Jack Kennedy

by Chris Matthews

  Beyond that were more basic challenges. How could he possibly run for president of the United States? Charlie Bartlett had challenged him. After all, he didn’t know the country. For all his intellectual curiosity, Jack had spent very little time in the real United States, if by that we mean the way regular Americans know it. Until he entered politics, Jack’s America had been Hyannis Port, Palm Beach, and the Stork Club. The product of elite prep schools and Harvard, he’d spent summers in Europe, touring with his chums and staying with his family in the South of France. During his father’s tenure in London, he was the ambassador’s son, a privileged American youth among the titled.

  To win nationally, Kennedy would have to get out there and stay—from now until 1960. The goal would be to build a whole national organization, just as he’d constructed a local one in the 11th Congressional District in 1946, and then across the Commonwealth of Massachusetts in the lead-up to the Lodge race in ’52. He’d be required to “retail” himself the way he’d done in both those earlier races. Certainly, the countrywide scale of the enterprise was daunting, and he could hardly piggyback on any existing organization. This meant a whole new Kennedy Party from coast to coast.

  Only by getting out there before everyone else could he build the sort of support he’d be able to use to dominate the Democratic big shots, especially the governors, who, he’d learned, control the bulk of the delegates. But before he could give them the Onions Burke treatment, he needed to secure his own clout.

  At first, it was just him and Ted Sorensen. The two of them would head out together across the country to introduce Jack to the local political people, the ones who’d likely be chosen as delegates to the next national convention. “For Christmas that year, 1956,” Sorensen recalled, “I gave him a blank map of the United States, with each state shaded or colored . . . according to a code indicating what percentage of that state’s 1956 convention delegation had supported him for vice president. He pored over that little map often in the next few years, and it became a guide to our early strategy and travel priorities in his quest for the presidency.”

  The hosts welcoming them out there in America’s cities and towns responded well to the attention of the glamorous Massachusetts senator. “The smaller states,” Sorensen remembered, “were flattered by this attention; the large states were pleased to have him speak at their annual fund-raising dinners.” Wherever he traveled, he was a hit, and for Sorensen, it was the hair-raising adventure of a lifetime: “To reach small towns not served by major airlines, private planes were an unavoidable part of political campaigning. Most politicians can tell stories of scary plane travels. Prior to my journeys with JFK, at least two sitting senators had been killed in small plane crashes.”

  He found his boss to be great company. It almost always was just the two of them, with the budding candidate giving the speeches, shaking hands, getting to know people, while his aide took down the names and details. “It was more than a list of names and addresses. I attempted to add to the file notes on which people were most influential in each state, their attitudes toward JFK, and the issues that mattered most to them. I also made certain that they received Christmas cards, personal notes, some even phone calls, from JFK, gradually building a ‘Christmas card list’ of thirty thousand influential Democrats across the country.” With a goal of meeting every potential delegate, it meant dealing with a lot of politicians.

  In those days the word politician, used today almost exclusively for candidates and officeholders, applied to those fellows behind the scenes as well. They were the ones calling the shots, picking the future mayors and governors. In the late 1950s and early ’60s, many of those less visible pols—the party chairmen, the big-city bosses, the ward captains—were Irish Catholics. Actually, almost all of them were. “When we said good-bye to almost every Irish-American mayor, party leader, or legislator we met around the country,” Sorensen recalled, “JFK would turn to me and say—depending on whether our host had been warmhearted or cold, compassionate or conservative—‘Now, that’s our type of Irish.’ “

  With some of this crowd, their mission would prove a hard sell. The city bosses from New York, Philadelphia, Cleveland, and Chicago were the people Kennedy most needed to win over. Having them on board would lay the foundation for winning over big-state governors such as David Lawrence of Pennsylvania and Pat Brown of California. Such men were skittish about Kennedy, perhaps even resentful. Why back another Al Smith, the Irish-Catholic New York governor who’d lost to Herbert Hoover in the presidential race of 1928? Based on Smith’s performance, Kennedy could run and wind up bringing scores of other Democrats down with him, embarrassing Catholics like them in the process. Some begrudged the fact of Kennedy’s effort itself. If he could take it on, it undercut their own egos. Why weren’t they themselves running for president?

  The key players the traveling duo of Kennedy and Sorensen hooked up with might include a congressman, an influential delegate, a governor, or sometimes just an old friend or relative. It was an education in national politics for both of them. “Those early trips were a way to test the presidential waters for 1960, to make friends and contacts while ascertaining whether a young, inexperienced Catholic senator would have any serious chance as a presidential candidate,” Sorensen said. “We discovered that there was no true national party, only a coalition of forty-eight—later fifty—state parties. JFK set out to win them over, state by state, building grassroots support, starting in smaller states, and encircling the big cities until we were ready to tackle them.”

  They also operated with a low enough profile to avoid any backlash. Many of their stops were in remote corners of the west and Midwest where, as Sorensen put it, his man’s “candidacy could make solid gains without alerting the national party and press barons to mount a ‘Stop Kennedy’ movement.” By late in 1959, Kennedy had personally contacted half the delegates who would be headed to the 1960 Democratic Convention.

  Larry O’Brien was separately traveling the country for Kennedy. His accounts of that period show what a pioneer effort the mere idea of such canvassing was at the time. “My main job, in those early months, was to go on the road, to travel around America to build a campaign organization, as seven years earlier I’d traveled through Massachusetts in search of Kennedy secretaries. I would pay special attention to the potential primary states, since we knew that Kennedy would have to score well in the Democratic primaries to have any chance for the nomination.”

  Indiana was a typical destination, a central state where O’Brien spent days chatting up mayors, sheriffs, state legislators, and union officials. “I introduced myself as a representative of Senator Kennedy, a potential candidate for President in 1960. I soon realized I was a long way from Massachusetts, that most often Jack Kennedy was just a name, an image on a television screen. People were polite, sometimes interested, but there was no great groundswell for him. I found some support, a sheriff here, a mayor there, but more important, I found concern about Kennedy’s religion.”

  O’Brien’s account of a trip through California revealed the problem Kennedy would have with fellow Catholics. “I paid a courtesy call on Governor Pat Brown in Sacramento, who was himself considered a dark-horse possibility for the presidential nomination or, more likely, the vice-presidential nomination. He was in a difficult position. Stevenson had a great deal of support in California, and I assumed the Stevenson people were hinting that Brown might be Stevenson’s running mate if he could deliver his state to their man. Brown certainly knew that, as a Catholic, he wasn’t going to be on the ticket with Kennedy. We had a pleasant talk, but we both were playing our own little games.”

  After this, he met with Jesse Unruh, the astute Democratic leader of the California State Assembly. Unruh announced his support for Kennedy right away and stuck with him even when it got tough. “Jesse,” O’Brien would tell him, “Senator Kennedy has every politician’s name written in one of three books, and yours is written in Book One, in gold letters.” />
  In this way, O’Brien worked his way across the country, finding both resistance and acceptance, but also people who were waiting to commit. What he didn’t come across was the enemy doing the same thing that he and his candidate were doing: getting out there and meeting people one on one. “As I moved from state to state making friends, nailing down support, I kept waiting for the opposition to show up, but it never did. . . . It always amazed me how other politicians underestimated Kennedy. Johnson and Symington weren’t taking him any more seriously in 1959 than Henry Cabot Lodge had in 1952. His opponents never discovered how tough, gutty, and ring-wise he was—until it was too late.

  “We were lucky in 1959, because if his opponents for the nomination had started earlier and worked harder, they could well have blocked Kennedy’s nomination,” O’Brien recalled. “Instead, they sat tight, the Washington columnists kept writing about what a political genius Lyndon Johnson was, and we kept locking up delegates.”

  Because he had neither the party liberals nor the congressional leaders behind him, Jack was creating his own national political organization. Charlie Bartlett was amazed at his old friend’s commitment. “I don’t think anybody realizes, really, how much of a job that was. I mean, those weeks that he put in . . . and going into these towns where he really didn’t know many people and there was no great Kennedy organization. He was traveling most of the time alone or with Ted Sorensen. It wasn’t very lavish. But he traveled a long road. This was, of course, part of his strength.”

  Kennedy’s feeling that his fate lay with a presidential run strengthened his resolve not to take a veep nomination. “He was urged to accept the vice presidential nomination to avoid a dangerous controversy,” Sorensen recalled, “to which he replied, ‘Oh I see, Catholics to the back of the bus.’ “ Kennedy still felt the sting of whatever anti-Catholic attitudes he’d come across over the years, even if they’d never been directed at him personally.

  The four-year marathon taxed Kennedy to his limits. “As hard as it is on the speechwriter, a presidential campaign is even tougher on the candidate,” Sorensen said. “It is impossible for him to remember the names of all the people whose hands he shakes, to remember the time of day, the day of the week, and the town in which he is speaking; to remember his own previously stated positions on issues, much less those of his opponent. All day, the press is outside his door and window, the rooms are full of sweat and smoke, his hand is bruised, scratched, full of calluses. In JFK’s case, one callus burst with blood. Everyone you meet wants something from you, your time, your endorsement, your support for some local project or measure; and then you move on to three more stops in three more states before you fall into bed.”

  Kennedy’s physical condition had improved somewhat since the surgeries of 1954 and early ’55, but his suffering continued. The pain in his back, attributed to loss of bone mass, was being alleviated with numbing injections. In September of ’57, an abscess was removed from his back at New York Hospital, where he remained a patient for three weeks. Not long after that, a bout of flu sent him back into a hospital bed.

  For everything that ailed him he was taking a daily smorgasbord of prescription medications, hardly the usual diet for a man of forty. Yet they all proved nothing more than stopgaps when it came to putting an end to his ongoing health troubles. The cortisone he took for the Addison’s, however, had the positive side effect of filling out his face, and he didn’t mind that at all. As perilous as his health remained, he looked better than he ever had.

  Ted Sorensen could do little to alleviate the strains of the road on Kennedy. “In the late 1950’s when we traveled the country together, I would ask each hotel to provide him with a hard mattress or bed board. When that failed, sometimes we moved his mattress onto the floor of his hotel room.” It was a replay of what had taken place in 1943 as young Lieutenant Kennedy was seen placing a piece of plywood under his mattress when he was training for PT-boat duty. “In retrospect, it is amazing that, in all those years, he never complained about his ailments,” Sorensen recalled. “Occasionally, he winced when his back was stiff or pained as he eased himself into or out of the bathtub.

  “On the political circuit I assumed that his practice of eating in the hotel room before a Democratic party luncheon was intended to avoid the bad food and constant interruptions that characterized his time at the head table. But now I realize after reading an analysis of his medical file, that his many stomach, intestinal, and digestive problems required a more selective diet.” Jack, it turns out, was a man typical of his World War II generation. He didn’t complain.

  As Sorensen noted, he’d committed himself to a year-upon-year commitment “best suited to fanatics, egomaniacs, and superbly fit athletes.” Jack Kennedy, well-rounded, pleasure-loving, was none of these.

  As a candidate, Kennedy quickly had begun to give off the glow of celebrity. No politician had ever gotten the kind of star treatment he was accorded. It had begun at the Democratic Convention in Chicago: his debut in the public eye there threw the spotlight on him and his wife as well. In April 1957, he’d been awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Biography for Profiles in Courage, the book he’d dedicated to Jackie. Their first child, Caroline Bouvier Kennedy, was born in November 1957.

  Whenever Senator Kennedy showed up at a local Democratic dinner in some small city where there were more hands to shake, it was if a Hollywood star had come to town. It was still the age of the glossy magazines, many of them pictorials. Look, Life, the Saturday Evening Post, all weeklies back then, did spreads on Jack and Jackie, as did McCall’s and Redbook.

  “Senator Kennedy, do you have an in with Life?” a high school newspaper writer once asked the roving candidate. “No,” he shot back, “I just have a beautiful wife.” There was a professional’s assessment if ever there was one. But the fuss didn’t stop with the romantic-couple angle. The TV series Navy Log did an episode on PT 109. The Knights of Columbus magazine Columbia offered a salute to a brother knight. And at the end of 1957, in the issue of December 2, he was Time magazine’s cover boy, painted looking thoughtful by Henry Koerner, whose unmistakable celebrity portraits were often featured there.

  This ongoing stream of media attention continued into the 1960 primaries. “You could go to the A&P store,” his rival Hubert Humphrey would later say, revealing his exasperation, “you could go to any grocery store. You’d pick up a women’s magazine—there would be a wonderful article. He had the publicity. He had the attraction. He had the it.”

  The Jack and Jacqueline Kennedy Show had a powerful effect even on people who normally paid little attention to politics but now could not take their eyes away. Eventually, the “it” to which Humphrey referred would achieve a name: charisma, not a word much in popular use until the Kennedys made it so.

  While the stillbirth in 1956 and Jack’s absence from the country at the time caused Jackie much pain, she and her husband had made their peace with it. Celebrating their new small family, they moved into a town house in Georgetown. Again, all the public saw were the pictures. Photos of infant Caroline with her splendid-looking parents captivated the American public.

  Nonetheless, the audience with which Jack most needed to make inroads wasn’t falling for it. Not yet, anyway. The liberals, given life by Franklin Roosevelt and still in love with Adlai Stevenson, were looking for gravitas. Here, again, Jack Kennedy went to work, with the help of his most trusted and productive lieutenant. For several years now, Ted Sorensen had been turning out all kinds of articles under Kennedy’s name. They appeared in such journals as the General Electric Defense Quarterly, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, and the National Parent-Teacher. Their purpose, Sorensen conceded, was “to promote Senator John F. Kennedy as a man of intensive progressive thought, balancing the flood of superficial articles about his looks and his romance with Jackie.”

  There remained the challenge of winning over the Stevenson people. “I’m not a liberal at all,” the Saturday Evening Post had quoted him just af
ter his election to the senate. “I never joined Americans for Democratic Action or the American Veterans Committee. I’m not comfortable with those people.”

  Still, his pursuit of the intellectuals who persisted in carrying a torch for Adlai was soon to begin in full earnest. The winning of the Pulitzer for Profiles, in fact, had been no happy accident. Rather, it was the result of energetic lobbying by Jack’s dad. Through the good offices of Arthur Krock, a New York Times columnist and Kennedy friend, Joe was able to approach the members of the Pulitzer screening board, one by one. Even Rose Kennedy, for a change, was clued in. “Careful spadework,” she said, was the key. Joe learned “who was on the committee and how to reach such and such a person through such and such a friend.”

  In this way, Kennedy senior and the influential Krock were able to get the job done. Rose, not always happy with her husband’s backroom activities, loved this bit of work. “Things don’t happen,” she said with untroubled pride, “they are made to happen.” That May, no doubt in recognition of the Pulitzer honor, Jack was named to chair the panel to select the five greatest senators in history, their portraits to be hung in the Capitol’s Senate Reception Room. The quintet chosen were Henry Clay of Kentucky, John C. Calhoun of South Carolina, Daniel Webster of Massachusetts, Robert Taft of Ohio, and Robert La Follette, Sr., of Wisconsin.

  The fact that Kennedy now was being taken seriously as a historian exerted its appeal over the Stevenson crowd, as it was meant to. Meanwhile, Kennedy won another distinction, one that would carry him nearer to the goal of influencing international affairs that had motivated him since first entering politics. He found himself appointed to the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations. Now came his first curtsy to the Democratic Left, which needed to be a clear sign that he’d departed from his rigid orthodoxies of the early postwar years, a semaphore signaling that he shared the liberals’ more sophisticated attitudes.