Report of the County Chairman

by James A. Michener

  There remains the fact that the Republican party as such also failed to wage a very effective campaign. In Bucks County, where the Republicans defeated us, we were never impressed by either the vigor or the intelligence of their effort to gain votes for Nixon. With all the advantages the party enjoyed, it should have given him a majority of 20,000. Throughout eastern Pennsylvania the story was the same. In New York and Connecticut the Republicans also failed to mount that aggressive, committed campaign that might have won. I know there is difference of opinion on this, and one Democratic visitor from California told me, “For God’s sake, don’t challenge the Republicans to work any harder. In California they ran one of the greatest campaigns I’ve ever seen and they clawed the victory away from us. They deserve all the credit you can give them.”

  In the other parts of the nation that I visited this was not so. Their campaign was sometimes effective and occasionally inspired; but the fire that characterized their nation-wide efforts in 1952 and 1956 was missing, and the principal ingredient that was lacking was dedication. A great many Republicans simply could not get excited about their candidate, and this indifference was exhibited constantly throughout the autumn.

  Many critics, while admitting Republican lassitude, argue, “The Democrats were just as bad. This was one of the dullest campaigns in history and most of the population was plain bored.” This is somewhat disproved by the record turnout of voters, nearly 69,000,000 and far in excess of pre-election estimates. At the same time, out of every 303 Americans who did vote, one, while willing to vote for the other offices, refused to cast a ballot for either Kennedy or Nixon. Across the nation a surprising total of 224,931 so refrained, enough to have swung the victory to Nixon had they supported him. In Bucks County about 300 voters rejected both candidates. These may have been disgruntled Stevensonians; more likely they were Democrats who found it morally distasteful to support either a Republican or a Catholic.

  In our county we did see some of the general apathy that was supposed to mark the campaign. From the floor people frequently asked, “Neither man is very good, is he?” Others said, “Except for that first debate, there’s been no real argument between the candidates.” Certainly the fourth debate was about as inept a performance as one could witness, with neither man saying anything new or even repeating the old effectively. But I was never willing to admit, nor am I now, that John Kennedy was inadequate. In everything he did, there was a promise of strong administration and powerful legislative leadership. However, I was quite content to have him say nothing new in the fourth debate. As one leading Democrat exulted with me the next morning, “Wasn’t it glorious that this time Jack didn’t dig any graves for himself?”

  So far as I was concerned, the election could not have been more exciting, and I think that if it had by some fiat been extended for an additional week, I would have had to go into the hospital. For if it lacked the dazzling verbal fireworks that characterized former elections, if there was no commanding figure, if the drama of great events was missing, there was nevertheless, for me at least, a quiet drama of even greater significance. A new dimension was being given to American politics in the election of a man born in this vital century. A new meaning was being added to our democracy in the removal of one more disqualification for the Presidency. Religious bigotry was dealt a crushing blow. But more important than any of these accomplishments, so far as I was concerned, was the conscious choice that America made between a candidate who talked sense and one who took refuge in bland generalities. In political significance, I found this election to be one of the most exciting of my lifetime.

  On the other hand, when it was over I was not able to think of it as particularly close, and I believe that the editorialists have been misguided in reiterating that it was. If one considers the religious handicap that John Kennedy carried into the battle, and if one remembers that Nixon should have won easily, one must conclude that Kennedy gained a rather handsome vote of approval for his political and economic policies. I do not understand those critics who preach that because of the narrowness of his plurality he is obligated to proceed cautiously. To me it would seem more proper to advise: “President Kennedy, if your policies won against such formidable odds, the people of the United States must obviously prefer them. Get on with the job.”

  Furthermore, I cannot accept current estimates of Republican strength, for the party is much weaker than it appears to be. If the Democrats won this time, think what they will achieve in 1962 and 1964 when the religious question is no longer so vital, when inexperience cannot be an issue, and when years of good administration can be pointed to with pride. If the Republicans lost this time, with all the advantages they had on their side, think of the problem they will face in 1964 when they will not be the incumbents and when they will not have the great prestige of President Eisenhower to draw upon. The 1960 election was a tremendous moral victory for the Democrats, and to denigrate it makes no sense.

  I wondered what my long-time friends Miss Omwake and Mrs. Dale thought about these matters, so I called on them after the election and they were far from resigned:

  MISS OMWAKE: I do have to admit, though, that Mr. Kennedy was very dignified in waiting to claim the election until Mr. Nixon had formally conceded.

  MRS. DALE: But I can’t ever really forgive him for cheating in the debates. A man who will cheat …

  ME: How did he cheat?

  MRS. DALE: Taking notes when Mr. Nixon didn’t.

  ME: Are you still convinced that Mr. Nixon was the better man?

  MISS OMWAKE: Of course. Mr. Kennedy will bring inflation. He’ll bring war. He’ll force socialism upon us.

  MRS. DALE: And you watch, first thing he’ll have his whole family, brothers and all, running the White House. You know what the woman down the street said, “It isn’t the Pope I fear. It’s the Pop.”

  MISS OMWAKE: But the really exciting bit is what just came over the radio. It says that Mr. Kennedy isn’t elected at all, and that the Republicans are going to get all the votes in Illinois, Texas and New Jersey.

  MRS. DALE: I’m sure the Democrats stole about half their states. I’d be very happy to see an honest recount in all the states. You’d find that Mr. Nixon was the real winner.

  MISS OMWAKE: If you could take an honest look into the ballot boxes of Philadelphia, you’d find that the Democrats had stolen the election there too.

  MRS. DALE: It’s infuriating to think that only a few more Republican votes would have won the election for Mr. Nixon.

  ME: Did you vote early in the morning?

  MRS. DALE: We didn’t bother to vote. It wasn’t a very interesting election.

  In the bars in my district broken-hearted Republicans were saying, “In this election the decent people of America were swamped by the scum. It’s really terrifying to contemplate the kind of people who are going to govern this nation.” One man garnered a lot of laughs each Saturday by announcing, “Tomorrow attend the church of your choice … while you still have a choice.”

  A woman who wore mink explained loudly, “You know who licked us? The K.K.K.”

  This was too much and I protested: “That’s a silly statement, and you know it. The only time the K.K.K. figured in this election was when some misguided idiot down south said the Klan was for Nixon. And I’m glad to say that Nixon quickly disowned them and said he didn’t want their help.”

  Because I spoke well of Nixon the woman assumed I was a Republican and confided, “Oh, when we say the K.K.K. we don’t mean the Klan. We mean the Kikes, the Koons and the Kat’lics.”

  I backed away and thought, “By God, I’m glad we won.”

  Earlier I wrote that I saw the Democratic party as a coalition in which people of many diverse types could feel at home: liberals, intellectuals, union people, Negroes, Catholics, Jews, and all who wanted to work for a vigorous new society. After the dreary conservatism of the last eight years, after the anti-intellectualism, after the deification of the country club, I felt that w
e needed the kind of leadership an entirely different kind of political force could give. I was proud during the campaign that I was working, in even a minor way, for such a force, and when it attained the victory I almost leaped with joy.

  I would be less than honest, however, if I did not admit that often during the campaign I was embarrassed by Republican hecklers who charged: “The Democratic party is a coalition all right, but not of the idealistic elements you describe. It’s a union of northern radicals and southern reactionaries.” After the results were in these same critics pointed out, “You were saved by the arch reactionaries of the South.” I do not think that because there were extremely conservative voters who backed Kennedy in some southern states that one need deny that a coalition of liberal groups was mainly responsible for his victory. Politics is the art of the possible, and if the Republicans had won, their victorious coalition would have contained elements just as diverse as ours. Knights in shining armor were not destined to capture this election, no matter which side won. Hard-headed politicians making hard-headed decisions triumphed, and I think that when John Kennedy leaves the White House in 1968 he ought to erect a statue to the man who suggested that he make his urgent phone call to Reverend Martin Luther King in that Georgia jail. Such things win elections and make it possible for coalitions like the one I supported to govern the nation.

  During the campaign there was much discussion of the role newspapers were playing, and I tried to read about eight each day. They came from Bucks County, Philadelphia, New York and wherever else possible. Of the eight, seven were strongly for Nixon, about the national average, and I think it would be stretching the metaphor to say that editorially they bent over backwards to be fair to Kennedy. One Philadelphia columnist, whose words appeared prominently on each day’s editorial page, was downright ridiculous in much of his pro-Republican ranting, and one of his columns about Adlai Stevenson was despicable. Fortunately, he did more harm than good and in many meetings Democrats quoted his worst effusions for comic relief.

  On the other hand, even though the newspapers were commanded by Republican owners, I could find no legitimate complaint against their handling of hard-fact news stories. Senator Kennedy’s positions were described and the progress of the campaign was honestly reported. This was largely because in America most working reporters are Democrats, so that no matter how urgently the owners might support Nixon, it was Democrats who wrote the stories and their preference for Kennedy could sometimes be detected.

  Furthermore, in this election the role of the independent syndicated columnist was conspicuous. Most were for Kennedy and either said so or implied as much, and Republican papers were rather gallant, I thought, in permitting these men free rein to express their opinions. Alsop, Reston, Childs, Pearson and Lippmann constantly refuted the editorial pages on which they appeared and substantiated the news columns in an admirable demonstration of what freedom of speech means.

  After the election Mr. Nixon, perhaps with accuracy, complained that he had lost the Presidency mainly because newspaper reporters had been against him and had slanted their stories in favor of Senator Kennedy. If this was true, and there is some evidence that it was, I can only call the result poetic justice. A great many newspapermen have intellectual interests, and for the past eight years they had watched an administration purposely flout the intellectual life. In those years to be an egghead was to be ridiculous and a thing of scorn. No memorable step was taken by Republicans to modify this national mucker pose, so that at a time when the intelligence of Europe and Africa, to name only two areas, was more prized than ever, the comparable intelligence of America was either ignored or actually denigrated. Everyone who worked in the arts knew this, newspapermen above all, so that if in 1960 most intellectuals of standing ardently sided with Kennedy it was an appropriate revenge.

  Belatedly, of course, the Republicans tried to institute committees of college professors and artists for Nixon, but these did more damage than good, because anyone who knew anything about the matter could not look at the resulting ill-assorted rosters without suppressing a laugh. If Mr. Nixon was correct that newspaper reporters stole the election from him, the theft was ironic retribution of an Aristotelian magnitude. Did the Republicans think that they could kick the intellectuals around for eight years and then call upon them frantically for support?

  It didn’t work that way, and any intellectual could have warned them that it wouldn’t.

  In forming a final estimate of the value of work done by people like me, I am unable to be very optimistic. Of every hundred votes cast for the Democratic party in my county I suspect that 75 percent of the people would have voted Democratic even if the ticket had been composed of Jack the Ripper and Aaron Burr. Of course, about 75 percent of the Republicans would have supported the same ticket if it had represented their side. A critical 24 percent were gotten to the polls solely by the efforts of the organized Democratic party working under the leadership of long-time professionals like Johnny Welsh and Jack Ward. That leaves one percent who might possibly have been modified in some small way by the work of amateur outfits like Citizens for Kennedy, but I doubt if the figure actually goes as high as one percent. To be specific, in Bucks County, where 57,177 people voted for Kennedy, it is possible that my organization influenced 571 votes, but to me that seems about twice too high. I can think of about 250 people that we switched from the Republican column to the Democratic. That’s one half of one percent. But of course, a swing of that proportion would have caused a landslide in the 1960 election.

  In order to win those 250 votes we spent about $5,800, the unpaid time of innumerable people, the gasoline of many cars, and the full-time energy of about ten dedicated workers. The rewards seemed so very small that I often wondered why we were doing it, and then sometimes as I toured my magnificent county and saw the old houses and the timeless footpaths and the good Germans who were against me this time, and their stout barns, and the bright new suburbs, and the children going to school, I thought: “We’re doing it because there is a nation to win.” And when the votes were in I added, “And you win a nation by convincing one man at a time, one by one. You win an election by one tenth of one percent. And that’s what you’re fighting for.”

  My motives were made clear to me on the final Saturday night of the campaign when I helped in a small way to entertain the final great rally in the Coliseum in New York. It seemed that everyone was there to participate in Senator Kennedy’s last major appearance. I sat beside Jim Farley and Carmine DeSapio. Mrs. Roosevelt and Herbert Lehman were there and Lyndon Johnson and Governor Harriman and Abe Ribicoff and John Bailey. And at the appointed time Senator Kennedy made his appearance and took his place before the microphones to address the nation in his last plea for votes.

  And I remember looking at the back of his neck and seeing that he had what seemed to be a wart on the right-hand side, just above the collar and it seemed a curious thing to me that the most conspicuous thing about the future President of the United States, so far as I was then concerned, was that he had a bump on his neck. I thought: “Is this the man for whom so many of us knocked ourselves out? Why did we do it? I don’t know him. I’ve spoken to him twice for a total of one minute, so I’m not even sure of what he thinks about really basic issues. He has nothing that I want and I am in no way beholden to him.” I watched the wart on the back of his neck as he spoke on in the voice that had become so important to me during the past eight weeks, and I was glad then that he had been so forceful on the night of that first debate when the victory march had started. I thought: “The fact is, I haven’t been working for John F. Kennedy, the imperfect man. I’ve been working for myself and for my perfect vision of what the United States can one day become. The process of selecting a President is confused and exasperating, but after much discussion a crystallization sets in, and the people, in some mysterious way, conclude: ‘He’s the man.’ This man comes to represent justice and equality and courage. It’s very doubtful that the
man about whom this crystallization begins to coalesce ever had these attributes to begin with, but the nation decides that he embodies them, so pretty soon you’re willing for him to be your President, and you’re willing to work until your voice is hoarse, because you know that if he doesn’t mature into those virtues now, then they probably don’t exist anywhere else in your nation.”

  You look at the thin young man with the reddish brown hair speaking at the microphone and you think: “For eight weeks my wife has been warning me night after night, ‘Don’t you dare call him “a young man.” That’s Republican propaganda,’ and for eight weeks I’ve been speaking of him as if he were just a little younger than Adenauer and only a bit less intelligent than Socrates. But he is a young man, and if we hadn’t had this grueling campaign he wouldn’t be even partially prepared for the Presidency. But no man, young or old, could go through what he’s gone through, the awful humiliation of begging 170,000,000 people for their votes, without experiencing the humbling impact that is required before greatness can be attained. I’m for him. I think he now knows what America is all about. I think he has guts.”