Listening In: The Secret White House Recordings of John F. Kennedy

by Ted Widmer

  JFK: No. I’ve run five times.

  CANNON: The only thing you’ve ever lost was the try for the vice presidency.

  JFK: That’s right.

  CANNON: And it really didn’t hit you very hard.

  JFK: No. At the time. I mean, that day it did.

  CANNON: What do you do, what did you say to yourself, when it happened?

  JFK: I was disappointed that day, and I was damn tired, and we came awfully close, and then we lost. By twenty-eight votes or something. And I was disappointed.

  CANNON: What did you do, go back to the hotel and go to sleep? Or have a drink?

  JFK: No, I think we went to have dinner with Eunice, didn’t we, Jackie? And then we went back afterwards.

  JACQUELINE KENNEDY: You know for five days in Chicago, Jack really hadn’t gone to bed. Nobody had. Except for two hours sleep a night. It just was this incredible … brutal thing. You don’t see how any men are that strong to stay up for five days and talk and talk …

  BRADLEE: Do you remember wanting to go into politics?

  CANNON: Not really, no.

  JFK: And here you are, around these history makers, in Washington. Do you ever think you’d rather be a politician than reporting?

  BRADLEE: Yup. Yup.

  CANNON: I think I can’t afford it. I have two children and …

  JFK: Well, you couldn’t, I mean, at this point. Now, after the war? What are you now, about forty-two or -three? Forty-one. Now let’s say 1945, you might have been able to.

  CANNON: Well, it was not a convenient thing.

  JFK: What was it, in ’45, were you in the service?

  CANNON: Yeah.

  JFK: Well, when you came home, you were pretty much [unclear].

  CANNON: Yeah, but I was … I’m not talking about myself.

  JFK: No, but I’m just trying to say, why wasn’t it possible, really, in ’45?

  CANNON: Well, basically, my problem was financial. I recognize that this was something that if you were going to be honest in, you ought to have an independent source of income.

  JFK: I don’t agree with that. I mean, it may be more difficult for me to talk about it, but I’ve seen a lot of politicians with money, and I don’t find … There’s so many kinds of being dishonest, the money part is just only one of them. I don’t really think you can prove by any test that you have to have money to be successful, politically, or that people with money are more honest than those who aren’t.

  BRADLEE: Or less honest, you mean.

  JFK: I mean more honest. People with money. They may be, not tempted by bribery, but nobody is offering people money in the Senate or the House except on the rarest occasions. There’s no idea that anybody attempts to bribe anybody in the United States Senate, with the exception of maybe, possibly …

  BRADLEE: [unclear]

  JFK: Well, here are maybe the rarest influences, but even Ben, who’s pretty tough, would have to say, maybe campaign contributors, but we all get campaign contributions, some from labor, and some from business, and I suppose that makes them perhaps somewhat responsive, but you’re responsive also to people who vote for you, veterans and other pressure groups. So I don’t think that this idea, you can’t tell me that, I’ll name him, but not for the thing, that Averell Harriman9 and these people are as political whores as anybody in the United States. Because they are desperately anxious to succeed in this profession which has so many attractions to it. So money is not really a sine qua non.

  BRADLEE: There are a thousand objections to running for politics that I … Somebody once told me that I ought to run for politics in New Hamsphire. God forbid! There were whole lots of objections, there was one that I couldn’t possibly have been elected. [laughter] You know, I mean, a Democrat in New Hampshire? For God’s sakes, I mean, I thought very very very seriously about this. Second thing was, there is something in some people’s minds that is uncomfortable at constantly being projected in the public eye, that is not uncomfortable to you and to these guys, who not only love it, but transfer it into a good thing. Whereas with somebody else it sort of snarls them up and gets them to eat their own tail. This is something about politics, who has that and why, I think is an important area of why go into politics.

  JFK: Let me now just finish this thing, though, and I’m not the best one because I do have some financial resources, so it’s rather easier for me, but I do say, looking at it objectively, that money, because you can just go through the House and the Senate, I mean, I know most of my colleagues do not have resources and they have succeeded in politics. The people with money who have succeeded are comparatively few in politics. I mean, it’s just most of them don’t go into politics, if they have money, and if they do go into politics, they’re not any better than their colleagues. I mean, they are just as susceptible to pressure and in many ways more susceptible to pressure because they are desperately anxious, this is their tremendous chance to break through the rather narrow lives they may lead. So they’re just as anxious to succeed. That’s why I say to you, merely getting beaten, the financial problem is an additional one, but not the chief one. The chief one is being cut off from this fascinating life at mid-age, which is what you’re suggesting to me. Now, I can survive, but it’s still being cut off.

  BRADLEE: What about the projection of one’s self? The only comparable field I can think of is a movie star.

  JFK: No, but I think I personally am the antithesis of a politician as I saw my grandfather who was the politician. I mean, every reason that I say, that he was ideal. What he loved to do was what politicians are expected to do. Now I just think that today …

  CANNON: Don’t you?

  JFK: No, I don’t. I don’t enjoy. I’d rather read a book on a plane than talk to the fellow next to me, and my grandfather wanted to talk to everybody else. I’d rather not go out to dinner.

  TONY BRADLEE: You look as though you enjoy it. Which helps.

  BRADLEE: But Jack, that whole projection that comes with modern times.

  JFK: I think I just happen to fit now. I mean, I think people don’t like this.

  JACQUELINE KENNEDY: I think that’s a nineteenth-century politician, don’t you, like your grandfather, that you people are suspicious of?

  BRADLEE: Now the politicians have to be constantly on the air.

  JFK: Bill Fullbright—he’s not on the air. He has a particular personality. I have a particular type of personality which, I [don’t?] look like a politician, and all the rest, which helps me. Everybody isn’t an extrovert in politics. I would say that a lot of the Senate certainly are not extroverts.

  BRADLEE: Well, name me one.

  JFK: Who’s not? Mike Mansfield is not an extrovert. John Cooper is not an extrovert. Richard M. Nixon is not an extrovert. Stuart Symington is a tricky extrovert, if he is one. I don’t think he is one. Hubert is. I’m not.10

  BRADLEE: But Jack, I mean, you are! No?

  JFK: No, I don’t think I am, actually.

  BRADLEE: But you like it. And you live on it.

  JFK: All these things may be true. Listen, I’m just saying, what I would be doing, you know I don’t go out to dinner.

  BRADLEE: I know, I’m not trying to provoke you.

  JFK: I understand. I’d be delighted if I had Hubert Humphrey’s disposition. He thrives on this. He loves to go out and campaign for five days. It’s a lot of work. I just don’t think you have to have that type of personality to be successful today in politics. I think you have to be able to communicate a sense of conviction and intelligence and rather, some integrity. That’s what you have to be able to do. This hail-fellow is passé in many ways. Those three qualities are really it. Now, I think that some people can do that. I think I do that well. I mean, I’ve been really successful, politically. I think I can do that. But it isn’t anything to do with being able to go out and just love it. Dancing [unclear], the Fourth of July.

  CANNON: Something you naturally do?

  JFK: In my first campaign somebody said to me
that he thought after I spoke that I would be governor of Massachusetts in ten years. I think I did well from the beginning in this particular key.

  BRADLEE: Did that statement create things in you?

  JFK: No, but I didn’t think it was possible, but I was pleased. Because I had not regarded myself as a political type. My father didn’t, he thought I was hopeless.

  CANNON: Go into that.

  JFK: I mean, Joe was made for it, and I certainly wasn’t.

  BRADLEE: Why was Joe? I never knew Joe obviously, but why?

  JFK: He [Joe] was more a type, an extrovert type.

  BRADLEE: Now why did the old boy think you were hopeless?

  JFK: At that time I weighed about 120 pounds. [laughter] Where was that picture we saw with Franklin Roosevelt, in the paper?

  JACQUELINE KENNEDY: Oh yeah. That’s in your old campaign photo?

  JFK: No, the one we just saw, in the Boston Globe, Sunday.

  BRADLEE: Jack, long before I knew you, when I was covering the federal courts in the District of Columbia, you used to, in the contempt cases, you used to come down and testify, “Yes, there was a quorum present. Yes, I was there. Yes, me and one other guy was there, which made up a quorum.” And you looked like the wrath of God. I can see you there now. You weighed 120, and you were bright green. You really were.

  JFK: There’s a picture that the Boston Globe ran Sunday, which had the veterans rally in ’47, Franklin Roosevelt and I, and I looked like a cadaver.

  BRADLEE: But that color was just fantastic. You were really green …

  JFK: Adrenal deficiency.

  BRADLEE: This was 1948, it must have been, ’48 or ’49.

  JFK: Forty-seven or -eight, I guess. Well, the point of the matter is, that’s why my father thought that I was not equipped for political life. [unclear]

  BRADLEE: And you’d been a congressman for two years. Did you run for Congress with this greenness?

  JFK: Oh yeah. Greener.

  TONY BRADLEE: What was that? That was atabrine?

  JFK: It was atabrine, malaria, and probably some adrenal deficiency,

  BRADLEE: Addison’s? What is that damn disease?

  JFK: Addison’s Disease, they said I have. Jack [unclear] asked me today if I have it.

  BRADLEE: Who?

  JFK: Drew Pearson’s man. I said no, God, a guy with Addison’s Disease looks sort of brown and everything. [laughter] Christ! See, that’s the sun.

  TONY BRADLEE: But then your back was later on.

  JFK: No, my back was in ’45.

  TONY BRADLEE: But then you were operated on after.

  JFK: I was operated on in ’45 too. All these things came together. I was a wreck.

  BRADLEE: When was that big slice, just north of your behind there, when was that?

  JFK: That was ’45, then again in ’54, and again in ’56.

  JACQUELINE KENNEDY: Yeah, he was all better, his crutch broke, and he had to go back again.

  CANNON: Does it ever concern you that you have lost your sense of privacy? You obviously can’t have … since everybody knows you now.

  JFK: That’s the real pleasure about Jamaica in a way. You really can’t go anyplace particularly now without … But I don’t mind, I think that’s part of running, so I’m delighted, really. I used to walk down the streets in ’45 and nobody knew me. Now that’s fifteen years of effort has gone into getting known. I mean, it isn’t pleasant for the person, but as an investment of energy it represents some …

  CANNON: What’s your reaction when someone comes up and says, “I saw you on television”?

  JFK: They come from Massachusetts? [laughter] It’s all right. I don’t mind. I’m asking their support, so, you know.

  CANNON: Do you take any special efforts to maintain a sense of privacy? Do you have a private phone? Unlisted?

  JFK: I do. But everybody seems to have it.

  [break]

  JFK: Have we covered everything?

  BRADLEE: I just would like two minutes on the magic of politics. [laughter] Because I go back to this guy who told me I ought to run against Styles Bridges.11 And for about two minutes, I just talked. And there was this whole marvelous sense of mission, that you’ve been thinking about. Somebody must have said that to you. “You can be … ,” never mind president, but you can go so high. It’s an adrenaline on a man.

  JFK: I agree. It’s stimulating. Because you’re dealing with … Life is a struggle and you’re struggling in a tremendous sort of arena. It’s like playing Yale every Saturday, in a sense.

  BRADLEE: But the drama of it. I don’t know, somehow …

  JFK: How could it be more interesting than this sort of checkerboard chess struggle of the next seven months?

  BRADLEE: Talk about that, because this is what appeals to me most about you.

  JFK: I mean, look at the cold decisions that have to be made that are really life or death. I mean, running in Wisconsin? And what do we do about Mike DiSalle?12 And how can it be handled?

  CANNON: There are 175,999,995 people who aren’t interested in it. You say, “What could be more interesting?” Why are you this interested, and the rest of the millions aren’t?

  JFK: Well, if they were in it. I mean, their lives are interesting to them. I’m having the same struggle that they’re having in a different sphere, but in the most sort of dramatic way, for the great effort, the presidency of the United States, my checkerboard struggle is going on. As I say, what is sports, spectator sports, the same thing. Johnny Unitas,13 he might find it interesting to play in a sandlot team, in front of four people, but he’s playing for the Colts, the best team in the United States, for the world championship. I mean, I must say, he must find that very absorbing. I’m not comparing the presidency with that, but I’m just saying that, how could it be more fascinating than to run for president under the obstacles and the hurdles that are before me.

  DICTABELT RECORDING, CIRCA 1960

  This recording, probably from early 1960, reveals Kennedy to be thinking deeply about his life and the reasons he went into politics, which he declares, with considerable understatement, to be “my present profession.” It includes a personal confession that he was “at loose ends” following the war and that his entry into politics was somewhat accidental. But as he also knew well, politics was in his DNA, and he accepted his destiny with good cheer and a willingness to work hard. Certain phrases are repeated from the January dinner party conversation, suggesting that it was recorded not long after. But this version shows him telling the story without interruption, and with a more polished ending. A similar version was submitted to James Cannon for inclusion in his book Politics U.S.A. This proto-memoir recounts some of the earliest circumstances of his entry into politics, and his constant desire to get near “the center of action.” In 1960, that is precisely where he found himself.

  JFK: Mrs. Lincoln, is this tape in? Is this plugged in? Is this plugged in? One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten. In a sense, it is important and desirable that people feel this way about politics and politicians in a free society. A politician’s power may be great, and with this power goes the necessity of checking it.

  But the fact remains that politics has become one of our most abused and neglected professions … Yet it is this profession, it is these politicians who make the great decisions of war and peace, prosperity and recession, the decision whether we look to the future or the past. In a large sense everything now depends upon what the government decides.

  Therefore, if you are interested, if you want to participate, if you feel strongly about any public question, whether it’s labor, what happens in India, the future of American agriculture, whatever it may be, it seems to me that governmental service is the way to translate this interest into action, that the natural place for the concerned citizen is to contribute part of his life to the national interest. Like many decisions in life, a combination of factors pressed on me, which directed me into my present profession.


  I was at loose ends at the end of the war. I was reluctant to begin law school again. I was not very interested in following a business career. I was vitally interested in national and international life, and I was the descendant of three generations, on both sides of my family, of men who had followed the political profession. In my early life, conversation was nearly always about politics. My father, who had directed much of his energy into business, nevertheless, as the son of a Massachusetts state senator, was himself interested in politics. My mother, also, shared the interest. Her father had been mayor and a United States congressman, and both my great uncles were state senators and my father’s first cousin was mayor of Brockton, Massachusetts.14

  For all the Irish immigrants, the way up in Boston was clearly charted. The doors of business were shut. The way to rise above being a laborer was through politics. So they all went into it, everybody in the Kennedy or the Fitzgerald family. But I never thought at school and college that I would ever run for office myself. One politician was enough in the family and my brother Joe was obviously going to be that politician.15 I hadn’t considered myself a political type and he filled all the requirements for political success. When he was twenty-four he was elected as a delegate to the Democratic convention in 1940, and I think his political success would have been assured. I [unclear] recall that I was a freshman at Harvard when Henry Cabot Lodge16 was elected to the United States Senate. I don’t suppose I ever thought, in those days, that I would someday run against him and defeat him for the Senate. I suppose there’s some freshman in college, today, who isn’t aware that he’s probably going to end up by defeating me sometime.

  My brother Joe was killed in Europe as a flyer in August 1944, and that ended our hopes for him. But I didn’t even start to think about a political profession until more than a year later. When the war came, I didn’t know what I was going to do … and I didn’t find it oppressive that I didn’t know. In ’44 and ’45 I had been in the hospital for about a year recovering from some injuries I received in the Pacific. Then I worked as a reporter covering the San Francisco conference, the British election, and the Potsdam meeting, all in 1945.17