All the Way with JFK: An Alternate History of 1964

by F. C. Schaefer

  Why are we talking now? Because of the passage of time and the passing of prominent individuals; the Kennedy years are ancient history now, and if I have any doubts, all I have to do is ask my kids. And I want my children to know what happened, what their parents once did in a long gone America when a man named Kennedy was President.

  Dorothy Brennan

  November 1964-September 2014

  There was one shining moment on election night, 1964, right after Ohio went in the Goldwater column when I actually thought the Senator had it won, then two of our must carry states, Arkansas and Tennessee, went for Kennedy and the next thing I knew, I was standing behind the Senator on the podium as he conceded the race, wiping the tears from my eyes. The next few days were spent in a state of deep mourning as I helped close up the Goldwater ’64 headquarters in Phoenix; what really hurt was that I knew how different things might have been.

  While closing down the campaign, I got two phone calls; the first was an offer to come and work on Capitol Hill, right in the center of the action and for good money. The second call was from the short guy who’d asked me out that night at the Adolphus, reminding me that I’d said call him after the election. The last person I wanted to spend any time with was a Kennedy man, I turned him down twice, but he was persistent and finally I agreed to go out with him on the condition we talk about anything but politics.

  And that is how I got to together with Kevin McCluskey, the love of my life.

  We were married in December 1965, in Idaho with just our immediate families present; my parents were polite, it took them awhile to get used to having an Irish-Italian Catholic in the family. Kevin’s folks took it all in stride, and no one was allowed to mention anything more controversial than the weather, before, during, and especially after the ceremony. We went back to Washington where, if we didn’t keep our marriage a secret, we did not advertise it either; Kevin worked at the Kennedy White House, while I accepted the job on the Hill, which meant we were working in enemy camps.

  From my vantage point, I watched as the Republicans in Congress barely put up a fight against Kennedy’s second term agenda, compromising over and over again as they negotiated with the White House to pass a so-called Voting Rights Act that decimated states’ rights; a government takeover of the medical profession, which was nothing more than a liberal vote buying scheme using health insurance; a Fair Housing Act which stripped honest Americans of their Constitutionally guaranteed property rights; a so-called Anti-Poverty Act which was nothing more than a tax payer funded subsidy to the lazy and shiftless.

  After a few years of this, I was ready to get back to doing something I loved - the give and take of political combat. It’s the one great thing Kevin and I share, besides our three wonderful kids, so after Kennedy left the White House, the two of us caught the wave of the future and put our political talents out there for hire. In the ensuing years, we were quite successful, Kevin more so on the national level, while my best success has come on the marketing side - the writing and producing of political ads for Republican candidates. In 1970, I produced the spots which helped William Ruckelhaus win an upset in an Indiana Senate race, if not for me, he would not have been on the ticket with Ronald Reagan two years later. That helped make my reputation and brought in a lot of work, in 1974, I earned a high six figures for designing the ads which helped defeat referendums to legalize abortion in six states, including California. I’ve been called a hack for the right wing many times. My answer has been to produce the hate mail I got for the full length newspaper ads I wrote in 1978 which were instrumental in swaying enough Illinois state legislators to pass the Equal Rights Amendment and make it part of the Constitution. Often my husband and I have ended up working on opposite sides in the same campaign; we learned very early not to talk shop at home.

  I probably missed my chance for a seat at the table of power when, in 1972, I turned down a job offer from Roger Ailes who wanted me to come and be a producer on a show he was putting together called American Perspective, a daily half-hour of news and commentary. I was already to say yes until I found out the program was to be built around Richard Nixon, who was trying to repackage his image as a statesman after his years of running Cuba. But I knew some things about Mr. Nixon that Roger Ailes did not know, like how he’d stabbed Goldwater in the back in ’64, and it was not even a decision I had to consider. I wished Mr. Ailes luck when I passed on the job. He didn’t need it; with his slashing takedowns on President Humphrey’s policies, American Perspective with Richard Nixon was a smash hit and turned out to be the perfect platform for a political comeback.

  Of course, Kevin and I have the Hotel Adolphus in common, the place where we first got together. We have remained silent while the story of that night has been chased by many an investigative reporter, we’ve stayed way clear of them. Neither of us has been so naïve as to believe that all our good fortune has been solely because of our own hard work, as there were powerful people who had a vested interest we never got into dire straits and might need to sell a particularly juicy political story.

  There were times when investigative journalist and the just plain nosy came awfully close to finding out about the Adolphus, especially during the wave of enquires into the CIA and the FBI during the Humphrey years, and it gave us a few sleepless nights. At one point, Kevin and I talked about what we would say in a statement when we went public if our presence at the Adolphus was exposed. It was much harder deciding what we would tell our children, to whom we had always stressed the value of honesty.

  Why talk now? We both agree that since all of the principles involved are gone, and many of the scandals JFK paid to have covered up have since become known, there is little harm in coming clean at this late date. We wrote one book about how political polar opposites managed to stay married for 30 years and it made good money, no need to write another one.

  Because of Kevin’s role in the Kennedy campaign, he would get invites to reunions of their campaign staff in the years after JFK left office. I refused to go with him for many years, but with time came a sense of our place in history, and as the partisan battles of the 1960’s receded, I relented and accompanied him to one of these gatherings in 1984. They were always held in Boston, even though the former President was living in Florida by then, not so Mrs. Kennedy, who had settled in Manhattan, although the two of them were always together at these reunions as if he wasn’t secretly living with that actress. He was walking with the help of two canes by then as well, and every step he took was obviously causing pain, Kennedy’s sons were there to help him if needed.

  Like many of my fellow conservatives, I’d mellowed somewhat on John F. Kennedy by then, and had found positive things in his legacy. The hard line he took with the Soviets in his second term surely helped keep the peace and his deliberate pace on civil rights gave white America more time to accept some needed changes. So when our turn came, I had no problem with accompanying Kevin over to the former President’s table for a few minutes of small talk. Up close, John F. Kennedy was clearly not the man he’d been in 1964; his hair had long ago gone completely gray, and he was a good thirty pounds heavier, in many ways he looked every bit a man of 67 years. All except his eyes, for John Kennedy still had the eyes of a much younger man. “Dorothy Jean Brennan,” he said in that unmistakable accent, “you look just the same as you did 20 years ago.” And he gave me exactly the same knowing wink he’d given me in an October long gone to history.

  Wade L. Harbinson

  November 1964 - August 1999

  John F. Kennedy beat me at my own game, so I made the best of it. After the events at the Adolphus, I had a vested interest in a Democratic victory, which made me a Kennedy man whether I liked it or not. During the last month of the campaign, I routinely informed Kennedy’s inner circle of everything happening in the Goldwater camp, especially the confidential stuff. In the end, Kennedy won and Goldwater lost, and all the dirty laundry stayed hidden, and everyone’s mouth stayed shut.

&nbs
p; And John Kennedy was as good as his word, over the next four years, the Houston-based construction company I owned had all the government contracts it could handle from the building of a new Federal Courthouse in Austin to the widening of Interstate 10; my crews were busy day and night, so much so that I went out and bought two of my competitors just to keep up with all the projects falling into my lap.

  But Texas was small change compared to what I made in Cuba - that country was a regular cash register during the reconstruction if you were connected. All it took was the right word spoken in Richard Nixon’s ear; all those rumors about him were true, he ran the place like a gangster’s fiefdom. I had the pleasure of making my first trip down to Havana in the fall of 1965; it was still a dangerous place even then, despite the presence of American soldiers, guns at the ready everywhere. I saw four bodies in the streets during the day and a half I spent there and the crack of gunfire was heard all night long.

  I met with Nixon at his HQ, a big plantation house outside the city, it must have been 90 degrees in the shade, but there was the former Vice President, wearing a dark suit like he was still presiding over the Senate, sitting behind a desk in an office with the air conditioning cranked up on high. Somehow, sweat still beaded up on his upper lip like he was back debating Kennedy in ’60.

  The Adolphus never came up, since neither one of us were in each other’s presence, the fiction was easily maintained. Nixon and I exchanged pleasantries, and he was effusive on the future of Cuba, which he clearly thought was his ticket back to the big time of Presidential politics. The real business was conducted later when Mr. Bebe Rebozo visited my hotel room at the rebuilt Flamingo. When he left, all the details were worked out, and I knew the exact figure which would guarantee my bid was accepted. This was the same Rebozo who was indicted two years later for taking kickbacks and would have done a long stretch in the pen if Edward Bennett Williams hadn’t been such a good lawyer. Everybody thought Bobby Kennedy was behind it, making sure Nixon didn’t run for President in ‘68; every single contractor who did business in Cuba during the rebuilding was subpoenaed and deposed except me. It didn’t do Bobby any good; he wasn’t elected the next year either.

  I was active in the Republican nomination battle in 1968; I signed onto the Curtis LeMay campaign early, LeMay was no politician, but a lot of patriots thought he was the man on horseback who could save the country. Reagan ran as well; he was a good man and a better politician than LeMay, but a lot of good conservatives wanted a man who would put the hammer down on our enemies and put it down hard. Both Reagan and LeMay were preferable to the other main candidate, Governor George Romney of Michigan, who, as far as many of us were concerned, was nothing more than a warmed-over Nelson Rockefeller. Either LeMay or Reagan could have won on the first ballot in Miami if the other had dropped out, but they stayed in and battled it out for four ballots before the delegates threw up their hands and turned to a “Dark Horse.”

  I’ll admit to being impressed with the Governor of Maryland, when back in April, he had gone on TV and issued orders to the National Guard to shoot looters on sight while Baltimore was being burned to the ground by rioting blacks. This was the kind of leadership many Americans were looking for in a President and overnight, Spiro Agnew became a household name. He went to the convention as Maryland’s favorite son and held tight through the first few ballots, putting him in the right spot at the right time. It was my home state of Texas who switched to Agnew on the fifth ballot, setting off a stampede in the early hours of Thursday morning. Most Republicans didn’t mind when the new nominee picked Romney for Vice President in an effort to unify the party; they thought they had a sure winner against an over the hill hack like Lyndon Johnson in the fall.

  Or so they thought; the day after the convention adjourned, I made a call to a contact in Lawrence O’Brien’s office, reporting to him some interesting rumors I’d heard during the past 36 hours, rumors concerning lavish spending in the Governor’s Mansion in Annapolis out of a secret account. Six weeks later there were front-page stories in the New York Times and the Washington Post detailing how Agnew had accepted $30,000 in bribes while in office and any chance he had of being elected President went up in smoke. It was an LBJ landslide, which was just what I wanted; he was just as involved in what went down at the Adolphus as anyone of us, so the good thing I had going continued for another four years. Only four years turned out to be a little more than two when Johnson died of heart failure in April of 1971 and Humphrey took over.

  All bets were off in ’72, and you can believe I worked my ass off to elect Reagan-Ruckelshaus that year. They would have made it if George Wallace hadn’t made good on his threat to run as a third party candidate and took most of the South out of play. A lot of good Americans were sick of all that civil rights crap after Johnson and Humphrey had gone further than JFK would ever have dared, if all of them could have united behind Reagan he would have won in a landslide; as it is, he polled 500,000 more popular votes than Humphrey, but the damn Democrats stole Texas and Illinois and won it in the Electoral College.

  I’ll hand it to Dick Nixon in ’76. He found a way to make a comeback even after all the dirt he got on himself with Rebozo’s antics in Cuba. And who would have thought he would do it by becoming a TV star. The country was more than ready for a change after sixteen years of Democratic misrule at home and victories by our enemies abroad. Look at that Goddamn Hubert Humphrey, who let the Communists take over Vietnam and forced gas rationing on the country for six months when he should have gone over there and just took the damn oil from the Ayatollah. I was instrumental in making sure Nixon won the Texas primary over our native son, Congressman George H. W. Bush, who called in a lot of IOU’s accrued over his years on the Ways and Means Committee. It was worth burning a few political bridges to get somebody back in the Oval Office who had been at the Adolphus. One of the reasons why John Connally jumped parties that year and ran as Nixon’s Vice President was because of men like me who floated the idea early. As far as I was concerned, the Brown kid was still in short pants; it must have brought Nixon sweet satisfaction to defeat the son of the man who beaten him in the race for Governor of California fourteen years earlier. I would like to say that Nixon’s election meant a return to business as usual, but he never did a damn thing for me after he was sworn in; I put a bid in to upgrade to docks at the naval base at Mobile Bay in April of 1977 and never heard anything back. I think once Nixon got to the Oval Office, he just said screw the rest of us; we couldn’t pull him down into the mud without drowning ourselves in it as well.

  The only real honest gentleman I ever met in politics was Barry Goldwater, and when I get to Heaven, which won’t be long now, I will profusely apologize to the man for ruining his chance to be President.

  I only saw John Kennedy one other time after the Adolphus, and that was in Palm Beach in July of 1969. I was in Florida to meet with some friends who were putting together a deal to invest in commercial real estate. It was at the West Palm restaurant in the afternoon when Kennedy came in for lunch; I was seated across the room with some associates when an excited buzz went through the place. It was the former President, out of office for six months and down there for the Moon launch. The former President and his party were led to a secluded table in a private room to spare him from being mobbed by admirers; everywhere he went in Florida there was some damn fool Cuban who would fall on his knees and thank Kennedy for saving his country. I barely caught a glimpse of the man when he came in, but a few minutes later, a waiter brought me a note requesting I come to the back, it was signed by JFK. I seriously considered ignoring the note, because - money notwithstanding - I still thought the 35th President of the United States to be the most morally reprehensible man ever to occupy that sacred office, but then thought the better of it. Maybe it was simple curiosity which made decide to go. After excusing myself to my lunch guests, I made my way to the back room, and after being checked by the ever-present secret service detail, was ushered inside. T
o my surprise, John F. Kennedy got up from his chair to greet me like an old classmate from Harvard. I caught an unmistakable wince as he rose from his seat, evidence of the bad back we’d all heard so much about. Mrs. Kennedy was with him and their youngest son, who was a toddler, along with Dave Powers and some other people I didn’t recognize, one of which had to be the little boy’s nanny.

  There had been a lot of stories in the press asserting that Kennedy was nearly a broken man after his brother was killed; how he somehow felt responsible for what happened in Memphis. But the man who greeted me, who actually threw his arm around my shoulder, was the same confident politician who’d shaken my hand years before. Maybe it was seeing his vow to put a man on the moon before the end of the decade come true which put him in such a magnanimous mood, but as John F. Kennedy pumped my hand, he turned to his wife and friends and said, “This is Wade Harbinson, a man of his word and a true Texan. He and Bobby would have really hit it off.”

  John F. Kennedy was everything I considered wrong with America: a man of no fixed beliefs except personal expediency and who lacked the guts to really do what was needed to be done to fight Communism, a man with no respect for bedrock American principles and the people who lived by them. As for his brother, when Bobby Kennedy was killed, I said, “Good riddance.” But right then and there, I did not hate this man despite all I believed he had done to the country I loved. In truth, I would have done anything for him after a compliment like the one he had just paid me in front of his family. In the years to come, I would separate the sin from the sinner; I never spoke ill of John Kennedy, the man, ever again and on the day he died, I actually shed a tear.

  Brigadier General Martin Maddox, USMC (Ret)

  February 1965 - March 2005