Shultz, George, 310, 314–15
Sidey, Hugh, 23
Smith, Al, 98–99, 101
Smith, Hendrick, 126
“snow button,” 95–96, 102, 103–4
Snyder, Mitch, 203–5, 212
Sobhuza II, king of Swaziland, 225–26
social legislation, 64, 65, 125–28
Social Security:
bipartisan cooperative compromise on, 242, 243–57, 345, 366
debate over, 192–203
O’Neill’s strategy on, 168–69, 187, 240, 256, 319
Reagan’s attack on, 4, 8, 64, 90–91, 127, 130–31, 146, 169, 182, 213, 237–38
Social Security commission, 169
Somoza family, 263
Sorensen, Ted, 19–20, 24, 149
Soviet Union, 33, 363
grain embargo against, 46
and Iran, 358
and Nicaragua, 263, 346, 349, 353, 355
Reagan respected by, 168
Reagan’s hard line on, 49, 260–61, 309, 312–13
Reagan’s strategy to overcome, 312–17
see also Cold War
Speaker of the House, role of, xvi
Speaker’s Cabinet, 306–7
Speakes, Larry, 198, 282
Special Orders, Gingrich’s use of, 294–95
spending cuts:
additional, 168
one-for-all proposal for, 144–46
Reagan plan for, 27, 33, 36, 43, 48, 49, 64, 121–28, 163, 188–89, 203, 208
Sperling, Godfrey, 126
spin, process of, 176–77
Stahl, Lesley, 201
“Star Wars” strategic defensive technologies, 311, 324
State Department, U.S., 9
State of the Union, 3, 296
State of the Union addresses, 180, 188–89, 251–54, 281, 293, 335, 340
Statue of Liberty, 6–7, 32
Steelworkers union, 214–15
Stenholm, Charlie, 306
Stockman, David, 144, 168, 174–77, 200, 215, 250, 255–56
stock market, 219
Strategic Arms Reduction Talks, 319–20
strategic defense, 310–12, 324, 326–27
strategic retreat, 182
Stripling, Robert, 87
student loans, 117, 172
Sudetenland, 260
Suez Canal, 170
suicide bombing, 270
“supply side” economics, 175, 218
Supreme Court, U.S., 146–47
Swaziland, 16, 18–19, 225–27, 246
Sweeney, Peter, 123
Syria, 263, 265, 266–67
Tampico, Ill., 78
tax cuts:
O’Neill’s battle against, 136–44, 159–63
Reagan plan for, 27, 33, 36, 43, 49, 63, 64, 69, 121–25, 163, 172, 174, 183, 188–89, 195, 198, 203, 208, 210, 212, 215–16
Tax Equity and Fiscal Responsibility Act (TEFRA; 1982), 206, 215–23, 231
Taxi Driver (film), 69
tax increase, Mondale’s call for, 301
tax “reform,” tax increase as, 214–23, 231, 244
tax reform bill (1986), 338, 342–45
Taylor, Leroy, 22
Teacher in Space Program, 335
Tehran, Iran, U.S. Embassy in, 8, 270
television:
Gingrich’s use of, 293–94
O’Neill’s discomfort with, 54–55, 136, 137–38
O’Neill’s use of, 136, 137–43, 164, 185–86, 210–11, 256–57, 295
Reagan’s career in, 89–90
Reagan’s use of, 43–44, 122–25, 160, 184, 335, 357
see also specific shows
terrorism, 170, 273, 283, 358, 360
Thatcher, Margaret, 309–10, 328, 333–34, 335
Thurmond, Strom, 73
Time, 23, 134, 354
“Time for Choosing, A,” 90
Today, 214, 291, 299
Tolchin, Martin, 285, 299, 339
Tracy, Spencer, 3, 45, 80–81
Transportation Department, U.S., 231
Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, 99
“trickle down” economics, 175, 201, 220
Trotsky, Leon, 261
Troubles, the, 330, 335
Truman, Harry, 37, 86
“Tuesday to Thursday club,” 106–7
Tunney, Gene, 72
Twain, Mark, 363
Ullman, Al, 28
unemployment, 102, 171–72, 183, 208, 213–16, 228, 230, 233, 240, 252, 253, 254–56, 292, 317
United Auto Workers (UAW), 214–15
United Fruit Company, 262
United Press International, 208
United States Information Agency, 246
universal national health insurance, 8
Vandenberg, Arthur, 261
veto override, 228–29
Vietnam War, 18, 109, 156, 262, 267, 354
“voodoo economics,” 177
“Wake Up, Mr. President” rally, 213–15
Walker, Robert, 156, 295, 307
Wallis, Hal, 81
Wall Street Journal, 209, 239, 282–83, 301, 350
Warner, Jack, 76, 81, 87
Warner Bros. studios, 68, 80–81, 83, 91, 330
strike at, 86–87, 98
War Powers Act (1973), 265–66, 268, 271–72
Washington, D.C.:
current political divisiveness and dysfunction in, xvi–xvii, 370–71
insiders and outsiders in, 17–18, 159
political atmosphere of, xiii–xiv
society in, 28, 34
Washington, George, xiii, 371
Washington Hilton, 60, 69, 71, 340
Washington Monument, 211
Washington Post, 34, 44, 46, 150, 178, 198, 222–23, 232, 235, 237, 244, 280, 296–97
Wasserman, Lew, 89
“Watergate babies,” 156–57, 303–6
Watergate scandal, 7, 23, 57, 108, 112, 156
“water’s edge” bipartisanship, 261–62, 275
Waxman, Henry, 209
Wayne, John, 5
Weinberger, Caspar “Cap,” 265, 269, 280
Weisman, Steven, 11, 235–36
Weiss, Ari, 60, 116, 152, 153, 185, 200, 211, 229
West Germany, 314, 316
Where’s the Rest of Me? (Reagan), 81
White, Kevin, 58
Will, George F., 163, 243
Wilson, Charlie, 163
Wirthlin, Richard, 42
Wood, Natalie, 89
Wordsworth, William, 225
“World’s Record Apple Pie” event, 211–12
World War II, 4, 36, 82–83, 85, 103, 182, 208, 255, 270, 299, 309, 313, 348
Wright, Jim, 180, 203, 220, 228–29, 255, 285–86
Wyman, Jane, 80, 83–84
Yatron, Gus, 126
Yearling, The (film), 83
PHOTO CREDITS
Chris Matthews: xviii, 16, 50, 284
Courtesy Ronald Reagan Library: 26, 66, 132, 308
Associated Press: 40, 114, 206, 224, 258 (bottom), 328, 346, 362
Getty Images: 76, 148, 164, 180, 338
Box 4, Folder 1, Thomas P. O’Neill, Jr. Congressional Papers (CA2009-01), John J. Burns Library, Boston College: 94
White House Photo: 242
Stuart Franklin/Magnum Photos: 258
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Praise for Jack Kennedy: Elusive Hero
“In his engaging new biography . . . Matthews, who has a deep knowledge of American political history, draws on conversations with numerous people . . . [offering] a valuable reminder of Kennedy’s skill at uniting toughness with inspirational leadership.”
—The New York Times Book Review
“Matthews excels in capturing the tribalism of the Irish Catholic culture and experience Kennedy both absorbed and overcame as he made his way . . . [and] is at his best in describing the political dynamics. . . . The book conveys a mood of longing not only for Kennedy, but for the World War II generation.”
—The Washington Post
“Matthews proves a compelling storyteller. . . . Jack Kennedy: Elusive Hero could be a worthy primer to introduce John F. Kennedy to curious members of a new generation.”
—The Boston Globe
“Chris Matthews . . . has written a compelling blueprint for President Obama’s reelection.”
—Dana Milbank, The Washington Post
“[Jack Kennedy] is rich in thoughtful observations and insights. . . . Matthews has produced a valuable addition to the literature about the life and career of our 35th president.”
—The Christian Science Monitor
“Matthews’s stirring biography reveals Kennedy as a ‘fighting prince never free from pain, never far from trouble, and never accepting the world he found.’ ”
—Publishers Weekly
“Although ‘elusive’ is part of Matthews’ subtitle, the book makes Jack Kennedy seem less elusive even as we approach the half-century mark since his assassination.”
—The Newark Star-Ledger
“When you can look behind the scenes, as Matthews does, you get a fuller picture than most ever see.”
—The Philadelphia Inquirer
“What sets Matthews’ book apart from so many others is Matthews’ reliance on original sources—stories he has been collecting for years from those who knew his subject personally.”
—Richmond Times-Dispatch
“A fascinating look at an ultimately elusive man.”
—Booklist
“[An] extraordinary and likable look at Kennedy.”
—Cincinnati CityBeat
“Matthews’ curiosity and keen insights about people and politics pay great dividends.”
—Great Bend Post
CONTENTS
EPIGRAPH
PREFACE
CHAPTER ONE SECOND SON
CHAPTER TWO THE TWO JACKS
CHAPTER THREE SKIPPER
CHAPTER FOUR WAR HERO
CHAPTER FIVE COLD WARRIOR
CHAPTER SIX BOBBY
CHAPTER SEVEN MAGIC
CHAPTER EIGHT SURVIVAL
CHAPTER NINE DEBUT
CHAPTER TEN CHARM
CHAPTER ELEVEN HARDBALL
CHAPTER TWELVE CHARISMA
CHAPTER THIRTEEN LANDING
CHAPTER FOURTEEN ZENITH
CHAPTER FIFTEEN GOALS
CHAPTER SIXTEEN LEGACY
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
NOTES
INDEX
To Kathleen
At the peak of the Cold War, an American president saved his country and the world from a nuclear war. How did Jack Kennedy gain the cold detachment to navigate this perilous moment in history? What prepared him to be the hero we needed?
This is my attempt to explain the leader Jacqueline Kennedy called “that unforgettable, elusive man.”
1
PREFACE
I grew up in a Republican family. My own political awakening began in 1952, when I was six. I remember riding the school bus to Maternity of the Blessed Virgin Mary. One of my classmates was a boy whose father was a Democratic committeeman in Somerton, our remote Philadelphia hamlet bordering Bucks County. I felt sorry for him because he was the only kid for Stevenson. It seemed everybody I knew was for Ike.
Back then, even though we kids were small, our souls were large. We had a sense of things we weren’t supposed to understand. I knew that Adlai Stevenson was an “egghead.” My father said he “talked over the heads of people.” There was distance between us and those like Stevenson. We were regular people.
My older brother, Bert, and I spent our days fighting World War II and the Korean War in our backyard. I knew General Eisenhower had fought in what Mom and Dad always called “the war.” It made him a hero. Once I was sitting with Dad at a movie theater when a newsreel came on showing Eisenhower making his return from NATO in Europe, boarding an airplane and waving. I wondered whether he was president and turned to my right to ask my father this. “No,” came the answer, “but he will be.”
One outcome of World War II was to offer Catholics their opening to join the American mainstream. My mother once told us how the big milk company in Philadelphia used to ask for religion on its job application. The correct answer, she explained, was any one of the Protestant denominations. “Catholic” meant you didn’t get the job. What I know for sure is that in the early 1950s we were still making an effort to fit in.
Looking back, I can’t count how many times we first and second graders found ourselves marching up and down Bustleton Avenue in front of Maternity carrying little flags. I don’t even know which holidays we were celebrating; maybe none. But there we were, mini–George M. Cohans offering up some endless display of our American regularness. All this actually happened, this postwar assimilation of Catholics, and it’s a key part of the story I’m telling.
Those were the early boomer years. And a boom it was. We had a hundred kids in our first grade, more than would fit in a classroom, so they had to put us in the auditorium.
I remember an afternoon in 1956 that’s hard to believe now. What’s strange about it to me is the way it marks a before-and-after moment in time. History changed. It was July, and we were listening to the radio in our two-tone ’54 Chevy Bel Air.
It was broadcasting the balloting from the Democratic Convention in Chicago. The fight to become the party’s vice-presidential candidate was on between Kefauver—a name I knew from listening to the news, just as I knew the name Nixon—and now, out of nowhere, this candidate named Kennedy. We’d never heard of him. It was an Irish name.
So, because he was a known quantity—Kefauver, a brand name—I was happy when the Tennessee senator won, finally, on the second ballot. The name I knew had beaten the other name. Isn’t that how most voting seems to be, voting for the name you recognize, rooting for its victory, and all the time having no real idea who the person is?
Yet, looking back on this event, that Democratic National Convention of over a half-century ago, an image from it remains frozen in my mind’s eye. The truth is, it’s a picture that entered my consciousness and stayed there. What I still see, as clearly as if it were yesterday, is that giant hall with its thousands of cheering delegates, its chaos then suddenly punctuated by the appearance onstage of a young stranger. It was John F. Kennedy, who had just lost the nomination to Estes Kefauver; swiftly he came through the crowd and up to the podium in order to ask that his opponent’s victory be made by acclamation. He was releasing his delegates and requesting unity, and, in making this important gesture, he seemed both confident and gracious. It was the first look the country at large had had of him, a figure we would come to know so well, one who would soon mean so much to us, to me.
I was ten at the time.
I was becoming increasingly obsessed wit
h politics. Two years later, on the midterm election night in 1958, I was backing the GOP candidates, among them Hugh Scott, who won his fight that night to be junior senator from Pennsylvania in an upset. In New York, the Republican candidate, Nelson Rockefeller, defeated the Democrat Averell Harriman, the incumbent governor. My father, a court reporter working for the city of Philadelphia, offered a kind remark about the patrician Harriman, saying he looked sad. It was one of those rare, memorable times when Dad would step out of his workaday world to make such a comment, or to quote from a poem he’d learned in school.
By 1960, I was a paperboy for the Philadelphia Bulletin, and suddenly, as I started reading the daily afternoon paper I was throwing onto people’s lawns, my loyalties were challenged. Now I was following Jack Kennedy in that year’s primaries and enthusiastically rooting for him. He was Catholic, after all, and I felt the pull. Yet all the while I followed his trail through New Hampshire, Wisconsin, and West Virginia, I knew that, in the end, I’d wind up supporting Nixon, his opponent.
That’s because, by this time, I’d become not merely a member of a Republican family but a Republican myself. Yet here I found myself entranced by the spectacle of the glamorous JFK winning his party’s nomination.
And not only was I cheering the idea of Jack occupying the White House for the next eight years, by the time of the Los Angeles convention I was dreaming of the “happily ever after”—the succession of his vice president, Lyndon Johnson, elected to follow JFK with his own two terms; then, after that, Bobby and Teddy. Momentarily dazzled, I was caught up by the romance of dynasty.
I’d lived my boyhood reading the biographies of great men. From a young age I’d gone from one to the next and been taken with the notion of leaders’ destinies. For every birthday and Christmas, Grandmom had made it her regular practice to buy me a book on the life of a famous historic figure. First it was the Young American series, then the Landmark books. I remember ones on Davy Crockett and Abe Lincoln, while others told stories of iconic events such as the Civil War sea battle between the Monitor and the Merrimack.
The first book I got from the little public library next to Maternity was an illustrated biography of Alexander the Great. And so that’s who I was in 1960—a kid who had this gut interest in history and liked reading biographies of heroes.
• • •
The Democratic Convention of 1960 was in Los Angeles. Now it was the Republicans’ turn in Chicago. I followed the events gavel to gavel, either watching on television or going to bed listening to the radio. I remember the jaunty, optimistic strains of “California, Here I Come!” repeatedly erupting whenever Nixon’s name was mentioned. Caught up in the Republican spirit, I once again shifted my allegiance.
Chris Matthews Complete Library E-book Box Set: Tip and the Gipper, Jack Kennedy, Hardball, Kennedy & Nixon, Now, Let Me Tell You What I Really Think, and American Page 40
