“He didn’t have to”: O’Neill, p. 119.
“the Rabbi”: Parmet, p. 248.
“You can’t stop a whispering”: KOD.
“They have problems”: Ibid.
In October he made: Ibid.
“He was in intense pain”: John Galvin, John F. Kennedy Oral History Program.
“handsomest”: United Press International report in Boston Globe, July 2, 1952.
“ ‘It looks like Eisenhower’s’ ”: Macdonald OH.
“John Barry, a well-known writer”: KOD.
“Well, all hell broke loose”: Ibid.
“Finally, he got so frustrated”: Ibid.
“That guy must never sleep”: Robert Caro, John F. Kennedy Oral History Program.
“The senator-elect got up”: KOD.
CHAPTER SEVEN: MAGIC
“Mary, now don’t be silly”: O’Neill, pp. 117–18.
“They were all experienced”: Davis OH.
“If you work for a politician”: O’Brien, No Final Victories, p. 40.
“I’d go down to his office”: Smathers OH.
“His mind was on bigger things”: Ibid.
“ability to write in clear”: Sorensen, Counselor, p. 96.
“Jack had the ability”: Reardon int.
“he was soft on Senator Joe McCarthy”: Sorensen, Counselor, pp. 98–99.
“He was much the same”: Ibid., pp. 102–3.
“Few could realize”: Ibid., p. 109.
“During my first year”: Ibid., pp. 103–4.
“I do not remember”: Ibid., p. 102.
“The thing to remember”: Author interview with Charles Bartlett.
“Black Jack” Bouvier: Leaming, pp. 4–5.
Jackie, who’d spent: Ibid., pp. 5–8.
While he was wooing her: Ibid., pp. 8–9.
“Jack appreciated her”: Dallek, An Unfinished Life, p. 193.
“Jackie was certainly very”: Forbes OH.
“There was this beautiful girl”: Bartlett int.
“Well, she knew what”: Ibid.
“I gave everything a good deal”: Fay, p. 160.
In fact, with an eye: O’Donnell and Powers, p. 95.
“They haven’t seen you since”: KOD.
“I said, ‘God, she’s a fantastic-looking woman’ ”: Red Fay, John F. Kennedy Oral History Program.
“Almost across the street from”: Fay, p. 152.
“I want to tell you”: Ibid., p. 153.
“Torby Macdonald stood up”: Fay OH.
“There were only a few political”: KOD.
“She was terribly young”: Pitts, p. 137.
Chuck Spalding had his own telling: Spalding OH.
“This would be a helluva”: Thomas Reeves, A Question of Character: A Life of John F. Kennedy (New York: Free Press, 1991), p. 114.
“When Jack and Jacqueline”: Fay, p. 151.
“they spoiled him”: Bartlett int.
“He saw her as a kindred spirit”: Collier and Horowitz, p. 233. Based on interview with Lem Billings.
CHAPTER EIGHT: SURVIVAL
“The story circulated”: KOD.
“I knew Jack was serious”: O’Neill, p. 90.
“After he had been in the Senate”: Sorensen, Counselor, p. 145.
Kennedy had come upon accounts: John Quincy Adams story, Kennedy, Profiles in Courage, 29–50.
“If we do not stand firm”: Remarks of Senator John F. Kennedy at Boston College, Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts, February 1, 1953.
He also challenged the Republicans’: Parmet, p. 282. “Under these circumstances, we must ask how the new [Secretary of State John Foster] Dulles policy and its dependence upon the threat of atomic retaliation will fare in these areas of guerilla warfare. At what point would the threat of atomic weapons be used in the struggles in Southeast Asia—in French Indochina—particularly where the chief burden is carried on the one side by native communists and on the other by the troops of a Western power, which once held the country under colonial rule?”
“To pour money, material”: JFK speech on the Senate floor, April 6, 1954.
“My good friends”: Joseph R. McCarthy in response to Edward R. Murrow, CBS, April 6, 1954.
“The reason why we find”: Joseph R. McCarthy speech, Wheeling, West Virginia, February 9, 1950.
“not fit to wear that uniform”: McCarthy quote, Zwicker hearing, February 1954.
A close friend of Bobby’s: Sorensen, Counselor, p. 152.
“Senator McCarthy and Mr. Cohn”: Schlesinger, Robert Kennedy and His Times, p. 113.
“He was told to sit down”: KOD.
“political suicide”: Ibid.
“to avoid the vote”: Ibid.
“I was in the Bellevue bar”: Ibid.
“JFK knew that if he voted”: Sorensen, Counselor, p. 152.
According to the historian: Dallek, An Unfinished Life, p. 196. “He could not bend down to pull a sock on his left foot and he had to climb and descend stairs moving sideways.”
“I don’t understand Jack’s”: Bartlett int.
“This is the one that kills”: O’Brien, No Final Victories, p. 45.
“They said the best thing”: Galvin OH.
“empty suit”: Sorensen, Counselor, pp. 127–28.
“ ‘sometimes party asks’ ”: Ibid.
Late that summer: KOD.
“Furcolo told him”: Ibid.
“We’d been building up”: Ibid.
On October 10: Dallek, An Unfinished Life, p. 196.
“I kept pushing and”: KOD.
“the only wrong political move”: Powers and O’Donnell, pp. 85–86.
The back operation: Dallek, An Unfinished Life, p. 196.
The odds made by the political wise guys: KOD.
“the doctors didn’t expect him”: Evelyn Lincoln notes.
“That poor young man is going to die”: Conversation with Rex Scouten, Aitken, p. 137.
“The doctors don’t understand”: Evelyn Lincoln notes.
“The tenor of his voice”: KOD.
“feared the wrath”: Sorensen, Counselor, p. 154.
“You know, when I get downstairs”: Parmet, p. 310.
Junior Chamber of Commerce dinner: Schlesinger, Robert Kennedy and His Times, pp. 115–16.
When the senator died: Ibid., p. 173.
“In January 1955, Bobby”: Fay, p. 159.
Oil painting and Monopoly: JFK’s oil painting described, Rose Kennedy, p. 127; Monopoly playing, Jean Kennedy Smith int.
“I think we hit it off”: Peter Lawford, John F. Kennedy Oral History Program.
“I don’t think anybody ever”: Ibid.
“He was really ill”: Ibid.
“He was enormously well read”: Fraser OH.
“I think the whole concept”: Bartlett OH.
“Kennedy played an especially serious role”: Sorensen, Counselor, p. 146.
The theme and the bulk: Ibid., p. 38.
nowhere as well read: Author interview with Ted Sorensen.
“Where else, in a non-totalitarian society”: Kennedy, Profiles in Courage, p. 7.
the prospect of forced retirement: Ibid.
“One senator, since retired”: Sorensen, Counselor, pp. 146–47.
“He must have been getting”: Ormsby-Gore quote, Lord Harlech, John F. Kennedy Oral History Program.
“Shut that door!”: Martin Dowd interview.
“Larry and I got a call”: KOD.
CHAPTER NINE: DEBUT
Onions was a John McCormack guy: Parmet, pp. 347–51, 354.
For Jack to woo: Ibid.
“Anybody who’s for Stevenson”: O’Donnell and Powers, p. 109.
“You’re either going to get”: Schlesinger, Robert Kennedy and His Times, p. 131.
“We argued that Onions shouldn’t be allowed”: O’Brien, No Final Victories, p. 50.
“He and his millions”: Parmet, pp. 347–51, 354.
To camouflage the effort: Ibid
., p. 359.
“You know, about the Catholic vote”: Finnegan quote, Sorensen, Counselor, p. 160.
The applause in the hall: Parmet, p. 356.
“I didn’t even know Senator Kennedy existed”: Edmund Reggie, John F. Kennedy Oral History Program.
Kennedy and Sorensen then: Parmet, p. 359.
The knock on Vice President: Ibid., p. 372.
“Call Dad and tell him I’m going for it”: Schlesinger, Robert Kennedy and His Times, p. 132.
Bellowing what an “idiot”: Joe Sr. to Jack, O’Donnell and Powers, p. 140.
“Just talk about the war stuff”: Smathers int.
“If we have to have”: Parmet, p. 362.
“America is not ready”: Schlesinger, Robert Kennedy and His Times, p. 132.
“troubled”: Eleanor Roosevelt quote, Matthews, p. 108.
“My name is Mary Jones”: KOD.
“After Stevenson had thrown”: Bartlett OH.
“Texas proudly casts its fifty-six”: Robert Dallek, Lyndon B. Johnson: Portrait of a President (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), p. 96.
“I’m going to sing ‘Dixie’ ”: JFK quote, Collier and Horowitz, p. 181.
“The second ballot was already under way”: Reeves, p. 466.
“He’s not our kind of folks”: Oklahoma governor quote, Sorensen, Kennedy, p. 89.
“He hated to lose anything”: O’Donnell and Powers, p. 142.
“I’ve learned that you don’t”: JFK quote, ibid., p. 144.
“It was too damned close”: Kennedy interview with Ben Bradlee, January 5, 1960.
“Magic”: Nickname given to Jack by Jackie, Parmet, p. 194.
“She wasn’t the carefree”: Pitts, p. 142.
CHAPTER TEN: CHARM
“Kefauver has never done”: Stevenson to Schlesinger, Arthur M. Schlesinger, Journals: 1952–2000 (New York: Penguin Press, 2007), p. 8.
“I know I’ll never be more”: JFK to Fay, Perret, p. 238.
“For Christmas that year”: Sorensen, Counselor, p. 172.
“The smaller states”: Ibid.
“It was more than a list”: Ibid., p. 175.
“When we said good-bye”: Ibid., p. 174.
“Those early trips were”: Ibid., p. 178.
Many of their stops: Ibid.
By late 1959: KOD.
“My main job, in those early months”: O’Brien, No Final Victories, p. 60.
“I introduced myself as a representative”: Ibid.
“I paid a courtesy call”: Ibid., p. 61.
“Senator Kennedy has every”: Ibid., pp. 61–62.
“As I moved from state”: Ibid., p. 62.
“I don’t think anybody realizes”: Bartlett OH.
“He was urged to accept”: Sorensen, Counselor, p. 160.
“As hard as it is”: Ibid., pp. 186–87.
Kennedy’s physical condition: Medical records of Janet Travell at the John F. Kennedy Library.
For everything that ailed him: For a list of Kennedy’s treatments in 1955, see Dallek, An Unfinished Life, pp. 212–13.
The cortisone he took: Sutton int. More than save his life, the cortisone he had taken during the 1950s had transformed his face, fleshing out his features until they coalesced into the radiant handsomeness, the familiar JFK image, that would linger in the nation’s fantasy years later. Billy Sutton, who had lived with Kennedy those early years in Washington, would remark that he never looked better than he did in those months of running for president against Richard Nixon.
“In the late 1950’s”: Sorensen, Counselor, p. 106.
“In retrospect, it is amazing”: Ibid.
“On the political circuit”: Ibid.
“best suited to fanatics, egomaniacs”: Ibid., p. 187.
It was still the age: Dallek, An Unfinished Life, p. 225.
“Senator Kennedy, do you have”: Ralph Martin and Ed Plaut, Front Runner, Dark Horse (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1960), pp. 461–62.
“You could go to the A&P Store”: Hubert Humphrey, John F. Kennedy Oral History Program.
While the stillbirth: Pitts, pp. 150–52.
“to promote Senator John F. Kennedy as a man of intensive”: Sorensen, Counselor, p. 145.
“Careful spadework”: Rose Kennedy quote, Laurence Leamer, The Kennedy Women: The Saga of an American Family (New York: Villard Books, 1994), p. 467.
“who was on the committee”: Ibid.
“Things don’t happen”: Ibid.
“The most powerful single force”: JFK on Senate floor, July 2, 1957.
“The war in Algeria”: “Facing Facts on Algeria” speech, p. 3.
In the same year he gave: Taylor Branch, Parting the Waters: America in the King Years, 1954–63 (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1988), p. 221.
“Well, I wondered why more people”: Forbes OH.
“always greatly interested”: Smathers OH.
“I remember very late”: Forbes OH.
July 19—Jack Kennedy called up around noon: Schlesinger, Journals, p. 56.
“I think he genuinely thinks he was wrong about it”: Ibid., p. 58.
“All his golfing pals are rich men he has met since 1945”: Ibid.
“He won’t stand by anybody”: Ibid.
“No one who has Addison’s disease ought to run for President”: Ibid.
The Senate Select Committee: Schlesinger, Robert Kennedy and His Times, pp. 147–60.
“If the investigation flops”: O’Donnell and Powers, p. 132.
The result of this rout: KOD. On the 1958 elevating of O’Donnell and O’Brien in eyes of Joe Sr.: “We had had some disagreements with him during the campaign. Mr. Kennedy has never been noted for his willingness to brook disagreements from someone whom he considered young kids who are hardly wet behind the ears. In addition, his sources of information about our conduct during the campaign had not always been friendly to us . . . The test had always been the score at the end of the game as far as he was concerned . . . He was very profuse in his congratulations to both of us. He could not have been warmer, kinder, or more grateful now that everything had turned out.”
The Rackets Committee managed: Schlesinger, Robert Kennedy and His Times, pp. 147–60.
“Would you tell us anything”: RFK interrogates Giancana, ibid., p. 165.
“We shall not flag or fail”: RFK banner, Thomas, p. 83.
“John F. Kennedy had clearly done his homework”: Pierre Salinger, John F. Kennedy Library Oral History Program.
“was not only good in terms of defending the union”: KOD.
“I think that his performance”: Muskie OH.
“the Presidency is the source of action”: Kennedy Transcript, January 5, 1960, Bradlee, 16.
The image remains suspended: Photo of RFK and JFK in the Rackets Committee, courtesy of John F. Kennedy Library.
Jack Kennedy made few new personal friends: Ben Bradlee, Conversations with Kennedy (New York: Norton, 1975), p. 21.
“Nothing in my education”: Ben Bradlee, A Good Life: Newspapering and Other Adventures (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995), p. 206.
“the mines”: Ibid.
CHAPTER ELEVEN: HARDBALL
Ken O’Donnell’s oral history provides the dominant source for the Kennedy presidential campaign’s hardball tactics. It gives a strategist’s look at the methods used to organize what was a breakthrough political effort. Where not otherwise identified, this chapter is based on O’Donnell’s account.
“Together, the two of them”: O’Neill, p. 86.
“There’s nothing there in 1960”: Bartlett OH.
“ ‘wounded tiger’ ”: Salinger OH.
It was Salinger’s first exposure: Ibid. “John F. Kennedy had the exterior façade of such an easygoing nature, and yet with this one remark he revealed something to me that I was later to find in him in other situations.”
“At Palm Beach, the senator was in full command”: Sorensen, Kennedy, p. 120.
“The truth of the ma
tter is that Brown”: Frederick Dutton, John F. Kennedy Library Oral History Program.
“There was no bullshit to the man”: Author interview with Pat Brown.
“His complete familiarity with California politics”: Dutton OH.
“Mike, it’s time to shit or get off the pot”: Dallek, An Unfinished Life, p. 247, from Abraham Ribicoff Oral History, Columbia University.
“just another pretty boy”: Ben Bradlee, Conversations with Kennedy, pp. 17–18.
“I always had a feeling”: Bartlett int.
“He hated the liberals”: Author interview with Ben Bradlee.
“You have no idea”: Author interview with Joan Gardner.
“did make it out there”: Ralph Martin, A Hero for Our Time: An Intimate Story of the Kennedy Years (New York: Macmillan, 1983), p. 221.
“I worked with him on the Hill”: Ibid.
“Had dinner with Jack and Jackie”: Bartlett int.
The official handout opened: Candidate’s biography that was stapled to prepared remarks, courtesy of John F. Kennedy Library.
“I asked him what he considered”: Schlesinger, Journals, p. 63.
“You think I’m out here”: Reeves, A Question of Character, p. 159.
Hubert Humphrey: Robert Caro, Master of the Senate (New York: Knopf, 2002), p. xiii.
“He was campaigning”: Author interview with Governor Pat Lucey.
“effective presentation of a celebrity”: Patrick Lucey Oral History, John F. Kennedy Library.
Using Lou Harris’s polling data: Author interview with Louis Harris.
“Shall I wear this blue overcoat?” Bartlett OH.
“I have great respect for the Polish people”: Fay, p. 17.
Probably his most famous stunt: Craig Shirley, Rendezvous with Destiny: Ronald Reagan and the Campaign that Changed America (Wilmington: ISI Books, 2009), p. 424.
“On the day Wisconsin voters went to the polls”: Bradlee, Conversations, pp. 16–17.
thousand-dollar contribution he’d delivered from his father: Arnold, p. 21. A March 3, 1960, note from Rose Mary Woods to Vice President Nixon recalls the Kennedy campaign contribution, also Nixon’s “flabbergasted” reaction.
“In all fairness to myself”: Pitts, p. 160.
“Kennedy is, of course, Roman Catholic”: Cronkite’s broadcast on primary night is included in the Robert Drew documentary Primary.
Chris Matthews Complete Library E-book Box Set: Tip and the Gipper, Jack Kennedy, Hardball, Kennedy & Nixon, Now, Let Me Tell You What I Really Think, and American Page 81