Jack Kennedy

by Chris Matthews

  “Quick”—that was the key. “The point is, you’ve got to live each day like it’s your last day on earth,” he recalled Jack telling him. “That’s what I’m doing.” Ted Reardon recalled a similar conversation on the way home from Capitol Hill one late afternoon in Jack’s convertible. “It was a bright, shining day. We had the top down. Out of the blue he said, ‘What do you think is the best way of dying?’ “ A new friend, the newspaper columnist and Georgetown mandarin Joseph Alsop, recalled Jack’s bluntness when it came to his short-range outlook. “Unless I’m very mistaken, he said that as a matter of fact, he had a kind of slow-acting—very slow-acting—leukemia and that he did not expect to live more than ten years or so, but there was no use thinking about it and he was going to do the best he could and enjoy himself as much as he could in the time that was given him.”

  Alsop could clearly see there was cause for worry. “He used to turn green at intervals,” he recalled. “He was about the color of pea soup.”

  As he had all his life, Jack found refuge from his health worries in the power of words and ideas. Reading remained his salvation, and not just of the newspapers that are the daily fare of most politicians. Billy Sutton recalls him staying up late at night with Arthur Schlesinger’s Age of Jackson. Mark Dalton, perhaps the most thoughtful of the people around him back then, recalled a visit to Hyannis Port one weekend when Kennedy called him and another friend up to his bedroom.

  He wanted to read them a passage by Churchill, possibly one from his magnificent study of the Duke of Marlborough, a heroic ancestor. “Did you ever read anything like that in all your life?” Kennedy demanded, thrilled again by his hero’s work.

  Dalton, obviously very fond of his friend in those days, believed he saw a side of Jack that rarely showed itself to others. “As I look back, the things that I liked most about John Kennedy were the small flashes of sentiment.” He recalled a particular incident. “One morning I was at mass with him in the early congressional days down at the Cape, at St. Francis there. We were alone. We were about to leave the church, and John said, ‘Will you wait a minute? I want to go in and light a candle for Joe.’ And I was stunned at it. But it showed the deep attachment that he had for his brother Joe, and it also showed his religious nature. You know, there was a strong bond.

  “Another day I can remember riding along with him in the car. He was driving. It was over by the Charles River here in Boston and he was humming a tune to himself, but he was way off. And I said to him, ‘What are you thinking about?’ And he said, ‘I was thinking of Joe.’ “

  He would soon lose someone closer still. His sister Kathleen, widowed when her husband, Billy Hartington, was killed in 1945, now was being courted by another English aristocrat, Peter Fitzwilliam. In February 1948, Kick took the bold step of telling her mother about this new relationship. It was with yet another Protestant, this one married. Her mother threatened to disown her. But nothing could dissuade Kathleen. She had found true, passionate love and would not let go.

  Now came tragedy. She and Fitzwilliam had left Paris on a chartered flight to Cannes. They had persisted in flying despite the bad weather, and then, in heavy rain, their plane crashed into the side of a mountain. Jack was listening to music on his Victrola when the first, preliminary call came.

  When the next call confirmed the tragedy, he sat quietly listening to a recording of the Broadway musical Finian’s Rainbow. He would never make it to the funeral of the person he loved most. Setting out for the flight to Europe, he got only as far as New York. For whatever reason, he couldn’t go on.

  “He was in terrible pain,” Lem Billings recalled of Jack. “He couldn’t get through the days without thinking of her at the most inappropriate times. He’d be sitting at a congressional hearing and he’d find his mind drifting back uncontrollably to all the things he and Kathleen had done together and all the friends they had in common.”

  Chuck Spalding could see the specter the deaths of his friend’s brother and sister had left in their wake. “He always heard the footsteps. Death was there. It had taken Joe and Kick and it was waiting for him.”

  Now he started to take risks. In September 1948 Kennedy decided to make a target of the powerful American Legion, declaring that this mainstream, middle-American organization of veterans hadn’t had “a constructive thought since 1918.” It was one of those marks of independence—his risk-taking again—that helped make him a hero to the young.

  One of those who thrilled to Jack’s taking on the Legion was Kenneth O’Donnell. A Harvard roommate of Bobby Kennedy and captain of the football team, he’d served in the Army Air Corps. When Jack “took on the American Legion,” said O’Donnell, “that was big to the average veteran.” Veterans, O’Donnell believed, were looking for “a fresh face in politics.”

  Jack Kennedy fully intended to be that face. Dave Powers had put a Massachusetts map on the wall of Kennedy’s Boston apartment, with colored pins indicating towns Jack had visited. “When we’ve got the map completely covered with pins,” Jack told his aide, “that’s when I’ll announce that I’m going to run for statewide office.”

  By his second year in Congress, Jack Kennedy had committed to a cause: the Cold War. He’d already triggered a mild stir with his tough grilling of the left-leaning Russ Nixon and his indictment of Harold Christoffel. In 1948, when East Germany cut off West Berlin, Kennedy went there and saw for himself the heroic survival of its people, as well as the pro-American loyalty the situation was instilling.

  As General Lucius Clay, commander of the American zone, put it, “the Russians, by their actions, have given us the political soul of Germany on a platter.” The spirit of the West Berliners stayed with Jack for years to come.

  Back home, the pursuit of the Communist threat continued to stir emotions. Dick Nixon had just led the successful exposure of Alger Hiss, America’s top diplomat at the U.N. Conference in San Francisco. For denying that he had ever been a Communist, the well-connected Hiss now stood indicted for perjury. Jack, who saw Hiss as a “traitor,” shared Nixon’s indignation at the way Hiss had managed to install himself in critical government positions through the patronage of New Deal figures.

  In September 1949 President Truman announced that the Soviets had exploded their first atom bomb, making it clear to the world that the United States no longer held a monopoly on the weapon that had ended World War II. Next came the declaration from China’s Communist rebel leader Mao Tse-tung that he had taken control of the entire Chinese mainland. America’s WWII ally Chiang Kai-shek was trapped on the island of Formosa.

  Kennedy was quick with his rebuke. “The responsibility for the failure of our foreign policy in the Far East rests squarely with the White House and the Department of State. So concerned were our diplomats with the imperfection of the democratic system of China after twenty years of war and the tales of corruption in high places that they lost sight of our tremendous stake in non-Communist China.” He accused the Truman administration of “vacillation, uncertainty, and confusion.”

  To Kennedy, America’s leaders were repeating the old prewar mistake of failing to confront aggression. Kennedy believed FDR had been as derelict in failing to stop Soviet ambitions in Asia as he had been in Europe. In a Salem, Massachusetts, speech, he described how “a sick Roosevelt with the advice of General Marshall and other chiefs of staff, gave the Kurile Islands as well as control of various strategic Chinese ports, such as Port Arthur and Darien, to the Soviet Union. This is the tragic story of China, whose freedom we once fought to preserve. What our young men have saved, the diplomats and our President have frittered away.”

  In January 1950 came another Cold War milestone. Alger Hiss, the accused Soviet spy, was convicted on two counts of lying under oath and sent to federal prison. That same month, desperate for material to use at a Lincoln Day talk to Republican women in Wheeling, West Virginia, Wisconsin’s Senator Joseph McCarthy jumped on the anti-Communist bandwagon. Cribbing from a speech Nixon had just given o
n the Hiss conviction, McCarthy said there were 205 Communists in the State Department. His specificity hooded the recklessness of the accusation.

  That June brought a real Communist menace. North Korea attacked American-backed South Korea. President Truman sent troops as part of a United Nations force. The next month came stunning news at home: Julius Rosenberg was arrested for stealing atomic secrets for the Soviets. Suddenly the country was under assault abroad and at home.

  Kennedy strongly allied himself with the anti-Communist activism. While facing no political contest himself in 1950, he played a small role in helping Nixon win a Senate seat: he walked to Nixon’s office and left a thousand-dollar check from his father. When he got the word, Nixon was overwhelmed that his Democratic colleague had crossed the political aisle like that. “Isn’t this something!” he exclaimed to an aide.

  Jack wanted what Nixon now had. Since they had come to the House together, he, Nixon, and George Smathers had enjoyed running banter on which of them would graduate first to the Senate. Smathers had gotten the jump early that year, beating a fellow Democrat in a Florida campaign notorious for its Red-baiting. Nixon now used similar tactics to beat the liberal New Dealer Helen Gahagan Douglas. Kennedy had to catch up.

  “This rivalry developed and they were all shooting for the future,” said Mark Dalton. Billy Sutton saw it in personal terms: “I think the thing that sent him to the Senate was George Smathers and Richard Nixon.” He was clear about not intending to stay in the House. Jack told his new aide Larry O’Brien, whom he recruited to begin organizing Massachusetts for him politically, “I’m up or out.” And he was ready to play rough. “I’m going to run!” he told Smathers. “I’m going to use the same kind of stuff.”

  18

  Jack, Ethel, and Bobby, November 1952

  CHAPTER SIX

  BOBBY

  All this business about Jack and Bobby being blood brothers has been exaggerated. They didn’t really become close until 1952, and it was politics that brought them together.

  —Eunice Kennedy Shriver

  By 1951, Jack Kennedy’s ambition was clear. He wanted very much to reach the Senate. Three times voted in, he’d proved himself an independent Democrat, an ardent anti-Communist, and he had been an efficient, if sometimes detached, steward of constituent services. Based upon his performance and popularity in such a heavily Democratic district, the House seat could have been his for life.

  His chance at the Senate would arrive the following year when Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr., a Republican, came up for reelection. The only problem was that Governor Paul Dever, having already served two terms himself, was also considering a job change. If Dever chose to take on Lodge and run for senator, Jack’s only option would be to declare for the State House. Whichever happened, he’d definitely decided he wasn’t going to stay put. Thus, in January 1951, he gave Tip O’Neill a heads-up.

  “I’ve decided not to run for a fourth term in the House,” he told him. “I don’t yet know whether I’ll run for the Senate or governor, but you can be sure of one thing: my seat will be open. I won’t be making any announcements for at least another year, so don’t tell a soul. But in case you have any interest in running, I wanted to give you a head start.”

  Getting ahead in politics generally requires solving a pair of equations, the first being the availability of an office that matches the politician’s ambitions. The other is finding the right person to run the campaign. While waiting for Paul Dever to make his decision, Jack got a lead on meeting the second challenge.

  Here’s how it happened: In September, Kennedy set off on a seven-week fact-finding trip to the Far East. America was at war in Korea, Asia presented the premier foreign-policy front, and the issues presented by foreign policy continued to be his primary interest. The trip would have the added merit of establishing in voters’ minds his firsthand experience. However, as the trip was being planned, a family issue arose, casting a slight shadow over it. The problem was pressure from his father to take along his younger brother Bobby. Jack’s reaction was that his sibling, eight years his junior, would be nothing but a hindrance, a “pain in the ass.”

  While Jack had been a warm, loving brother to both Joe Jr. and Kathleen, still missing them terribly, he had yet to form close ties with the younger members of the family. At the time, Bobby struck him as a very different sort from himself, a far more churchy guy, a straight arrow who spent most of his time trying to impress their father with his dutifulness. But rather than Bobby’s presence being an annoyance, the opposite turned out to be true. Spending their first ever quality time together, they managed to surprise each other.

  As Jack traveled with his brother all the way from Israel to Japan—from the Mediterranean to the South China Sea, stopping in India and Indochina—what they found deepened his own longstanding fascination with foreign policy. But the circumstances they encountered also opened the eyes of both men to the sparks of postwar nationalism beginning to catch fire in each country they visited. While Jack admired the nobility of General Jean de Lattre de Tassigny, the French military commander he met in Hanoi, for instance, he sensed the war he was fighting was “foredoomed.”

  More important than any other knowledge Jack gained over the course of their journey was the strength of heart he discovered in Robert Fitzgerald Kennedy—and the extent of his brother’s love for him. The evidence came during a moment of mortal peril when Jack, thousands of miles from home, suffered a frightening new episode of his Addison’s disease. The younger brother more than rose to the occasion, showing his guts under pressure and also his resourcefulness. He got things done.

  As Jack was flown from Tokyo to a U.S. military hospital in Okinawa, Bobby never left his side, keeping watch over him as his temperature rose to 106 degrees and he became first delirious, then comatose. It looked like he was dying, and for the second time he was given the last rites.

  The upshot of this latest brush with death was a memory an older brother would be unlikely to forget. Where Jack had once seen only the puritan, he now recognized the protector.

  Back home, Jack Kennedy once again focused on his quest to leave the U.S. House of Representatives behind. In his mind he was already out of there, and even began disparaging the 435 members as “worms.” He’d had it with the House. He’d already begun spending weekends campaigning statewide, and the map hanging on the wall of his Bowdoin Street apartment was starting to be thickly covered in pins. Those were Dave Powers’s markers indicating where a speech had been made or where his boss had shared a coffee with a significant political leader.

  The time had come to face the big challenge. For him, running for governor in ’52 would only be a connecting flight to the next destination. Chuck Spalding could see his friend’s determination. Eventually, “if he was going to get anywhere, he’d always have to be able to beat somebody like Lodge . . . So, I think, he made the decision, ‘I’ve been long enough in the House. It’s time for me to move ahead. If I’m going to do it, I’ve got to take this much of a chance.’ “ Pitting himself against Henry Cabot Lodge—now and not later—had overwhelming appeal. Above all, it showed audacity, a quality that ranked high with Jack.

  On December 2, 1951, Kennedy made the admission, rare for a politician, of personal ambition. He did it during an appearance—his first—on NBC’s Meet the Press. The moderator had wasted no time zeroing in on the hot political rumor buzzing through the Bay State.

  Lawrence Spivak:

  When I was in Boston last week, I heard a good deal of talk about you. There were many who thought that you would be the Democratic nominee for the senatorship against Henry Cabot Lodge. Are you going to run?

  Jack Kennedy:

  Well, uh, I’d like to go to the Senate. I’m definitely interested in it. I think most of us in the House who came in after the war—some of them have already gone to the Senate, like George Smathers and Nixon and others, and I’m definitely interested in going to the Senate, and I’m seriously considering runn
ing.

  But, to anyone paying attention, it was obvious it wasn’t just the intramural rivalry of his ’46 House classmates driving him. His thinking about matters beyond the scope of the typical House member, his grander notions, were in every way a part of who he was, of who he had become.

  The mind of Jack Kennedy, in fact, was already busy with the big picture. He’d been traveling the world since his teens. He’d witnessed Britain and Europe up close in the late ’30s, he’d fought in the war and come back to see the depressing events in postwar Europe and Asia. He’d honed a personal sense of what was wrong with U.S. influence abroad.

  On his trip to the Far East, for instance, he’d had an eyewitness look at the predicament of France trying to hold on to its empire after World War II, against the local resistance to colonial power. What he saw was the overriding strength of the Vietnamese people’s desire for independence.

  “You can never defeat the Communist movement in Indochina until you get the support of the natives,” he explained in a speech on his return, “and you won’t get the support of the natives as long as they feel that the French are fighting the Communists in order to hold their own power there. And I think we shouldn’t give the military assistance until the French clearly make an agreement with the natives that at the end of a certain time when the Communists are defeated that the French will pull out and give this country the right of self-determination and the right to govern themselves.”

  He also articulated that Sunday morning a strong critique of the way America represented itself overseas. On that same Meet the Press, Spivak quoted back to Kennedy a remark he’d made about our diplomats being “unconscious of the fact that their role was not tennis and cocktails but the interpretation to the foreign country of the meaning of American life.” Is this something, he wanted to know, Kennedy had seen for himself?