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

by Matthews, Chris

  “George, old pal” came the 1:00 A.M. phone greeting to George Smathers, the “old pal” being a sure signal to the Florida senator of impending unpleasantness. “Do me a favor; nominate me for vice president. Adlai has thrown the nomination open to the convention.” Smathers wondered what he, a southern conservative, could say that would help Kennedy. “Just talk about the war stuff,” his early-morning caller instructed. For the class of 1946, World War II was still the “greatest campaign manager.” As his taxi headed toward the convention hall that dawn, a sleepless Kennedy was clenching his fist, whispering again and again to himself: “Go! Go! Go!”

  As balloting commenced, Kennedy mustered surprising strength, especially in the South. “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; Tennessee senator Estes Kefauver, 4831/2; Sen. Albert Gore, also of Tennessee, 178; 6861/2 delegates were needed for the required two-thirds majority. With the second balloting, the momentum shifted to Kennedy. Once again, he was drawing far more than expected from among the southern delegates. “I’m going to sing ‘Dixie’ for the rest of my life,” the candidate promised aloud as the states reported their counts to the podium. With 646 delegates, victory seemed assured.

  “The senator was convinced, and so were most of us on the floor,” recalled Kenny O’Donnell, “that he had more than enough votes to win the nomination.” He didn’t. The convention chairman, Speaker of the House Sam Rayburn of Texas, would not recognize several delegations that wished to switch to Kennedy. Instead, Rayburn called on Senator Gore, who then threw his own dwindling number of delegates to his fellow Tennessean, Kefauver. The Kennedy team correctly sensed the resistance of party bosses, including Rayburn, to the thirty-nine-year-old’s upstart candidacy. “If we have to have a Catholic,” the gruff speaker had told Stevenson, “I hope we don’t have to take that little pissant Kennedy.”

  Loss came as a shock to a confident Jack Kennedy. One moment, he had been headed toward the convention floor; the next, he was absorbing the fact of defeat. It was the first political setback of his life. As wife, Jacqueline, and his aides gathered around him in his Stockyards Inn suite, Kennedy refused to be cheered by those who said the close defeat was the best possible outcome, that he had made a name for himself without having to endure the defeat in November everyone expected for the Stevenson ticket. “He hated to lose anything, and he glared at us when we tried to console him by telling him that he was the luckiest man in the world,” O’Donnell remembered.

  The defeat brought Kennedy to a sober reckoning. He now believed that whatever lip service they paid to tolerance, the main party leaders, like 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 aides. “That means you’ve got to deal with the party leaders as well as with the voters.” The Kennedy team learned another lesson from the loss: While a candidate’s Senate colleagues may be big shots in Washington, they cannot be counted on to deliver votes at a convention. The true power lay elsewhere. To win a presidential nomination, Jack Kennedy and his organization realized, they needed to get out and win support in the country itself.

  In this coming fight, John F. Kennedy would have a clear edge. Something had changed out in that vast territory beyond Capitol Hill. As the country had listened to the Democratic balloting, from its car radio, it had caught a race to the finish between the well-known Estes Kefauver and this new political name, “Kennedy.” Those who watched on television had seen something more dazzling. 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 at his side could hardly be counted among life’s losers. Moreover, Jack Kennedy in defeat had found the electoral edge that would carry him to victory four years later: the sense by millions of Catholics that one who shared their faith had been denied something he had justly deserved.

  * * *

  THE Republican convention opened in San Francisco the following week with the vice-presidential nomination still in doubt. Just days earlier, former Minnesota governor Harold Stassen had called for the nomination of Massachusetts governor Christian Herter to run with Ike. Stassen ignored the fact that Nixon had outpolled Herter in a nationwide opinion survey 83 percent to 10 percent! Once again, Ike was allowing his veep to sweat. Though Herter himself dubbed Stassen’s effort a “comic opera,” the silence emanating from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue lent the stop-Nixon campaign a certain stature. “I can’t understand how a man can come so far in his profession,” Ike wondered aloud about his loner vice president, “and not have any friends.”

  Not until he reached San Francisco did Ike consent to take Nixon off the hook. While much of the country would continue to idolize his tormenter as a kindly grandfather, Nixon knew the Ike secret. So did Jack Kennedy. “He’s a terribly cold man,” he said of the great general before whom political necessity forced Dick Nixon once again to bow.

  * * *

  ADLAI Stevenson would spend much of the general election attacking Richard Nixon. “Our nation stands at a fork in the political road. In one direction lies a land of slander and scare; the land of sly innuendo, the poison pen, the anonymous phone call and hustling, pushing, shoving; the land of smash and grab and anything to win. This is Nixonland.” Taking the low road himself, the second-time Democratic nominee went on to predict ominously that Eisenhower would not live out the term. “Every piece of scientific evidence that we have indicates that a Republican victory would mean that Richard Nixon would probably be President within the next four years.”

  Shrewdly, Nixon refused to respond. This caused a desperate Stevenson, in turn, to mock him for the nasty tactics he had abandoned. “The vice president has put away his switchblade and now assumes the aspect of an eagle scout.” Bobby Kennedy, who was traveling with the Stevenson campaign, saw the fault in the strategy. “The subject of Nixon came up, and I was strongly against making the campaign built around an attack on him.” It was obvious to him, if not to the liberals surrounding the Democratic candidate, that the Stevenson people were deluding themselves into thinking that the country’s undecided, swing voters shared their contempt for the Republican vice president. Bobby knew better; the Nixon haters and the Stevenson lovers were one and the same. They constituted a minority of the electorate. The Democrats’ only hope, such as it was, against the immensely popular Republican president lay with those Catholic and other conservative Democrats who had switched to Ike in 1952, voters who not only lacked the liberals’ contempt for the vice president but, in many cases, identified more with Nixon’s grit than with Stevenson’s eloquence.

  The disdain of the younger Kennedy for Stevenson extended well beyond campaign strategy. “I came out of our first conversation with a very high opinion of him. Then I spent six weeks with him on the campaign and he destroyed it all.” On election day, Robert Kennedy voted without fanfare for the Republican ticket of Dwight Eisenhower and Richard Nixon.

  CHAPTER

  EIGHT

  Two Men on Third

  UPON publication in 1956, Profiles in Courage garnered impressive reviews for its senator-author. The New York Times declared that a “first-rate politician” had written “a thoughtful and persuasive book about political integrity.” To Joe Kennedy, good notices were not enough. Defying the word of mouth that his son had received substantial help in producing the inspiring book on political courage, he wanted greater legitimacy still. He wanted the Pulitzer Prize.

  Crony Arthur Krock, the Times columnist, began working quietly to secure for his friend’s son the award for biography. Robert Choate, the member of the Pulitzer advisory board he lobbied, was sk
eptical. “Give me some reasons why the Kennedy book might be considered among the biographies,” the Boston Herald publisher wrote back. Choate told Krock that the prize’s jurors for biography had not even mentioned the Kennedy book. When Krock made a second pitch for the book, this time for the history category, Choate said it had been ignored by those screeners as well.

  Wishing to be helpful, Choate now gave Krock the names of the Pulitzer screening board and suggested that Krock contact them directly. “I am quite confident that Joe would be glad to see it went to a Democrat,” he kidded Krock, referring to the prize’s namesake, Joseph Pulitzer. Choate expressed his full confidence that the New York Times men would keep their dealings confidential.

  Here again the Kennedys proved their agility at surmounting barriers. In May 1957, the Pulitzer Prize was awarded to Profiles in Courage. In an extraordinary move, the full committee, of which Choate was a member, disregarded the judges’ recommendation and presented Sen. John F. Kennedy with the award for biography. Rose Kennedy frankly credited the triumph to her husband’s “careful spade work.” Joseph Kennedy had learned “who was on the committee and how to reach such and such a person through such and such a friend.” It was a simple matter, she said, of doing what was necessary to win. “Things don’t happen; they are made to happen,” she said.

  By year’s end, however, the authorship of the book and Senator Kennedy’s Pulitzer had both become controversial. Influential columnist Drew Pearson went on Mike Wallace’s popular ABC program to allege that Profiles was “ghostwritten,” that Senator Kennedy’s willingness to accept the prize for the book therefore constituted a public fraud. Fearful that the publicity would cripple his presidential buildup, Kennedy paid an emergency call on Washington superlawyer Clark Clifford. As he sat in Clifford’s office explaining his plight, the telephone rang. “Sue the bastards!” It was Kennedy’s father yelling through the receiver. “For fifty million dollars! This is a lie! They are trying to destroy Jack.” Clifford, with a cooler head, explained that a lawsuit would only focus greater attention on Pearson’s accusation. Instructing Kennedy to gather together any notes showing his personal involvement in producing the book, anything to indicate he had done more than simply let his name be put on the cover, Clifford then traveled to New York, where, in a face-to-face confrontation, he forced ABC executives to retract the “ghostwritten” allegation. While never persuaded that the senator had done any significant amount of the actual writing, Kennedy’s knowledge of the subject matter convinced Pearson that he had been seriously involved in the project. Decades later, Mike Wallace would call the ABC retraction a “craven” buckling to a Kennedy “bluff.”

  “The author is the man who stands behind what is on the printed page,” Ted Sorensen would argue loyally. “It’s his responsibility to put his name to it and to put it out.” While Jack Kennedy may have lacked the requisite zeal for the lonely toil of drafting and redrafting manuscripts, he would prove adequate to the writer’s more public role of promoting the finished work.

  * * *

  “THERE’S no question that Jack played the game of politics by his own rules,” Massachusetts colleague Tip O’Neill noted, “which is why his fellow politicians were so slow to take him seriously.” Always fascinated by the personal magnetism of movie stars like Cary Grant, Kennedy now possessed it himself. Thanks to his concession speech at the 1956 convention and his Pulitzer, he had become a figure of glamour around the country, and thanks to his ex-movie mogul father, he would now get the buildup accorded a new Hollywood matinee idol. His PT-109 exploits were chronicled on the TV series Navy Log. He was the subject of a Time cover story. Reaching a more passionate, if narrower, audience, the magazine of the Knights of Columbus, the Catholic fraternal organization, informed readers that a Roman Catholic, indeed a brother Knight, might soon be running for president. Senate colleague Hubert Humphrey watched it happen. “He had the publicity. He had the attraction. He had the it.”

  Kennedy was determined to maximize that “it,” understanding that what seemed effortless could never be left to chance. There was the long day spent at the Manhattan studio of photographer Howard Conant, a photographer famed for his portraits of Grace Kelly and other stars. Conant worked with Kennedy from different angles, then carefully studied the contact proofs. The result was the dashing, sideways Jack Kennedy glance into the distance that would adorn a hundred thousand buttons and placards in the years ahead.

  Now, as Humphrey and his Democratic rivals passed legislation in the halls of the Capitol, Kennedy crisscrossed the map of the country. While the pack at home logrolled legislation in Senate committee hearings, his campaign plane, the Caroline, logged 110,000 air miles carrying the junior Massachusetts senator to meet voters. Ted Sorensen was compiling a card file of thirty thousand Democrats known to have local election-day clout in their district. What amazed Larry O’Brien, who was also crisscrossing the country organizing local Kennedy efforts, was the loneliness of the mission. Where was everyone else? No one representing Senators Johnson or Humphrey or Symington or any other 1960 presidential hopeful ever seemed to be anywhere around. The Kennedy strategy was working. “The thing that amazes me is that we had the field almost entirely to ourselves,” O’Brien recalled.

  Majority Leader Johnson, Humphrey, and the others slowly realized that their younger colleague had already beaten them in the race to capture control of the modern media apparatus. Thanks to both his and his father’s cunning efforts, Kennedy had leapfrogged the Democratic pack for the 1960 presidential nomination. “Now I admit that he had a good sense of humor and that he looked good on television, but his growing hold on the American people was simply a mystery to me,” Johnson was to confess.

  The upstart from Massachusetts was now being compared to his ultimate rival himself. “Kennedy has been regarded by many as the Democratic counterpart for the OOP’s Richard Nixon,” the Winchester> Evening Star declared in February 1958. “Nixon, probably, is basically a moderate conservative, though with some liberal tendencies,” the Virginia newspaper noted with approval. “Kennedy is basically a moderate liberal, but with many conservative leanings. Neither is an extremist in any sense.” The editorial earned a thank-you note from the polished Massachusetts senator. “Once he started in 1956, he told me he was going to cultivate reporters,” remembers Smathers. To get more TV appearances, he told producers of the Sunday interview programs to count on him as a substitute if an invited guest failed to appear.

  As he had in 1956, Kennedy now focused the full power of his charms on his party’s liberal wing. Beginning with his “one takes the low road” knock at Nixon in Chicago, he engaged in a step-by-step campaign to woo Democratic intellectuals who took pride in having twice run the “egghead” Stevenson against the Philistines. The Pulitzer had been the first important move. His next curtsy to the Democratic Left would take the form of a speech aimed at convincing liberals that he had departed from his rigid Cold Warriorism, that he shared their more sophisticated perspective on world affairs.

  On the Senate floor in July 1957, Kennedy called boldly for revision of the Eisenhower administration’s Eurocentric foreign policy. America, he said, should end its automatic alliance with its colonialist World War II Allies and recognize instead the rising aspirations of the developing world. “The most powerful single force in the world today is neither communism nor capitalism, neither the H-bomb nor the guided missile,” he began. “It is man’s eternal desire to be free and independent.” The immediate target was French colonial rule in Algeria. Kennedy explained that France’s 1954 defeat at Dien Bien Phu had not resulted from a shortage of military power. In his opinion, the French would have lost the war in Indo-China even if it “could afford to increase substantially the manpower already poured into the area.” In the long run, it was a prophetic warning to the country that would soon inherit France’s military commitment in Southeast Asia. In the short run, it was an affront to the Allies. “His words annoyed the French, embarrassed the
American administration and almost certainly would not satisfy Algerian nationalist leaders,” the London Observer tartly noted at the time. “But they did one thing: They introduced Kennedy the statesman.”

  Lou Harris, Kennedy’s newly recruited pollster, admits that the Algeria speech had in fact been customized to win over the wing of the party whose backing his client needed. It was meant to show the liberals just how far Joe Kennedy’s boy had come! The irony, Harris argued, was that Kennedy actually read a good deal more and was a good deal more informed than those on the Democratic left into whose political bed he was trying to climb.

  The Algerian speech contained a direct shot at Nixon. “Instead of recognizing that Algeria is the greatest unsolved problem of Western diplomacy in North Africa today, our special emissary to that area this year, the distinguished vice president, failed even to mention this sensitive issue in his report.” In the next paragraph, Kennedy took the occasion to zero in on another old rival. “Instead of recognizing France’s refusal to bargain in good faith with nationalist leaders or to grant the reforms promised, our ambassador to the UN, Mr. Lodge, in his statement this year, as previously . . . expressed firm faith in the French government’s handling of the entire matter.” “I do not criticize them as individuals,” Kennedy added out of courtesy to the pair who would head the Republican national ticket three years hence, “because they are representing the highest administration policy.”