John Kennedy

by Burns, James MacGregor;

  All of us

  Why not take all of us?

  Fabulous—

  You can’t live without us.

  My son Jack

  Heads the procession.

  Then comes Bob,

  Groomed for succession.…

  Publicity fed on publicity. As Kennedy stumped the country, magazine editors found that he was superb copy, with his youth, war record, family, and money, and that he and his wife made a wonderful front cover, especially in color. During 1957, Time did a cover story on Kennedy, McCall’s and Redbook wrote him up in feature articles with plenty of attention to Jacqueline, the American Mercury played him as the “perfect politician.” U.S. News & World Report and Parade struck the theme of John and Robert Kennedy as a governmental “brother act,” and the Saturday Evening Post and the Catholic Digest covered the whole Kennedy family. Newspaper coverage was heavy, too, and soon news clips were overflowing Kennedy’s filing cases into cardboard cartons.

  Kennedy himself had contributed a remarkable number of articles to a variety of publications. His favorite theme—or the favorite theme requested by the magazines—was still political courage; he applied the test to others besides the heroes of Profiles in Courage and squeezed the last drop out of this topic when he wrote a piece on three women of courage for McCall’s. He did an article on his illness—“What My Illness Taught Me”—for the American Weekly and on brotherhood for Parade. Several of his favorite legislative problems he popularized in magazines; he urged in the Saturday Evening Post that the military academies be taken out of politics, and in the New York Times Magazine he wrote on lobbyists and on the challenge of political courage. Kennedy was not interested solely in mass-circulation magazines; he also appeared in the Foreign Policy Bulletin, the National Education Association Journal, and business and labor periodicals.

  In earlier days, Kennedy had had to offer articles to journals like any other beginner, but after 1956, editors were dunning him for submissions. They had discovered that he could be depended on to send in a knowledgeable, well-argued piece, not eloquent or brilliant, perhaps, but highly satisfactory and likely to arouse further notice when newspapers quoted from the Senator’s remarks. The award of the Pulitzer prize to Profiles in Courage in May 1957 made Kennedy’s writings more prized than ever.

  All in all, Kennedy got a magnificent build-up in 1957—a build-up that he mightily aided and abetted. Sometimes the Senator and his aides wondered whether all this was premature—the presidential election, after all, was three years off. But the matter was largely out of their control; there was no way to pace the publicity to fit their political needs. “If top magazines want cover stories, calling him ‘hot copy,’ we don’t throw them out suggesting they come back next year,” declared a staff member. They would take what they could get when they could get it, and hope that the morrow would bring new ideas and more headlines.

  Room 362

  Life in Kennedy’s office had become more frenetic than ever. The sheer output of work was extraordinary. Secretaries toiled far into the evening over mountainous correspondence. Aides returned at night to work on speeches and legislation. The office was more jammed than ever; visitors could hardly find a place to sit, and an extra person coming in to help out had to play musical chairs, grabbing any desk that was momentarily unused. Reardon now supervised sixteen employees, some of whom worked in the basement office.

  As the years had passed, this office had taken on the appearance of a museum and a library. On the right, as one entered in 1959, stood a large glass-faced bookcase housing volumes sent to Kennedy and arranged indiscriminately. Among the books there were Paul Blanshard’s American Freedom and Catholic Power, a book by Billy Graham, several Bibles, and a biography of Al Smith. On top of the bookcase sat several models of World War II ships, and hanging over it a nine-foot eight-inch sailfish Kennedy caught in a two-hour struggle off Acapulco in 1953. Completing this nautical display was a huge harpoon section of a darting gun used in hunting whales, maps of the New Georgia Islands, and a telegram—THE NAVY IS PROUD OF YOU—that Kennedy received from James Forrestal after his election to Congress.

  In the far right corner from the entrance door was the historical section of the office: old cartoons from Harper’s Weekly, old prints, and more than fifty framed pictures of the Senator’s friends, most of them inscribed to him. The pictures suggested the broad range of his friendships: Harry Truman, Herbert Hoover, Bishop Weldon of Springfield, Massachusetts, Senators Lyndon Johnson, Walter George, and Hubert Humphrey, the last inscribed to Kennedy, “a man of courage, brilliance and dedicated to public service, with admiration and friendship.” In the center of the room, before a green marble fireplace and the flags of his state and nation, stood Kennedy’s large desk. Within arm’s length he had several books—at that time, Margaret Coit’s Mr. Baruch, John Dos Passos’ The Men Who Made the Nation, Walter Lippmann’s The Communist World and Ours, the Alsop brothers’ The Reporter’s Trade, and the Report of the United States Commission on Civil Rights, 1959. On this desk, too, were some souvenirs: a gavel presented by Stevenson in 1956, a long pipe, and, the most valuable of all, the coconut shell on which Lieutenant Kennedy scratched the message that led to his rescue in the Pacific.

  In a cubbyhole room surrounded by filing cases, Sorensen labored on campaign talks, magazine articles, speeches for the Senate floor, newspaper releases, correspondence with political leaders. Though he was incessantly interrupted by telephone calls and visitors, Sorensen never lost his composure; somehow he was able to supply Kennedy with the meaty articles and speeches he wanted, often just before the deadline. In the same cubbyhole, at a desk next to Sorensen’s, sat Mike Feldman, a tall rangy Pennsylvanian and seasoned government lawyer who did legislative analyses and bill-drafting for the Senator. Fred Holborn, a Harvard-trained expert on international affairs, helped out on foreign-policy statements and a host of lesser matters. Ralph Dugan, of the staff of the Senate Education and Labor Committee, assisted Kennedy on a wide range of labor and social welfare matters. Sitting just outside the Senator’s door was his personal secretary, Mrs. Evelyn Lincoln, who, amid the hurly-burly of ringing phones, special messengers, gawking visitors, and chattering typewriters, seemed to know exactly where everybody and everything was located.

  The door was still open: an election was coming up, and the office could not forget for a moment the power held by the people back home. Constituents came in to get admission cards for the Senate gallery from Pamela Turnure, a pretty New Yorker who sat by the door; some visitors tarried a bit hoping to get a look at the Senator. Reardon was on the phone to Boston, making arrangements for Kennedy appearances, smoothing over local frictions among the Kennedy forces, sending instructions to the state Democratic committee, and keeping a watchful eye on Massachusetts politicians.

  An air of tense, bustling informality hung over the office. Kennedy was everywhere, darting out to talk with Reardon or Sorensen, stopping by Mrs. Lincoln’s desk to take a telephone call or to dictate a letter, welcoming a visitor, closeting himself in his office for long conferences and phone talks, rushing off to the Senate floor at the sounding of a quorum call. As he talked with visitors in his office, Kennedy would sit back in his big chair, lean forward to make a point, fidget with a pencil, interrupt himself to pick up the phone. Mrs. Lincoln would show in more visitors—the Senator would look up with a smile, “Hi Bill! How’re you doing?” At times the office seemed like a five-ring circus, as Kennedy simultaneously performed as senator, committee member, Massachusetts politician, author, and presidential candidate.

  Producing a dozen major articles and speeches a month, the office devoured factual information and new ideas. Kennedy was the biggest senatorial user of the Legislative Reference Service in the Library of Congress. Help was found also in the nation’s universities, especially Harvard. Kennedy went to historians for advice on the five outstanding senators, to political scientists for help on governmental problems such as lobbying and the
Electoral College, to law professors for their views on civil liberties and civil-rights bills. A brilliant student of international politics at M.I.T., W. W. Rostow, had a major part in working up several of the Senator’s foreign-policy statements. Other help came from Earl Latham at Amherst and John K. Galbraith at Harvard.

  If Kennedy had access to brains in his big operation, he also had another requisite—money. Big-time politics was expensive. Giving a banquet at the Mayors’ Conference at Miami Beach cost Kennedy over $2,000. Every Christmas he sent out several thousand greeting cards. During the first seven months of 1956, when the Democratic convention and national campaign were in the offing, Kennedy spent $72,206 outside his regular allowance for his Washington office. Among the major items were $19,913 for his Washington house expenses, $1,697 for clubs and contributions, $18,647 for extra Washington office expenses, $2,791 for his Boston office, $11,061 for hotel, travel, and other business expenses. Some of Kennedy’s bills were paid by him through his father’s New York office, which served as a financial clearing-house for tax and accounting purposes and as a communication center for the whole family. At one point, the Senator feared that he had inadequate control of his own expenses and he had to request the New York office to send all bills and requests for essential expenditures to him for his approval.

  By 1958, Senator and Mrs. John F. Kennedy and daughter Caroline were well settled in their Georgetown house. Jacqueline was happier here than out in Virginia. Fronting on a quiet, tree-lined street, the three-story brick house looked out in back on a walled garden with outdoor furniture and a play area for Caroline. Jacqueline hoped to make the house a restful, nonpolitical retreat for her husband, and furnished and decorated it to reflect her personality and interests rather than his. On the walls of the living room were old prints of French scenes; on the table were art books and folios; the furniture was dainty and elegant. It was clearly not a house for politicians’ smoke-filled rooms.

  But even in this tranquil setting, Kennedy was still his restless self. He hated to waste time; in the morning he would read a magazine while taking a bath and at the same time shave there, guiding his razor by glancing occasionally at a mirror set up on a bathtub tray. Often friends and politicians came in for breakfast, served on trays in the living room. The Senator took a few minutes to play with Caroline, but after that everything was on split-second timing. Sometimes he let John J. (“Muggsy”) O’Leary, a genial Senate doorkeeper who helped out in the office, drive for him, but he usually preferred to take the wheel and race over to the Capitol. If he got to an airport ten minutes early, he rushed to a phone booth to shower Mrs. Lincoln with instructions or even squeeze in a couple of long-distance calls. No time was lost at lunch, either; Muggsy brought a hot meal from home. Kennedy rarely got back to his family before eight in the evening, too late to see his daughter. He rushed to finish dinner to get to a meeting or to take Jacqueline to the movies. The Kennedys did little entertaining. The Senator’s idea of the ideal way to spend an evening was with a book, especially history. When queried at one point during 1957 as to what he was reading, he listed John Buchan’s Oliver Cromwell, Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.’s Crisis of the Old Order, and Arthur Link’s Road to the White House.

  “Young man in a hurry,” one journalist called him. Sometimes his friends feared that he was too much in a hurry, that he was going too far too fast, that he should pace himself better, that he should learn to take a breather. But the dynamo would not or could not slow down. He was always in the process of going or coming. Friends noted with a smile that of the first six words Caroline had learned at a year and a half—Daddy, airplane, car, shoe, hat, and thank you—at least three had something to do with motion.

  In his usual shrewd and gentle way, James Reston, of the New York Times, summed up Kennedy’s position in Washington as the 1958 session ended. Kennedy, said Reston, had established himself as the rookie of the year when he first came to the Senate and this was about the way he was regarded until the Democratic convention of 1956.

  “The pros, who are older and therefore allergic to rookies, thought he was too young—35 when he came in, 41 now—and some of them even thought he was too pretty. Also he read, and even wrote, books, and spoke to people at Harvard—all of which encouraged the professionals to wonder whether he was tough enough for the big time.…” Reston described Kennedy’s successes in the 1956 convention and after.

  “In short, Senator Kennedy is on the make; he makes no pretense about it, and he dismisses out of hand the suggestion that he is young enough to wait for some other presidential campaign … when newer and perhaps tougher competition will arrive. He is swinging for the fences now.…”

  Home Run in Massachusetts

  Kennedy’s senatorial term expired at the end of 1958. As the fall campaign approached, hardly an informed Democrat—or even Republican—in Massachusetts saw any real possibility that he could be beaten. No Republican of any stature wanted to be the sacrificial lamb. It looked as though a Democratic trend was on generally, and Republican leaders forlornly surveyed their stable of younger candidates.

  What discouraged the opposition most was the extent of the defection to the Senator from their own ranks. Rank-and-file Republicans did not hide their determination to vote for Kennedy. Despite his voting record, they simply refused to look on him as a Democrat or as a liberal: somehow he seemed above or outside the regular party battle. It was hard to think of this engaging young green blood as a politician—what with his money, his education, his prize-winning book and all.

  Kennedy was, of course, very much a politician, but he had cultivated the feeling among the voters as a whole that he was a “different breed,” with his moderate speeches, emphasis on economy, and standoffish attitude toward Boston polls. The remarkable thing was the number of conservative businessmen who were going to vote for him, not from any sentimental attachment to him or misunderstanding of his voting record, but because of concrete things that he had done for them. A Democratic candidate for Congress, campaigning in one of Massachusetts’ districts in 1958, was amazed at the number of businessmen who said they had seen Kennedy two or three times on their tariff or tax or labor or regulatory problems. Somehow Senator Saltonstall had been too busy and their own Republican representative unavailable, but they had always been able to get in to see the junior Senator.

  Kennedy was especially eager to help prominent Republicans, who might forgive him his Democratic votes as long as he attended to their problems with the federal government. For example, Robert Choate, the very Republican editor of the very Republican Boston Herald, for years had been trying to get a prized television channel in the Boston area but had run into difficulties. The rival paper, the Boston Globe, and others in Boston had opposed this grant on the grounds that control of mass media should be diversified rather than concentrated in one man’s hands. Choate drew up an amendment that would bar the Federal Communications Commission from discriminating against applicants for TV licenses because of their other interests in mass media—in short, because of their newspaper ownership. Kennedy obligingly submitted to the chairman of the House Interstate and Foreign Commerce Committee a long memorandum that argued against the discrimination policy and included Choate’s amendment. Kennedy insisted both in his submission and in private correspondence that he was not necessarily endorsing the amendment; but certainly he had given Chaote good service.

  Kennedy had also intervened in the scramble of airlines for routes allotted by the Civil Aeronautics Board. He and five other New England senators wrote the CAB in July 1956 in favor of the certification of a New England enterprise, Northeast Airlines, for a Florida route. In a separate letter to the CAB, Kennedy made clear that he supported Northeast’s bid over Pan American’s.

  It was small wonder that Kennedy kept his reputation as a fighter for Massachusetts’ interests. His office also toiled in behalf of the thousands of persons who wrote in for little favors. This help is, of course, routine for any congressiona
l office—but again the remarkable thing was the sheer volume of Kennedy’s “case load,” as favor administration is called on the Hill. Frustrated by their labyrinthine state and local governments, Massachusetts people would write in to Kennedy concerning not only federal but all sorts of local problems—road construction, school difficulties, liquor licenses, housing, and so on—and as often as not the Senator’s office would ask a Kennedy lieutenant back home to help out. Old Pat Kennedy would have admired the efficient processing of these requests. The main difference between Kennedy and his forebears was patronage; the Senator had few jobs to give out because of Republican control of the administration.

  The political consequences of all this activity were simple: Kennedy had decisively won re-election long before the campaign. Still, he had some worries. One was complacency and apathy among his own forces. Another was the annoying tendency of the newspapers to set margins by which Kennedy would have to win in order to maintain his national prestige. Victory alone would not be enough; he must win by 200,000 or 250,000 votes. And as the campaign got under way, the newspapers kept raising the ante—to 300,000 or 400,000 votes. The faster Kennedy ran, the more he stood still.

  But the thorniest problem for Kennedy was that of maintaining his nationwide momentum while devoting himself to a campaign back home. A smashing victory would, of course, enhance that prestige; the trouble was that Democratic candidates everywhere were appealing to him to come to their bailiwicks and help them out. The Kennedy name, it had long been known, could be depended on to pack a party rally or dinner. For his part, Kennedy prized these invitations, for they could lead to closer contacts with state party leaders, and also build up political debts to him on the part of candidates who might become senators and governors and congressmen and hence control delegates to the national convention.