When Jackson entered the apartment he was surprised to find the living room filled with people. Usually the place was deserted at this early hour. He soon saw why—sitting on the sofa was Joseph Kennedy. The father, who usually operated from his own rooms was making one of his rare visits to the apartment. The candidate was evidently still in bed. The others were mainly advertising and public-relations people. While the group watched nervously, Jackson pulled out his document and started to read it.
He had got through three sentences when Joseph Kennedy sprang to his feet with such force that he upset a small table in front of him. He stormed over to Jackson almost as if he would attack him.
“You and your friends are trying to ruin my son’s career!” He was not opposed to McCarthy, he shouted; he had contributed to his campaign. Again and again he returned to the charge that liberals and union people were hurting his son. The Jews were against him, too. In the midst of the hubbub, young Kennedy appeared. He took neither side—indeed, he hardly spoke to Jackson or to his father—and soon he and Reardon slipped out for the day’s campaigning. Jackson left soon afterward, the great challenge back in his pocket.
A few days later, Jackson was sitting in the same living room at the same hour, while the candidate dressed in the bedroom.
“They gave you a bad time, Pat?” Kennedy called casually through the half-open door.
“How do you explain your father, Jack?” Jackson asked.
Kennedy was silent for a few moments. “Just love of family.” He paused and then corrected himself: “No. Pride of family.”
Kennedy kept mum on the McCarthy issue. Lodge’s eventual endorsement of McCarthy for re-election in Wisconsin was not enough to mollify conservative Republicans in Massachusetts. Basil Brewer continued to busy himself in Kennedy’s behalf. He visited John Fox, publisher of the Boston Post, and urged him to oppose Lodge and support Kennedy on the grounds that Lodge had no firm convictions, and perhaps, too, on the grounds that he had been soft on communism. When Lodge later refused to “explain himself” to Fox, the publisher wrote a front-page editorial endorsing Kennedy. Fox said long afterward that he then had tried to reach Kennedy without success; at one of the telephone numbers, however, he found Joseph Kennedy, who came over for a drink and a talk. Shortly after the election, Fox obtained a loan of half a million dollars for the money-losing Post from Joseph Kennedy. This loan, the senior Kennedy later said, was a regular commercial transaction and was repaid in sixty days at full interest.
Battle of the Teacups
Dogged by discord in his own ranks, and still faced with an elusive opponent, Kennedy did what successful politicians often do under such circumstances—he let the two sides follow their own strategy separately while he pursued his. While his cohorts peppered away at Lodge from both right and left, Kennedy attacked him for taking contradictory positions on a host of issues, including trade with communist countries, civil rights, price control, China, troops to Europe, rent control. However, he evaded a clean confrontation on national issues—to the extent this was ever possible between two such like-minded men—by basing his campaign on local and state problems.
“Kennedy will do MORE for Massachusetts,” billboards and posters proclaimed.
Lodge was not to be outdone.
“Lodge has done—and Will Do—the MOST for Massachusetts,” his placards proclaimed back.
Kennedy’s billboards outnumbered Lodge’s, but the Congressman learned early that billboards could not do the job alone. One night, returning to Boston from Worcester, he and a friend stopped off at a roadside restaurant. As they got out of the car, Kennedy observed happily a huge Kennedy billboard of the most expensive kind looming over the restaurant, and blazoning forth in enormous letters, “JOHN F. KENNEDY FOR SENATOR.” After gulping down a chocolate milk shake, Kennedy paid his check to the manager. He stuck out his hand.
“Hello, I’m John Kennedy.”
The man looked at him vaguely. “Who?”
“John F. Kennedy, running for United States Senator.”
“Oh—John Kennedy. Running for what?”
Kennedy walked out, took another look up at the sign, and drove on in eloquent silence.
Lodge’s whole offensive was now in full swing, but for a Massachusetts campaign the contest was remarkably mild and gentlemanly. Cautiously, the men shadowboxed with each other; it seemed hard for the blue blood and the green blood to join battle. Lodge backed Eisenhower’s program in the hope that the General would sweep the state, but otherwise he, too, was forced back on local issues. He made something of Kennedy’s absenteeism, only to have his opponent charge him with absenteeism on more important issues. The two men met face to face on one or two occasions. Once, 1,200 people crowded into a junior-high-school hall in Waltham to watch the expected fireworks, but the two men argued affably and even said nice things about each other. On debating points, the result was a standoff, although Kennedy proved that in force and in presence he compared well with his more experienced rival. Kennedy disarmed his opponent at the start by admitting that the Truman administration had made some serious mistakes, although it had done a good job as a whole. Two of the most serious issues on the national election front—Korea and McCarthyism—seemed out of bounds in Massachusetts’ campaign.
Still, by late September, Kennedy’s campaign showed signs of faltering, mainly because he had been stumping so long and Lodge was just getting under way. The Senator was especially effective in speaking to French-American groups in fluent, idiomatic French, in appearing before Italian audiences in the company of a noted Italo-American artist, Francesca Braggiotti (the wife of his brother, Governor John Lodge, of Connecticut), and in talking to isolationist Irish-Americans who remembered his grandfather’s battle against the League. Jim Curley, hoping to get revenge for Kennedy’s refusal to sign his pardon petition, was giving aid and comfort to the Lodge forces. And Lodge finally met the McCarthy problem by saying bluntly that he was supporting all Republican candidates, specifically including Joseph McCarthy.
There were signs, too, that an Eisenhower sweep was in the making even in Massachusetts, which had not voted for a Republican candidate for President since Coolidge. Stevenson’s independence and his divorce disturbed many Democrats who regularly voted for their party. Kennedy asked his workers to help Stevenson, too, and he appeared with him when the Governor toured Massachusetts. But Kennedy was running his campaign separately from all other candidates—an old custom in Massachusetts—and it was clear that many of his supporters liked the combination of “Ike and Jack.” For his part, Stevenson strongly endorsed Kennedy, calling him “my type of guy.”
With betting odds now even between the two candidates, Kennedy unsheathed a secret weapon unusual even in Massachusetts, where the politicos felt they had seen everything. For weeks, thousands of Massachusetts women had been finding in their mail formal invitations to a series of receptions throughout the state. The invitation for one such affair read:
Reception in honor of
Mrs. Joseph P. Kennedy
and her son
Congressman John F. Kennedy
Wednesday evening, October 1, 1952
at 8 o’clock
at the
Commander Hotel, Cambridge, Mass.
Guests Invited [union label]
Printed on sleek white cards, encased in hand-addressed vellum envelopes, the invitations seemed to have no relation to politics, except perhaps for the union label. The star of the affair was Rose Kennedy. Still youthful-looking and stylish in a dignified way, she gave a simple, motherly tribute to her son that made the real campaign seem far off and somehow unimportant. At first, Kennedy’s aides tried to write her speeches for her (“Of all places on earth, Boston is, and always has been, dearest to me …). But ghostwriting was unnecessary; Rose’s own stories about bringing up her children were better even than tributes to local pride. Sisters Eunice, Jean, and Pat managed the affairs with their usual charm and gusto. The candidate
gave a short talk, barely touching on issues and ending with a request that each of the ladies come up on the stage so that he and his mother and sisters could meet them and later have a cup of tea with them.
“For approximately two hours,” a newsman reported of one such affair, “an unbroken line of women filed slowly across the stage, shaking hands with each of the Kennedys, mumbling confused introductions and pleasantries, and pushed on through a side door into the lobby still packed with those waiting their turn to go through the receiving line. Along one side of the spacious room were long tables with harassed waitresses—pouring tea and coffee and serving cookies. (Total consumption was reported later at 8,600 cups.) … An air of pleasant, chattering amiability prevailed in spite of a few splattered dresses and two faintings. When the handshaking in the ballroom was finally completed around 10:30, the Kennedys, looking wilted but determined, came in for tea themselves.”
The Kennedy receptions were a smashing success. In this television age, when it is almost impossible to induce people to leave their TV sets to see candidates in the flesh, 50,000 women, by a conservative estimate, turned out to meet the Kennedys. Most important, the women went home talking about it—gossiping over the back fence, telling their in-laws, and planting the Kennedy name firmly in the minds of women who would not dream of following an election campaign. And the guests were carefully selected from a racial, religious, national, and political cross section, so that Kennedy talk would go back to every part of their communities.
As election day neared, the activity of the Kennedy family reached its peak tempo. The sisters held house parties; their mother toured Boston wards; Kennedy shook hands on city sidewalks. To blanket the state in one fell swoop, the family twice put on a homey “Coffee with the Kennedys” television program, showing mother and children chattering happily on a sofa, for the viewing of which campaign workers were asked to arrange little parties in their homes. The campaign almost ran out of Kennedys; on one occasion, Bob had to leave headquarters to give one of the shortest political speeches on record:
“My brother Jack couldn’t be here, my mother couldn’t be here, my sister Eunice couldn’t be here, my sister Pat couldn’t be here, my sister Jean couldn’t be here, but if my brother Jack were here, he’d tell you Lodge has a very bad voting record. Thank you.”
On election eve, Kennedy toured the Gloucester water front in the fog and drizzle of a November afternoon. The sisters buttonholed astonished riders of the Boston subways. Nearby, at the Boston Garden, Eisenhower was the center of a glittering all-star political extravaganza that the Kennedy forces suspected had been put on in Boston to rescue Lodge. On election night, Kennedy sat, tense but cool, with a large group of friends at campaign headquarters. Down the street, they could see the lighted windows of the opposition camp. The returns swayed back and forth, but Kennedy was serene throughout. Early in the morning, when Eisenhower’s sweep was clear and Lodge was ahead, Kennedy and Torby Macdonald left the feverish campaign headquarters and went for a walk in the Boston Public Garden. “I wonder what job Eisenhower’s going to give Lodge,” Kennedy speculated. He had no doubt of his own victory. At six in the morning, Lodge conceded and left his office. Only then did the Kennedy forces relax, too tired to celebrate.
Kennedy beat Lodge by 1,211,984 to 1,141,247, a margin of over 70,000 votes. Eisenhower overcame Stevenson in Massachusetts by 208,800 votes. Dever lost to the Republican candidate for governor, Christian Herter, by a close margin. Like a sapling, left standing amid uprooted oaks, Kennedy was suddenly the dominant political figure in the state, eclipsing even McCormack.
How had he done it? Political pundits in Boston had a multitude of theories—Kennedy’s money, his father’s influence and mobilization of public-relations people, the tea parties, the Kennedy family, Lodge’s inability to campaign during most of the year, the defection of the Taft men. Certainly all these were factors. Undeniably, Kennedy out-spent Lodge by a substantial margin; he had more television and radio time, more billboards, and probably more newspaper space. The various Kennedy committees, which operated independently of the Democratic-party committees, officially reported expenses of $349,646; the whole cost of the Kennedy campaign was probably more than half a million dollars. The Lodge campaign cost, officially, $58,266; but he was also one of the chief beneficiaries of the one million dollars spent by the Republicans for their state ticket.
Lodge’s desertion by the Taft forces hurt him some but probably not decisively. The Taft leaders were disgruntled, yet the bulk of the Ohioan’s supporters in Massachusetts were too strongly Republican to vote for Kennedy. Brewer and other Taft backers simply could not deliver. Nor is it likely that Joseph, Sr.’s tactics had a vital part in the outcome. Whatever votes he picked up for his son on the isolationist right were probably balanced by losses on the internationalist left.
Seen in retrospect, the contest was essentially a battle between Yankee Republicans and Catholic immigrant Democrats. Kennedy held the Democratic vote, which usually is slightly in the majority in Massachusetts, and added to it some of the Taft Republicans. His major achievement was in pulling up even with Lodge by his lengthy “pre-campaign” campaigning and his tea parties. The main effect of the teas was to hold for the Democrats the “lace-curtain” Catholic vote that had gone earlier to Yankee Brahmins like Lodge and Saltonstall. In two or three years, he had made himself as well known as Lodge had done in sixteen. The TV, radio, and billboards simply channeled the Kennedy sentiment into the act of voting. Essentially, Kennedy outstumped Lodge by old-fashioned campaign methods, and by the tea parties.
The campaign was not won on issues; the differences between the two men were too obscure. Like most congressional and many senatorial campaigns, the outcome turned on personality rather than national policies. To be sure, Kennedy’s consistent support of bread-and-butter legislation in Congress and in the campaign helped tie down the labor vote. But on foreign policy, civil liberties and civil rights, military policy, and absenteeism, the voters could not see clear alternatives. Kennedy had taken what seemed to be a major strength of Lodge—his ambiguous record—and at the very least had managed to neutralize it.
Never a sentimentalist, Kennedy would not think of his victory as vengeance for his grandfather’s defeat by the earlier Henry Cabot Lodge thirty-six years before. But the day after the election, some old Irishmen sitting on a park bench in East Boston were sure that they heard—from the place where Boston politicians go for their reward—the faint but happy rendering of “Sweet Adeline.”
7THE SENATOR FROM NEW ENGLAND
The story goes that when, early in January 1953, Senator-elect Kennedy first tried to board the quaint little subway car that runs between the Capitol and the Senate Office Building, a guard told him to “stand back—let the Senators go first.” If this happened, the guard must have been even newer to the place than Kennedy, for the young man did not arrive unheralded. Anyone who had knocked Lodge out of his Senate seat had come sharply to the notice of the observant politicians of the upper chamber.
Kennedy, indeed, moved into the Senate, and into its inner life, with ease. He liked the spaciousness of the Senate, its decorum, gentility, sense of tradition. The upper chamber, as William S. White has said, is an odd, mixed place—both hard and efficient and soft and dawdling, harsh and kind, dignified and disorderly, democratic and “majestically undemocratic.” And because these qualities of the Senate mirrored the contradictions and ambivalence of American life, the place was all the more congenial to the young Bostonian, who himself still held an ambivalent and undeveloped set of political views.
The Senate was a storeroom of history. Here had strode the colossi whom Kennedy had been reading about for years—Webster and Clay and Calhoun, Norris and La Follette and all the others. Here had been hammered out great decisions of state, especially in the days when the initiative in policy lay more with Congress than with the President. Here, too, “willful men” had thwarted presidential projects through t
he filibuster and other engines of delay and destruction.
The upper chamber was still the habitat of famous men. Robert A. Taft, beaten by Eisenhower at the convention but imperishably “Mr. Republican” on Capitol Hill, was majority leader of his party. Lyndon Johnson, of Texas, led the Democratic minority. Patriarchal Walter George and apple-cheeked Harry Byrd, who had both defied Franklin D. Roosevelt and got away with it, symbolized the durable strength of the old South. Veteran New Dealers like Herbert Lehman, of New York, and Lister Hill, of Alabama, still carried on the liberal tradition. The radical right was fully represented by a score of Republicans; one of its spokesmen was a man named McCarthy, who, under the inverted logic of senatorial politics, held the seat once held by Bob La Follette, of Wisconsin.
Entering the Senate meant associating with such men; it meant, also, access to the wider, more sophisticated world to which the Senate was a direct route. This was the world of Cabinet members and Supreme Court justices, of foreign envoys and high State Department officials, of potentates of business and labor, of noted journalists like the Alsop brothers, Marquis Childs, and James Reston. Kennedy had known such men through his father’s connections; now he was to rub shoulders with them almost daily, not as an ambassador’s son, but in his own right. Much has been made of the Senate as a poky, parochial place, but for some men it can also be a broadening and liberating institution.
On January 3, 1953, Kennedy marched down to the well of the Senate on the arm of his senior colleague from Massachusetts, Leverett Saltonstall, and took the oath of office. Then he took his seat in the rear row behind the Democratic phalanx. On his right sat the eloquent, mettlesome young Senator from Minnesota, Hubert Humphrey, now beginning his fifth year in the Senate; just in front was the liberal statesman Paul H. Douglas, of Illinois. Over the heads of the rows of Democratic senators, Kennedy could see the dark, heavy jowls of the new President of the Senate, Richard M. Nixon. Seventeen days later, Dwight D. Eisenhower was inaugurated President of the United States.
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