by Ted Widmer
So there never was a moment of truth for me when I saw my whole political career unfold. I came back in the fall of ’55 [1945] after Potsdam, at loose ends, and the head of the Boston Community Fund asked me to help him during the drive. That was Mike Kelleher, who later became my finance chairman when I ran for the Senate in 1952.
[unclear] Kelleher or his assistant meant making speeches for the first time in my life, and they seemed to be acceptable. The first speech I ever gave was on “England, Ireland, and Germany: Victor, Neutral, and Vanquished.” It took me three weeks to write and was given at an American Legion Post. Now, the speech went rather well. A politician came up to me afterwards and said that I should go into politics, that I might be governor of Massachusetts in ten years. Then I began to think about a political career. I hadn’t even considered it up till then. Later in the fall, James M. Curley18 was elected mayor of Boston and a congressional seat became vacant. This was the seat, this was the eleventh congressional district, which my grandfather had once represented in Congress fifty years before.
JOHN F. KENNEDY CAMPAIGNS FOR CONGRESS IN THE NORTH END OF BOSTON BY THE OLD NORTH CHURCH AND PAUL REVERE STATUE, 1948
Suddenly, the time, the occasion, and I all met. I moved into the Bellevue Hotel with my grandfather and I began to run. I’ve been running ever since. Fascination began to grip me and I realized how satisfactory a profession the political career could be. I saw how ideally politics filled the Greek definition of happiness: “Full use of your powers along lines of excellence in a life affording scope.”19
I might have gone to law school, which so many were doing after the dislocations of war, and become a member of a big firm and [unclear] or a divorce case, or been involved in an accident suit. But how can anyone compare that in interest with being a member of Congress, with trying to write legislation on foreign policy or on the relationship between labor and management. Or I could have worked, or I could have taken part in an antitrust case against a great corporation, a case which might have taken two or three years. How can you compare in interest that job with a life in Congress where you are able to participate to some degree in determining which direction this nation will go?
Even reporting has its disadvantages, and that was the first profession I tried. A reporter is reporting what happens; he’s not making it happen. Even the good reporters, the ones who are really fascinated by what happens and who find real stimulus in putting their noses into the center of action. Even they, in a sense, are in a secondary profession. It’s reporting what happened, but it isn’t participating.
I had in politics, to begin with, the great advantage of having a well-known name, and that served me in good stead. Beyond that, however, I was a stranger in Boston to begin with, and I still have a notebook, which is filled page after page with the names of all the new people I met back there in that first campaign.
I had several disadvantages as a candidate. I was an outsider, really. I was living in a hotel. I had never lived very much in the district. My family roots were there, but I had lived in New York for ten years, and on top of that I had gone to Harvard, not a particularly popular institution at that time in the eleventh congressional district. But I started early, in my opinion the most important key to political success. In December, for the primary election next June.
My chief opponents, the mayor of Cambridge and Mayor Curley’s secretary, followed the old practice of not starting until about two months before the election. By then I was ahead of them. In 1952 I worked a year and a half ahead of the November election, a year and a half before Senator Lodge did. I am following the same practice now. I believe most aspirants for public office start much too late. When you think of the money that Coca-Cola and Lucky Strike put into advertising day after day, even though they have well-known brand names, you can realize how difficult it is to become an identifiable political figure. The idea that people can get to know you well enough to support you in two months or three months is wholly wrong. Most of us do not follow politics and politicians. We become interested only around election time. For the politician to make a dent in the consciousness of the great majority of the people is a long and laborious job, particularly in a primary where you don’t have the party label to help you.
Once I did start, I worked really hard, trying to get the support of the nonprofessionals, who are much more ready to commit themselves early than the traditional politicians. In my opinion, the principle for winning a ward fight or congressional fight, really, is the same as winning a presidential fight, and the most important ingredient is a willingness to submit yourself to long, long, long labor.
Halfway through that campaign the mayor of Cambridge offered me the job of his secretary if I withdrew and he won. I refused. Finally, after a tough fight, I won with a generous margin.
And almost immediately, politics lived up to the great expectations I had for it as a profession. The first thing I did in Congress was to become the junior Democrat on the labor committee. At the time we were considering the Taft-Hartley Bill.20 I was against it, and one day in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, I debated the bill with a junior Republican on that committee who was for it … his name was Richard Nixon. And now, here we are debating again, fourteen years later.
Why does a politician continually raise his sights and leave a job that represented complete satisfaction at one time for a higher position? Part of the reason lies in the normal desire to move ahead, the motivation that helps move the world; perhaps a more important part lies in the recognition that a greater opportunity to determine the direction in which the nation/world will go lies in higher office. The scope and power are bigger.
When I was in the House, I was especially interested in my district, in Boston, in the future, in the navigation, for example, of Boston Harbor. I still am. But in the House you are one of 435 members. You have to be there many, many years before you get to the hub of influence, or have an opportunity to play any role on substantive matters. After I’d been in the House for six years, I made up my mind that there was a greater opportunity to function in the United States Senate. I prepared to move on.
In the same way, during my years in the Senate I have come to understand that the presidency is the ultimate source of action. The Senate is not. It may have been in 1840, but it isn’t today. Take the Labor Bill, for instance. In 1958 I had worked for two years on that bill. President Eisenhower made one fifteen-minute speech, which had a decisive effect on the House. Two years versus one fifteen-minute speech. I worked for a year on a proposal to send an economic mission to India. The State Department opposed it. It was defeated in the conference. I worked for a year on a bill to change the Battle Act21 to allow a greater economic trading with countries behind the Iron Curtain, such as Poland. The president withdrew his support on the day of the vote. We were defeated by one vote. All of the things that you become interested in doing, the president can do and the Senate cannot, particularly in the area of foreign policy.
There is, in fact, much less than meets the eye in the Senate, frequently. The administration controls, in my opinion, today, and in the administration it’s the President who controls and who can affect results, while we play in the vital issues of national security, defense, and foreign policy a secondary role in the United States Senate.
The President, all public officials, today face serious and sophisticated problems unheard of in the nineteenth century, where political leaders dealt for several generations with the problems of the development of the West, slavery, tariff, and the currency. Today, politics has become infinitely complicated. One day we deal with labor law, the next with significant matters of foreign policy, the following day with fiscal and monetary policy, the next day with the problems of which new weapons should we put our emphasis on.
With the new complexity and intensity of political problems, I think the politics and politicians have changed. The hail-fellow-well-met extrovert is passing from [the] political scene. A good many of the politicians
I know in the Senate are quiet and thoughtful men, certainly not extroverts.
A successful politician today must have and communicate a sense of intelligence and integrity, and he must be willing to work. Money helps, of course. It is desirable for anyone to have financial security in whatever they do, but it is certainly not an essential for success. The fact is that people with private resources who have succeeded in politics are comparatively rare. Most of them do not go into politics, and for some who have, money has been a hazard. In any case, this is not the decisive question and I think our history has demonstrated this very clearly. Franklin Roosevelt had some personal resources. Lincoln did not. They were both successful political leaders and great presidents.
In looking back, I would say that I have never regretted my choice of profession, even though I cannot know what the future will bring. I hope all Americans, men and women, regardless of what may be their chosen profession, will consider giving some of their life to the field of politics. Winston Churchill once said: “Democracy is the worst form of government except for all of the other systems that have been tried.” It is certainly the most demanding, it requires more from us all than any other system. Particularly in these days when the watch fires of the enemy camp burn bright, I think all of us must be willing to give some of ourselves to the most exacting discipline of self-government. The magic of politics is not the panoply of office. The magic of politics is participating on all levels of national life in an affirmative way, of playing a small role in determining whether, in Mr. Faulkner’s words, “freedom will not only endure, but also prevail.”22
MEETING WITH GENERAL DOUGLAS MACARTHUR, AUGUST 16, 1962
On August 16, 1962, not long after the tapes were installed, General Douglas MacArthur, eighty-two years old, came to Washington to be feted at a lunch ceremony on Capitol Hill. He took advantage of his visit to pay a social call at the White House, where he found a receptive President Kennedy eager to join him in conversation. Kennedy had admired MacArthur for years, for his personal courage as a soldier in the First World War and his strategic vision in the wars that followed. They’d met in New York in April 1961, in the immediate aftermath of the Bay of Pigs disaster, when MacArthur offered valuable public support. A year later, they enjoyed an easy, discursive conversation, ranging over politics, Southeast Asia (where MacArthur advocated caution), and their shared interest in history. At one point, the conversation was interrupted by a phone call from the President’s father, who, though eight years younger than General MacArthur, was incapacitated by a stroke. World War I was on JFK’s mind, and he described Barbara Tuchman’s recent book, The Guns of August, to MacArthur; MacArthur recounted some of his adventures in that war, including his memory of a young French tank commander, Charles de Gaulle. In the selection that follows, MacArthur vents his criticism of the media, and the difficulty of living in the public eye.
MEETING WITH GENERAL DOUGLAS MACARTHUR, AUGUST 16, 1962
MACARTHUR: You have inherited difficulties that you probably will just about settle [and] you’ll get through and then some other fellow will come in and get all the credit.
JFK: [laughs] That’ll be all right.
MACARTHUR: That’s the old story of the pioneer.
JFK: [laughs]
MACARTHUR: There isn’t a single trouble that you have that isn’t a relic of either the—most of them from the Eisenhower administration and some of them from the preceding administration that he drove under the rug and left for you to clean up. But the general situation is undoubtedly on the up curve. You probably place more emphasis on these columnists, who are the damnedest bunch of petty liars the world has ever seen.
JFK: Or second-guessers.
[break]
JFK: [Yeah?]
MACARTHUR: This talk about the Republican Party taking the House is a lot of [hocus bull?]. They’ve got no more chance of taking the House than I have of flying over this house.
[break]
JFK: Yeah, yeah. Do you know this fellow Romney? Have you met Romney? George Romney?23
MACARTHUR: Only casually.
JFK: Yeah, yeah.
MACARTHUR: He doesn’t stand a chance.
JFK: What do you think, Rockefeller? You think he has …
MACARTHUR: He’s a very presentable man, personally, he would fill the bill. He looks it and everything. But he … to begin with, Mr. President, he’s practically unknown. I tried it out. I talked with one hundred people the other day, just as I happened to meet them. The bellhops. They would be window cleaners [?]. They were the maids. They were the servants. They were my own board of directors, and others. And of those hundred people, with the exception of the board of directors, there were only two that knew who Romney was.
JFK: [Yeah?]
MACARTHUR: You can’t pick the president that way. Now I know this piece came out yesterday, according to the New York Times, which is not always reliable.
JFK: [laughs]
MACARTHUR: And said he wasn’t going to run in ’64.
JFK: Yeah, I heard those statements.
MACARTHUR: Well, he [laughs], it was a pretty smart move, because even if he got the nomination, he couldn’t win it. And he’d have to build himself up as the governor of Michigan and make a campaign from the bottom up. No, don’t worry about these smart-aleck columnists that have to write something. It’s their bread and butter, you know. And the easiest thing is to get the big figure and damn him. I remember listening to old Mr. Hearst once. William Randolph Hearst.24 And he was talking to a group of young reporters that he had just assembled. And at that time, he was at the height of his journalistic empire. And he said, “Now,” he said, “the best way, the main purpose of my papers,” he says, “is to sell them.” And he says, “Dry and dull papers,” he says, “never make the grade.” Now, he says, “When you don’t get something sensational,” he says, “make it.” And some little fellow says, “Well, Mr. Hearst, how do you make it?” Well, he says, pick out the finest, the most honest, the most prominent man in your society, and attack him [physically and—?]
JFK: [laughs]
MACARTHUR: He says, “He’ll deny it,” he says, “and then you’ll have the sensation.”
JFK: Yeah. Then you’ll have it.
MACARTHUR: And there are a great many of these horrors. They’d rise up and vehemently deny, but a great many of them do that. Their stock in trade is a tirade against the great.
MEETING WITH PRESIDENT DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER, SEPTEMBER 10, 1962
John F. Kennedy was an unlikely successor to Dwight D. Eisenhower. The former supreme commander of the Allied Forces in Europe took a while to warm up to the former navy lieutenant, twenty-seven years his junior, whom he called “that young whippersnapper.” Kennedy had not met with Eisenhower once during his eight-year presidency, and during the 1960 campaign he freely criticized his complacent leadership. But that surface chilliness concealed a genuine respect that only grew as they began to know each other as fellow presidents. Kennedy drew upon Eisenhower’s military and political wisdom on numerous occasions, particularly during the Cuban Missile Crisis. This conversation, in the aftermath of the crisis, included some shared exasperation at the daily price paid for being France’s ally; reflections on the Cold War and its flash point, Berlin; and Ike’s memories of early tensions with the Russians in the waning days of World War II.
EISENHOWER: Well, of course, on that one, Mr. President, I’ve personally, I’ve always thought this from the beginning. If they believe there is no amount of strength you can put in Berlin, they can say that. I would think that you could … What’s his name, Khrushchev,25 said to me at Camp David, he was talking about [the United States] needing some more troops [in West Germany], there was somewhat at that time in the public about more, a couple more divisions, and so … he says, “What are they talking about?” He says, “For every division they can put in Germany, I can put ten, without any trouble whatsoever.”
And I said, “We know that.” And I said, �
��But we’re not worrying about that.” And I said, “I’ll tell you, I don’t propose to fight a conventional war.” If you declare, if you bring out war, bring on a war of global character, there are going to be no conventional, nothing conventional about it.” And I told him flatly. And he said, “Well.” He said, “That’s a relief. Neither one of us can afford it.” “Yes,” I said that, and I said, “OK, so I agree to that, too.” [laughter]
JFK: Right, right.
PRESIDENTS KENNEDY AND EISENHOWER, SEPTEMBER 10, 1962
EISENHOWER: But you see, what these people are afraid of, I mean the essence of his argument was, if you try to fight this thing conventionally from the beginning, when do you start to go nuclear? And this will never be until you yourselves in other words become in danger and he said, “That means all of Europe is again gone.” And that …
JFK: But of course, we’ve got all these nuclear weapons, as you know, stored in West Berlin. All we are … what they are really concerned about is that the Russians will seize Hamburg, which is only a few miles from the border, and some other towns, and then they’ll say, “We’ll negotiate.” So then Norstad26 has come up with this whole strategy. I think the only difficulty is that no one will … that if we did not have the problem, as I say, of Berlin and maintaining access through that autobahn authority, then you would say that any attempt to seize any part of West Germany, we would go to nuclear weapons. But of course, they never will. But it’s this difficulty of maintaining a position 120 miles behind their lines.
PRESIDENT KENNEDY ADDRESSES THE PEOPLE OF WEST BERLIN, RUDOLPH WILDE PLATZ, JUNE 26, 1963
Ish bin ein Bearleener (Ich bin ein Berliner/I am a Berliner),