Jack Kennedy

by Chris Matthews

  “I was really digging at Johnson pretty hard,” Salinger remembered. He was angry, still, at the attacks on his candidate’s health—accurate as they were. He’d chosen to fight back by accusing Johnson of lacking guts, claiming he was afraid of Kennedy, and so forth. Then he got a phone call. “I heard the voice on the other end of the line say, ‘Young man, this is Phil Graham.’ I’d never met Phil Graham before in my life.” Of course, he knew who the Washington Post publisher was.

  “And he said, ‘I just want to say one thing to you. Don’t tear something apart in such a way that you can never put it back together again.’ I said, ‘Okay,’ and hung up the phone. Of course, it immediately dawned on me what he was trying to say to me. It was that there was a chance of a Kennedy-Johnson ticket.” Graham, it turns out, was pushing Johnson to accept the vice presidency if Kennedy offered it, and was pushing the idea of the ticket to LBJ as being for the good of the country.

  With Lyndon Johnson’s arrows having failed to hit their mark, the next rival Jack needed to render impotent was Adlai Stevenson. He’d retained scattered loyalists, but his support since ’56 had rusted, even on his home turf, Illinois. Despite some packing of the galleries, there was no demand for Adlai on the convention floor or in the deal-making back rooms.

  Still Stevenson’s supporters persisted, keeping up the drumbeat, hoping the scene they were creating on the television screen would stir the delegates. Senator Eugene McCarthy of Minnesota gave the convention perhaps its most memorable oratory. “Do not turn away from this man. Do not reject this man. . . . Do not reject this man who has made us proud to be Democrats. Do not leave this prophet without honor in his own party.”

  But nothing happened. The Kennedy “operation was slick, well financed, and ruthless in its treatment of Lyndon Johnson’s Southerners and the uncredentialed mob that was trying to stampede the convention for Stevenson,” noted John Ehrlichman, then a young campaign worker for Richard Nixon secretly scouting the opposition.

  Beating Vice President Nixon was not going to be easy. Jack was going to need support in the once-reliable Democratic South. His decision to offer the job of running mate to Lyndon Johnson was a model of cold-blooded politics. The fact was, no one else brought to the table what LBJ did, which was Texas and much of the South. The big surprise was that he might accept the prize if offered. But such was the case. And one person who found himself a go-between, helping to seal the deal, was Tip O’Neill.

  Johnson’s mentor was Sam Rayburn—a fellow Texan and the powerful Speaker of the House—who made it his business to contact Tip, saying, “If Kennedy wants Johnson for vice president, then he has nothing else he can do but to be on the ticket.” Instructing O’Neill to find Kennedy and tell him what he’d just said, he even passed on the phone number for Jack to call.

  Tip located Jack that night at a legendary Hollywood hangout, Chasen’s. When the two met on the sidewalk outside the restaurant, O’Neill gave Jack the phone number and told him what Rayburn had said: Lyndon would accept if offered. “Of course I want Lyndon,” Kennedy replied. He said to tell Rayburn he’d be making the call that night.

  The full story of what lay behind John F. Kennedy’s selection of Lyndon Baines Johnson remains murky to this day. When Salinger asked his boss for “some background” on the making of the decision, Jack was unforthcoming. “He said, ‘Well, I’d just as soon not tell you. I don’t think anybody will ever really know how this all really came about.’ “ Bobby, opposing the choice, had urged him to withdraw Johnson’s name. Jack himself appears to have wavered.

  What remains impressive is his ability to absorb the attack he took from Johnson and his people and keep his political bearings. “It was a case of grasping the nettle,” Schlesinger wrote in his journal for July 15, 1960, “and it was another evidence of the impressively cold and tough way Jack is going about his affairs.” Indeed, in putting the Johnson assault in its place, Jack was simply sorting matters into compartments, as he often did. Fending off a last-ditch challenge to his nomination was one matter. Finding someone to help him in November was totally another. Whether Johnson had played tough to try to secure the presidential nomination for himself was no deterrent to his running as Jack’s vice president. Not in Jack’s eyes. Not now. Rather, it was an indicator of how tough Johnson was prepared to fight by his side.

  Charlie Bartlett could sense Jack was brooding about the necessity of picking Johnson, just as he’d brooded four years earlier over the need to back the less than fresh Pat Lynch as his Massachusetts party chief in 1956. But he also remembers Joe Kennedy standing there in his smoking jacket and slippers saying, “Don’t worry, Jack, in two weeks, they’ll be saying it’s the smartest thing you ever did.” For once, the father’s political judgment was on the money.

  With the issue of his vice-presidential choice resolved, and the waves of history lapping at his feet, now came Kennedy’s speech accepting the nomination.

  What most people recall is the debut of his presidential signature. “Today some would say that those struggles are all over—that all the horizons have been explored—that all the battles have been won—that there is no longer an American frontier . . . But I tell you the New Frontier is here, whether we seek it or not. Beyond that frontier are uncharted areas of science and space, unsolved problems of peace and war, unconquered pockets of ignorance and prejudice, unanswered questions of poverty and surplus.

  “For the harsh facts of the matter are that we stand on this frontier at a turning point in history. We must prove all over again whether this nation—or any nation so conceived—can long endure; whether our society—with its freedom of choice, its breadth of opportunity, its range of alternatives—can compete with the single-minded advance of the Communist system.”

  Kennedy was really harking back to the same question that presented itself just before World War II, the one that had gripped him and driven his interest in foreign policy. It had not lost its relevance, for what he was asking was, could the democracies match the dictatorships when it came to responding to a dire threat? While we see the allusion to Lincoln in the wording, the question itself is pure twentieth century—only it was now Khrushchev, not Hitler, in opposition to us.

  But it wasn’t just America’s Democrats who had their attention focused on the convention concluding in Los Angeles. The about-to-be Republican candidate, Richard Nixon, was watching television that night, viewing it carefully with the eye of a professional, and deciding, when all the shouting was over, that he was encouraged by what he’d seen.

  Theodore White, then doing the reporting for his landmark book The Making of the President, 1960, described the response of the Republican cohort this way: “They sat rapt, then content, then pleased. The rapid delivery, the literary language, the obvious exhaustion of the Democratic candidate . . . all combined to invite in them a sense of combative good feeling.” Nixon told those with him that he thought Kennedy had turned in a poor performance, his speech above people’s heads and delivered too rapidly. He could take this man, his longtime colleague, now a known quantity, on TV—or so he felt.

  So Nixon, made confident by what he’d seen, and trusting his judgment, was in a mood receptive to the idea of televised debate. Kennedy, when the moment came, jumped at the opportunity. “I took the telegram to him,” Pierre Salinger said. The networks were proposing a candidates’ debate, and, in the Kennedy camp, the decision to agree was quickly made. “The feeling was that we had absolutely nothing to lose by a debate with Nixon. If we accepted right away, we’d put Nixon in a position where he had to accept.”

  No one, least of all Jack, could have predicted the vice president’s psychology or realized that Jack’s performance at the convention had allayed Dick Nixon’s worries about going head to head with him in front of the cameras. But by saying yes to a debate, what Nixon was handing his opponent was, in fact, a platform of such value that not even the senior Kennedy’s wealth could have purchased it. Here was an opportunity for Jack
to face the American people and claim for himself a measure of the recognition already Nixon’s. Eight years in the vice presidency had given his rival a mammoth edge. TV would now hand it to the challenger.

  The Kennedy themes, devised to differentiate his candidacy from Nixon’s, all looked to the future. While the one man was so closely associated with both the long-standing positives and the more recent negatives of the Eisenhower era, the other could recast the country’s complacency as a trap. Elect him, Jack Kennedy promised, and he’d arouse citizens to a new urgency, a new determination to face up to the challenges ahead. The United States was slowing down; everyone knew that. But he, John F. Kennedy, would get it moving again. He’d take on the Soviet threat, close the “missile gap,” and bring the enemy to the bargaining table. He would arm America, not to fight, but to parlay. In short, he’d do what Winston Churchill might have done to prevent World War II, had his own countrymen listened to him back in the 1930s.

  Meanwhile, Kennedy had a vibrant domestic agenda as well. He vowed to be a Democratic activist in the tradition of Franklin Roosevelt, bringing medical care to the elderly, federal aid to education, and strong enforcement of civil rights.

  When the two came together face-to-face, the strategy was for Nixon to be squeezed, maneuvered into appearing both weak on defense and inactive on the home front. The tactic had worked against Henry Cabot Lodge in 1952, and, since you repeat what works, Kennedy intended to deny Nixon any chance to benefit as a moderate-sounding Republican. Not hard enough on defense, not soft enough on taking care of people: Kennedy would keep up the punches and send his rival into a defensive crouch, trying to match point for point every charge made against the Eisenhower record.

  However, before he could go head to head with Nixon, Kennedy first needed to deal once again with the religion issue, which, despite his facing it head-on in West Virginia, had never really gone away. The need to do so once again came in early September, as he was whistle-stopping his way down the Pacific coast from Portland to Los Angeles. Suddenly, at one stop, he was peppered with questions about a meeting of 150 ministers just held at Washington’s Mayflower Hotel. The purpose of the gathering, called Citizens for Religious Freedom, had been to band Protestant clergymen together to work against the election of a Roman Catholic president.

  The meeting’s organizer, Norman Vincent Peale, the longtime pastor of New York’s Marble Collegiate Church and author of the best-selling The Power of Positive Thinking, also hosted his own radio program, The Art of Living. Thus, he was a popular and influential figure, now committed to using his clout against Jack Kennedy. “Our freedom, our religious freedom,” he proclaimed, “is at stake if we elect a member of the Roman Catholic order as president of the United States.” He worried that the pope was poised to assert his authority over any Catholic aspirant to the White House. His mission was convincing his fellow Americans of that risk.

  As the waiting reporters clamored for a statement, Kennedy’s initial response was curt: “I wouldn’t attempt to reply to Dr. Peale or to anyone who questions my loyalty to the United States.” Later, though, he’d remark to Ted Sorensen—after hearing Peale had claimed “the election of a Catholic president would change America”—“I would like to think he was complimenting me, but I’m not sure he was.”

  Yet, as he traveled on, it was becoming increasingly apparent that his responses to date still weren’t enough to put the issue to rest. He decided to accept an invitation to speak to the Protestant ministers of Houston. When he stood there in front of them, he intended to address thoughtfully what he’d actually come to view as legitimate questions about his loyalty. The effect of it, he hoped, would be enough to arouse the loyalty of all Americans, not only Catholics, who’d felt the sting of prejudice. Though it’s true he was sending mixed signals, telling Protestants not to vote their religion at the same time he was courting the Catholic vote, still, the eloquence he brought to bear upon bigotry cut deep and created a watershed moment in American politics.

  The math, in fact, was straightforward enough. Kennedy understood the electoral power his religion actually gave him. While just one voter in four was Catholic, these citizens had sizable leverage in the states with the most electoral votes. So he needed, first off, to minimize the anti-Catholic vote by hanging the “bias” tag on any Protestant vote against him. Jews and other minorities would then get the picture, he hoped, and rally to the cause.

  He also had to keep it light; he couldn’t allow himself, ever, to get publicly defensive. When Harry Truman, campaigning for Kennedy and sounding only like himself, let loose at Nixon-loving Southerners, telling them they could “go to hell,” the profanity earned him a pious rebuke from the Republican candidate himself. Kennedy, though, dispatched a clever telegram to the highly partisan, and also Nixon-hating, former chief executive. “Dear Mr. President,” he wrote, “I have noted with interest your suggestion as to where those who vote for my opponent should go. While I understand and sympathize with your deep motivation, I think it is important that our side try to refrain from raising the religious issue.”

  En route to address the Greater Houston Ministerial Association, he made a stop in El Paso. Look magazine’s Bill Attwood, who was friendly with Jack, saw him there and has recounted a telling exchange. “It was night and we were late, and a crowd of 7,000 people had been waiting at the airport for hours. They wanted to yell and cheer, and they wanted him to wave his arms and smile and say something about the Texas sky and stars. But he just strode out of the plane and jabbed his forefinger at them and talked about getting America moving again. And then he turned and climbed into a car and drove away.

  “A few days later . . . I told him the crowd had felt let down and suggested that the next time he should at least wave his arms the way other politicians did and give people a chance to get the cheers out of their throats. Kennedy shook his head and borrowed my notebook and pencil—he was saving his voice for the day’s speeches—and wrote, ‘I always swore one thing I’d never do is’ and he drew a picture of a man with his arms in the air.” There were limits to what he would do to win votes.

  But someone else was impressed—and extremely so—that night at the El Paso airport. According to Ken O’Donnell, Sam Rayburn, the legendary “Mr. Democrat,” told him “ten times after we got to the hotel he had never seen such a crowd in El Paso and certainly not at that hour of the night. He didn’t quite understand it, saying ‘This young fellow has something special. I just didn’t realize until now.’ “

  While the Kennedy advisors all agreed that a speech on his religion was necessary, they were equally against their candidate’s accepting the Houston invitation. Jack Kennedy himself was the sole voice in favor. “In the end, he alone made the decision to go,” O’Donnell recalled. “It came about casually; he was in shaving . . . and came out of the bathroom and said, ‘Notify them we’re going to do it. I’ll give the speech. This is as good a time as any. We might as well get it on the record early; they’re going to be asking this throughout the rest of the campaign. So, I’m going to do it.’ “

  In the hours leading up to the speech, Kennedy continued to wonder aloud if he’d made the right decision. Then, just before leaving his hotel room in his black pinstriped suit, a nonpolitical issue arose. “Look!” he told the ever-present Ken O’Donnell, pointing at his shoes. “They’re brown!”

  Finally, Dave Powers, the staff guy in charge of wardrobe, was located. His response brought common sense to bear: “I think, Senator, you’ll be behind a podium and nobody will notice it on television. . . . I think this once you’ll be okay.”

  “Really, Dave,” Kennedy replied, “so you don’t think anyone will notice that I have brown shoes with a crisp black suit?”

  “Nah, nobody will notice. I mean, come on, Senator, most people in America only have one set of shoes—and, Senator, those shoes! Those shoes are brown! You know what you did tonight, Senator! You know what you did! You sewed up the brown shoe vote.” At this,
even Jack began to see the humor.

  Kennedy walked into the meeting room alone. To make sure the audience viewing clips at home got the message, the advance man, Robert S. Strauss, had picked the “meanest, nastiest-looking” ministers to put in the front row. Assuming the role of defendant in the argument, Jack offered respect to these serious citizens with doubts about his loyalties. The invited ministers had a perfect right to question him, he said. But once having satisfied themselves as to his sincerity, they also had a responsibility to move on to other issues.

  Kennedy’s opening presentation in Houston was, perhaps, the finest of the campaign. “So, it is apparently necessary for me to state once again not what kind of church I believe in, for that should be important only to me, but what kind of America I believe in. I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute, where no Catholic prelate would tell the president—should he be a Catholic—how to act, and no Protestant minister would tell his parishioners for whom to vote.”

  O’Donnell described Senator Kennedy’s performance there as “dancing on a needle.” On the one hand, he had “to satisfy this audience with regard to a Catholic in the presidency; and yet at the same time he had to be careful not to jeopardize his position with the Catholics across the country, the Catholic Church, or the Catholic priests.” If he “came across as too conciliatory to these people, some of whom were outright bigots, it would destroy his candidacy and his position.”

  Not only did Kennedy speak eloquently; he presented himself with careful dignity, at the same time displaying an elegant pugnacity when roused. This was especially true in the long question-and-answer period that followed his speech. One focus of attention was Kennedy’s rejection of a 1947 invitation to address a dinner in Philadelphia to raise funds for a Chapel of the Chaplains. It had been intended as an interfaith house of worship honoring the four chaplains who went down with the Dorchester in World War II. Kennedy had, at first, accepted the invitation, only to later turn it down. He’d done so at the request of the local archbishop, Dennis Cardinal Dougherty.