John Kennedy

by Burns, James MacGregor;

  “I can’t support you.”

  “Why not?”

  “You’re a god-damned carpetbagger!”

  Boston thought it had seen everything in politics, but here was something new. Kennedy was only twenty-eight years old. Still yellow from the Atabrine he had taken to fight malaria, reserved, gaunt, almost emaciated-looking, he was a polar opposite to the familiar image of the derby-hatted, loud-talking, paunchy Boston politician. Many of the latter did not take the young candidate very seriously. He would get a bad case of burned fingers, they told one another; Boston politics was for big boys. Wait till the pros got into the race. But he had the Kennedy name, money, and a determination to make good that became almost fanatical as the months passed.

  Knowing he had to establish his claim to office in his own right, Kennedy got into the race early. In 1946, the Massachusetts primary elections took place in June. Kennedy campaigned for several months before the other candidates jumped off from the starting line. And in the process he began to build a big personal organization. It was this group that was most responsible for Kennedy’s victory.

  Its nucleus was a number of old friends from Choate, Harvard, and the Navy. Republicans or Democrats, liberals or conservatives, they converged on Bowdoin Street to “help out Jack.” One Navy friend flew in all the way from San Francisco. Brother Bob, just out of the Navy, came in to take over some wards in East Cambridge. Les Billings, in from Pennsylvania, plunged into the campaign and even surprised himself with his zeal—a Republican working for a Democrat, an Episcopalian working in a Catholic district, a Pittsburgh native working in Boston, he later noted wryly.

  Kennedy was shrewd enough, however, to know that he could not win with a bunch of non-Bostonians. It was bad enough that he himself was an outsider. Early in the operation, he began to hunt out people who had grown up in the different parts of his district. The men he found were much like himself—young, vigorous, politically inexperienced, not active in party politcs, vaguely Democratic but uncommitted ideologically. His “junior brain trust,” Kennedy called them.

  There was Francis X. Morrissey, a jaunty, voluble young Bostonian who helped run the Community Fund. There was sunny, likeable Timothy J. (Ted) Reardon from Somerville, who had been a close friend of Joe, Jr. at Harvard and was now just out of the service. There were Mark Dalton of Boston, Tom Broderick of Brighton, Dave Powers, who took over the tough Charlestown district, Billy Kelly of East Boston, John Droney of Cambridge—all veterans, all weary of Boston’s noisy and corrupt politicos, all hardheaded and businesslike, all looking for new faces in politics. And they in turn recruited scores of volunteer helpers from outside the usual political channels. Despite the polyglot nature of the district, almost all Kennedy’s leaders were Irish.

  At times they looked at their own candidate a bit anxiously. Could this slight, reserved, charming young man fight a Boston primary battle? One day Frank Morrissey found out. He drove Kennedy to Maverick Square, a gathering place for swarthy Sicilians, who stood about, coat collars turned up, hands in their pockets, broad-brimmed hats pushed low over their eyes, staring coldly at the throng. Morrissey watched while Kennedy went up to each of these characters, stuck out his hand, extracted a handshake, and soon had them talking and even smiling. Kennedy, Morrissey decided, would make out fine.

  Free-for-All

  Primary elections are rather special affairs. Almost anyone who has a mind to can run for the party nomination, which means that a dozen or more politicians may join the race. Some jump in planning to be bought off to get out. Since all the contestants belong to the same party, the battle is one of personalities and name-calling rather than issues and program. Confused and bored, most of the voters do not show up at the polls on primary day. All this is doubly true of Boston primaries. In this most political of cities, primaries are a hurly-burly of neighborhood vendettas, ethnic-group rivalries, and obscure clashes of street-corner politicians, occasionally enlivened by stunts and mudslinging.

  Kennedy’s primary was no exception. To make things worse, the decision to hold primary election day in June meant that the nomination of candidates came five months before Election Day in November and hence at a time when the voters were even more apathetic than usual. It was also apparent by early 1946, as candidate after candidate filed for the Democratic nomination for Congress in the Eleventh District, that this race would be a typically wide-open affair.

  Kennedy’s rivals were a rather mixed lot. Best known was Mike Neville, of Cambridge, an old-timer who had climbed the political ladder to state legislator and mayor. Another favorite was John F. Cotter, of Charlestown, who, as secretary to former Congressman Jim Curley, had built close contacts in the district. Of wholly different cast was Joseph Lee, of Boston, a patrician Yankee who valiantly ran for office year after year in this Catholic area and occasionally won. Catherine Falvey, of Somverville, who had served as a WAC major, lent color to the contest, for she liked to show up at rallies in her gleaming white dress uniform. Also in the race were a Somerville schoolteacher—an idealist who wanted to show that he could campaign without accepting contributions—and four Bostonians of Italian origin, two of whom were named Joseph Russo.

  At first the rest of the candidates laughed Kennedy off—at least tactically. “The poor little rich kid,” Catherine Falvey dubbed him. Mike Neville offered him a job as a secretary if Kennedy would drop out. It became increasingly evident that Kennedy was working hard and running strong, and the taunts changed to indignation. Who was this kid who had invaded the Eleventh District? Nothing but an outsider trying to slide in on the Kennedy name and money. Kennedy’s father, it was charged, was buying the election; according to one story, the old man claimed that with the money he was spending he could elect his chauffeur to Congress. And if the boy was a carpetbagger, he came by it naturally, for hadn’t old Fitzgerald run for office while he was living in Concord?

  Actually, the “kid” was taking no chances on the power of his name and money; he was relying on sheer hard work. Day after day, he made whirlwind tours of his district’s endless sidewalks, darting into barbershops, saloons, grocery stores, factories, wharves, fire stations for quick handshakes. He turned more hollow-eyed and anemic-looking than ever, his war injury bothered him, and sometimes his harried workers wondered if he could get through the day. But he always did—though living on nervous energy.

  Kennedy learned campaigning as he campaigned. At first his speaking was nervous and hesitant; he showed little poise and certainly no magnetism. But he slowly developed a style of direct, informal, simple speaking, without high-blown rhetoric or bombastic exaggeration, that to some of his listeners was in happy contrast to the oratory of the old-fashioned politicians. Kennedy’s way of speaking was appropriate for what he talked about. Shunning personal attacks, ignoring his opponents altogether except toward the end, he talked factually about problems closest to the needs of the Eleventh District—jobs, housing, low rents and prices, medical care, veterans’ benefits, social security, and other bread-and-butter matters. While on all these issues he took a New Deal–Fair Deal position, he spoke not in generalities but in terms of concrete help that he could supply from Washington. The only foreign-policy issue of importance in the campaign was the British loan, which Kennedy supported and several other candidates opposed.

  The young candidate learned, too, the power of suggestion and the quirks of voters. At one rally he was speaking vehemently for veterans’ housing when an old character named Jackie Toomey suddenly stood up in the front row.

  “What about the non-veteran?” Toomey hollered.

  “Yes, sir, the non-veteran too,” Kennedy shot back, and Toomey was seen going around to his pals afterward with the happy report, “You see—he’s for the non-veteran too.”

  With that cold realism that has marked his whole career, however, Kennedy saw early that orthodox campaigning was not good enough. People who turned out for rallies had already made up their minds. Sidewalk handshaking helped,
but most voters quickly forgot his name, or at least what he was running for—hardly surprising, since there were nine other candidates in his own race, and several score other contestants for a dozen other state and local nominations. Radio time and newspaper advertising were useful, but much of this was wasted because these media covered all of Greater Boston.

  How could he reach the thousands of apathetic voters who looked on politics as an odious business monopolized by crooks and windbags? If they would not come to him, he would go to them in their homes. So Kennedy, through his hundred or more volunteers, arranged for house parties in every corner of his district. There was nothing new in this—house parties were an old campaign technique—but what was different was the sheer number of parties, the care with which they were planned, and the scheduling that enabled Kennedy to cover at least half a dozen in one evening. In poorer neighborhoods, Kennedy workers supplied coffee and cookies, cups and saucers, silver and flowers. Names were carefully noted and added to mailing lists. Kennedy was at his best at these affairs—coming in a bit timidly but with his flashing, picture-magazine smile, charming the mothers and titillating their daughters, answering questions with a leg draped over an arm of his chair, wandering into the kitchen for a word with proud grandparents about news from the “old country,” a final round of handshaking before leaving for the next affair. This social type of politicking was climaxed by a huge affair at a Cambridge hotel that featured, not the candidate, but his mother and sisters.

  Kennedy reached the voters wherever he could—even on their way to and from work. It was said that his streetcar and subway advertising beat anything ever seen before in a congressional fight in Massachusetts. A single streetcar would have as many as four Kennedy placards, on which four different people—for example, a housewife, a dockworker, an executive, and a veteran—would explain “why I am for Jack Kennedy.” A condensation of the New Yorker account of the PT-boat episode was widely distributed.

  By now the slush and ice had long since gone from Boston’s streets, spring was turning to summer, and the long campaign was nearing the end. The lesser candidates knew they were licked; one of them—the idealistic Somerville schoolteacher—obligingly played the piano to hold the crowd when Kennedy was late. But the tempers of the front runners grew short. When Miss Falvey, after peppering Kennedy with accusations at an outdoor rally, then whispered in his ear, “Don’t pay any attention—it’s just politics,” Kennedy was not to be disarmed. He got up and delivered a biting counterattack on the lady. When one of Lee’s supporters wrote humorous vitriolic pieces for an East Boston newspaper playing up the “rich kid” theme and, far worse, charging (falsely) that Kennedy’s sister had married a descendant of Oliver Cromwell, despised by all good Irishmen, Kennedy begged Lee to have his friend lay off, and Lee reluctantly complied. By primary day, the race was rapidly developing into one of those zany, bellicose, and feverish battles so well described by Edwin O’Connor in The Last Hurrah.

  On primary election day Kennedy went to the polls with Grandmother and Grandfather Fitzgerald, and squeezed in a movie—“A Night in Casablanca”—before the returns came in. The results showed how well Kennedy had done his work. By amassing a total of 22,183 votes, he almost doubled the vote of Neville, who came in second, and beat Cotter by better than three to one. Major Falvey came in fifth. Kennedy ran ahead of all his opponents in Boston and Charlestown, and was beaten only by Neville in Cambridge. His share of the vote—about 42 per cent—was impressive for a ten-man race.

  Jack took his victory with his usual self-possession. But Grandpa Fitz danced an Irish jig on a table and sang “Sweet Adeline.”

  Safe Seat

  In winning the nomination, Kennedy soon began paying the penalty of success. Stung by their defeat at the hands of this youth now just turned twenty-nine, some die-hard supporters of his opponents charged that Kennedy’s father had masterminded the election, had put a small fortune into radio and newspaper advertising, and had induced politicians with Italian names to enter the primary (to split the “Italian vote”) or had tried to keep others with Yankee or Irish names out of the race.

  Without question, Kennedy, Sr. was as active as he could be behind the scenes. He supplied money, pulled strings, and worked on publicity and public relations. Doubtless his agents were active in obscure maneuverings. But his activities probably had only a small effect on the outcome. There is no way to buy or rig a wide-open, ten-man primary race, for there is no way of telling just what effect the entrance of one candidate or the departure of another will have on the final vote. Any manipulation on behalf of one candidate is counterbalanced or canceled out by manipulation for other candidates.

  The greatest contribution of father to son was the name Kennedy. This was the magic word that opened doors and gave the candidate a chance to put over his charm. The other main ingredients of success were Kennedy’s tireless stumping over a long period, the intensive use of house parties, the availability of money when needed, and, above all, the enthusiasm of his aides and volunteers.

  Kennedy won his first big race mainly on his own. The result hardened not only his self-confidence but his belief that he could make realistic political decisions, sometimes against the advice of the pros. He had heard much conflicting advice during the campaign—from his father, from Grandpa Fitz, from old Boston pals, from New Deal liberals, from conservative friends—and his victory vindicated the political judgments that he had reached.

  The results also left him with a disdain for routine politics and “party hacks” that he would not lose for many years, if ever. He had found that the Democratic party hardly existed as an organization in the Eleventh District; after he won office and consolidated his position, he could say, “I am the Democratic party in my district.” Thus he learned early that the key to winning politics—at least in Boston—was a personal organization, not the party committees. And he was careful to keep his organization intact as a nucleus for a bigger group.

  Kennedy’s primary victory was, of course, a final victory, since the Eleventh District had not gone Republican for decades. A Somerville Republican valiantly entered the regular election in the fall of 1946, and Kennedy, without campaigning very much, swamped him by more than two to one. He had that prize of American politics, a safe seat. How safe it was, was shown two years later, in 1948, when Kennedy had no opposition in the Democratic primary, nor Republican opposition in the fall. Two years after that, he easily bested five primary opponents—four of them Italians—in winning with five times their combined vote, and in the fall of 1950, he defeated the Republican nominee, a young Boston lawyer named Vincent J. Celeste, by almost five to one. Kennedy had the firm base of operations he wanted so badly.

  But all this was in the future. During the summer and fall of 1946, while other candidates across the nation toiled on the hustings, he could swim, sail, and relax on the Cape. While he did so, the pendulum was swinging in American politics. Capitalizing on postwar shortages, frustrations, and letdown, the Republicans, under the leadership of Senator Robert A. Taft and the slogan of “Had Enough?,” won their first majorities in Congress in almost two decades. Even this outcome was helpful to Kennedy, for with few new Democrats elected to the House, he gained a better choice of committee assignments. Without trying very hard or thinking much about it, and without knowing much about the subject, he became a member of the House Committee on Education and Labor, a step that would be of considerable significance in his later career.

  5THE GENTLEMAN FROM BOSTON

  Kennedy was only twenty-nine years old when he took his seat in Congress in January 1947. He looked years younger, with his shy, boyish smile, big shock of hair, and gangly frame. Kennedy denies that he was mistaken for a page boy, but some of the old hands around Congress thought he was a college boy who had picked up a patronage job. And those who knew him paid him little notice at first. The Kennedy name might mean a lot in Boston, but scions of famous political families were a dime a dozen in the nation�
��s capital. Kennedy was amused by some of his experiences.

  “Well, how do you like that?” he demanded with mock indignation as he burst into his office one morning. “Some people got into the elevator and asked me for the fourth floor!” The young Congressman at first did little to correct this impression. He might appear on the House floor in his old khaki pants, perhaps with a rumpled seersucker coat. Sometimes his tie was spotted and his shirt-tail hung out. This was not affectation, but a habit of grabbing the nearest piece of clothing handy in the morning, or even a suit that his valet had put aside to be cleaned.

  It was, in short, hard for older congressmen to take him seriously. When crusty Ed O’Neal, veteran farm lobbyist, kept addressing him as “laddie” in testifying before the House Labor Committee, he spoke not out of contempt; it was just the natural way to talk to someone who seemed more like a college freshman than a member of Congress.

  Nor was it easy for Kennedy to step into the statesman’s routine. Still fond of sports, he sometimes left his office early, donned an old sweatshirt and sneakers, and hurried over to a Georgetown playground with a football or a soft-ball and mitt. Soon he would be the center of a gang of boys, white and colored, who had no idea that they were catching passes from a congressman. Sometimes he sailed in the Tidal Basin with Ted Reardon. Evenings he went to the movies, read at home, or had dates with girls around town, sometimes jointly with other bachelor members of Congress, especially his close friend George Smathers, of Florida, who had entered Congress the same year as Kennedy.

  He lived in a Georgetown house, attended by a doting housekeeper, Margaret Ambrose, and his Negro valet, George Thomas, formerly employed by Arthur Krock. George brought Kennedy’s luncheons to his office in a big heated container. Part of the time Kennedy stayed with his sister Eunice, before her marriage to Sargent Shriver, of Chicago. Occasionally his mother came to town to take an anxious look at his domestic arrangements, just as she had come to school to check on his progress years before; brothers and sisters often stopped in on their way through Washington. His father rarely came to the office but often called him long-distance.