If Kennedy Lived: The First and Second Terms of President John F. Kennedy: AnAlternate History

by Greenfield, Jeff

  It wasn’t until ten days before the primary that the dimensions of Al Lowenstein’s “guerrilla army” became evident. Hundreds, maybe a thousand or more, mostly young recruits were sleeping in the basements of churches, invited in by ministers who took the gospel of peace literally; they were crashing in the guest rooms and garages of like-minded voters.

  (“I live every day with the memory of the Cuban missile crisis,” one grocer told a Humphrey volunteer who had knocked on his door. “If Scoop Jackson had been president, I don’t know if any of us would be around today. So if you and your friends are looking for a place to sleep, I’ve got a large pantry and a spare room upstairs.”)

  With Vice President Symington staying out of the primaries, and George Wallace shunning a state where racial and cultural disorder appeared only on television screens, New Hampshire came down to a two-man fight . . . although there were a few moments when a more dramatic possibility appeared. Paul Corbin had a checkered connection to the Kennedy family that went back to the 1960 Wisconsin primary. He was distrusted by almost everyone around the President . . . except his brother Bobby, whose children called Corbin “Uncle Paul.” One indication of his tangled background and beliefs was that he had once been a card-carrying member of the Communist Party . . . and a business partner of Senator Joseph McCarthy. Now a Boston Globe reporter found him at a telephone bank just across the state line in Haverhill, Massachusetts, where he was organizing a write-in campaign for Robert Kennedy. It took a personal phone call from Bobby—after prodding by the President—to persuade Corbin to fold his tents.

  Scoop Jackson, with the backing of the state’s AFL-CIO chapters, worked the textile and shoe factories that lined Manchester’s Merrimack River. He had praise for President Kennedy’s domestic agenda, but on defense matters he made his differences clear.

  “To those who say we must take risks for peace by cutting the meat from our military muscle, I say you are unwittingly risking war. I’m not a hawk and I’m not a dove. I just don’t want my country to be a pigeon.”

  “Who is it,” Humphrey answered in a speech at Saint Anselm College, “who risks war? Did John Kennedy ‘risk war’ when he stood up to Soviet aggression with firmness and flexibility? When the two great nuclear superpowers began to move from confrontation to negotiation, did that risk war? Do we really want to return to a world where one miscalculation can mean the deaths of millions?”

  This was the message that Humphrey’s young volunteers were carrying to the increasingly suburban southern towns of Nashua and Brattleboro, up to Berlin in the north. (“For God’s sake,” one New Hampshire native said to a group of volunteers. “It’s BER-lin . . . not the city in Germany!”) In the last week of the campaign, that message appeared in a new venue, in the form of a one-minute commercial that ran on every Boston television station (WMUR, the state’s only VHF TV station, was so insignificant that it was still broadcasting only in black-and-white). Reporters soon labeled the commercial “the Dr. Strangelove ad,” because it opened with a montage of nuclear explosions before dissolving into pictures of Kennedy.

  “This did not happen,” the voice of actor Gregory Peck intoned, “because the right man was president. On March 12,” he added, as the image of Humphrey appeared, “the people of New Hampshire can make sure it will never happen . . . by choosing the right man again.” The ad ended with a quick black-and-white shot of Kennedy’s 1961 inaugural—“Let Us Begin!”—dissolving to a full-color shot of Humphrey—“Let Us Continue!”

  The lavish ad buy surprised many in the political world, given that the Humphrey campaign had complained consistently about being strapped for cash. They would have been even more surprised had they learned the source of the money: a satchel filled with $100 bills—$25,000 worth—that had been supplied by the reclusive Las Vegas billionaire Howard Hughes. His obsessive fear of germs was only surpassed by his fear of atmospheric nuclear testing, and among the candidates for president, he saw Humphrey as the one least likely to resume them.

  Whether it was the advertising, the swarm of volunteers, or the less-than-dynamic campaigning of Jackson, Humphrey won New Hampshire by a decisive twelve-point margin. His April victories in Wisconsin and Massachusetts not only ended Jackson’s campaign but led to an event almost unheard-of in Democratic presidential history.

  It was the President himself who engineered it.

  “We’re in for a hell of a fight,” he said to his political team in early May, demonstrating once more his grasp of the political terrain. “In ’60, Nixon won 219 electoral votes. With reapportionment, those same states would give him 238. Throw in Texas and South Carolina, and he’s president. And don’t forget, he damn near took Illinois, Missouri, and New Jersey. If Reagan somehow pulls it off—and I’m not convinced he can’t—then Wallace stays out of November and Reagan takes the whole South. And if you don’t think Reagan can win in those big Midwestern states, take a look at the working-class and middle-class suburbs when he ran for governor. We’re going be drawing to an inside straight in November, and the last thing we need is a brawl in Chicago.”

  Four days later, one of America’s best-known columnists shared an off-the-record coffee with Kennedy in the Oval Office, and two days later Walter Lippmann wrote that “those closest to the President say he is quietly counseling top party leaders to fall in behind the presidential campaign of Hubert Humphrey.”

  (“When it’s in a Lippmann column,” one senator cracked, “it’s about as ‘quiet’ as a stick of dynamite.”)

  When Chicago mayor Richard Daley, California assembly speaker Jesse Unruh, and New Jersey governor Richard Hughes all threw their backing behind Humphrey in a single forty-eight-hour period, the Democrats—for the first time anyone could remember—produced a consensus candidate.

  “It may be the most unexpected turn of events in modern American political history,” wrote R. W. Apple in the New York Times. “A party whose presidential campaigns look like a meeting of the Hatfields and the McCoys has suddenly taken on the appearance of the Trapp Family Singers. Those devotees of fractious conventions may want to rethink their travel plans to Chicago this August.”

  That proved to be an understatement. Even the traditional last-minute choice of a running mate was abandoned in favor of a Sunday-night rally, where Humphrey introduced Tennessee senator Al Gore as his running mate.

  “Hubert knows the South is pretty much gone,” Gore said to his son, Al Gore Jr., when he got the call. “But he thinks I could make a difference in some of the border states—may give him a shot back home.”

  “Makes sense,” Al Gore Jr. said. “It’d be damn hard for a national candidate to lose his home state.”

  When the convention swiftly unseated the all-white Southern delegations and rushed the platform through by voice vote, NBC’s David Brinkley observed that “while political predictions are notoriously unreliable, you can take this one to the bank: as Lincoln would have put it, the world will little note nor long remember a single moment from the 1968 Chicago Democratic convention.”

  • • •

  “Mr. President? Mrs. Kennedy said to tell you she’s waiting in the Oval Room.”

  “Okay, George,” Kennedy said to his butler as he was eased out of the tub and slipped into a polo shirt and a pair of chinos. The Yellow Oval Room was one of her proudest accomplishments, a centerpiece of the years-long White House restoration she had supervised. The room opened out onto the Truman Balcony, with its spectacular views of the Mall and the Monuments; it was where many of the Kennedys’ close friends ended up after a White House dance or dinner party. Now only his wife awaited him, wearing a pink cashmere sweater and high-waist trousers, her hair long, loose, and straight.

  • • •

  It was ending the way his own campaign had ended: too close to call, too many states in the balance. Not the South—that was going to be all Reagan, once Wallace had decided to take a pass. Rea
gan had said nice, safe things about Wallace: “He’s dwelling mainly on law and order, patriotism, and so forth, and these are very attractive subjects, and I’m sure there are very few people in disagreement.” Reagan had told a story about standing up for a Negro football player back in college, and explained how the civil rights laws Wallace opposed weren’t about race at all, just about an overbearing federal government. Well, Kennedy thought, that’ll be part of my legacy: a Democratic president who delivered the South to the Republican Party for a generation.

  In fact, it would be his legacy on the line in so many ways. He’d pulled the country away from its cold war outlook, but how much would they respond to Humphrey’s plea to “keep the peace!” after Reagan began quoting lines from Kennedy’s own speeches. (“For only when our arms are sufficient beyond doubt,” Reagan would intone, “can we be certain beyond doubt that they will never be employed”—and then he’d ask with a chuckle, “Guess what warmonger said that?”)

  That’s why the Humphrey campaign was beaming an unprecedented number of TV commercials into American homes during the daytime, when women were home.

  “I was talking to a poli-sci professor last week,” said adman Tony Schwartz. “He says if Humphrey wins, it’ll be because of what he called a ‘gender gap.’ I’ll put it more simply: if we win, it’ll be because five million American women lied to their husbands about how they voted. If their husbands see Reagan and say ‘Tough guy,’ we need their wives to see Reagan and say ‘Dangerous guy.’”

  And it wasn’t just the war-and-peace question on which his eight years would be judged. He’d brought a whole new generation to public service, but another part of that generation had put fear into the hearts of their elders with their behavior, and it was still unclear whether voters saw him as an inspiration or a baleful influence. He’d opened doors once closed to Negroes—William Hastie now sat on the Supreme Court, its first Negro justice after he’d replaced retiring Chief Earl Warren with Justice Arthur Goldberg—but would those open doors be seen as a step toward equality or special privilege? Would he get credit for trying to resolve an ancient American dilemma, or for feeding agitation? He’d presided over a strong economy, no doubt about that, but his onetime Senate colleague Al Gore cautioned him against excessive optimism.

  “I was talking with Al Jr. last week,” Gore said. “Bright kid. He was worried that after such a long run of good times, voters might take it for granted. I told him he could test it out when he ran for president some day, but he might have a point.”

  Well, Kennedy thought, our labor friends are all in. They were sending mail to every union household in thirty states—millions of pieces of mail, pounding away at Reagan’s opposition to social programs; replaying a speech of his where he’d called the new Medicare program for the elderly “right out of Karl Marx’s playbook”; warning of his hostility to Social Security and other New Deal programs. But how strong are those arguments? he wondered. The New Deal was more than thirty years ago, and those working-class kids are suburban parents worried about their schools and taxes.

  Whatever the outcome two days from now, there was his own future to consider. He’d be fifty-one when his term ended, and his future had been one of the press’s favorite guessing games. Only Teddy Roosevelt had been younger when his presidency ended, and Kennedy had neither the health nor the inclination to set out on a worldwide hunting trip. As for his quest to reclaim the White House, the two-term limit took care of that.

  And it wasn’t as if Bobby was going to be able to extend the Kennedy legacy in the Oval Office. Bobby had wanted to run, even stepped down as Defense secretary in mid-1967 to take over the Office of Community Development. “I need to be seen putting people to work, and opening businesses,” he’d said. “All I’ve done for seven years is chase bad men and watch men in uniform march around and blow things up.”

  Still, there was no way to leverage that work into a presidential run in 1968: not without ever having run for office, not with the specter of “dynasty!” hanging over the family, not with Bobby still carrying the image of the “ruthless” family enforcer. He needed distance, and a political life of his own. But where? A second “Senator Kennedy” from Massachusetts might be a bit much. Bobby’s home was in Virginia, and as far as a Kennedy winning a Senate seat in Virginia . . . yes, right after they elect a black man as governor.

  The President had often talked about staying in public life. After John Quincy Adams had lost the White House, he won election to the House of Representatives, where he became a champion of the anti-slavery movement. But the House was simply not a platform significant enough for an ex-president, and as for the Senate, he’d have the same problem as Bobby: the idea of two Kennedys from Massachusetts seemed excessive.

  For the near future, then, there was a memoir to write—maybe two or three volumes, if he could find the time and patience. He’d be in a footrace with Schlesinger and Sorensen, but on the other hand, the eight years’ worth of tapes he had would give him a hell of a leg up. Churchill had once said, “History will treat me very kindly, for I intend to write it.” Well, he’d also had the wit to record it. Let’s see Ted and Arthur compete with the tapes.

  • • •

  “How was the trip?” she asked as he set aside the crutches and eased himself onto the sofa next to her.

  “Endless,” he said.

  “J.B. said you wanted to see me,” Kennedy said. “If this is about Wexford—”

  “No,” she said. “I love the house; you don’t. No, we need to talk about what comes next.”

  He sighed and started to go over the familiar ground. Maybe he’d buy a newspaper or start a magazine, a Time or Life with a liberal bent. In another election or two, if his health allowed, he might wind up as Bobby’s or Teddy’s secretary of state, although . . .

  “Jack?” She was holding up a cautionary hand. “I’m not talking about what comes next for you. I’m talking about what comes next for me.”

  And then she began talking for several minutes, uninterrupted, as he sat and listened.

  “We had some of Caroline’s friends over for a movie the other night: The Wizard of Oz. There’s a line in that movie, after Dorothy finds out the Wizard’s just a hot-air-balloon man. She says to him, ‘You’re a bad man.’ And he says, ‘No, I’m a good man; I’m just a very bad wizard.’ It’s the other way with you, isn’t it, Jack? You’ve been a very good president—the country’s been lucky to have you. But as a man? A husband?”

  She talked of what she’d always known, about the women at dinner parties and excursions whom she knew had shared his bed, about her long absences from the White House, about the way she’d carefully alerted the staff about her travel plans, about the people she’d sought out for advice and counseling. “After Dallas—after you almost died in my arms—I really thought things would change . . . and I think for a time they did . . . for months, maybe a year or more. And then they didn’t.” She told him of a doctor in Washington she’d met years earlier, an obstetrician with whom she’d felt a strong connection—“No, not that kind—not your kind—but I’ve talked with him over the years about everything. He helped me come to a decision.”

  “If you’re talking about divorce—”

  “No,” she said. “I grew up in a broken family. I wouldn’t do that to the children. I’m talking about something else: when we leave the White House, I’m going to New York. I’ve been looking at apartments, and there are publishers who would love to have me work with them as an editor. And I don’t think we’ll have much trouble getting Caroline and John into good schools. As far as the world knows, we’ll be together . . . it isn’t as if we haven’t spent months of every year apart.”

  “I can’t believe you’d do this to me,” he said.

  “I’m not doing it to you,” she said, “I’m doing it for me. I’m not Nora at the end of A Doll’s House, slamming a door. I’m just closing one
, very quietly, very politely, and maybe opening another one. I’ve always said my purpose was to live my life through a significant man, and God knows I have. That’s what I thought a woman does. Maybe when it’s Caroline’s time, she’ll be able to live her life through herself.”

  • • •

  For a long time after she left, he sat out on the Truman Balcony, his flight jacket around his shoulders, smoking a Havana. His wife’s decision was a wound, but he had been wounded before. By the smallest accidents of fate, he had lived through those wounds; and those same accidents had put him, with all his strengths and weaknesses, at the helm of his country with the fate of tens of millions in his hands. Whatever judgment history would render on what he had done with the life he had been granted, he could live with that too.

  AFTERWORD

  THE SOURCES OF SPECULATION

  This is a book of what might have happened. It is, necessarily, a book of speculation. It is perfectly reasonable to argue that history would not have turned out this way: that John Kennedy would not have survived Dallas even if the bubble top had covered his car, or that Lyndon Johnson would not have been driven from office, or that Kennedy would have made very different judgments about Vietnam or civil rights, or that his private life would not have been the target of his political enemies.