Kennedy gave the job of proving the case for putting him on the ticket to Ted Sorensen. It was the same sort of tricky assignment he’d handed his legislative assistant two years earlier when he’d sent him up to Boston to work on the sly for Saltonstall against Furcolo. Again, Sorensen proved equal to the task, knocking out a seventeen-page memo showing the power of the Catholic vote in fourteen key states. It demonstrated how Catholics’ defection in ’52 had cost the Democrats the election. It showed, too, that they had split their tickets in the election, voting for Democrats for the House and Senate, but Ike for president.
However, Kennedy also understood that such a sales pitch coming from him would be seen exactly for what it was. It might even trigger a backlash. To camouflage the effort, he had the Sorensen memo distributed by Connecticut’s John Bailey, the state Democratic Party chairman, a close Kennedy ally. In any case, the “Bailey Memorandum,” as it was marketed, went out to fifty top Democrats thought to have Stevenson’s ear. A few days later, it showed its power. Stevenson’s campaign manager, Jim Finnegan, asked for a dozen copies of “that survey” that was going around. “You know, about the Catholic vote,” the Philadelphian said.
Jack went to Chicago prepared for lightning to strike. He phoned Tip O’Neill and asked him to let Bobby take his place as a Massachusetts delegate. He said his brother was the smartest politician he knew and he wanted him there on the convention floor in case the odds broke in his favor.
He, nonetheless, remained cool about his prospects. On the way home from the Hill with Ted Reardon that summer, he sounded easygoing about the whole thing. “After all this, I may actually be disappointed if I don’t get the nomination. Yes, and that disappointment will be deep enough to last from the day they ballot on the vice presidency until I leave for Europe two days later.” He was thinking about his coming end-of-summer cruise along the south coast of France with Torby Macdonald, George Smathers, and his youngest brother, Ted.
It was at this moment that Jack Kennedy got one of those big breaks that made so many other ones possible. After Governor Edmund Muskie of Maine, another rising young Democratic figure, turned down the opportunity, Kennedy won a big role on the first night of the national convention in Chicago. He, a freshman senator, was asked to narrate a documentary film on the Democratic Party.
It would turn out to be the highlight of the convention’s opening. Hearing his distinctive New England accent echoing across the floor of Chicago’s International Amphitheatre and broadcast over the country’s television and radio stations, Americans discovered a new voice. The Pursuit of Happiness, created by Dore Schary, a Hollywood producer who’d made his name at RKO and MGM, was projected onto huge screens in the convention hall. It made Jack Kennedy the Democrats’ star of the night.
The applause in the hall, swelled by his friends, was prolonged when Jack was introduced from the floor. Edmund Reggie, a Catholic delegate from Louisiana, was astonished by this young promising Democrat. “I didn’t even know Senator Kennedy existed. The Louisiana delegates sat across the aisle from the Massachusetts delegation. And the first time I ever remember seeing him is in a film that he narrated.”
Nothing that Jack Kennedy had done before, not the offices he’d won, the books he’d written, even the heroics in WWII, would propel him so mightily as what had just happened. Everything before was now prelude.
• • •
The sensation created by Jack’s role in the convention film had an immediate effect. Stevenson picked him to be his chief nominator, Kennedy having gotten the word from Adlai himself on Wednesday morning. It came with the assurance that he was still in contention for the vice presidency.
Kennedy and Sorensen then went to work, laboring together on the speech until six o’clock in the morning. Criticized by the New York Times for relying too heavily on a “cliché dictionary,” the speech, nonetheless, was a genuine rouser. In it Kennedy warned that the Democratic ticket would be facing fierce opposition in the fall from “two tough candidates, one who takes the high road and one who takes the low road.”
The knock on Vice President Richard Nixon thrilled its intended audience. The liberals loved it, and continued throughout the campaign to repeat the line. In fact, it became a refrain, resonating throughout the months of the contest. Kennedy had understood exactly what he was saying and precisely whom he wanted to hear him. He was playing to the Nixon haters. It was a theme to which Stevenson, once nominated, would return. He wanted his fellow Democrats to keep in mind that Ike had been the first sitting president to have a heart attack. What would happen, he implied, if he died and Dick Nixon became president?
At eleven o’clock on Thursday, the convention’s fourth night, Adlai Stevenson made a surprise announcement: instead of picking his running mate himself, he would let the delegates do it. Seven of the country’s thirty-four presidents, he reminded them, had risen to office because of an incumbent’s death. Bluntly implying it could happen again—“The nation’s attention has become focused as never before on the . . . vice presidency”—Stevenson told the hundreds of assembled Democrats he wanted the decision made by the party rather than by a single man.
When the convention opened, Senator Estes Kefauver of Tennessee had been the front-runner. The field now included Senators Lyndon Johnson of Texas, Hubert Humphrey of Minnesota, and Albert Gore, Sr., of Tennessee, Mayor Robert Wagner of New York, and John F. Kennedy of Massachusetts.
Fourteen years older than Jack Kennedy, Kefauver had gained national attention for chairing a 1950 Senate committee investigating organized crime; in the ’52 election he’d sought the Democrats’ nomination for president but lost, in the end, to Stevenson. Trying again, this time he’d won a number of early primaries before falling to Stevenson in later big-state contests. He and the other contenders for vice president, including Kennedy, now entered upon what would be a twenty-four-hour effort to secure the honor of being Adlai’s running mate.
“Call Dad and tell him I’m going for it,” Jack instructed Bobby.
Reached in the South of France with the news, Joseph P. Kennedy was livid. Bellowing what an “idiot” his son was, he could be heard all the way across the room. Jack was ruining his career with this move. “Whew!” Bobby said, after the connection was broken. “Is he mad!”
To place his name in nomination, Jack picked Governor Abraham Ribicoff of Connecticut. This choice of a Jewish politician, the son of immigrants who’d begun his political career in the Connecticut state legislature back in the late ’30s, was a shrewd one. Equally savvy was the next phone call he made. At one in the morning, he reached George Smathers, asking him to give the seconding speech. When the Floridian asked what a Southern conservative might say that could help, Kennedy assured him it was a no-sweat assignment. “Just talk about the war stuff,” he said.
Kennedy now had to figure out how to beat the seasoned pros lined up against him. He already had a base of support in the Massachusetts delegation, and in the early days of the convention, he’d realized, during various sessions, that he’d emerged as leader of the New England region. He now had just hours to extend his support beyond it.
As his taxi headed toward the convention hall that Friday dawn, a sleepless Kennedy was clenching his fist, whispering again and again to himself: “Go! Go! Go!” Charlie Bartlett attributed it to his friend’s innate love of competition. “The way Stevenson laid that challenge on the floor was what really challenged him. At that point he decided this was going to move. And, of course, everybody was all around ready to move. I remember the whole family was milling around, ready to go. As soon as the competition arose, he lost his reluctance. He really went for it.”
For the rest of the morning, Kennedy would personally do much of the hour-to-hour campaigning. He discovered he had surprising strength in the South. Part of this was the result of antipathy toward Kefauver due to his record of civil rights support. But there was also clearly goodwill toward Kennedy himself, as a result of his war heroism and
his reputation as a moderate. Many Southern delegates saw him as standing apart from the liberal pack.
Of course, he also had to face prejudice. “If we have to have a Catholic,” Speaker of the House Sam Rayburn told Stevenson, “I hope we don’t have to take that little pissant Kennedy.” But some Catholics were themselves a problem. James Farley, the old New Deal warhorse who’d helped make FDR and then broken with him when he ran for his unprecedented third term in 1940, gave Stevenson his opinion: “America is not ready for a Catholic yet.”
Kennedy also took a hit from the party’s liberal wing, who knew he wasn’t really one of them, who’d never forgotten, let alone forgiven, his failure to cast a censure vote against Joe McCarthy. To woo the keepers of the New Deal flame whom he’d spent his early congressional years bashing over Yalta and the loss of China—those same liberals with whom he said he did “not feel comfortable”—he now needed to do some genuflecting.
When he managed to set up a meeting with Eleanor Roosevelt in Chicago, the former first lady and Democratic grande dame didn’t make it easy. She’d let it be known how “troubled” she was by “Senator K’s evasive attitude on McCarthy.” Her opinion wasn’t changed by their get-together. Elaborately orchestrated, it turned out to be a disaster, with the rapport between them nonexistent. When Mrs. Roosevelt raised the McCarthy issue, Jack replied that it was “so long ago” it didn’t help. He also quibbled that the time to censure the Wisconsin senator had been when he returned to the Senate for his second term in 1953.
FDR’s widow was having none of it. In full dudgeon, she berated Jack in front of everyone present, including other politicians who came and went throughout the discussion. Mrs. Roosevelt correctly saw herself as not just Franklin Roosevelt’s partner within the Democratic Party but his political heir. She regarded Kennedy’s approach to her as less than sincere, which it was.
Balancing his failure to win over Mrs. Roosevelt, there now came good news. They began to get promises of support from delegates far and wide. Two or three in Nevada, one in Wyoming, one in Utah, and so forth, people who were for Jack Kennedy personally, but represented no large group of votes or delegates. They’d knock on the door of the hotel suite and say, “My name is Mary Jones. I’ve seen the senator on television and I think he is wonderful.” Or, “I’m from Oregon, and I want to vote for him.”
Winning the support of big-state delegations was a more serious challenge. Charlie Bartlett described the process of Jack going to the Democratic bosses of the country—all complete strangers to him—and asking for their backing. It was an intimidating group that included the major honchos of the New York machine. But he was breaking new ground.
“After Stevenson had thrown down the challenge, it was all beginning to accelerate, and he was obviously quite excited. I said, ‘Look, there’s Carmine DeSapio. You ought to go and see what you can do about him. He might be able to help you.’ I wish I had a movie of that scene. There he was—this rather slight figure, and DeSapio was a rather big fellow—and the reporters were all around DeSapio, completely ignoring Kennedy. But he went up and shyly said, ‘Excuse me, Mr. DeSapio, but my name is John Kennedy from Massachusetts, and I wondered if I could have a few words with you?’ That was the beginning. As I remember, he got a pretty good chunk of the New York vote.” It was like his old door-to-door campaigning in the Boston neighborhoods.
When the public balloting began, Kennedy mustered surprising strength, with the Southern bloc contributing to his numbers. “Texas proudly casts its fifty-six votes for the fighting sailor who wears the scars of battle,” Senate Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson hollered when his state’s delegation was recognized. The first ballot count was John F. Kennedy, 304 delegates; Estes Kefauver, 483; Albert Gore, 178. A total of 686 was needed for the required two-thirds majority.
With the second balloting, momentum further shifted to Kennedy. Once again, he was drawing more support than expected from the Southern states. “I’m going to sing ‘Dixie’ for the rest of my life,” Jack promised aloud as the states reported their counts to the podium. With 646 delegates, victory seemed assured.
Kennedy and Kefauver were now the two main contenders. The other candidates were flagging. The next ballot would be the decider.
Ted Sorensen was watching the broadcast from campaign headquarters at the Stockyards Inn, as was his boss. “The second ballot was already under way, and a Kennedy trend had set in. The South was anxious to stop Kefauver, and Kennedy was picking up most of the Gore and Southern favorite-son votes. He was also getting the Wagner votes. Kefauver was gaining more slowly, but hardly a handful of delegates had left him. Bob Kennedy and his lieutenants were all over the floor shouting to delegations to come with Kennedy. Our television set showed wild confusion on the convention floor and a climbing Kennedy total. But the senator was as calm as ever. He bathed, then again reclined on the bed. The race was now neck and neck, and Kennedy knew that no lead was enough if it could not produce a majority.”
The religious issue was about to intervene. The governor of Oklahoma stayed with the also-ran Gore, his candidacy now dead in the water, rather than back a Catholic. “He’s not our kind of folks,” he told a Kennedy pleader. With South Carolina, Illinois, and Alabama all seeking recognition to shift their delegates to Kennedy, the convention chairman, Sam Rayburn, instead recognized Oklahoma, which switched its Gore votes to Kefauver. Rayburn then called on Senator Gore, who now threw his own dwindling number of delegates to his fellow Tennessean.
Kennedy, who’d been in the lead, could see that the trend had shifted. “Let’s go!” Kennedy said to Sorensen. Once inside the Amphitheatre, he began pushing his way through the crowded floor up to the podium. While some convention officials tried to stop him, urging him to wait for the balloting to be completed, Jack walked onto the rostrum, smiling. Speaking impromptu, he congratulated Kefauver, saluted Adlai Stevenson for allowing the delegates to choose his running mate, and called for making the nomination of Kefauver unanimous.
That moment up on the stage, before the national television cameras, was Jack Kennedy’s unforgettable debut as a national leader.
• • •
In a matter of hours Jack had learned a slew of lessons. He’d discovered the need for state-of-the-art communications on the convention floor; the need for an ongoing, accurate delegate count; for a perfect grasp of the minutiae of convention rules. Friendships were important, too. Celebrated senators mattered less. Estes Kefauver had beaten Jack because he knew delegates personally; after all, it had been his second time around and what he himself had learned in ’52 he’d put into action now. Wearing his trademark coonskin cap—a reference to his pioneer ancestors—Kefauver was a familiar figure who had shaken a lot of hands in a great many small towns. Unlike him, Jack Kennedy lacked the experience of traveling the length and breadth of the country itself and connecting with voters face-to-face.
These lessons, absorbed and put to use later, were nothing in contrast with his triumph. He had taken a near-miss for the vice-presidential nomination and converted it, at the moment he raced to the podium, into a career-changing event. He had gone to Chicago one of several Democrats looking to the White House, and now was a subject of national fascination. In an inspired gesture of magnanimity, he had, in effect, won the first national primary of 1960.
In the short run, of course, all he counted was the loss itself. Just an hour ago, his vote total was rising, seeming to clinch the deal. Now he was absorbing the defeat. As Jackie and his aides gathered around him in their hotel suite, he refused to be cheered by those who said the close defeat was the best possible outcome, that he’d made a name for himself without having to endure the thrashing in November everyone expected for the Stevenson ticket.
“He hated to lose anything, and glared at us when we tried to console him by telling him he was the luckiest man in the world,” says Ken O’Donnell. The defeat brought Kennedy to a sober reckoning. He now believed that whatever lip service they paid to
tolerance, the main party leaders, such as Rayburn, would simply not let him—young, independent, and Catholic—become their nominee. The 1956 experience also marked Kennedy’s metamorphosis from dilettante to professional. “I’ve learned that you don’t get far in politics until you become a total politician,” he told his crew. “That means you’ve got to deal with the party leaders as well as with the voters.”
Until that week in Chicago, the Kennedy people had been parochial in their experience and their outlook. But what had just happened to Jack—this incredible almost getting the vice-presidential nomination—was no real guide to what they’d have to do now. He, Jack Kennedy, needed to get out in the country, among the future delegates on their home ground, doing what Kefauver had done, but better.
“It was too damned close not to be disappointed,” Kennedy would say years later. “Kefauver deserved it. I always thought that, with his victories in the primaries. Because I had done much better than I thought I would, I was not desolate. I was awfully tired. We had worked awfully hard, and we had come damn close.”
Jackie Kennedy would recall how hard her husband had driven himself in his chase for votes: “Five days in Chicago, never went to bed.”
What mattered was that John F. Kennedy now owned an edge on which he’d had no claim before. Change was stirring out in that vast territory beyond Capitol Hill. Those who’d watched on television had seen a dazzling sight. In a sea of gray faces, the camera had lingered on the handsome countenance of Jack Kennedy. It had spotted, too, his radiant spouse: anyone with Jacqueline Kennedy by his side could hardly be counted among life’s losers. Moreover, by making himself so visible, even in defeat, Jack Kennedy had gained the advantage that would carry him to victory four years later—those millions of Catholics who’d seen him felt pride, then were disappointed, and now were on his side, ready for the next chance.
Yet Jack Kennedy was not, we now know, the perfect vessel for the hopes of America’s Roman Catholics. Though he and his gorgeous wife seemed in public a stunning portrait of the adoring, supportive couple, the reality behind the picture was far from perfection. As planned, once the convention ended, Jack left Chicago for a sailing trip in the Mediterranean with Torby, Smathers, and his brother Teddy tagging along. Just as he’d hung out with a buddy during his honeymoon, he was defecting again at another less than ideal moment. Left behind was his wife, eight months pregnant with their first child.
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 59
