JFK

by Fredrik Logevall

  Of the Cambridge tea party, again held at the Commander Hotel, one reporter remarked:

  For approximately two hours, an unbroken line of women filed slowly across the stage, shaking hands with each of the Kennedys, mumbling confused introductions and pleasantries, and pushed on through a side door into the lobby still packed with those waiting their turn to go through the receiving line. Along one side of the spacious room were long tables with harassed waitresses—pouring tea and coffee and serving cookies. (Total consumption was reported later at 8,600 cups.)…An air of pleasant, chattering amiability in spite of a few splattered dresses and two faintings. When the handshaking in the ballroom was finally completed around 10:30 [P.M.], the Kennedys, looking wilted but determined, came in for tea themselves.35

  In addition to the large-scale tea receptions, smaller house parties like this one were a core part of the campaign. Mother Rose is on the right with a pearl necklace. Sister Patricia is in a white dress on the left.

  The reporter picked up on one of the defining features of the receptions: they were family affairs, and winningly so. Rose Kennedy in particular, modish and youthful at age sixty, won universal accolades for her role as hostess. Campaign aides would prepare written remarks for her, but they needn’t have bothered: invariably she followed her own script, usually without notes, describing her experiences raising nine children (often she brought a prop, in the form of the index card file she had used to keep track of illnesses and vaccinations and dental work) and dropping in artful and humorous references to her father, Honey Fitz. Though in one-on-one conversation Rose Kennedy could be frosty and remote, before a crowd she had an unerring social instinct, what Kenny O’Donnell called “a perfect knack for saying the right thing at the right time and always striking the right note.” She charmed Italians in the North End with a few words of Italian and told them about growing up in the neighborhood. In Dorchester she reminisced lightly about her experiences at Dorchester High School. She even adapted her wardrobe to the individual locales, jettisoning her preferred high-priced Parisian offerings for plainer, if still elegant, styles when she ventured to the less prosperous areas. On more than one occasion she changed outfits in the car on the way from one event to another.36

  Her daughters, meanwhile, with the exception of Rosemary, were seemingly everywhere, going door to door, speaking to women’s clubs around the state, showing a short film of Jack’s career, hosting house parties in and around Boston, and appearing at the teas.*1 Jean also doubled as office manager at the Kilby Street headquarters. Bobby’s wife, Ethel, also got into the act, even giving a campaign speech in Fall River on the same night she gave birth to Joseph P. Kennedy II. “I’m just crazy about Jack,” she enthused, “and I’m only an in-law.”37

  IV

  The great secret of the 1952 campaign, though common knowledge to those around the candidate, was that he was often in acute back pain. In a May appearance at a fire station in Springfield, he gamely agreed to slide down a fire pole for the cameras, from the third floor to the first. When he hit bottom he winced in agony. The succeeding days brought scant relief, and he was forced to use crutches to get around. Aides, worried it would become a campaign issue, explained away Jack’s absences from headquarters by pointing to a recurrence of an old war injury—a transparent effort to evoke sympathy for the military hero. They insisted the issue would soon pass and that his overall health was excellent. In truth, candidate Kennedy was in near-constant pain that summer and fall, finding relief only when he soaked in the bathtub at the end of a long day—or, when the schedule permitted, between events in midafternoon. The painkillers helped, but not enough. Before he entered an auditorium for a speech, Powers or another aide would usually take his crutches and discreetly hide them away so no one in the audience could see them. Jack would stride in, lean and sinewy, the seeming epitome of youthful good health. He would give his short speech and then stand for hour upon excruciating hour in the receiving line, never giving anything away but leaning subtly against a piano or a wall when possible. Only when no such aid was available and the pain got too great would the crutches come back out.38

  He drove himself forward, relentlessly. He smelled victory, could almost taste it, but feared that any letdown could spell doom for his campaign—and thus for his political career. For six months he traversed the state, from Cape Cod to the Berkshires, hitting the larger cities eight or nine times and the small towns at least once, shaking hands and giving speeches, time after time, usually eating a cheeseburger on the fly. “Now we were starting literally—this is not exaggerated—at five or five-thirty in the morning,” recalled Frank Morrissey, whose task was to get the candidate up in the morning and put him to bed at night. “We were speaking at a very tight split-second schedule, going across this whole commonwealth, and we’d go until one or two until we put him to bed.” When the candidate proved hard to wake up, Morrissey resorted to a trick in which he picked up the phone and pretended to make a call. “I’d say, ‘Joe, I’m sorry we have to cancel this first one…’ And I’d no sooner get the word ‘cancel’ out, than Jack would let out a yell, get up, and away we’d start. We’d do that repeatedly.”39 It didn’t make Morrissey’s task easier that Kennedy much preferred to sleep each night at home on Bowdoin Street, where he had a mattress he knew, with a board under it, rather than get a hotel room locally; this meant longer days and more time on the road.

  Sometimes the candidate and his aides would repair to Schrafft’s, in Charlestown, for late-night strategy sessions over milkshakes until the place closed, then move on to his apartment for still more scheming. Alcohol seldom factored in. A running gag in the campaign was that Kennedy, at the end of a bruising day, would exclaim, “Boy, do I need a drink,” his aides would eagerly agree, and he would take them to a drugstore for a chocolate shake.40

  All the while, the team tried, with modest success, to manufacture campaign issues. One argument, laid out by Jim Landis and others, blamed the two Republican senators—Lodge and Leverett Saltonstall—for the state’s industrial decline and unemployment, an awkward assertion given Paul Dever’s simultaneous campaign boast that the economy was humming under his leadership. Another attacked Lodge for supposedly being inattentive to his Senate duties. An internal campaign document titled “Lodge’s Dodges” vilified the senator for supposed policy reversals, and during the summer months the campaign hit him from both the left and the right: from the left for opposing key aspects of the Truman administration’s Fair Deal legislation, including with respect to housing and labor; from the right for being too supportive of Truman on foreign policy, too reticent in opposing Communism. Lodge was accused of favoring the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Korea, and more generally of being timidly bipartisan, while by contrast Jack Kennedy had the courage to oppose numerous parts of the administration’s foreign policy. In this regard, a campaign document declared, Congressman Kennedy “has been much closer to the position of [Ohio Republican Robert] Taft than has Lodge.”41

  The reference to Senator Taft was a shrewd suggestion by Joseph Kennedy, who saw a chance to pick up support for Jack among Massachusetts conservatives dismayed by what was happening within the GOP: the growing support for General Dwight D. Eisenhower in his battle with Taft for the party’s presidential nomination. By all rights the nomination should have belonged to Taft, a widely respected and highly intelligent lawmaker—he had graduated first in his class at Yale and then again at Harvard Law—who had waited twelve years for this moment and had been deeply loyal to his party throughout. (He was proud of his “Mr. Republican” nickname.)42 The eastern establishment wing of the party might have snagged the previous three nominations, but Taft felt certain that he was closer to the hearts of most rank-and-file party members than was Tom Dewey, twice the candidate and twice the loser. Perhaps he was, but he hadn’t counted on an Eisenhower candidacy. Into the fall of 1951, as both parties courted him, the five-st
ar general stayed publicly coy about his plans, in part because he was uncertain about running. His competitive instincts, which ran deep behind his sunny disposition, inclined him toward jumping in. But he had already held a more important job—overseeing the invasion of Europe in 1944—and he did not relish subjecting himself to a potentially sordid and dehumanizing nomination battle.43

  Gradually, however, Eisenhower edged toward seeking the Republican nomination, urged on by the eastern wing of the party and impelled by his own concern that a President Taft would take the country in a sharply isolationist direction, perhaps even pull the United States out of the Western alliance.*2 In January 1952 he allowed his name to be entered in the New Hampshire primary; in April he asked to be relieved of his duty in Paris as commander of NATO so he could come home to contest the GOP nomination; the request was granted. Though in hindsight it is tempting to see the outcome of the ensuing battle as foreordained, with the renowned general and his military bearing and high-wattage smile cruising to victory over the stiff and colorless Taft, in fact their fight was a rancorous, closely contested affair—heading into the party convention, in Chicago that July, Taft indeed had a clear lead in delegate support. But Eisenhower’s forces were better organized and better on the convention floor, and he prevailed. Taft and many of his backers left Chicago deeply embittered.44

  Eisenhower’s decisive first-ballot win obscured a deep split within the party. To secure his victory, he had accepted a party platform that contained isolationist elements and at the same time condemned Truman’s containment policy and called for the “liberation” of Eastern European nations. It denounced the 1945 Yalta agreement and accused the Democrats of harboring traitors in the government. As a further sop to conservatives, Eisenhower accepted the selection of Richard M. Nixon as his running mate.45 The California man soon made good on his selection, going after the “spineless” Truman and his party with gusto. Of the Democratic presidential nominee, the urbane and articulate Illinois governor Adlai Stevenson, Nixon said he was an “appeaser,” with a “Ph.D. from Dean Acheson’s Cowardly College of Communist Containment.”46

  None of this would have mattered much to the Senate race in Massachusetts had not Henry Cabot Lodge been one of the principal figures behind Eisenhower’s candidacy. As much as anyone, it was Lodge who had leaned on the general to leave his Paris post to return to America to contest the nomination; in January 1952 it was Lodge who entered the general’s name in the New Hampshire candidacy. In subsequent months he became Ike’s de facto campaign manager and a principal strategist in the convention struggle in Chicago.47 As a result, Lodge was distracted throughout the summer, paying little attention to his own campaign and seldom setting foot in Massachusetts. To make matters worse, his actions on Eisenhower’s behalf alienated Taft-supporting conservatives in the state, some of whom vowed to sit out the Senate race and others of whom went a step further, pledging their support to John Kennedy. Basil Brewer, Taft’s manager in Massachusetts and the publisher of the New Bedford Standard-Times, which had a wide readership in the southeastern part of the state, flipped his paper from acclaim of Lodge to condemnation, calling him a “Truman socialistic New Dealer.” After a meeting with Joe Kennedy, Brewer endorsed Jack’s candidacy.48

  V

  Only at the start of September, after a leisurely Caribbean vacation and with the election but two months away, did Lodge turn his full attention to his own campaign. By then Kennedy had been going full bore for more than four months and had made important inroads with key constituencies around the state, including labor and women. (On August 22 the Massachusetts Federation of Labor endorsed Kennedy at its annual meeting.)49 To aides Lodge expressed confidence that he would ultimately prevail, but it was a sign of his anxiety that he challenged his opponent to a series of debates—“anywhere and any place of his own choosing.”50 The Kennedy camp agreed to two, the first of which took place on September 16, before an overflow crowd at South Junior High School, in Waltham. Both men were respectful and substantive; both were content to shadowbox and say nice things about each other. But the challenger won plaudits for his calm, direct, and poised demeanor, and for his frank acknowledgment of Democratic mistakes over the past twenty years. At the same time, he stressed, his party’s policies should be judged against the complexity of the challenges involved with the Depression, the Nazi threat and World War II, and the reconversion to peacetime. “It is against this panorama that our actions must be judged—and not merely through the trick binoculars of hindsight, which makes all things easy, all men wise. To claim our successes were bipartisan, our failures Democratic, is good politics perhaps, but not good sense.” Jack reminded his audience that his party had been crucial in furthering the rights of labor, in stopping the exploitation of children and women, and in enacting a minimum wage law.51

  Reporter Mary McGrory, covering the debate for The Washington Star, judged Kennedy the clear winner. “He was totally self-possessed, had all the facts at his command, and charmed everybody.” Jack himself, self-critical as always, felt he had only mustered a draw, but he conceded aides’ claims that a tie was as good as a win, given Lodge’s experience, stature, and popularity. Lodge didn’t disagree; he knew he had failed to knock his younger, greener opponent down a peg or two. The response of one Waltham resident who was in the audience played more to Kennedy’s advantage than to Lodge’s: “I liked ’em both.”52

  The Waltham debate was carried only on radio, but, in a sign of the changing times, the scene for the second encounter shifted to a television studio in New York City. Hundreds of thousands tuned in to the broadcast, which was simulcast by a Boston station, and once again the challenger held his own on substance while seeming the more comfortable of the two men in the new medium.53 Joe Kennedy was thrilled. He had raised his children to be at ease in front of a camera, and his belief in the transcendent importance of the small, grainy black-and-white screens for the future of U.S. politics had only deepened over the summer. The Ambassador strategized constantly about how his son should be used on television, how he should be dressed, how he should speak, where he should fix his gaze. Jack needed no persuasion, and he worked diligently to hone his skills, even participating in a CBS “television school” in July. His early performances were mixed—he tended to lapse into a monotone when reading from a script—but he improved with practice. Talented at repartee and skillful in debate, he did better in unscripted settings in which he shared the stage and could let his natural charm come through.

  In October the campaign aired two installments of a special thirty-minute TV program on Boston’s WNAC-TV, Coffee with the Kennedys, hosted by Rose and featuring appearances by the candidate and his sisters. Seated on a plain living room couch, the matriarch welcomed viewers and talked about her family, explaining why she believed her son’s qualities made him ideally suited to represent Massachusetts in the U.S. Senate. She spoke of his childhood accomplishments, his early interest in politics and history, and the invaluable experience he gained from his extensive travels across Europe while his father served as ambassador to Britain. Then the program shifted to the congressman’s campaign headquarters and shots of two or three of the Kennedy sisters at work. Viewers were invited to call in toll-free with questions for the candidate, and the show finished with Jack fielding the queries and asking those with cars to volunteer to drive fellow voters to the polls on Election Day. Not content to simply air the programs, the campaign organized five thousand viewing parties across the state, with each host—almost invariably a woman—encouraged to invite ten to fifteen friends over to watch the shows.54

  Sensing trouble, Lodge redoubled his efforts in the final weeks, working sixteen-hour days and hitting every corner of the state, only to find that wherever he went, Jack Kennedy had been there before him, greeting workers at the factory gate, chatting with patrons at the diner, lining up volunteers.55 A later estimate suggested that Kennedy shook five hands for every one
that Lodge shook. The incumbent nonetheless took encouragement from his own touring—from the mood at his events and from the size of the crowds. And, in truth, many voters liked both candidates, who seemed so alike in so many ways, including in their political centrism. “People, even Democrats, would say to you, ‘Gosh, isn’t it too bad he’s running against Lodge, because we need both of them,’ ” Dave Powers remembered. “Lodge had the same kind of reputation, he was the same type of man as Jack Kennedy. He was a Republican Jack Kennedy. Some people called Jack Kennedy a Democratic Henry Cabot Lodge. People in Massachusetts felt we need them both and it was a shame that one of them had to fall by the wayside.”56 Even seasoned journalists saw little daylight between the two men on core issues, especially in foreign policy, and there was no mistaking the broad similarity in their campaigning styles: a focus on the issues and on being quietly approachable, an avoidance of gutter politics or personal invective.

  The candidates even shared a common problem: how to handle Joseph McCarthy. The firebrand senator remained a formidable if controversial figure in American politics as he cruised toward reelection in Wisconsin. Over the previous two years he had perfected what one reporter would call his “unique distortion technique”: stating as facts a set of fictitious claims, then doubling down on these “facts” when challenged.57 McCarthyite tactics were again commonplace that fall, with Republican candidates using the slogan K1C2—Korea, Communism, and Corruption—to pummel Democrats. Nixon took a leading role in the assault, and even Eisenhower dabbled in red-baiting. At the urging of aides, who feared offending McCarthy on his home turf, Eisenhower removed from a speech in Milwaukee a tribute to his mentor General George Marshall’s “profoundest patriotism” in “the service of America.” (McCarthy, it will be recalled, had accused Marshall of treason in a lengthy Senate speech the previous summer.) But Ike kept in the Milwaukee address passages that might well have come from the senator’s own mouth. Two decades of laxity about Communism reaching high levels in Washington, he exclaimed, had meant “contamination in some degree of virtually every department, every agency, every bureau, every section of our government. It meant a government by men whose very brains were confused by the opiate of this deceit,” causing the loss of China and the “surrender of whole nations” in Eastern Europe. At home, meanwhile, acceptance of Communism had allowed policy decisions to be made by “men who sneered and scoffed” at the threat, allowing “its most ugly triumph—treason itself.”58