Kennedy

by Ted Sorensen

  Minnesota’s Senator Humphrey, whose name led the list of some two dozen possibilities, declared himself an open candidate for the Vice Presidency. With what he thought was Stevenson’s blessing, he initiated a nationwide campaign for the job. Estes Kefauver, after his Presidential hopes were ended by Stevenson in the primaries, was also angling for second spot. Kennedy, while interested and available, refused to consider himself a candidate or to permit a “campaign” worthy of the name.

  While I was more eager, I had never been to a convention and knew no delegates. John Bailey talked to a few party leaders, as did the Senator. But no public endorsements were sought. Plans for a Hyannis Port meeting of all New England delegates with Stevenson were abandoned lest some pressure or preference be read into it. We stimulated a few meetings and mailings, but most of the Kennedy endorsements received by the Stevenson circle were made without our knowledge. Most of the analyses of the situation I drew up—the comparative qualifications of the candidates, for example, and possible plans for convention action—were for my own guidance only, enabling me to respond to friendly inquiries and to talk concretely with the Senator.

  In one of these talks—which occurred as he drove me home one summer evening—we discussed a letter from Schlesinger, who was then working in Stevenson’s office, saying “Things look good.” Said Kennedy in effect, “After all this I may actually be disappointed if I don’t get the nomination.” His statement was contrary to all we had previously assumed and I so remarked. “Yes,” he went on, “and that disappointment will be deep enough to last from the day they ballot on the Vice Presidency until I leave for Europe two days later.”

  We left for Chicago and the convention in August with stacks of material—reprints of favorable editorials and stories, one-sided summaries of Kennedy’s shaky farm record, the Midwest response to his Seaway support and biographical data sheets—but with very few lists of names on whom we could count. At the suggestion of Schlesinger, who had quietly kept us informed of thinking within the Stevenson camp, I went out several days in advance to test the water. Among the Stevenson aides (aside from Arthur), I found Newt Minow enthusiastic, Bill Blair friendly, the rest noncommittal. With the help of Kennedy brother-in-law Sargent Shriver and the Chicago Merchandise Mart (a Joseph Kennedy establishment which he helped direct), I was able to make arrangements for our accommodations and credentials—but very little political headway. I also encountered and refuted rumors about the Senator’s health, about a financial contribution he had supposedly made to Nixon and about a tremendous campaign for the Vice Presidency being masterminded by his father.

  Our far-from-tremendous campaign began in Chicago the Sunday before the convention opened. It consisted of a few friends meeting in our hotel suite. “You call them,” the Senator had said to me with a smile. “You’re responsible for this whole thing.” “No,” I said, “I’m responsible only if you lose. If you win, you will be known as the greatest political strategist in convention history.”

  Circumstances, more than political strategy, enabled the Kenned} face and name to be brought favorably to the attention of the convention. Many delegates who had served with Kennedy in Congress were willing to work within their own states. Massachusetts delegates spread the word in convivial get-togethers with those from other areas. The Chicago Sun-Times gave Kennedy an editorial boost widely read in the convention. With the exception of the Kefauver delegation from New Hampshire, most of the New England delegates who gathered each morning for breakfast (a Roberts-Ribicoff-Kennedy innovation) liked Kennedy and wanted to help. A luncheon for a local Illinois candidate, attended by key Stevenson leaders, featured Kennedy as a speaker. Several delegations invited Kennedy to address them.

  On opening night Kennedy’s assets were favorably displayed in his previously filmed role as narrator of the “keynote” motion picture—a documentary history of the Democratic Party which outshone the fiery, flourishing keynote speech of Frank Clement. At its close, Kennedy was introduced from the floor, and our friends around the hall had no difficulty in getting others to join in prolonged applause.

  With all these boosts, Kennedy banners, buttons and volunteers began to appear from New England and Chicago sources. One Massachusetts delegate in a big Stetson hat and cowboy boots carried a sign reading “Texans for Kennedy.” But buttons and banners were not the equivalent of a Stevenson endorsement. A visit to Governor Stevenson by Ribicoff, Roberts and Massachusetts Governor Paul Dever had no visible results. The plan of a mutual friend to obtain backing from a key Stevenson supporter, Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt, collapsed, for she used the occasion to chastise the Senator in a roomful of people for being insufficiently anti-McCarthy.

  Finally, on Wednesday noon, word came by a circuitous route that Kennedy was no longer under consideration. After consultation with his brother Bob, whose cool judgment and organizational skills were once again available and invaluable, the Senator sought and received a direct talk with Stevenson. Stevenson did not answer the Vice Presidential question with finality, but asked Kennedy’s views on all those considered (Kennedy liked Humphrey). He then asked the Senator if he was willing to make the principal Presidential nominating speech. “I assumed,” the Senator later told me of his feelings at that time, “that when I was given the opportunity to nominate Stevenson they had decided on another candidate [for Vice President]….I thought the matter was closed and was not especially unhappy.”

  The Stevenson staff had hinted the previous week that Kennedy was a possible choice for nominator. Delaying the decision, they assured me, was no problem inasmuch as a fine speech had already been written. That afternoon—less than twenty-four hours before nominations opened—a speech draft was brought to us by Stevenson aide Willard Wirtz. From a brief conversation with Wirtz I mistakenly inferred that Kennedy had been definitely ruled out for Vice President. I also learned that even his role as Stevenson’s nominator could not be final until (1) a courtesy clearance was received from Stevenson’s fellow Illinoisan, Senator Douglas, and (2) that evening’s fight on the party platform was over, should any schism require a Southerner in the slot of chief nominator.

  The Senator asked me to review the speech and to rework it in his style while he attended the convention. It was an impossible assignment. The draft we were handed was a wordy, corny, lackluster committee product. I finally caught up with the Senator well after midnight, when the platform fight was over and he had been told definitely he would speak the next day. He looked at the original draft, then at my redraft, and said, “We’ll have to start over.”

  He talked about a fresh opening, the points to make in a new draft and the length he desired, and asked me to bring it to his room by 8 A.M. the next morning. I did. There he reworked it further, sitting in bed. I rushed back to my room to get it retyped, and then we hurried out to Convention Hall.

  Owing to our haste, one page from his copy was missing, and the Senator refused (wisely, it turned out) to rely on the teleprompter. I snatched the missing page from the teleprompter office, promising to return it as soon as it was copied. A helpful reporter, Tom Winship of the Boston Globe, borrowed a typewriter at the press table and banged it out.

  The teleprompter failed but the speech was a success. Its reference to the two different types of campaigners on the Eisenhower-Nixon ticket—one who took the high road and one who took the low—was picked up by subsequent speakers and became a part of that year’s campaign vocabulary. Illinois leader Richard Daley later said this speech helped convince him that Kennedy was needed on the ticket.

  Stevenson won the nomination, and then dramatically announced that he would leave to an open convention the selection of his Vice Presidential running mate. Despite the bitter arguments of several party leaders who thought it a dangerous experiment and certain to aid Kefauver, he regarded it as a stimulant to a dull convention, as a contrast with the Republican selection of Nixon, and as a way out of the conflicting political pressures on him created by the number of friendly
candidates.

  His late night announcement that a genuine balloting on the Vice Presidency would be held the next day set off twelve hours of feverish political activity. Bob Kennedy and John Bailey held a hectic meeting of family and friends in our suite. Assignments were handed out. Efforts were made to reach key leaders. But we acted largely in a state of confusion and ignorance. We had no plans, no facilities, no communication, no organization, little know-how and very few contacts.

  There have been many sensational stories about that Vice Presidential race: that Kennedy backers pressured Stevenson into throwing the convention open—that Kennedy was furious with Stevenson for throwing the convention open—that Kennedy decided to try for it only when Georgia announced for him—that Chicago’s Dick Daley and New York’s Carmine DeSapio were both slighted because no one in the Kennedy camp recognized them—that Joseph P. Kennedy lined up several delegates by transatlantic phone—that John McCormack deliberately aided Kefauver over Kennedy—and that the Senator was stunned, tearful or deeply hurt when he failed to secure the nomination. Not one of those stories is accurate. There have also been many conflicting claims about which Kennedy friend lined up which delegation. I do not know which of those claims is accurate. I could not line up one delegate, even in my own state of Nebraska, which was solidly for Kefauver.

  As always, the Senator was his own best campaigner, seeing state leaders and visiting several state caucuses. He still had doubts about the desirability of the nomination—but this was where the action was, and his combative spirit would not let him run away from a fight or run out on his friends. His brother Bob and sister Eunice toured other delegations. A handful of Congressmen—including Edward Boland and Torbert Macdonald of Massachusetts and Frank Smith, a Mississippi progressive—never rested.

  I rounded up material for the nominating and seconding speeches, but it was of little use. Abe Ribicoff gave a ringing, largely extemporaneous, nominating speech. George Smathers, who could give us very little help in the Florida delegation, gave a hasty seconding speech (sample: “Jack Kennedy’s name is magic in Ohio, Cincinnati, Akron, California and other areas. It will be great for us to have him on the ticket”). And John McCormack, literally propelled toward the platform at the last minute by Bob Kennedy, gave a politically oriented seconding speech (“It is time to go East”) that was identifiable as a Kennedy speech only by its closing lines.

  With surprising speed, the nominations closed and the balloting opened. Kefauver, Kennedy, Humphrey, Wagner, Gore and others were all in contention. I sat alone with the Senator as he lay on his bed in the Stockyards Inn, behind Convention Hall, watching the race on television. He shook his head in amazement at his unexpected strength in Georgia, Louisiana, Nevada and Virginia. “This thing is really worth winning now,” he said.

  Illinois’ 46 (of their 64) votes gave him a boost. Maine disappointed him by splitting their 14 votes. He muttered something unprintable when Ohio’s Mike DiSalle and Pennsylvania’s David Lawrence, both fearful of a fellow Catholic on the ticket, delivered more than 100 of their 132 combined votes to Kefauver. “You better hustle over to the platform and find out what I do to make Kefauver’s nomination unanimous,” he said.

  At the end of the first ballot, it appeared that Humphrey, Gore and Wagner would not make it, though the first two still hoped for a deadlock. On the next ballot many of their votes, as well as some favorite-son votes, would in all probability start switching to the leaders—either to Kefauver, who led Kennedy by a ratio greater than three to two, or to Kennedy. From our television set came the report that Humphrey was on his way to Kefauver’s suite in the Stockyards Inn, presumably to switch his votes to the Tennessean. “Get up there and intercept Hubert,” the Senator said. “Tell him I’d like to see him, too.”

  Outside Kefauver’s door I found nothing but the chaos of competing cameramen and newsmen. No one knew who was inside, coming in or coming out. Hurrying to the speaker’s platform, I checked briefly on the procedures for making Kefauver’s nomination unanimous and raced back to the inn. En route I met Humphrey’s manager, Eugene McCarthy, and delivered Kennedy’s invitation (which assumed Humphrey was visiting Kefauver). Congressman McCarthy sadly shook his head. “All we have are Protestants and farmers,” he said, negating any get-together. Kefauver, it later turned out, had personally come to plead with the distraught Humphrey, as had Michigan’s Governor Mennen Williams, on Kefauver’s behalf. McCarthy was quoted as feeling slighted that Kennedy, instead of coming himself, had sent a callow youth to offer Humphrey an “audience.”

  Meanwhile, the second ballot was already under way and a Kennedy trend had set in. The South was anxious to stop Kefauver, and Kennedy was picking up most of the Gore and Southern favorite-son votes. He was also getting the Wagner votes. Kefauver was gaining more slowly, but hardly a handful of his delegates had left him. Bob Kennedy, John Bailey and their lieutenants were all over the floor shouting to delegations to come with Kennedy.

  When New Jersey and New York in rapid succession gave Kennedy 126½ votes he had not received on the first ballot, the press chaos was transferred from Kefauver’s corridor to ours. Our television set showed wild confusion on the convention floor and a climbing Kennedy total. But the Senator was as calm as ever. He bathed, then again reclined on the bed. Finally we moved, through a back exit, to a larger and more isolated room.

  The race was still neck and neck, and Kennedy knew that no lead was enough if it could not produce a majority. Oklahoma stayed with Gore (“He’s not our kind of folks,” the Governor of Oklahoma said to a Kennedy pleader, summing up in six words the Senator’s inability to dent the Western Protestant farm and ranch areas). Wagner’s votes in Pennsylvania went to Kefauver instead of Kennedy. “Lawrence,” muttered the Senator. Puerto Rico stayed with Wagner, despite his withdrawal. “They didn’t get the word,” said the Senator somewhat ruefully.

  Tennessee, torn by the conflicting ambitions of its two Senators and Governor, stayed with Gore. Then Lyndon Johnson rose for Texas. With the help of several Congressmen, he had beaten down the anti-Catholic sentiment within his delegation, including that of Sam Rayburn, and he announced the full 56 votes of Texas “for that fighting Senator who wears the scars of battle…the next Vice President of the United States, John Kennedy of Massachusetts.”

  I stretched out a hand of congratulation. “Not yet,” said the Senator. But as his total grew, he finished dressing and, between glances at the television, began to discuss what he should say to the convention if nominated. North Carolina, which had passed on the second ballot, now switched half its votes to Kennedy. Kentucky’s chairman announced that his delegation, “which has consistently been with the minority all through this convention, enthusiastically joins the majority and changes its vote to John Kennedy.”

  It almost was a majority—but not quite. In the entire nineteen-state West-Midwest area between Illinois and California, excepting Nevada, Kennedy could get no more than 20 of their 384 convention votes. Suddenly the tide turned again.

  Albert Gore earlier in the year had seemed to endorse Kennedy (“I would like to see Jack Kennedy in either the first or second place on the Democratic ticket in either 1956, 1960 or 1964”). But now he released his Tennessee delegates to Kefauver. Oklahoma switched from Gore to Kefauver. Minnesota and Missouri switched their Humphrey votes to Kefauver. Illinois and South Carolina tried to stem the avalanche by switching a few more votes to Kennedy. But it was to no avail. The Kennedy current had run its course. More Kefauver votes followed.

  The Senator remained silent until the television screen showed Kefauver with a majority. “Let’s go,” he said and plunged through the maelstrom outside his door to walk to the convention platform. Brushing aside those officials who wished him to wait until it was all over, he strode to the rostrum with a tired grin. Speaking briefly and movingly without notes, he thanked those who had supported him, congratulated Stevenson on his open-convention decision and moved to make Kefauver’s nomina
tion unanimous.

  Afterward, we reviewed the accidents of chance that prevented a few dozen more delegates from putting Kennedy over the top:

  • If the large electric tote board in the back of the hall had not been dismantled the night before, so that all delegates could have seen Kennedy nearing a majority…

  • If Convention Chairman Sam Rayburn had called for a recess and a third ballot instead of second-ballot switches…

  • If some of our friends had not unknowingly left town the day before…

  • If Kennedy had possessed an organized campaign machine with a communications and control center…

  • If South Carolina, Illinois and Alabama, which wished to announce switches favoring Kennedy, had been recognized by Mr. Rayburn before Tennessee, Oklahoma, Minnesota and Missouri…

  • If additional Kennedy supporters in the California, Indiana and other delegations had not been prevented from switching their votes to the Senator when his “bandwagon” was still rolling…

  • If there had been time for the television viewers back home to make their views known to the delegates…

  But Jack Kennedy paid little attention to the “ifs.” The basic fact was that he had run out of potential votes and could get no more in the Midwest or West. Back in his room at the inn, joined by Jacqueline and members of his family, the Senator was quiet. He was neither angry like Bob nor crying like Ben Smith. He had a few caustic comments on supposed friends who had let him down, and he composed with more sarcasm than hurt an imaginary wire to David Lawrence, who had earlier asked him to Pittsburgh. But his disappointment did not even last until his departure for Europe—it was vanquished that evening in a noisy, joking dinner with family and friends.

  The convention adjourned that night on a note of intergroup harmony, with Negro soprano Mahalia Jackson singing “The Lord’s Prayer” accompanied by the Chicago Swedish Glee Club. The Senator flew off to Europe with no foolish claims, charges, tears or promises to retract or regret. He was content.