The Patriarch

by David Nasaw

  Whatever his role, Kennedy was given an honored place in one of the two front cars reserved for permanent members of the campaign entourage. Kennedy was unaccustomed to working as part of any group that he did not direct, but he seemed to get along well with everyone on board, especially Moley, who thought him smart and shrewd in the ways of the world and the perfect counterweight to old-school politicos like Louis Howe. The Roosevelt children, especially James and Anna, found him to be an “unusually warm human being.” “Joseph P. Kennedy,” James Roosevelt later recalled, “was a rather fabulous figure to a very young fellow on his father’s first campaign train.” Kennedy was blunt, terse, his language now earthy and laced with expletives, but when he spoke, Jimmy Roosevelt remembered, everyone, including his father, listened.28

  Immaculately groomed in dark banker’s suits, his brownish red hair perfectly in place, his freckles and toothsome smile seemingly at odds with his austere banker’s uniform, Kennedy carried with him an aura of mystery and of gravitas. He alone among the candidate’s advisers, he proudly proclaimed to a Boston reporter, had no ulterior motives. “There is nothing I want. . . . There is no public office that would interest me. Governor Roosevelt asked me to go with him on this trip and I agreed to accompany him.” His major responsibility, he insisted, was to act as the candidate’s eyes and ears. “I never go to the official functions. When the dinners and speeches are on, I go out on my own to talk to the barber or the druggist. I try to find out what the people are thinking and talking about.”29

  In what Raymond Moley referred to as “the friendly intimacy of the campaign train,” Kennedy quickly “became one of the inner circle. I permitted him to read the speeches before their delivery and welcomed his shrewd suggestions. His political inheritance from his father and his understanding of very practical economic affairs were valuable.” Kennedy’s standing as a member of the campaign team was enhanced by the presence of Eddie Moore, his sidekick, secretary, and companion. “His infinite capacity to make friends made up for much of Kennedy’s shortcomings in this respect.” It quickly became clear that Moore was not there to act as Kennedy’s toady or gofer or jester or yes-man. He was, recalled Eddie Dowling, former song-and-dance man, theatrical producer, and now campaign aide, a man possessed of “a tremendous amount of know how” and solid political instincts. Kennedy loved him like a brother, and he in turn revered Kennedy. “He never stopped telling me, and anybody else that would listen, about the greatness of Joseph P. Kennedy.”30

  Kennedy and Moore established themselves as the go-to problem solvers on the train. When James Farley and finance chairman Frank Walker decided to join the campaign in Salt Lake City, they wired Kennedy for assistance. “Have you sufficient influence to obtain suite of rooms and bath for us. Colonel House [Woodrow Wilson’s former adviser and still a power in the party] joins party at Butte. Keep cool, calm, and collect,” a not so subtle reference to Kennedy’s role as campaign fund-raiser.31

  The first stop on the campaign train was Jefferson City, Missouri, on September 13 at ten A.M.; then St. Louis, Kansas City, and Topeka for a major address on farm policy to be broadcast nationwide. Between Kansas City and Topeka, Kennedy attempted to inject “some typical New York expressions” into the farm speech, but according to the Boston Daily Globe reporter covering the campaign, he was overruled by Moley.32

  With each stop on the way west, the crowds grew larger and more enthusiastic. In “Los Angeles, stronghold of Republicanism,” two hundred thousand onlookers engulfed the motorcade as it made its way to the Hollywood Bowl, where Roosevelt addressed a crowd of twenty-five thousand. That evening, the candidate appeared at a star-studded salute at the Olympic Stadium, organized by Jack and Harry Warner. Kennedy had suggested to Jack Warner at an earlier meeting in New York that he try to get Hearst’s support for the rally, which Warner did, he recalled, by fashioning it as a charity event and donating half the proceeds to the Marion Davies Foundation for Crippled Children and half to the Motion Picture Relief Fund. The evening was a smashing success, with nearly ninety thousand in the audience and dozens of Hollywood stars onstage. Warner remembered standing with “Joe looking over the enormous crowd. . . . He watched me for a moment then asked, ‘What are you doing, Jack—counting the house?’ ‘No,’ I replied. ‘I was just wondering who’s in the theatres tonight.’”33

  Joseph P. Kennedy was having the time of his life. Roosevelt enjoyed campaigning, and his delight and enthusiasm rubbed off on the others. The hours were grueling, the pace relentless, the discussions over policy and what to include in the candidate’s speeches endless and sometimes acrimonious, but the electricity surging through the train was palpable. The campaign entourage—often with the press in tow—ate in the best restaurants, stayed in the swankiest hotels, and rode only in limousines. Despite Depression conditions, no one seemed to mind.

  After Los Angeles, Roosevelt stopped over in Arizona for a two-day vacation before returning east. Kennedy, with Farley and Flynn, flew back to New York City. For the remainder of September and most of October, he would be strangely absent from the campaign. He spent most of his days—and many nights—at his office at 35 West Forty-fifth Street and the nearby Ambassador Hotel, where he had rented an apartment for himself. He went home to Bronxville some nights—and always on weekends—to see the younger children and Rosemary. Though Choate was only a few hours’ car ride from either Bronxville or New York City, Kennedy did not visit his boys that fall. Joe Jr. was particularly upset when his father missed the Choate football game with Hartford High on October 8. “I was not in the first team line-up but after about the first three minutes of the first quarter the coach sent me in for right-end, and I played there until the last two minutes of the game,” he wrote his mother. “I wish Dad had come up yesterday, because I might not play so long next week. . . . P.S. Please be sure to show this letter to Dad.”34

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  In mid-October, Roosevelt (again against the advice of his chief strategists) set off on a second train tour, this one through the Midwest, then south to Atlanta, Warm Springs, Raleigh, and Baltimore. As the New York Times reported on October 18, he intended to take with him the same cast of characters who had accompanied him west in September. “Only Joseph P. Kennedy, banker and chief campaign fund raiser, and Edward Moore, his associate, are thus far not included.”

  There is no indication as to why Kennedy was not invited on the October tour. It might have been because he had outlived his usefulness to the campaign—and both he and Roosevelt knew it. His chief role, and the one for which he had been invited along on the western trip, was as a fund-raiser, but he had, in the end, turned out to be something of a failure in this regard. He had also been less than generous with his own contributions. His only gift had been $10,000, made on September 9, at the start of the western trip. He had, in addition, lent the campaign $50,000, which he expected to be repaid (and it was, much later). These were large contributions, but significantly less than those made by at least a dozen other Democratic contributors, including John Jakob Raskob, William Woodin, Bernard Baruch, and Hearst.

  It is also possible that his continued presence in the campaign might have been vetoed by Louis Howe, the chain-smoking, wheezing, gruff gnome of a man who had been Roosevelt’s most trusted adviser for more than twenty years. Howe not only distrusted and disliked Kennedy, but he worried that Roosevelt would be tarred by association with a Wall Street operator.35

  On October 18, after the Roosevelt campaign train had left Albany without him, Kennedy received a letter from Joe Willicombe, William Randolph Hearst’s secretary, with a check for $25,000 “for radio campaigning.” Kennedy wrote to thank Hearst for funneling his campaign contribution through him. Well aware that while Hearst thought Roosevelt would make a better president than Herbert Hoover, he feared him as too much of a progressive and an internationalist. Kennedy inserted himself between the two, claiming that whatever happened in the future, he
would remain Hearst’s ally, defender, advocate, and liaison to Roosevelt. “As far as I am concerned. . . . I appreciate personally, more than I can ever express to you, your kindness in mailing [the check] to me because I realize that this check coming to the Committee through me helps a great deal in having consideration paid to any suggestions that I might want to make. You may rest assured, and this I want to say in order to go on record, that whenever your interests in this administration are not served well, my interest has ceased.”36

  Kennedy telephoned Jimmy Roosevelt as soon as he got Hearst’s check and asked him to relay the news to his father. A few days later, Roosevelt telegraphed Kennedy from the campaign train: “Been having a great trip. Why don’t you join up with us at Richmond, Washington, or Baltimore?” Kennedy caught up with the group on its final swing through the South and donated an additional $5,000 of his own money. He remained with the campaign after the tour and traveled north to Boston with Roosevelt for his last major speech, on October 31.37

  On November 8, 1932, Franklin Delano Roosevelt carried forty-two of the forty-eight states in the Union, won the electoral college by 472 to 59, and received 57.4 percent of the popular vote. The following evening, Kennedy celebrated with a theater party for Roosevelt’s two oldest children, Anna, twenty-six, and Jimmy, twenty-five, and their friends. (He tried to invite Elliott Roosevelt as well but could not reach him.) Whatever the future brought, Joseph P. Kennedy intended to stay close to the nation’s new first family.38

  Eleven

  WAITING FOR THE CALL

  On the Sunday after the election, President Herbert Hoover telegrammed the president-elect to ask that he join him in fashioning a response to the British request for a suspension of war debt payments, including $95 million due on December 15. Roosevelt was put in an awkward—and historically unprecedented—situation. If he refused to cooperate with Hoover, he could be blamed for contributing to the economic collapse; if he did, he risked being co-opted into support for Hoover’s failed policies.

  Assuming that Joseph P. Kennedy was in direct contact with Roosevelt, Hearst wired to warn him not to “let the incumbent unload on our friend any part of his unpopularity or any part of the responsibility for those things which cause his unpopularity. I think it far better for our friend to go into office with a clean state.” Before Kennedy had a chance to forward the message, the president-elect declined Hoover’s request. Hearst was delighted, as he indicated in a second telegram to Kennedy, sent the next day: “Our friend’s letter pretty darn good. Incumbent has bad case unpopularity measles and wants to give them to our friend.”1

  Hearst was not the only one who assumed that Kennedy was part of Roosevelt’s inner circle and would follow him to Washington. The New York Times identifying him as the “fiery Boston and New York financier, who fights so hard in conferences for his proposals and his convictions that he sometimes arouses temporary enmity within the group,” listed him among the fifteen or so members of “The ‘Cabinet’ Mr. Roosevelt Already Has: The Group of Advisers Who Assist Him in Plotting His Course on Political Seas.” Will Hays only half jokingly addressed his election day telegram to Kennedy to “Dear Mr. Secretary.”2

  Kennedy responded to the congratulatory calls, letters, and telegrams on Roosevelt’s victory and his imminent move to Washington by insisting that “accepting any position” in the new administration remained “the farthest thing from my mind.” He had gone “into the fight,” he wrote Hiram Brown at RKO, “for the fun it gave me, and there is no hope of an ultimate reward.”3

  That was not entirely true. As Raymond Moley recalled, Kennedy, having “ostentatiously” come out in support of Roosevelt, believed “quite realistically, and I believe properly . . . that he would be rewarded with a high place in the new Administration.” Years later, Rose would recall that “what Joe really wanted from Roosevelt was to be Secretary of the Treasury and he felt he could and would do a good job in that capacity and restore confidence in the dollar.” But if this was what he wanted, he had to know that it was not going to happen. Roosevelt had, in his longhand notes on cabinet appointees, identified Kennedy as one of the donors whom he hoped or thought he should reward, but he had penciled him in as a possible “Treasurer” of the United States, a largely honorary position, not as secretary of the treasury.4

  All through November, Kennedy waited in New York for his invitation to confer with the president. Hearst had counted on him to forward his recommendations for the cabinet to the president-elect, but he had been unable to do even this. He had heard nothing from Roosevelt, who was in Warm Springs, but planned, he wrote Joe Willicombe, Hearst’s secretary, to “go to the Gridiron dinner [in Washington] a week from Saturday night and meet there some of the folks coming up from Warm Springs. Have all W.R.’s suggestions and will try to get further reactions on this at this dinner.” After the dinner, he would fly to Los Angeles “to visit W.R. for a few days” and fill him in on what he had learned.5

  Kennedy attended the Gridiron Club dinner as planned, but he did not get to confer with the president-elect or any of his advisers. The following Monday, as promised, he flew to California to spend the weekend with Hearst and Marion Davies at San Simeon. The more strained his relationship with Roosevelt, the closer he was drawn into Hearst’s orbit. In some ways, Hearst was what he aspired to be: the consummate insider, a shrewd and highly successful businessman with political connections, and a man who did exactly as he pleased in his personal life. On Christmas Eve 1932, he wrote to offer Hearst “my sincere appreciation of your kindnesses to me personally and your cooperation this year. Over a period of twenty years in business I have had to do with a great many people big and little. In all my experience I have never once met up with anyone who so nearly fitted my idea of a business associate. My sincerest wishes for a merry Christmas and a happy New Year with the hope that this year I may have the opportunity of being of some service to you.”6

  Hearst, not yet unwilling to give up on the president-elect, but sorely miffed that he had not been consulted on cabinet selections, asked Edmond Coblentz, the editor of the New York American, to hand deliver to Kennedy another memorandum for Roosevelt. Kennedy forwarded the “papers” to the president-elect. “I think that you will like to see them. If you want me to come to Albany right away, I will be very happy to do so, or call me on the telephone, or suit your convenience.”7

  Again, there was no response from the president-elect.

  Snubbed by Roosevelt, Kennedy reached out to his family, friends, and advisers. He invited Jimmy Roosevelt and his wife, Betsey—and her sister—to stay with him and Rose in Palm Beach. Jimmy was unable to make it, but his wife and sister-in-law were. Eddie Flynn and Raymond Moley, both close advisers to the president-elect, were also invited to visit Palm Beach. Moley, who had been in touch with Kennedy since the election, recalled later how Kennedy’s concern at being neglected by the president “turned very soon to deep indignation. . . . I heard plenty of Kennedy’s excoriation of Roosevelt, of his criticisms of the President-elect, who, according to Kennedy, had no program—and what ideas he had were unworthy of note. There must have been hundreds of dollars in telephone calls to provide an exchange of abuse of Roosevelt between Kennedy and W. R. Hearst. . . . There was little I could do in 1933 either to pacify Kennedy or to move Roosevelt to offer some substantial recognition of his obligation. But while I never developed a real affection for Kennedy, I sympathized with his disappointment.”8

  Kennedy would have been better served by swallowing his disappointment and staying mute. Instead, he let everyone he came into contact with know what he felt, and in the bluest language. On the telephone, in letters, telegrams, and face-to-face conversations, Kennedy expressed his irritation, nearly exhausting his friends with his ceaseless criticism of the president-elect. Herbert Bayard Swope, with whom, according to Swope’s biographer, Kennedy had a standing telephone appointment at eleven A.M. each morning, wrote him in
Palm Beach to report on a conversation he had had with Raymond Moley, Frank Walker, and Forbes Morgan, a Roosevelt campaign donor. “All agreed, and thought” that Roosevelt’s failure to do anything for Kennedy “was a damned outrage. They are going to send for you and have the Great White Father hold your hand. I am told that everybody agrees that not alone should you have what you want, but that you have the right to speak for any job you want for anybody else.” Swope had heard that there was a movement to install Kennedy as under secretary of war. Louis Howe, he had been told, was “quite friendly, except he wants to keep you away from finance. That’s his method, I suppose, of separating the Administration from Wall Street.”9

  There was a great deal of truth in Swope’s observations. Whatever he might have done in Hollywood or on the campaign trail, Kennedy remained tied by reputation to the worst of the Wall Street stock manipulators. In January, the Senate Committee on Banking and Currency had again taken up its investigation of fraud and illegality in banking and the stock market. “As newspapermen watched with astonishment,” Arthur Schlesinger has written, “leading figures of the banking world shuffled to the stand, where, under the patient and ruthless questioning of Ferdinand Pecora, the new Committee counsel, they squirmed, fidgeted and sweated, while reluctantly confessing to one breach after another both of normal ethics and of normal intelligence.” Political prudence dictated that Roosevelt not tie himself or his administration to men like Kennedy.10

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  While Kennedy relentlessly and viciously criticized Roosevelt to his friends, in his few private communications with the president after the inauguration, to which he was not invited, he nearly prostrated himself in praise. On March 14, he telegraphed Roosevelt to report that the “Mother Superior” at the Sacred Heart Convent in Providence, “a real saintly woman,” had told him that “the nuns were praying for you and then made a remarkable statement for a religious woman to make ‘since your inauguration peace seemed to come on the earth; in fact it seemed like another resurrection.’ Mortal men can pay you no higher compliment.”11