on the leniency in criminal justice system, the loss of property rights, and the lack of respect for basic American tradition by making the same stark contrast.

  My favorite was the one with John Wayne where he looked the viewer straight in the eye at the end of the ad and said, “It was men with guts who made America great, the kind of men who settled the West, built our great cities, and answered the call to keep this country free for nearly 200 years. I’m proud to say I consider my good friend, Barry Goldwater, to be one of them.”

  Our poll numbers edged upward, especially in the industrial Mid-West with a lot of blue collar households.

  Kennedy was probably in bed with some prostitute when they had to roust him out with news of Khrushchev’s fall; then, only days after the Moscow coup, came news that the bombing of North Vietnam was being resumed on a limited basis - another weak response to Communist aggression sure to grab the notice of the new thugs in charge in the Kremlin.

  The Russian coup and Vietnam were top of the agenda when Goldwater and Kennedy met for the third and final Presidential debate in Cleveland on the 20th of October. I was in the theater throughout the entire debate, seated only a few feet away from both candidates, and despite what the pundits and the Eastern liberal press wrote, it most definitely was not a “debacle” for Senator Goldwater. Speaking from behind a podium for more than an hour, I saw and heard a man who stood up for patriots, promised to make Communism retreat, and refused to put up with the current coddling of criminals and the general disrespect for law and order. The Senator had every right to get angry when one of the journalists present, Tom Wicker, a card-carrying leftist, asked him about a supposed endorsement he’d received from the Alabama Ku Klux Klan. There never was any such endorsement, and it was nothing but a New York Times reporter trying link the Republican candidate to the worst elements in American society. There was clear bias from the debate moderator, Chet Huntley, from the beginning, and never more so than when he admonished the Senator about his “intemperate” tone.

  Huntley and Wicker and the rest of them were not nearly so hard on Kennedy, all the more galling to me after what I’d learned about the man back in Texas. I received another knowing wink from the President as I was making my way to the stage after the debate to congratulate Senator Goldwater for a fine performance. Talk about no shame.
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  We now had two weeks until Election Day, Goldwater was still behind, but far from out according to the polls; we were within striking distance of the President in 10 states. All we needed to do was carry half of them, and when added to the states we had already locked up, it was more than enough to give the Senator a majority in the Electoral College.

  It was just a matter of finding a way to move the right amount of voters, and this set off a contentious argument inside the campaign, Dean Burch wanted the Senator to hit Kennedy hard for not “finishing the job” against the Communists when we had the upper hand, and for doing to South Vietnam what Truman had done to China, abandoning an Asian ally to Red insurgents. Cliff White, on the other hand, wanted the Senator to focus on crime and disorder here at home, and draw a straight line between the Los Angeles riots and the results of Kennedy’s big government liberalism.

  Senator Goldwater heard both sides out, and then said, “win or lose, I’ve got to do it my way.” He never did make a choice and stick to one theme, and as a result his speeches in the final weeks often jumped from back and forth from one point to another; if it was a problem, the crowds didn’t seem to mind as the candidate received wildly enthusiastic responses in such varied places as Indianapolis, Houston, Milwaukee, and Denver.

  The one piece of advice the Senator did listen was from some of his wealthy California backers to have Ronald Reagan come to Arizona and give him some valuable tips on how to deliver his speeches. Reagan was a skilled speaker who’d honed his talents giving patriotic talks to GE employees; he is the reason why more detailed anecdotes and examples were in Goldwater’s speeches at the end of the campaign, something which did not come naturally to the Senator. That is why Goldwater would invoke a plumber or secretary when talking about the burden of high taxes or a GI who had fallen in Cuba when criticizing Kennedy’s outstretched hand to Khrushchev. It was wise council, and it really paid off before the crowds. Reagan is justifiably lauded for his “Time to Choose” TV speech late in the campaign, it was perfect articulation of conservative principles and launched his political career, but the work Reagan did behind the scenes was just as important

  The biggest event of the campaign was at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, California during the last week before Election Day and it is the one all of us who worked so hard to elect Goldwater remember with the most fondness. The crowd was enormous and pumped; we learned later they had to turn away thousands at the gate. The few Hollywood stars willing to come out for the Republican ticket were there: James Stewart, Ginger Rogers, Mary Pickford, Alice Faye, Irene Dunne, Robert Taylor, and of course, John Wayne. Nixon was there as well; he managed to introduce the candidate as the “next President of the United States” with conviction.

  The crowd hung on Senator Goldwater’s every word, proof positive of how much he had improved as a candidate since he had first stomped through the snows of New Hampshire back in the February. He answered the attacks the Kennedy campaign had been hurling at him night and day for weeks when he stood before the throng in the Rose Bowl and stated, “Moderation will not keep America free; Moderation will not keep America safe from enemies bent upon its ultimate destruction; Moderation will not deliver to our children the precious heritage of liberty, duty, and God-given individual rights which previous generations handed down to us.” I still get chills at the memory of his final words. “America has always been a bright light in an often dark world, a beckon of hope to those under tyranny’s heel. I’ve always believed that was God’s destiny for this country. I now fear that light has dimmed and that this great land is in danger of falling short of its grand and divine destiny, that the tyranny so many have fled to our shores to escape has now taken root in our own precious soil. It is our job, here and now, my fellow Americans, to restore the full glow to the torch of liberty, to banish even the hint of despotism from our land, to extend a hand not to the foreign dictator, but to the men and women he has enslaved. In this great crusade, I ask for your vote, and I ask for your help. God bless America!”

  I saw tears in the eyes of a couple of the movie’s greatest tough guys when the Senator was finished, and the crowd in the Rose Bowl was on its feet, giving him an ovation which lasted for nearly ten minutes. There were tears in my eyes as well, not because of the Senator’s words, but because if not for a deal struck at the Adolphus Hotel, the American people would have learned the truth about Kennedy and this great man, Barry Goldwater would be looking at a landslide victory in a matter of days.

  In that moment, I felt history would never forgive me, if I didn’t do something.

  John Compton

  October 1964

  In the history of the Kennedy-Johnson re-election effort in 1964, there is before Dallas on October 1st, and then there is after Dallas; or, for those of us in the know, there was before the Adolphus Hotel, and then there was after the Adolphus. The official historians write about the genuine joy and enthusiasm from the citizens of the Lone Star state that Kennedy received upon his return to Texas for the first time since the assassination attempt the year before and the clear spirit of forgiveness and generosity with which he welcomed it. It is true, Kennedy and Johnson toured the state for the next two days and were met with huge crowds wherever they went - Fort Worth, Austin, San Antonio, Houston - while the surge to Goldwater, plainly visible to any observer for the past few weeks, appeared to have crested and receded. But appearances were misleading, Kennedy’s tour brought only a momentary lift to the campaign, and it is doubtful any of his speeches changed the minds of those already hell bent on voting Republican in November.

  No, what truly made the difference was the cold hard cash we had deposited in a Dallas bank in the early hours of October 2nd after the events at the Adolphus; money which was then liberally spent all over Texas, the rest of the South, and even points far North and West in the remaining days of the campaign. There are no ledgers and receipts to document this windfall, no withdrawal slips to show the daily flow of funds into campaign coffers, but its presence is there for all to see, it is only a matter of perspective.

  The first place this sudden infusion of cash made itself felt was on the airwaves in every radio market in Texas, where they were deluged with 10- and 30- second spots extolling the President’s decisiveness and thoughtfulness in a time of crisis, always describing him as “a man who will keep the peace.” At the same time, there was a multitude of ads going after Goldwater on his opposition to Social Security, Federal aid to farmers, old age medical insurance and just about everything else enacted in the 20th Century to make life better for the working man in America.

  “If we can get Texans and even a few more Southerners to forget where Barry stands on Civil Rights,” the Vice President said at one point, “even for a little while, they’ll see that he’s never lifted a finger to do a damn thing for them. In fact he’s worked hard to make their lives worse.”

  By the second week of October, we had good reason to believe this tact was working: even though the polls did not reflect it yet, you could feel the pendulum in Texas swinging back toward the Democratic ticket. It was out there on the campaign trail, an energy among the crowds which were growing, and in the large number of volunteers who were flocking to party headquarters across the state. The national Kennedy-Johnson headquarters liked what they were hearing so well, that they authorized spending money to make anti-Goldwater ad buys in selected radio markets in the rest of the South; which meant more money packed in suitcases inside the bank’s vault and hand carried to Nashville, Memphis, New Orleans and Atlanta.

  Then, just as we were feeling awfully good about our chances, every TV in the country was interrupted by one of those Special Bulletin logos; a coup in Moscow, Khrushchev was out, and God only knew whose hand was on the nuclear button. There was a new sheriff in the Kremlin, and he wasted no time in ordering mass arrests behind the Iron Curtain and letting us know he wasn’t about to abide any agreement old Nikita had made at New Delhi.

  This event made it ap
pear as if the Kennedy Administration had been completely blindsided and his claims of steady leadership in the preceding months ring hollow, along with putting into doubt all his lofty goals in foreign policy for the second term. Suddenly, it made having a tough guy like Goldwater, a man who said he would have no problem lobbing one into the Men’s Room at the Kremlin, as President make a lot of sense to voters. It did not help when South Vietnam heated up again within days; to anyone following events, it appeared as if the new bosses in Moscow were wasting no time in challenging the American President. Newspaper editorials across the country unanimously pronounced the President’s policy of reaching out to Russia a failure, his plans for negotiations to lessen tensions and reduce nuclear arms so much dust in the wind. The papers in Texas really gave the President hell, calling him a fool for not pressing the advantage over the Reds when he had the chance.

  Kennedy had no choice but to pivot politically in the face of changing events; there couldn’t anymore talk of summits. Overnight, there needed to be more speeches along the lines of “pay any price, bear any burden.”

  The third and final debate was set for October 20th, in the wake of the Moscow coup. For the President, it was both a challenge and an opportunity; the challenge would be fending off the inevitable “I told you so” attack from Goldwater while taking advantage of this opportunity to retake the offensive against him.

  I remember watching the debate on a TV set in a Baton Rouge motel room, and having my heart sink when the Republican candidate came out swinging in his opening remarks, attacking Kennedy’s foreign policy as hopelessly naïve and feckless against an aggressive and intractable enemy. Then there was the first question of the night to the Arizona Senator from a New York Times reporter asking him if he was willing to repudiate an endorsement from the United Klans of America. My motel TV was black and white, but I could still see Goldwater’s face redden, and the fire come out his ears; later he would claim to know it was a question designed to embarrass him and to be determined not to take the bait. “The Klan, the Communist Party, the Socialists, or the Know-Nothing Party are free to do whatever they want. I don’t have anything to do with it.” What the millions watching saw was a man who refused to renounce the Ku Klux Klan; if you watch a tape of the moment now, you can see John F. Kennedy fighting hard to hide a smile as his opponent steps in it on national TV. Goldwater lost his temper and never quite got it back for the rest of the debate; his Klan answer was front page news across the country the next day, not his slashing attacks on Kennedy’s foreign policy. Two days later, follow up reporting would reveal there had never been any such endorsement of Goldwater by Robert Shelton, the Grand Dragon of the UKA, but the damage was done.