Listening In: The Secret White House Recordings of John F. Kennedy

by Ted Widmer

  On Sunday I watched the golf tournament, which Bud Palmer and Freddy Cushing won. Bud Palmer and his wife are about to have a baby. Everyone was asking for you, and asking me what I was doing in Newport. I stated that I was up visiting my daughter. She was a great success on the beach and seemed to love the water. Ginny Ryan was there with her rather squinty-eyed children for a five-week period. Miss Shaw is the loveliest figure actually on the beach, and has a beautiful red-brown bathing suit that goes with her hair. She has let herself go, however, slightly, around the middle.

  [I flew back Monday with your mother, who was in an excellent humor.] Your mother flew back with me on Monday, and she’s in a great humor, and spoke warmly of you and Lee. I hope you and Lee do not get upset at the various stories that Grace and Michael report, they both have sour grapes and their only retort is to indicate how pleasant their life is and how pleasant Stas and Lee’s life …6 [sound distorted] I’m sure that Lee when she feels better … very satisfactory in England. [distorted] It looks like we will be here until the first part of September, so the African trip is off. I’m enclosing a letter [sound distorted] that I took the liberty of opening as it had news about our prospective visit. It sounds wonderful there, if we only could go. Perhaps we can, if not this year, maybe in December. I shall …

  EXCERPTS FROM DINNER PARTY CONVERSATION, JANUARY 5, 1960

  On January 5, 1960, the journalist James M. Cannon recorded a dinner party conversation with a few friends. That was somewhat unusual in an era when tape-recording was still clunky and expensive; what was even more unusual was that the dinner party included a candidate for the presidency of the United States. John F. Kennedy had declared his candidacy three days earlier, on January 2, and on this occasion was relaxing at home with his wife, Jacqueline, and their close friends Ben and Tony Bradlee. Bradlee would later achieve fame as the editor in chief of the Washington Post during the Watergate years; in 1960, he was the Washington bureau chief of Newsweek and, like Kennedy, a veteran of the navy, the Pacific campaign, and Harvard University. They spoke easily together, as indicated by Bradlee’s 1975 book, Conversations with Kennedy, and Cannon entered this convivial group without difficulty. Cannon, a Newsweek correspondent (and future staffer for President Gerald Ford), was writing a book entitled Politics USA: A Practical Guide to the Winning of Public Office. That book, with its tortured title, faded quickly from view, and the tapes as well. But they resurfaced when Cannon sent them to the Kennedy Library in 2007, with the stipulation that they become part of the library’s collection upon his death. He died in September 2011, and the entire conversation can now be heard by the public. It includes fascinating and candid revelations about Kennedy’s medical problems, his private reasons for wanting to run, and his worry that he was too introverted to be a natural politician.

  JFK: This is on? Can it get me from there?

  BRADLEE: [unclear] How come? Was it Joe’s death that started the …?

  CANNON: Why did you get started in politics? Why were you ever interested in it?

  JFK: In the thirties, when I was home from school, the conversation was always about politics. Want a cigar?

  CANNON: It’s all right. Talk loud.

  JFK: Not in the sense of sort of being emotionally stirred about great issues, but really, just about the whole interest of my father was [unclear] in politics, in the Roosevelt administration.

  [break]

  CANNON: … When did you take your first step? What year was that?

  JFK: January ’46, with the election in June.

  CANNON: This was for a seat in …?

  JFK: Congress.

  CANNON: In what district?

  JFK: The eleventh congressional district, which my grandfather once represented in Congress. But I didn’t know anybody in Boston; I hadn’t really lived there much. The war, I’d been away. I’d been at Harvard University. I’d been to Choate School before that, and lived in New York. So I went to live with my grandfather at the Bellevue Hotel, and I began to run, at a much earlier time than anyone else. [To Jacqueline Kennedy and Tony Bradlee: “You might want to go sit in the other room....”]

  BRADLEE: No, no, no.

  JFK: They don’t want to listen to this.

  BRADLEE: They do!

  TONY BRADLEE: We do, Jack! We love it, Jack!

  JFK: Tony doesn’t, and I know Jackie doesn’t.

  TONY: Yes I do, Jack! I’m so interested.

  BRADLEE: Bullshit!

  TONY: If it makes you uncomfortable, we won’t …

  BRADLEE: It’s going to be all stilted unless we can have some of that.

  JACQUELINE KENNEDY: Ben said we should interrupt and I should show my views and grasp of issues.

  BRADLEE: And provoke! Is that not right?

  CANNON: Absolutely.

  JFK: You don’t think it’s working, do you?

  CANNON: It’s working.

  BRADLEE: Don’t stare at it.

  JFK: OK, now we’re in January 1946.

  [break]

  BRADLEE: Then when was the moment that you absolutely were bitten with it?

  JFK: Once I started, I worked damn hard, and I did the same thing in ’52 as I am now doing, which may not be successful nationally. Start early. Try to get the support of nonprofessionals, in a sense, who are much more ready to commit themselves early, and then it’s just long, long, long labor. Early.

  CANNON: Why?

  JFK: Why do it?

  CANNON: Why do you do it now? Why do you go to all this effort? Obviously you’re a well-to-do guy, who could live off the fat of the land. Why do you go in for politics?

  JFK: I think the rewards are, first, infinite.

  CANNON: What are they?

  JFK: Well, look now, if you went to law school, and I’d gotten out, which I was going to do [unclear] and then I go and become a member of a big firm, and I’m dealing with some dead, deceased man’s estate, or I’m perhaps fighting in a divorce case, even a case of one kind or another, or some fellow got in an accident, can you compare that, or let’s say more serious work, when you’re participating in a case against the DuPont Company in a general antitrust case, which takes two or three years, can you tell me that that compares in interest with being a member of Congress in trying to write a labor bill, or trying to make a speech on foreign policy? I just think that there’s no comparison.

  [break]

  PRESIDENT AND MRS. KENNEDY WITH BEN AND TONY BRADLEE, ATOKA, VIRGINIA, NOVEMBER 10, 1963

  TONY BRADLEE: Can I ask a question?

  JFK: Sure.

  TONY BRADLEE: Is being president the ultimate of everybody that goes into politics?

  JFK: In the sense of being head of whatever organization you’re in, I suppose. But most important is the fact that the President today is the seat of all power.

  [break]

  CANNON: What you are suggesting is that your interest in politics evolved really after you got into it. Is that correct?

  JFK: Well, no … well, that’s partially correct. It wasn’t overwhelming. I didn’t participate in political activities in college.

  CANNON: Not until really you felt the satisfaction of having made a speech come off?

  JFK: I hadn’t even considered myself, because I’m not a political type.

  BRADLEE: Why?

  CANNON: Not even now?

  JACQUELINE KENNEDY: Why? Ben reminds me of Adlai Stevenson. [laughter]

  JFK: Well, I mean the political type. I think it’s hard work. My grandfather was a natural political type. Loved to go out to a dinner. Loved to get up and sing with the crowds. Loved to go down and take the train up and talk to eighteen people on the train.

  CANNON: What makes you think you aren’t, in a different context?

  JFK: I just happen to fit the times. My grandfather, his political career was limited partly because he was part of the immigrant group, who would not achieve success, but partly because he did do these things and therefore he never concentrated enough to get wha
t he really wanted, which was either governor or senator. Now it requires far more work, politics is far more serious business. You really aren’t so much interested in who’s at the … really, they try to make, I think the judgment is rather cold in judgment, as to what, the people who have some competence. So the old-type political personality is on his way out. Television is only one manifestation. I think that the problems are so tough, I don’t think you have to be this hail-fellow-well-met.

  CANNON: Why do you say the problems are tough, what are some of these problems?

  JFK: I think, all the problems, war, the destruction of the United States and the world, every problem, urban problems, agricultural, they’re all … monetary, fiscal, labor-management, inflation. I mean, they’re terribly sophisticated. In the nineteenth century you only have about three problems: the development of the West, slavery, tariff and currency.

  [break]

  BRADLEE: But did you have any remote idea, Jack, that when you ran for Congress, in 1946, that you would run for president?

  JFK: No, I didn’t.

  BRADLEE: Remote? Not even when you went to bed?

  JFK: Never. Never. Never. I thought maybe I’d be governor of Massachusetts someday.

  [break]

  TONY BRADLEE: And yet it’s true that there are only some people who have either what it takes, or have …

  JFK: Desire?

  TONY: … something in them that makes them go through …

  JFK: I don’t know. Everybody reaches a natural level. It’s possible my natural level is in the Senate. I mean, we’ll know in the next six months. But there isn’t anybody in the House that would not like to advance himself, or anybody who works for anything. My God, if you didn’t have that power of desire, the United States and every place else would collapse! That’s what moves the country and the world. That’s just a part of it. I’m just saying that it’s the center of power. I’m not talking about personal, I’m just saying the center of action is the more precise term, is the presidency. Now if you are interested, which many, many people are, not just me, the presidency is the place to be, in the sense of if you want to get anything done.

  [break]

  CANNON: If you were talking to a college student, why would you tell him that he ought to go into politics?

  JFK: Because I think that this opportunity to participate in the solutions of the problems which interest him, I would assume he’s interested, I would say the place he could effect some results would be in politics. The second, that your personal sources of satisfactions which come from doing this work is far greater in politics than it will ever be in business. And your financial reward will not be as great, and your insecurity will probably be greater in politics, because you may get defeated in the next election. Those are the disadvantages.

  CANNON: Well, should somebody who is contemplating going into politics, should he have some sort of other source of financial security?

  JFK: Well, it’s desirable for anybody to have financial security, in whatever they do, but quite obviously the mass, the great majority of politicians do not have it, but they seem to survive.

  CANNON: Do you feel it’s been a help to you?

  JFK: Well, I think my biggest help, really was getting started, and my father’s having been known. And therefore when you walked up to somebody, you had some entree. That’s a far greater advantage to me, I think, than the financial [unclear]. Coming from a politically active family was really the major advantage.

  CANNON: You think there’s more advantage in having financial backing, so that you didn’t have to worry?

  JFK: Well, I have to worry, because I could be defeated.

  CANNON: But you don’t have to worry about your family, about being out of a job, if you should be defeated.

  JFK: No, but I worry, I wouldn’t like to try to pick up my life at forty-five, -six, or -seven, and start after twenty years of being in politics, and try to pick up my life then. That would be a source of concern to me. Many politicians probably are lawyers and would start in something else. I’m not a lawyer. It would be a problem for me to decide. Maybe need a different degree. I mean, it’s like having your leg up to your ankle or to your knee amputated, it’s still disturbing.

  BRADLEE: Jack, what career might you pick?

  JFK: I don’t know what I’d do. This just happens to be …

  BRADLEE: Does that mean that politics is an all-inclusive profession?

  JFK: I don’t see really what you do out of it. I went in when I was … navy, college, politics. Where would you go? What would I do now? I couldn’t possibly. I don’t know what I’d do.

  TONY BRADLEE: Write.

  JFK: No, I couldn’t, because I’ve lost the chance. I mean, I’m sure it takes twenty years to learn to be a decent writer. You have to do it every day.

  [break]

  BRADLEE: Well, what stops a guy, Jack, that hasn’t stopped you?

  JFK: You mean, where does everybody reach a decision where they’ll stay? I think an awful lot is fortune. There is an awful lot of fortune in the thing. As I look ahead now, as I look at these primaries, how they’re breaking, bad luck and good luck. Why is it that I have to run in Wisconsin, the one state where I have infinite trouble, when Hubert Humphrey has got nothing anyplace else? That’s just a bad break.

  BRADLEE: Well, what is there in a man? I mean, why isn’t Muskie running for president now, instead of you?

  JFK: Muskie may. If I had to pick a vice president, I’d pick Ed Muskie. My judgment is Ed Muskie has the best chance of being vice president of anybody.

  BRADLEE: With you?

  JFK: Not with me, but if I don’t make it. My judgment is, the ticket would be, if I had to pick a long shot, if I don’t make it, it would be Stevenson7 and Muskie.

  [break]

  BRADLEE: Well, what is the magic? And is the magic that you think exists and is important at forty-three, did you have any idea what it was at twenty-six?

  JFK: No, but I did always reasonably well. In the first place I worked harder than my opponents, on at least three occasions, I worked harder, with the exception of Hubert, I think, than anybody else, every time I’ve run. And then I brought advantages, as I say, I brought advantages in ’46, and in ’52 I just buried Lodge.

  BRADLEE: Advantages … well-known family?

  JFK: I don’t think he was tough enough, Lodge, because he didn’t do the work. He had every advantage in ’52. I mean that was really a long shot. Nobody wanted to run against him.

  BRADLEE: … Eisenhower?8

  JFK: Well, yeah, he’d won by the biggest majority ever in the history of Massachusetts the previous time he’d run, 560,000, he beat Walsh. After four terms. I mean, Walsh was a soft touch, but it was a hell of a victory, 560,000 votes. Fifty-two, a Republican year coming up, campaign manager.

  BRADLEE: But is it true that the magic and the desire changes with the office, because that seems to be true?

  JFK: No, I just think that as time moves on, and you move on, your perspective changes. I don’t know what makes some politicians succeed and others fail. It’s a combination of time and their own quality …

  BRADLEE: And luck.

  JFK: … and luck. I mean, the margin is awfully small between, you know, those who succeed and those who don’t. Like it is in life.

  CANNON: Were you disappointed in ’56 when you didn’t make it for vice president?

  JFK: I was for about a day or so.

  CANNON: Is that all, really? What did you do to contain your disappointment?

  JFK: I didn’t really ever think I was going to run when I went there. I didn’t think I had much of a chance ever. When Stevenson asked me to nominate him. I thought I was out, this was a complete surprise to me, I really …

  BRADLEE: Did you nominate Stevenson in ’56?

  JFK: Yes.

  TONY BRADLEE: Maybe he’ll do the same for you now. [laughter]

  BRADLEE: You’d ask nothing less.

  CANNON: But once
it was done, were you disappointed?

  JFK: Yeah, I guess we were, the next morning, weren’t we, Jackie? I mean, I was tired.

  JACQUELINE KENNEDY: You were so tired. How could you be anything …

  JFK: It was so damn close, I was disappointed. I was disappointed that night.

  CANNON: Did you think that they were going to win?

  JFK: Kefauver deserved it. I always thought that [unclear], he’d beaten Stevenson in two or three primaries …

  BRADLEE: You didn’t run in any primaries in that, did you?

  JFK: No, but he had, that’s why he deserved it.

  CANNON: Was there any sense of [unclear]?

  JFK: Afterwards? No, it’s past [or passed].

  CANNON: It was past the next morning. You can honestly say, you could go off the next day to home, or to Hyannisport, or wherever, and say, “Well, nice try.”

  JFK: Not quite that easy, because I was damn tired, but I have to say, I thought, you know, we did have a close effort, and I had not thought I was going to win, I did much better than I thought I would, I thought Kefauver deserved to win, and therefore I was not desolate. It’s a lot different from now. Now it’s entirely different. Now I’m [unclear]. It would take me a lot longer to recover.

  CANNON: How does a politician get over this sense of loss? Sense of defeat?

  JFK: I didn’t lose so much. I was still in the Senate, and finally, of course, you know the ticket didn’t win.

  CANNON: Did you think it was going to?

  JFK: Well, in September I thought he might, I thought he had a pretty good chance. At the end of the convention we all got excited. I thought even in September he was doing … turned out to be a [unclear].

  CANNON: Why did you think he was going to win?

  JFK: Well, for a little while there, Stevenson was awfully active and Eisenhower wasn’t. I was just talking to Democrats.

  CANNON: You’re suggesting that you haven’t had many disappointments in politics. Have you ever lost a race?