The Patriarch

by David Nasaw

  After his last “fact-finding” trip in February, Jack had taken a position in direct opposition to that of his father. Now, nine months later and after weeks of extended discussions with diplomats, military officials, anticolonial leaders, and journalists in the field, his thinking had begun to move closer to his father’s on the need for the United States to reduce its presence overseas. With a specificity that was absent from his father’s broad-stroked attacks, but in line with his overall policy recommendations, Congressman Kennedy, in his half-hour radio address, broadcast nationwide on November 14, 1951, from New York at ten thirty P.M., urged American withdrawal from the “desperate effort of a French regime to hang on to the remnants of empire. . . . These Indo-Chinese states are puppet states . . . as typical examples of empire and of colonialism as can be found anywhere.” In the Arab world as well, the United States appeared “too frequently . . . too ready to buttress an inequitable status quo.” He was opposed to the government’s unthinking, unwavering support for European colonial interests, to American “intervention in behalf of England’s oil investments in Iran . . . our avowed willingness to assume an almost imperial military responsibility for the safety of the Suez, our failure to deal effectively after these years with the terrible human tragedy of the more than 700,000 Arab refugees [from Palestine].”

  The similarities between his father’s speeches of the year before and his radio address were remarkable. Joseph P. Kennedy had declared on December 12, 1950, “We have far fewer friends than we had in 1945!” Jack, nine months later: “It is tragic to report that not only have we made no new friends, but we have lost old ones.” Joseph Kennedy had, on February 3, 1951, asserted that the United States, because of its support of European imperialism, had come to “represent in Asia, as the French in Indo-China, the revival of the white man’s burden.” Jack now insisted that American support of British interests in Iran and French colonialism in Indo-China had “intensified the feeling of hostility towards us until today we are definitely classed with the imperialist powers of Western Europe.”6

  There were differences between the two men’s positions, differences that would be emphasized in the years to come. Unlike the ex-ambassador, Congressman Kennedy thought it was in the best interests of the United States to fight communism abroad, but by force of example, not force of arms, by celebrating and exporting the “American spirit,” supporting nationalist attempts to break free of colonial rule, combating poverty and want, and contributing to the building of “strong native non-Communist sentiment.” His father, on the other hand, believed the United States had no business fighting communism in any manner, anywhere outside the western hemisphere.

  The New York Daily News, in the past one of the few and most dynamic supporters of the senior Kennedy’s views, saw at once the significance of the congressman’s decision to come over to his father’s side. John O’Donnell, the paper’s Washington correspondent, declared on November 20, 1951, that in his radio address, John Fitzgerald Kennedy had dropped “a couple of political blockbusters.” He was not only taking aim at the Truman administration’s foreign policy but had signaled his intentions to challenge Truman’s most loyal Republican champion, “Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr., long a supporter of the Roosevelt-Truman foreign policy.” If, as now seemed to be the case, Congressman Kennedy decided to run for Lodge’s Senate seat, Massachusetts politics would be turned topsy-turvy with “a Democrat who challenges both Truman’s foreign policy and its Republican backer. The future will be lively.”

  Though an unannounced candidate and unsure as to whether he would be running for senator or governor, the congressman was in full campaign mode now. “Jack,” his father wrote Arthur Poole on November 20, “was in pretty bad shape when he arrived and, with the radio broadcast that he made followed by a . . . speech before the Chamber of Commerce yesterday, and another television appearance that evening, and a half dozen speeches in the eastern part of the state, and three days in the hospital here, we expect him home tonight. His mental courage is so much superior to his physical strength that I sometimes wonder what the final result will be.”7

  Jack was facing a much more difficult campaign than in 1946. Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr., was as handsome as Jack Kennedy and a better speaker, paraded a family name as distinguished as any in Massachusetts (or the nation), had his own Harvard degree, a distinguished war record, a stellar record as an anti-Communist, and lots of money. George Smathers, perhaps Jack’s best friend in Congress, urged him not to oppose Lodge. So did almost everyone outside the family. There were whispers everywhere about whether Jack was making the right choice, Eunice Shriver recalled, but none “in our home about Lodge. Only a mighty roar every time Jack came home. . . . ‘Jack run for the Senate. You’ll knock Lodge’s block off.’ My father had analyzed the situation thoroughly, and decided that Jack could win. Jack made the decision on his own after campaigning in every town in Massachusetts and finding support. But the greatest influence on his decision was my father’s encouragement, and his belief that Jack could win.”8

  Joseph Kennedy’s reasoning, as he laid it out to Cornelius Fitzgerald in late October 1951, was simple. Massachusetts was a Democratic state; all Jack had to do was to hold the Democratic vote and add to it some Republicans and independents. “It’s ridiculous in this Democratic state that has been able to elect Curleys and Hurleys and even Dever that we should have Republican senators for almost twenty years. Lodge is very weak with the Republicans, themselves, and he had always been elected because he was able to get the Democratic vote. Nobody has ever fought him . . . who was competent to take him on, but Jack can easily do that. If Jack holds the Democratic vote in this state, he will get a substantial Republican vote and a very substantial independent vote.”9

  There was something daring, almost reckless, about Kennedy’s analysis. To everyone else, Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr., looked unbeatable in 1952. The last four statewide elections for senator had gone to Republicans. Lodge himself, first elected in 1936, had been reelected in 1942; after his stint in the military, he had run against and easily defeated Democrat incumbent David Walsh in 1946, with 60 percent of the vote. Leverett Saltonstall, another Republican, had been elected to Lodge’s seat by a landslide in 1944, then reelected in 1948 by a comfortable margin.

  No matter what his father might say, Jack faced a difficult battle. “I am interesting myself in Jack’s candidacy which probably will be for the U.S. Senate,” Kennedy wrote Sir James Calder on November 24, 1951. “I have turned the conduct of most of my business over to an organization that I have gotten together in my office in New York and I am not paying too much attention to anything except in a very supervisory capacity.”10

  Kennedy canvassed friends, acquaintances, business associates, and former colleagues for help in getting his son’s name before the voting public. And he was successful.

  The year before, in the wake of the uproar over his University of Virginia speech, Kennedy had been invited by Lawrence Spivak, the founder, permanent panelist, and producer, to appear on Meet the Press. Kennedy declined but remained in touch with Spivak, who, a year later, issued an invitation for December 2, 1951, to Jack Kennedy, one of the few congressmen ever granted a half-hour interview on what was the premier news program on radio or television.

  Jack looked remarkably young and almost painfully thin, with his ears sticking out on either side of his freshly trimmed haircut (thick on top, short on the sides). He answered questions from Spivak, James Reston, May Craig of the Portland Press Herald, and Ernest Lindley of Newsweek about whether Eisenhower was a Democrat or a Republican, whether Truman was the strongest candidate, what effect ongoing bribery and influence-peddling scandals would have on Democratic chances in 1952, and what he had learned on his recent trip abroad. His responses were dutiful and rather dull. On Korea, he tiptoed around, saying he agreed with General MacArthur on some points, but not on bombing Manchuria, that he supported the ongoing truce t
alks, and that he did not regard it as a sell-out of American troops that Truman had agreed with the enemy to establish a “truce line.” “We ought to take agreement where we can take it.” On most issues, he sounded like any other Democrat. Only when it came to questions about American intervention in the Middle East and Asia did he sound like his father. On Indo-China, he criticized the U.S. government for giving the French everything they had asked for. On Iran, he criticized it for taking the British side and turning its back on the nationalists. When asked what he would do differently, he responded that he would send more “technical assistance” to the Middle East and Asia, improve the Voice of America and other propaganda tools, and back off support for the French in Indo-China until they declared their intention to cede independence to the native peoples of the region.

  It was a good—though not a great—entrance onto the national stage for the young congressman. He made no mistakes, appeared intelligent, answered all the questions, resisted the traps laid, and found several occasions to flash a bit of Kennedy charm. The fact that, while still a comparatively junior congressman with no real accomplishments to his name, Jack had appeared on Meet the Press was, in the final analysis, more important than anything he happened to say.

  His father acknowledged as much in a letter to Spivak a month after the appearance. Spivak had sent Joseph Kennedy a pair of suspenders as a Christmas gift. “Is there any significance to the fact that you sent out suspenders?” Kennedy had responded. “Does that indicate that people could lose their pants on the program, or anything like that? From what I have seen of it, I can’t imagine trying to keep up with the brains of your panel. Maybe I could have done it in my younger days but I am sure I couldn’t today. On the other hand, Meet the Press established Jack once and for all as a major personality, so there you are! Anyway, my very deep appreciation for all your favors and kindnesses.”11

  Two weeks after Congressman Kennedy’s appearance on national television, his father spoke on the Mutual Broadcasting System radio network from 10:35 to 11:00 P.M. via a live hookup from Chicago. Written with James Landis and James Fayne, and reviewed and edited by Arthur Krock, his address to the Economic Club, titled “Our Foreign Policy—Its Casualties and Prospects,” was another direct assault on Cold War assumptions and policies. The amount the nation spent fighting so-called enemies abroad, Kennedy insisted, limited “how much we can and dare expend for social purposes.” Without firing a single shot, the Russians had succeeded in impoverishing America by forcing “upon us peacetime expenditures beyond what could have been their wildest hopes.” The Truman administration had been “wasting our resources in the pursuit of a dream [the defeat of communism everywhere] which, worthy though it might be, was impossible of accomplishment. . . . The Korean War becomes more ghastly, more utterly futile as each day follows the next. . . . In Indo-China, American arms, American military aid, and American dollars are going to support France’s desperate effort to keep her old colonial empire. In the Suez and on the Persian Gulf, we may soon become embroiled by the actions of the British. The Arab world, whose friendship had been ours, has turned against us. . . . America is no longer seen as a champion of democratic self-determination but as a nation indistinguishable from her imperial allies.”

  His anti-imperialist, anticolonialist rhetoric sounded much like his son’s, but as he was not running for office, he had no need to moderate his positions, disguise his anger, or conceal his fears for the future. While the congressman could not distance himself from the ultimate Cold War objective—the destruction of communism—and remain a viable candidate for any office, his father could and did. Looking into the future, Kennedy underscored what he believed would be the ultimate consequence of an extended Cold War arms race. “Since armaments quickly become obsolescent and need replacement, this will mean the continuation of vast expenditures for the North Atlantic world. . . . Taxes will remain extravagantly high and life regimented to the austere needs of a war economy. It is not too difficult to predict that our democratic institutions cannot long survive such a strain.” He had made much the same case in arguing against American involvement in the war against Germany, Italy, and Japan. To fight a dictatorship, even in a “cold” war, democratic governments had to employ the tools of dictatorship. Political and economic freedoms would be curtailed, markets reined in, investments controlled, prices and profits regulated.

  He had tried the year before to set in motion a “great debate” about the Cold War, and perhaps he had. But, aside from Senator Robert Taft, who would be seriously challenged that year for leadership of his party and the Republican nomination for president, there were fewer and fewer politicians who were actively dissenting from what appeared to be a growing bipartisan consensus. The Democrats supported Cold War spending because they believed that the country could afford both guns and butter and that enhanced military expenditures were not detracting from but driving economic recovery and growth. The Republicans did not publically disagree but argued only that they could fight communism more efficiently and effectively than Truman.12

  As the year before, reaction to Joseph Kennedy’s speech was largely negative. He was not one to make excuses, but he felt obliged to explain himself in a letter to Adlai Stevenson, the governor of Illinois and the front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1952. “I have no ax to grind in politics,” he explained, “but I am tremendously disturbed by the results of our foreign policy.” His “sincere doubt” that the nation could afford the current program of foreign aid and his “growing conviction” that overseas expenditures were not buying added security had led him “to what I set forth in my talk. I hope it will at least stimulate thought, for the burden of the solution must be borne by younger men like yourself.”13

  This was to be his “last hurrah.” With his son now a candidate for the Senate and, he hoped, in the foreseeable future, for the presidency, Joseph Kennedy recognized he would have to take a backseat. “As you may know,” he explained to Dave Powers, who had invited him to speak in Detroit, “I made a speech in Chicago on the 17th and that finishes my speech making for quite some time. I have a son who is a Congressman and who is active in public life. I have tried to retire more or less from making speeches and let him carry on, and I make only one speech about once a year.”14

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  With my boy Jack a probable candidate for the Senate against Lodge in Massachusetts,” he wrote Lord Beaverbrook on February 18, 1952, “I am finding myself with plenty to do.” During the Hialeah meet that winter, Rose remembered her husband spending at least three days a week working “in a political way, because a lot of people would come to Miami for the winter who were influential politically and he’d give them a sales talk.” In Palm Beach, he solicited support for Jack on the phone from his bullpen, where he sunbathed from about eleven thirty to lunchtime every day, naked, save for the hat on his head and the coconut butter he smeared all over his torso. “Joe used a telephone the way Heifetz played a fiddle,” his friend Morton Downey remembered. “He could do business on a telephone in a few minutes that took his supposed peers a day or a week to accomplish across a desk in an office and conference room.”15

  To court the Italian American vote, he sought Galeazzi’s assistance in arranging for Jack to be awarded “the Star of Solidarity” from the Italian government for his service to Americans of Italian descent. Lodge was so disturbed by the award that he petitioned for his own “Star of Solidarity,” as did Senator John Pastore of Rhode Island. It didn’t matter. As Kennedy gleefully wrote Galeazzi, the announcement that Jack was getting the award came out first. And, as his campaign literature noted, he was the only congressman to have ever been so honored.16

  In early April, Governor Dever finally called Jack to say that he intended to stand for reelection, leaving the path to the Senate nomination wide open. Mark Dalton, whom Jack had asked to return as campaign manager, drafted the announcement that Congressman Kennedy wo
uld be a candidate for Lodge’s seat and read it over the phone to Kennedy, Jim Landis, and Arthur Krock, who, though still Washington bureau chief for the New York Times, remained a Kennedy adviser. The statement was issued on Palm Sunday, which Archbishop Cushing thought augured well for the campaign.

  The Palm Beach season at an end, Kennedy returned north to take residence at 84 Beacon Street in Boston, just around the corner from Jack’s residence at 122 Bowdoin. The apartment had three bedrooms, one for Sargent Shriver, whom Kennedy imported from Chicago to work on the campaign, another for Rose, the third for Kennedy. The campaign team, built with Kennedy’s money, included the motley crew of volunteers and “secretaries” whom Jack had recruited during his visits through the state; professionals from previous campaigns; new advisers and media consultants like Ralph Coghlan, formerly of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, and Larry O’Brien, who had been brought in because of his contacts in Springfield and western Massachusetts; and family retainers like Landis, Fayne, Krock, and Johnnie Ford.

  The ambassador (his preferred title of address) approved every piece of campaign literature no matter where it originated; designed and oversaw radio and TV advertising; served as personal liaison with newspapers across the state, especially the Republican ones; and personally recruited Taft Republicans and independents who distrusted Lodge’s steadfast support for Truman’s foreign policy initiatives. He had spent the winter working on a position book with Elizabeth Walsh, a member of his New York staff, that referenced Jack’s record and public statements on every issue that might come up during the campaign, and on the “tabloid,” a glossy photo-and-text magazine that could be distributed door-to-door or through the mails. “He picked out the pictures and what stories went into it. He knew how to do that.” According to Sargent Shriver, Kennedy was also responsible for the campaign slogan “He will do more for Massachusetts,” with the “more” underlined.17