Bobby Kennedy
Page 16
Bobby, Jack, and Lyndon Johnson at the Biltmore Hotel, 1960.
CHAPTER TWELVE
THE ENEMY WITHIN
“Friend is sometimes a word devoid of meaning; enemy, never.”
—VICTOR HUGO
Jack and Bobby’s partnership served their mutual goal, to see the older of them achieve the presidency of their country. Yet the division of labor between the two brothers could easily be confounding.
Jack was a charmer, with a lightness about him, and a 150-watt smile. This affable affect masked an innate coldness. Bobby’s emotions ran hot—in anger or in empathy. With regard to the running of the campaign, Jack never lost sight of the road ahead and how the ever-shifting strategies needed to close the distance between himself and victory. For Bobby, the politics was day-to-day, and personal. He kept track of who was loyal and who was not; who was friend, who was enemy.
This difference in their outlooks would reveal itself sharply in their view of one man: Lyndon Johnson. If they complemented each other as they jointly moved forward through the months of 1960, they clashed in their assessment of the Texan’s potential value to their effort. Bobby didn’t trust him, never had, and didn’t see the current moment as the time to start. Jack, though, was pragmatic, maintaining his belief that Johnson might prove to be of use.
Dealing with this larger-than-life operator seemed to Jack simply elemental in the political menagerie. He called him a “riverboat gambler,” appreciating his “pluses” while remembering never to lose sight of his “minuses.” To Bobby, on the other hand, Johnson was a figure of ill will from the start. The idea of ever needing him—even tolerating him—for any purpose was abhorrent to him.
In short, it was a matter of either appreciating what Lyndon Baines Johnson could do for them or disdaining him for who he was. Unlike Bobby, his brother was willing to do what was necessary, stepping past any history of bad blood. It was a matter of geography. As a New Englander and Roman Catholic, Jack needed a ticket balancer. The Texan was the ideal candidate to be his running mate: Southern, Protestant, and battle-hardened.
The Democratic National Convention was now looming on the horizon.
On July 4, exactly one week before the Democrats were set to convene at the Los Angeles Memorial Sports Arena, a press conference was staged in the host city. Two Johnson surrogates—aide John Connally, then an ambitious young figure in Texas politics, and former party official India Edwards—stood before a crowd of newsmen to divulge vital information about the front-running candidate that they believed American voters needed to know. They revealed that forty-three-year-old Jack Kennedy suffered from Addison’s disease. This fact, they said, would jeopardize his ability to serve adequately as the country’s leader.
Springing into action, Bobby Kennedy held his own press conference to contain the damage. Speaking with a family member’s authority, he told reporters that his brother didn’t suffer from what is “classically defined as Addison’s Disease.” He was quibbling, though reporters couldn’t know it. The story faded as quickly as it had appeared.
The next day, what wasn’t supposed to have happened did. Lyndon Johnson declared his candidacy for president. Joining the race this late, the Texan’s best hope was to keep his Massachusetts colleague from gaining a majority of delegates on the first ballot. This way, he could keep the nomination open. Yet by tossing his hat in the ring, Johnson was now brazenly breaking the second of three promises he’d made to Bobby Kennedy during his ranch visit. He’d told him that he wouldn’t be a candidate and that he wouldn’t do anything to hurt Jack’s run.
Questioning a candidate’s mortality showed a desperation, and a bitterness, that couldn’t be masked. The true message behind the Addison’s revelation he’d orchestrated was clear: if he couldn’t have the nomination, Johnson didn’t want Jack to have it. The fact, which he refused to face, was that Jack Kennedy had sewn up the nomination back in West Virginia. With his brother at his side, he’d won every primary he’d entered—and that’s what mattered now.
The Kennedys came west armed with what they believed to be reliable delegate counts the campaign had been collecting for months. Such political intel was the name of the game. Back then, only a fraction of those arriving in Los Angeles had been selected in the primaries, the rest were under the influence of state leaders. The cultivation of these make-or-break allies had obviously been the organization’s top priority, with the complex tallying process accomplished under the oversight of Bobby and Dave Hackett.
Meanwhile, as more and more Democrats poured into Los Angeles, speculation on who might wind up filling the ticket’s second spot became part of the pre-opening buzz. The likely Democratic nominee’s brother had a favorite. On the Saturday before the convention, Bobby told Seattle Times reporter Ed Guthman he was pushing for Scoop Jackson.
The Washington State lawmaker had served alongside Bobby, its chief counsel, on the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. “He’s my choice,” the campaign manager declared, “and Jack likes him. But between now and Thursday he is going to have to convince some of the midwestern and eastern leaders that he can help the ticket the most. We’ve told him that. I hope he can do it.”
Jack Kennedy, meanwhile, still had come to no conclusion about who might best serve his vice presidential needs. A variety of factors figured, but in the end his focus was on a single goal. And that was how to amass the winning amount of electoral votes in November’s general election.
Examining the data, the importance of the Democrats holding the Southern states was vital. In the previous two presidential elections, both lost by the Democrats, not just Texas but also Louisiana, Florida, Virginia, and Tennessee had gone to Eisenhower-Nixon.
Members of Jack’s circle of Washington buddies were on the case. Among these friends were Washington Post publisher Phil Graham and nationally syndicated columnist Joe Alsop. Each now began pointing out to him the wisdom of choosing none other than Lyndon Johnson. It was the worldly Alsop, in fact, who not only stressed the political logic of picking Johnson . . . but also the dangers of not doing so.
The convention—with all its many time-honored rituals—began Monday. On Tuesday, the eve of the presidential balloting, Tip O’Neill delivered a message to fellow Bostonian John Kennedy. It was from Speaker of the House Sam Rayburn, Lyndon Johnson’s Texas mentor. He was relaying the information that if Kennedy offered him the vice presidential nomination, Johnson would take it.
Meanwhile Johnson was continuing to stir up anti-Kennedy sentiment. He now went after Joseph P. Kennedy’s reputation as a World War II “appeaser,” hoping to attach the sins of the father to the sons.
Jack and Bobby had spent their public lives trying to overcome this legacy. Now, before the convention cameras, Lyndon Johnson was taunting them with their paternal history: “I wasn’t any Chamberlain umbrella man,” Johnson declared vehemently to a group of delegates, referring to the trademark umbrella of the British prime minister at Munich. “I didn’t think Hitler was right.”
Following that, he’d made it his business to draw attention once again to Jack’s failure to cast a vote in the Joe McCarthy censure. He was saying that the front-runner was neither a loyal Democrat nor even a decent American.
This enraged Bobby. Spotting a Johnson aide not long after, he erupted venomously. “You’ve got your nerve! Lyndon Johnson has compared my father to the Nazis and John Connally lied in saying my brother is dying. You people are running a stinking damned campaign and you’re gonna get yours when the time comes!”
And if the blatant anti-Kennedy attacks weren’t enough, Johnson had one further trick up his sleeve. In his ongoing effort to prevent a first-ballot win for Jack, he plunged into a backroom effort on behalf of the already twice nominated (and twice defeated) Adlai Stevenson. On Wednesday, Johnson ally Eugene McCarthy went forth to do the honors, delivering the most eloquent speech of the convention for Stevenson. “Do not reject this man who made us all proud to be Democrats.”
Just fourteen at the time, I remember the excitement in the broadcast booths at the prospect of an eleventh-hour Stevenson win, a repeat of what had occurred in Chicago eight years earlier. But the smart observers caught the problem: the excitement for the two-time nominee was primarily up in the galleries, packed with his liberal California supporters. Down on the floor, the delegates were quietly committed to Kennedy. It was Stevenson’s last hurrah.
Bobby was now in total command. “I want the cold facts,” he demanded of his delegate counters. “There’s no point in fooling ourselves. I want to hear the votes we’re guaranteed to get on the first ballot.” The information system he’d set in place, not to mention his own prodigious efforts to keep the troops in line, was producing exactly the hoped-for results.
Jack needed 761 delegates to win the nomination. They’d arrived with 600 already in pocket. The rest would have to be squeezed by the time of the balloting on Wednesday. Late that night, after the decisive roll call had confirmed what most had expected, Jack Kennedy was officially declared the Democratic presidential candidate. Bobby’s numbers proved on the mark.
As good as the Kennedy effort was on the math side, there was still a problem brewing on the human front: the question of whom Jack would select as his running mate.
Soon after receiving the nomination, Jack sent a message to Missouri’s senator Stuart Symington—with an invitation to join him on the ticket. But that pairing was not to be. An event occurred much later that night that would set the drama’s key figures on a different course. Lyndon Johnson now dispatched a note expressing his support to Jack Kennedy. He’d made an insistent point that it be hand-delivered, with no possibility—none—of its not quickly reaching the candidate.
Whatever Jack thought of this, we know what he did. Contacting Johnson at 8 a.m., he arranged for them to meet at ten in the Texan’s room two floors down. There he asked Johnson if he’d like to be his running mate. Johnson said he would.
In the hours that followed, events become murkier.
However he’d expected Johnson to answer, Jack Kennedy had indeed put the vice presidency out there on the table, and Lyndon had grabbed it.
But then there arose Robert Kennedy’s fury when he heard the news. In addition to his own feelings, there were objective problems. At the top of the list were the reform-minded labor leaders with whom Bobby had formed a mutually respectful relationship during his Rackets Committee days. There were also the party’s liberals. Hadn’t Jack spent the past four years trying to convince that Democratic voting bloc he was one of them?
A group of union representatives, arriving now in the Kennedy suite, were livid. Ken O’Donnell said he’d never seen Bobby “so savagely attacked in his life. They felt bruised and betrayed by the choice of LBJ.”
Jack, looking to break the tension over what he’d done by choosing Johnson, now reassured his brother. “I’m forty-three years old,” he said. “I’m not going to die in office.”
Still, the stored-up hatred for the Texan felt by Bobby Kennedy couldn’t be appeased. Inviting him to be part of the Kennedy campaign felt to him as if a foreign organ was being implanted in the political body the two brothers had formed over the years.
Shaken by his brother’s fierce resistance, Jack now agreed he’d been wrong to make the offer. The challenge was how to take it back without giving dangerous offense to Johnson.
The difficult task—as was so regularly the case with their unpleasant jobs—fell to Bobby. Arriving at the Johnson suite, he was met by Rayburn and Connally, both assuming he was there to confirm the deal and make arrangements for the announcement.
They’d guessed wrong. “Johnson can’t accept this nomination,” Bobby bluntly informed them. “It was a mistake.” Then he cited labor’s objections to Johnson. They were in an uproar, he said, which meant there’d be a fight on the convention floor if Jack put Johnson on the ticket. Cutting to the chase, he suggested a consolation prize—that the Senate leader, instead, take the role of national party chairman.
“Shit” was Rayburn’s response to hearing this.
With the hours passing, and not managing to come face-to-face with Johnson himself, Bobby kept trying to get past his gatekeepers. At last, after several visits to the Johnson suite, he managed to get to him. He began by warning the majority leader of the amount of delegate opposition the Kennedy effort was likely to encounter if they went ahead and selected him.
The Johnson people, clearly upset that Bobby had gotten past them to see LBJ, now demanded a reckoning. An immediate one. This could come from only one source, Jack Kennedy. When the presidential nominee was reached, he settled it, but not with the decision Bobby had sought. “Bobby’s been out of touch and doesn’t know what’s happening,” was at the heart of what he said. Then Bobby himself was handed the phone. Though he’d been preparing last-minute arguments, he’d recognized his own cause was lost.
“It’s too late now,” he told Jack and hung up.
The exhausted nominee, torn by the arguments and uncertainties, was still adjusting to the fact of his decision. “Don’t worry, Jack,” his father told him after the announcement was made. “In two weeks they’ll be saying it’s the smartest thing you ever did.”
But their dad’s scorecard wasn’t Bobby’s. He didn’t believe the ends—assembling a winning ticket in November—excused getting in bed with Lyndon Johnson. In his mind, his brother had now chosen a liar for a running mate, a man who’d publicly claimed Jack was dying, who’d derided the family’s patriotism, despite it having given one son to their country and nearly a second. How could Bobby Kennedy live with this?
“Yesterday was the best day of my life,” he told Jack’s friend Charlie Bartlett late on Thursday. “Today is the worst day.”
Teddy, Bobby, and Pat in Hyannis Port the night of the 1960 presidential election.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
VICTORY
“Kick him in the balls.”
—BOBBY’S ADVICE TO JACK, SEPTEMBER 26, 1960
Jack Kennedy now faced the daunting challenge of the general election. Richard Nixon, having won the Republican nomination handily, selected Kennedy’s old rival Henry Cabot Lodge as his running mate. Right through to election day the polls would show the two tickets historically close.
With the November 8 election drawing closer, the Democratic candidate accepted an invitation to address the Greater Houston Ministerial Association, a Protestant ministers group. It was the chance to face down the religious issues directly. It was, in Ted Kennedy’s words, an appearance that “even the normally fearless Bobby had advised against.”
It turned out to be Kennedy’s most effective speech to date. Another family member, Jacqueline Kennedy, expressed a different opinion. She saw no reason why her husband was having to defend his religious commitment. “I think it so unfair of people to be against Jack because he’s a Catholic,” she quipped to a family friend. “He’s such a poor Catholic. Now, if it were Bobby, I could understand it.”
What she didn’t grasp was how her brother-in-law was finding ways to turn the Kennedys’ religion to political advantage. One was to barnstorm through New York’s Catskill mountain resorts explaining to Jewish audiences that an attack on one religion could easily lead to assaults against others.
And even as both Kennedys reminded non-Catholics of the quintessential American notion of religious tolerance, they appealed to the ethnic and religious tribalism of Irish, Italian, and Polish voters. When Jack arrived that fall to campaign in Milwaukee, a newspaper photograph showed popular congressman Clem Zablocki draping the candidate in his own overcoat on an especially chilly day. As Zablocki at the time portrayed the gesture he’d made for his fellow Democrat: “Not only do we keep you warm; we provide you votes.”
• • •
The Kennedy an
d Nixon campaigns had agreed to four nationally televised debates, the first to be held on September 26. Never before had such a face-to-face between candidates occurred with the country watching.
Arriving at the CBS studio, Jack refused director Don Hewitt’s offer of makeup before going on the air. More than an instinctive “no, thanks,” it was a cagey move. Ted Kennedy explained it this way: “Jack, who’d needled Hubert Humphrey for wearing TV makeup in Wisconsin, said he wouldn’t go into the makeup room unless Nixon went first. Nixon said he would not go in unless Kennedy was seen going in as well.”
Nixon, who’d just spent two weeks in the hospital for an infected leg—it had kept him off the campaign trail—looked it. But Bobby, spotting a chance for mischief, reassured a Nixon aide that there was nothing to worry about. In fact, it was just the opposite. The Republican candidate looked “terrific!”
Nixon now felt trapped by the thought his rival would mock him just as he’d teased Humphrey for unmanly primping the previous spring. He now made the unfortunate decision to cover his darkening five o’clock shadow with a product called Lazy Shave, a kind of powder concealer.
Meanwhile, Jack was being devious. Bill Wilson, the media expert Bobby had brought into the campaign, walked me through the goings-on that historic night. “I was in the green room,” Wilson recalled. “Bobby was there. Anyway, I said, ‘Okay, we’ve got to close it down. Jack needs about ten minutes before he goes on to get quiet, and I’ve got to put some makeup on him.’ ” Ironically, the candidate with the healthy tan was taking cosmetic help while the one with the sickroom pallor was not.
Before departing the candidate’s holding room, Bobby added a bit of spirit to the night’s main event: “Kick him in the balls,” he cheered on his brother.