by Ted Sorensen
His stomach was always sensitive—at one point it was suspected he had ulcers—and though he did not faithfully follow his diet (which did not, for instance, include a drink of vodka and tomato juice), he usually ate carefully and often. In the Senate his lunches were for a time prepared at home and brought by Jacqueline or “Muggsy” O’Leary to his office. On the campaign circuit he avoided the mass cooking at most banquets and ate in his hotel room or elsewhere. To keep something in his stomach, he ate frequently during the day—on the plane, at airport stops, before and after speeches, at every meal and between meals—great quantities of milk, creamed soups or chowder, sirloin steak, baked potatoes, ice cream and hot chocolate made with milk. 3
But it would be wrong to assume that he was a sickly man. “Vigah,” as he supposedly pronounced it, became a humorous byword during his administration—but it was accurate. He had astounding vitality, stamina and endurance, and this made him resent all the more the fact that he had to give up tennis and touch football and at times proceed gingerly with his children and golf. Many reporters and staff members fell weary or ill at his campaign pace, and he invited all those who had doubts about his health to accompany him on his grueling travels.
He made no pretense of ever having been a star athlete, despite his prowess in many sports. “Politics is an astonishing profession,” he told a banquet as President. “It has enabled me to go from being an obscure member of the Junior Varsity at Harvard to being an honorary member of the Football Hall of Fame.” But he had a strong, agile and nimble physique for a man over thirty-five years old, six feet tall and over 165 pounds. He rarely had a cold and never a headache. Though he drove himself too hard for too long, he looked out for his health in most other ways (“Better than 99 percent of my patients,” said Dr. Travell in 1960). He took his pills, watched his posture (after his operation, for previously he had been a sprawler), exercised regularly and bathed at least three times a day to relax and heat his aching back muscles. He managed to nap under the severest pressures and on the shortest notice, in planes, in cars and in his hotel room before a speech. He was never a confirmed hunter or fisherman, but he liked to be outdoors, and he inevitably seemed to feel better in good weather.
Yet pain was almost always with him—“at least one-half of the days that he spent on this earth,” according to his brother. “Those who knew him well,” said Bob Kennedy, “would know he was suffering only because his face was a little whiter, the lines around his eyes were a little deeper, his words a little sharper. Those who did not know him well detected nothing.” But Kennedy accepted it all with grace. His philosophy was summed up midway in his Presidential term in a news conference answer on the Reservists:
…there is always inequity in life. Some men are killed in a war, and some men are wounded, and some men never leave the country…. It’s very hard in military or in personal life to assure complete equality. Life is unfair. Some people are sick and others are well.
Life was unfair in many ways to John Kennedy. But he never complained. He loved life too much.
1 A slogan subsequently adapted by the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee for many states, and more recently used, without change but this time with considerable criticism, by Edward Kennedy in his 1962 race for the same Senate seat.
2 “And in those days,” the Senator told me, “an Ambassador was really on his own. Today, if there is any flap, Dulles can fly to London in a few hours, but when I decided to fly back to Harvard from the Embassy in 1938, there was no nonstop plane, and it took both a train ride and a boat ride to reach what plane there was.”
3 In early 1955 he joshed Jacqueline that her expensive course in French cooking had taught her some imaginative recipes but not how to make him hot chocolate.
CHAPTER II
THE SENATOR
JOHN KENNEDY WAS NOT one of the Senate’s great leaders. Few laws of national importance bear his name. And after he graduated in November, 1958, from the traditionally inactive freshman class, his opportunities for major contributions to the Senate—except for his battle for fair labor reform and against rackets—were increasingly eroded by the demands of his Presidential campaign.
During his first four years Kennedy’s two committees—Labor and Government Operations—handled comparatively little legislation of importance. He was frustrated in his efforts both to obtain major assignments (e.g., an investigation of lobbying) for the Government Operations Committee and to exchange his seat on that committee for another on a more important one. In 1957 Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson named him to the prestigious Foreign Relations Committee, but in 1955 I had had occasion to write to Senator Kennedy while he was in Europe:
Lyndon Johnson has finally come through, making up for his failure to appoint you to the Foreign Relations or Finance Committees. He had recommended that you be appointed to the Boston National Historic Sites Commission!
Nevertheless, considering his eight years as a whole, the Senator could take some pride in his less spectacular work in committee, in his participation in major debates, in the dubious measures he had helped defeat and in the smaller bills, amendments and modifications for which he could take some credit. Not all were widely known or controversial. He originated, for example, the resolution leading to the “Three Wise Men” study of Western aid levels to India and Pakistan. It was highly important, but rarely mentioned. A review of his voting record, and the bills and amendments he sponsored that were enacted, reflects his widening horizons, his deepening convictions and his growing interest in ideas as well as voters. Except for absences due to illness, his attendance record on roll-call votes improved—although his 1959-1960 campaign efforts coincided and at times conflicted with a sharp increase in his committee responsibilities. (When Kennedy reminded Nikita Khrushchev at Vienna in 1961 that they had met during the Chairman’s *959 American tour at a Senate Foreign Relations Committee meeting, the latter replied, “I remember…you were late.”)
RELATIONS WITH OTHER SENATORS
Senator Kennedy was never a full-fledged member of the Senate’s inner circle, the “club” whose influence has been exaggerated by both its defenders and its detractors. He was too young, too liberal and too outspoken. Early in his first term, his participation in a floor debate caused him to move closer to the front from his seat in the back row, and he found himself temporarily sitting next to Senate “Dean” Carl Hayden, who had entered Congress more than forty years earlier. Ever interested in history, he asked Senator Hayden what changes, if any, had occurred in that time, and the reply was: “New members did not speak in those days.”
Nevertheless, even in the early years the older members of the Senate would have agreed with Kennedy’s first Naval promotion report: “Very willing and conscientious.” He was liked and respected by nearly all Senators. Fellow Democrats appreciated his never-ending willingness to speak at their fund-raising dinners and to appear on their televised reports. His close friends included liberal Republicans such as John Sherman Cooper and conservative Democrats such as George Smathers. His contributions to floor debate were well regarded for their careful facts and cool logic. His independent votes in committee and on the floor were appreciated as the product of intelligence, courage and restraint. “My crowd listens when your man gets up to speak,” Senator Lister Hill of Alabama told me. “They know he’s done his homework and they know no one else can deliver his vote.”
His independent ways, however, also disgruntled a few colleagues. Because he voted with the Democratic leadership on committee assignments, Wayne Morse—whose fiery logic Senator Kennedy admired (“The only man,” he told me, “who speaks in precise paragraphs without a text”)—denounced him in Massachusetts and opposed his participation in the 1954 Neuberger campaign in Oregon. Because he was the only Democrat voting against the Democratic leadership on the 1955 Interstate Highway Bill on the day he returned from his convalescence, one Democratic Senator grumbled that Kennedy might have stayed away one more day. When he vo
ted to give flexible farm price supports a chance to prove their merit (they didn’t, he later concluded), Minnesota’s Democrats under Hubert Humphrey canceled their invitation to Kennedy to speak. 1
He also found that economy in government was a principle in the Senate but not always a practice. In the House Kennedy had taken pride in being one of a handful of Democrats who had upheld President Truman’s vetoes of unjustified veterans’ pensions. In the Senate he had led the fight for the reform measures recommended by the Second Hoover Commission (on which his father served), though it was under fire from the Democratic National Committee. When a New England business group which had badgered him mercilessly about reducing Federal spending insisted that he vote more funds for airport construction, he voted against the increase partly for that reason. But when, after careful study, he openly attacked “pork barrel” river and reclamation projects, their sponsors resented his role and overrode his protests. When he exposed a Congressional pension plan as actuarially unsound, a few veteran staff members hoping for windfalls spoke sarcastically about his wealth.
He refused to adopt the practice of most liberal Senators of cosponsoring every measure circulated by every other liberal regardless of its effect on the budget, and his refusal was sometimes interpreted as rudeness. When we left the Capitol at the close of the 1954 session, he was racked by the pain in his back and discouraged over the opposition to his efforts to save money on the Colorado and Delaware rivers. “We made a lot of enemies for nothing,” he said, in one of his rare moments of discouragement.
But Senators are accustomed to divisions and debate, and he had no real “enemies” among his colleagues—with two possible exceptions. One was the lady from Maine, Senator Margaret Chase Smith—“a very formidable political figure,” he termed her in 1963. She was, during all the years of his travels for new Senatorial candidates, the only Republican Senator who regarded it as a personal affront that he had campaigned for a Democratic opponent.
The other “enemy” was Senator Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin. There were many reasons for McCarthy and Kennedy to be close. No state had a higher proportion of McCarthy supporters than Massachusetts. No newspaper was more devoted to his every cause than the Boston Post. McCarthy had not spoken in Massachusetts in the 1952 Senate campaign, and neither Kennedy nor Lodge, uncertain of the impact, had raised the issue of his methods. McCarthy had Bob Kennedy on his committee staff in 1953. Earlier he had visited the Kennedy girls at Cape Cod, and for some time he had basked in the admiration of the Ambassador. (In 1954, however, Senator Kennedy put down the phone after a chat with Hyannis Port and remarked, “McCarthy’s really gone now—even my father is down on him!”)
But McCarthy’s rough and wide-ranging hunts for Reds, “pinks” and headlines had often trampled on the liberties and sensibilities of those who had committed no crime, and John Kennedy was too rational and reasonable a man to remain indifferent to the extremism known as McCarthyism. After he voted against the confirmation to the Federal Communications Commission of McCarthy’s friend Robert Lee—a vote which had been converted into a test of McCarthy strength and sentiment—McCarthy would pass Kennedy in the hall without a nod. McCarthy was also disappointed that Kennedy had supported Charles “Chip” Bohlen to be Ambassador to the Soviet Union—supported former President of Harvard James B. Conant to be Ambassador to West Germany, despite a personal plea from McCarthy to Kennedy—supported a Hatch Act amendment barring political speeches by McCarthy friend Scott McLeod, then Security Chief at the Department of State—and later opposed McLeod’s nomination as Ambassador to Ireland. (“I sympathize with their wanting to get rid of McLeod,” Kennedy told me, “but why pick on poor old Ireland?”)
In addition, Kennedy was a thorn in McCarthy’s side in the full Government Operations Committee of which McCarthy was chairman (as he was of its Investigations Subcommittee). When McCarthy sought to name former Senator Owen Brewster as chief counsel to the full committee, Kennedy, fearing the tactics for which Brewster was noted would transfer to the full committee all the sins of the subcommittee, was responsible for delaying and defeating the appointment. When McCarthy sought a contempt citation of Corliss Lamont for refusing to answer questions on his books, Kennedy blocked its approval in committee until the Department of Justice certified its constitutionality (and the Supreme Court, he later noted, ruled the Department wrong).
Except for the Boston Post, however, most of his constituents and the nation still regarded the junior Senator from Massachusetts as neutral or equivocal on McCarthy. Kennedy made no speeches which appeased the passions of the multitudes of McCarthyites among the Massachusetts Irish, but, like most of his colleagues from sensitive states, he made no speeches against him. That was wrong. On a television interview in February of 1954, he stated that McCarthy and his associates were guilty of partisan excesses in calling Democrats “the party of treason.” Any specific vote found him on the side of civil liberties—he opposed, for example, looser restrictions on wiretapping and a bill to compel the waiver of a witness’ rights under the Fifth Amendment. He led the fight against loyalty oaths for students and labor leaders, and he supported changes in the rules to prevent the abuse of witnesses. But on the broader and vaguer issue of “McCarthyism” he preferred, like the Supreme Court, not to decide a case which was not actually before him. He answered constituent mail on the question with caution, stating candidly his views on specific issues but avoiding a commitment on the man.
Many thoughtful Americans believed that McCarthy’s conduct was an issue before the Senate as a whole. His name had become symbolic of an atmosphere which was increasingly intimidating many civil servants, teachers and others suspected of unorthodox beliefs. Within the strangely isolated walls of the Senate, however, a different atmosphere prevailed—an atmosphere in which, as Kennedy said later, “Most members are reluctant to judge personally the conduct of another. Perhaps that was wrong in McCarthy’s case—-perhaps we were not as sensitive as some and should have acted sooner. That is a reasonable indictment that falls on me as well.”
In any event, the case of McCarthy was soon formally before the Senate—less for the damage he had done to the reputation of loyal citizens than for the damage he had done to the reputation of the Senate. Senator Kennedy was not enthusiastic about the approach of Vermont Senator Ralph Flanders, whose rather loosely worded motion for a Senate censure of McCarthy initiated his downfall. McCarthy’s violations of due process, Kennedy reasoned, made it all the more important that due process be strictly followed in any proceeding against him. “Flanders had supported McCarthy wholeheartedly in the ’52 campaign when his talks were irrational,” he told me. “He only got mad at him when he went to work on the Republican Party.” And in the speech Kennedy had been planning to give in support of censure, he pointed out:
Although [the Senator from Vermont] has cited incidents stretching back as far as 1949 in support of his resolution, he has since that date voted to seat the Senator from Wisconsin as Chairman of the Government Operations Committee, voted funds for his investigations and failed—until recently—to protest publicly these past acts…. Indeed, as recently as last March, after Senator McCarthy had described in a speech the conduct of the Democratic Party as “twenty years of treason” or at best “criminal stupidity,” the Senator from Vermont…called this speech “magnificent for the Republican Party” and…stated that “all would be forgiven if he will only take the position and perform the way he did” the previous night.
The Kennedy speech had been carefully based on Senatorial and legal precedents. As a devotee of civil liberties I was proud of my participation in drafting it and the Senator’s plan to deliver it. It cast aside, as any court would, all the specious, emotion-tinged charges that surrounded the case. “Nor do I agree,” he had written, “with those who would override our basic concepts of due process by censuring an individual without reference to any single act deserving of censure.”
Instead, the Kennedy speech e
mphasized the need to identify concrete censurable practices which had occurred since the Senate had seated—and thus implicitly approved—McCarthy in 1953. He suggested that the record of hearings on the dispute between McCarthy and the Army provided ample grounds within the precedents of previous Senate censures. He later told me, “I think the grounds we picked were far superior to the ones the Watkins Committee picked.” His text, which covered more than twelve double-spaced pages, concluded with a quotation from the Bingham censure case by my boyhood hero, Senator Norris, urging censure “for the welfare of the country…and for the honor and dignity of the United States Senate.”
But this speech was never given and never released. On the night of July 31, 1954, I stood in the back of a crowded Senate chamber, holding in my hand copies prepared for distribution, as the first censure debate began. That afternoon at a strategy meeting called by Senator Herbert Lehman of New York, agreement on the need for more specific charges had been reached by Kennedy and other liberal Senators, most of whom had also previously avoided antagonizing the vocal McCarthy supporters in their states. Now Senator Kennedy was in his seat, speech in hand, crutches by his side. Senator Flanders made a vague and ineffective plea for action. Then a brilliant speech by Senator Morse, who had attended the afternoon meeting, turned the debate into one over proper procedure, and the Senate wisely voted to refer the whole matter to a Select Committee.