As interesting as the debate about Jack’s authorship were his private and public reactions to questions that were raised about it. Suggestions that the book was not his idea or the product of his work incensed him. In 1956, when a Harvard classmate and radio journalist ribbed Jack about the allegations, he became furious. Jack normally loved that kind of repartee with old friends, but questions about his authorship were different; they touched something in him that left no room for humor. When New York Times editor John Oakes privately passed along the rumor that Jack was not the author, Jack confronted him with “evidence” to the contrary. (“I sure wasn’t convinced by this,” Oakes said. “Undoubtedly Ted [Sorensen] or someone else wrote it.”) When columnist Drew Pearson asserted in a television interview that the book was “ghostwritten,” Jack asked prominent Washington attorney Clark Clifford to compel a retraction, which Pearson reluctantly gave.
Jack certainly hoped that Profiles would identify him with uncompromising political responses to national dangers. He yearned for a challenge that would give him an opportunity to act like a political hero. The best he could find was a congressional proposal to reform the electoral system. Jack took up the cudgels against what he described as “one of the most far-reaching—and I believe mistaken—schemes ever proposed to alter the American constitutional system. No one knows with any certainty what will happen if our electoral system is totally revamped as proposed.” Jack emphasized how well the existing electoral system had worked to ensure the influence of the popular vote, the two-party system, and “the large-State-small-State checks-and-balances system.” The proposed amendment, which he feared could destabilize American politics at a time of grave foreign challenges, was nothing voters had demanded or even knew about. Although Jack gave a lengthy, authoritative Senate speech that contributed to the defeat of the amendment, his opposition hardly registered on the press or the public; reform of the electoral college was an invisible controversy.
OTHER THAN THE MCCARTHY CONTROVERSY, the most significant political challenges Kennedy faced between 1954 and 1956 centered on the Massachusetts Democratic party—a venue not for heroics but for self-serving, brass-knuckle politics disconnected from any larger public good. In 1954, Kennedy found himself in a battle with Foster Furcolo, a Yale-trained Italian American attorney who had served as a Massachusetts congressman and state treasurer and was a Democratic candidate for Republican Leverett Saltonstall’s U.S. Senate seat. In 1952, Furcolo, looking ahead to a Senate race and the need for independent and Republican votes, gave Jack cautious support against Lodge. In response to this tepid endorsement, Jack, who had an excellent working relationship with Saltonstall and a high personal regard for him, was reluctant to back Furcolo. And like Furcolo two years before, Jack did not want to antagonize non-Democrats who had supported him and might vote for him again in 1958. Nor was Jack eager to help someone he saw as an ambitious rival for statewide influence and possible national power.
Jack’s tensions with Furcolo came to a head in October 1954, just before he entered the hospital for surgery. In a joint television appearance with Robert Murphy, the party’s gubernatorial candidate, and Furcolo, Jack showed himself to be visibly more sympathetic to Murphy than to Furcolo. He also ignored Furcolo’s demand that he directly attack Saltonstall. At one point, before the program began, Jack, who was on crutches and in a great deal of pain, stormed out of the studio, saying to Frank Morrissey, “That goddamn guinea.” After Morrissey told a journalist that Jack did not want Furcolo elected, Kennedy’s office refused further comment on the clash. But it was an open secret, and in the view of Kennedy aides Ken O’Donnell and Dave Powers, “the only wrong political move Jack Kennedy ever made.”
More constructive was an eighteen-month battle for statewide control of the Democratic party. Jack had initially been reluctant to get into an intraparty conflict he associated with traditional Boston politics, and his father urged against it as well: “Leave it alone and don’t get into the gutter with those bums up there in Boston,” Joe told him. But O’Donnell and another Kennedy aide, Larry O’Brien, advised otherwise. Speculation that Jack might be Adlai Stevenson’s running mate in 1956 convinced them that Jack’s selection and political future now turned on delivering the Massachusetts delegation to Stevenson at the party’s nominating convention. Consequently, they urged Jack to wrest control of the state party committee from John McCormack and his ally William H. (“Onions”) Burke, the chairman of the Democratic State Committee, who intended to back New York governor Averell Harriman for the presidential nomination. Massachusetts congressman Philip Philbin also urged Jack to take on McCormack and Burke. “There is a great ‘hassle’ going on in the erudite Massachusetts Democracy,” he sarcastically told Jack in March 1955. “Various learned ‘savants’ and ‘intellectuals’ who shape the upper crust of our party organization are conducting a campaign for control, perhaps I should say a campaign to insure our defeat at the next election.” Kennedy and his team needed, Philbin said, to clean “up this deplorable situation.”
With Jack still recuperating from his surgery in Florida, he was not ready to act. He praised O’Brien and O’Donnell for their analysis of the situation but deferred a decision until he could return to Massachusetts for discussions. In the meantime, he asked them “to study proposed courses of action.” They began doing more than that, pressuring Democratic state bosses to accept Jack as their leader. And Jack, who shared their conviction that a fight for party control, however unpalatable, was vital to his future, soon threw himself into the battle with characteristic determination. Pointing to polls demonstrating his popularity and threatening to put himself forward as a favorite-son presidential candidate, Jack persuaded McCormack and Burke to give him an equal say in choosing the party’s 1956 delegation to the national convention. At the same time, however, he instructed O’Brien and O’Donnell to work secretly to oust Burke and his allies from the state committee. “So we can’t let Burke or McCormack know that we’re trying to get our people on the state committee,” he told his aides. “At least, not for the time being. Keep working on it, but don’t let Burke know about it, and don’t mention my name to anybody.”
Since Jack’s opposition to Burke was well known, Burke took precautions to counter Kennedy’s attack. In March and April 1956, while Jack helped organize a write-in vote for Stevenson in the state’s Democratic presidential primary, Burke countered with a favorite-son campaign for John McCormack. With support from Boston Post publisher John Fox, a staunch McCarthy backer and all-out opponent of Stevenson, the Burke forces gave McCormack a 10,000-vote victory over Adlai.
Jack now saw no alternative to an open fight with Burke. Although the Burke machine had the advantage of incumbency in a May 19 election for the party’s eighty committee seats, Jack moved quickly to exploit Burke’s unsavory image and unpopularity around the state. A short, rotund, balding onion farmer from the Berkshires, Burke had limited appeal to Boston Democrats. More important, a propensity for riding roughshod over opponents had created many enemies, who were all too happy to join Jack’s campaign. Sensing Burke’s vulnerability when contrasted with himself, Jack let it be known that he had given Burke an ultimatum—resign or be ousted. He issued a judicious statement of intent that further contrasted him favorably with Burke. “I do not relish being involved in this dispute,” he said, but he saw no other way “to restore our party to dignity and respect.” When Burke associated Stevenson supporters with communist sympathizers and falsely accused Jack of trying to bribe him with a promise of appointment as Democratic national committeeman, it incensed Democrats and added to the feeling that Burke was unworthy of high public influence.
The struggle turned into a no-holds-barred contest. Jack wrote, called, and met with committee candidates to ask for their support in overthrowing Burke. Needing to suggest a replacement, he reluctantly picked John “Pat” Lynch, the longtime mayor of Somerville. Lynch was a surprising choice; he was one of the old pols Jack seemed determined t
o defeat. Indeed, when O’Donnell brought Lynch in to see Jack, he “saw the shock on Jack’s face.” The small, bald-headed fifty-five-year-old “leprechaun,” as O’Donnell described him, dressed in a wide-brimmed hat and velvet-collared coat typical of Boston’s Irish politicians was no one Jack wanted to identify with. But when the Dever Democrats made clear that it would be Lynch or Burke, Jack endorsed Lynch. Even then, threatened fistfights and mayhem marked a three-hour committee meeting that produced a 47-31 vote for Lynch and Jack’s undisputed control of the state party.
It had been the first time Jack had been “caught in a mud-slinging Boston Irish political brawl. We never saw him so angry and frustrated,” O’Donnell and Powers wrote. During and after the fight, Kennedy took pains to divorce himself publicly from “gutter” politics. In an article published in the April Vogue and a June commencement address at Harvard, when the university gave him an honorary degree, he decried the current antagonism between intellectuals and politicians and reminded readers and listeners that the two were not mutually exclusive. Recalling the careers of Jefferson, Madison, Hamilton, Franklin, and the Adamses, he said “[The] nation’s first great politicians . . . included among their ranks most of the nation’s first great writers and scholars.” Recounting an anecdote about an English mother who urged her son’s Harrow instructors not to distract him from a Parliamentary career by teaching him poetry, Jack declared, “If more politicians knew poetry and more poets knew politics, I am convinced that the world would be a little better place to live.”
The speech partly eased Jack’s discomfort with the ugly fight he had just passed through, and it may also have been aimed at Adlai Stevenson, who shared Jack’s affinity for a union of poetry and power. But more important, it expressed his genuine idealism about what he wished to see in American political life. Seven years later, at the height of his public influence, he repeated the value he placed on those committed to the life of the mind. In an October 1963 speech at Amherst College, he would say, “The men who create power make an indispensable contribution to the nation’s greatness, but the men who question power make a contribution just as indispensable, especially when that questioning is disinterested, for they determine whether we use power or power uses us.”
IN 1956, JACK thought less about the uses of power than about its acquisition—specifically, how to gain the vice presidency. In September 1955, after Eisenhower suffered a heart attack and speculation arose that he might not run again, Democratic party prospectsin 1956 brightened. A vice presidential nomination for Jack could be the prelude to an eight-year term as VP, followed by a run for the White House in 1964, when he would be only forty-seven years old.
For the Democrats to win the White House, however, Joe and Jack thought that the party would have to find a nominee other than Adlai Stevenson. They preferred Lyndon Johnson. Although no southern Democrat had won the presidency or even been nominated in the twentieth century (Woodrow Wilson, a Virginian by birth, ran as governor of New Jersey), Johnson seemed a reasonable bet to break that tradition. A dominant figure in the Senate and the party, with credentials as a moderate who could appeal to all regions of the country, Johnson was keenly interested in running.
In October 1955, Joe asked Tommy Corcoran, a prominent Washington “fixer” and friend of LBJ’s from the New Deal days, to carry a message to Johnson. If Lyndon would declare for the presidency and privately promise to take Jack as his running mate, Joe would arrange financing for the campaign. Because raising enough money would not be easy for any Democrat in 1956 and because Jack would bring a number of attributes to the ticket, Joe believed his offer would get serious consideration. But LBJ immediately rejected it. Reluctant to declare before he was sure that Eisenhower would not run and fearful that an announcement would encourage other candidates to join a “stop Lyndon” movement, Johnson simply said he was not running. According to Corcoran, Johnson’s response “infuriated” Bobby Kennedy, who declared it “unforgivably discourteous to turn down his father’s generous offer.” In a conversation between Jack and Corcoran in Jack’s Senate office, Kennedy said, “‘Listen, Tommy, we made an honest offer to Lyndon through you. He turned us down. Can you tell us this: Is Lyndon running without us? . . . Is he running?’” Corcoran answered, “Of course he is. He may not think he is. And certainly he’s saying he isn’t. But I know God damned well he is.” Joe Kennedy called Lyndon directly, but the answer was still no.
Johnson’s rejection did not deter Jack from putting himself forward as a potential running mate. In January 1956, when a Massachusetts state senator advised Jack that he wanted to start such a campaign, Jack agreed to talk with him but cautioned against an overt effort; he preferred to keep a low profile until he had convinced Democrats, especially Stevenson, that he would be a strong addition to the ticket. Part of this quiet strategy entailed controlling the Massachusetts delegation to the party’s national convention. It also meant getting sympathetic journalists to talk up Jack’s candidacy. In February 1956, Fletcher Knebel, a Look writer, described Jack as on everyone’s list of possible Stevenson running mates. Jack had “all the necessary Democratic assets”: youth, good looks, liberal views, a record of military bravery, and proven vote-getting ability. Moreover, his religion, which would have been a bar to nomination in the past, was described as no longer a problem. On the contrary, Knebel cited a document Ted Sorensen had prepared arguing that a Catholic on the ticket in 1956 would be a distinct asset in northern states with large Catholic populations. In June, Knebel addressed the issue directly in an article, “Can a Catholic Become Vice President?”
Sorensen also prepared a comparative study of twenty-one potential Stevenson running mates, analyzing their attributes in twelve categories: availability, compatibility, political outlook, public reputation, marital condition, officeholding or political experience, age and health, military record, voter appeal, TV personality, and wealth. On Sorensen’s chart, not surprisingly, only Jack received a positive mark in every category. (Sorensen apparently did not know the full story of Jack’s various health problems.) In August, shortly before the convention met, Sorensen put the case for Jack before Stevenson through an aide. Despite a growing list of public endorsements, led by New England governors and Tennessee senator Albert Gore Sr., Stevenson—who saw Kennedy’s Catholicism as an insurmountable obstacle—was not convinced. Jim Farley, FDR’s Catholic postmaster general and Democratic party “wheel horse,” concurred, telling Adlai that “America is not ready for a Catholic yet.” House Speaker Sam Rayburn weighed in against Jack as well. “Well, if we have to have a Catholic,” he said, “I hope we don’t have to take that little piss-ant Kennedy. How about John McCormack?”
And if Stevenson was the nominee, Joe remained convinced that Jack should not run. Eisenhower’s recovery from his heart attack and decision to stand again made it unlikely that Stevenson could win. A straw poll in June 1956 showed the president with a 62 to 35 percent lead over Adlai. Moreover, Joe feared that a Democratic defeat would be blamed on Jack’s Catholicism and would undermine his chances for the presidency.
But Jack was not convinced. He continued to press the case for his nomination, telling Joe that “while I think the prospects are rather limited, it does seem of some use to have all of this churning up.” In July, Sargent Shriver, Eunice Kennedy’s husband and director of Kennedy enterprises at the Merchandise Mart in Chicago, directly urged Jack’s candidacy on Stevenson during a plane trip from Cape Cod to Chicago. Shriver made clear to Adlai that despite Joe Kennedy’s publicly stated misgivings, he would be “100% behind Jack” and described Joe as ready to return from his summer vacation in France in twenty minutes if Jack wanted him. Eunice wrote her father in August that without a vice presidential nomination and campaign, which would make him “better known,” Jack did not think the party would “select him as a presidential candidate any . . . time in the future.”
Stevenson was not swayed. He believed he needed a southerner, or at least a border sta
te senator. Moreover, with a number of candidates actively seeking the nomination, he hoped to avoid alienating any of them by letting the convention choose for him. It was a thin tightrope to walk. Stevenson was eager to maintain good relations with Joe Kennedy, who was a promising source of campaign funds in what “looked like a thin year for the Democrats.” But Adlai’s refusal to follow tradition by picking a running mate angered the Kennedys, who saw it as a way to avoid taking Jack.
Although Stevenson’s decision made it extremely difficult for Jack to win the nomination, he did have several things working in his favor. On Monday, August 13, the first night of the Chicago convention, he was the narrator of a film celebrating the Democratic party and its recent heroes such as Roosevelt and Truman. The New York Times compared his appearance to that of a “movie star” whose personality and good looks made him an instant celebrity. And before the convention even met, Kennedy supporters had set up a headquarters in the Palmer House hotel to promote Jack’s candidacy.
On Wednesday, ostensibly to give Jack greater visibility and prominence but largely as a way to blunt Jack’s drive for the second spot, Stevenson asked him to put his name in nomination for the presidency. Jack complied, and although Stevenson denied it, Kennedy accurately saw Stevenson’s request as a compensatory gesture for being denied the vice presidency. And indeed, Stevenson’s decision to leave the VP choice to the convention had placed significant obstacles in Kennedy’s way. Instead of having only to convince Stevenson and his advisers to put him on the ticket, Jack now had to bring a majority of the convention delegates to his side. In a competition with Tennessee senator Estes Kefauver, who had a large base of delegate support, Jack had little chance to win.
An Unfinished Life: John F. Kennedy 1917-1963 Page 27
