JFK

by Fredrik Logevall

  5. O’Donnell and Powers, “Johnny,” 82.

  6. NYT, April 7, 1952; BP, April 7, 1952.

  7. On Lodge and his political persona, see Brown, Moderates, 175–201; and Nichter, Last Brahmin.

  8. Miller, Henry Cabot Lodge, 174; Whalen, Kennedy Versus Lodge, 49–51; Matthews, Jack Kennedy, 125.

  9. Schlesinger, Thousand Days, 91; Leamer, Kennedy Men, 281–82.

  10. Quoted in Nasaw, Patriarch, 657.

  11. Quoted in Schlesinger, Journals, 1952–2000, 291. See also Brown, Moderates, 192–93; and Nichter, Last Brahmin.

  12. Burns, John Kennedy, 102.

  13. David Powers extended OH, box 9, DFPP.

  14. O’Brien, No Final Victories, 11–14; O’Donnell, Brotherhood, 8–9.

  15. Much later, this building would serve as the exterior for the hit television series Cheers.

  16. Martin and Plaut, Front Runner, 161.

  17. Quoted in Martin and Plaut, Front Runner, 176.

  18. Shaw, JFK in the Senate, 36.

  19. O’Donnell in Stein, American Journey, 41, quoted in Nasaw, Patriarch, 664; O’Donnell, Irish Brotherhood, 60–63. Dalton initially took a philosophical view of being shunted aside in favor of Bobby Kennedy: “It probably was a good decision that was made, because I found it very difficult, when I would give a decision, to have other people abide by the decision. But if a Kennedy made the decision, the people in the campaign would abide by it.” Dalton OH, JFKL. In his later years, he became more bitter. See his interview with Laurence Leamer, in Kennedy Men, 295; and his interview for the PBS program The Kennedys. I’m grateful to Elizabeth Deane of WGBH for providing me with this transcript.

  20. O’Donnell and Powers, “Johnny,” 86.

  21. Quoted in Bzdek, Kennedy Legacy, 169.

  22. Bzdek, Kennedy Legacy, 89; Laing, Robert Kennedy, 131.

  23. Edward J. McCormack OH, JFKL; O’Brien, Victories, 27–30; Guthman and Shulman, Robert Kennedy, 441–43.

  24. Powers extended OH, box 9, DFPP.

  25. David Powers OH, JFKL.

  26. John T. Burke OH, JFKL; Whalen, Founding Father, 423.

  27. Bryant, Bystander, 34–35.

  28. Kennedy speech, “Kennedy fights for civil rights,” n.d., box 93, JFK Pre-Pres; Bryant, Bystander, 36.

  29. Kennedy speech, “Kennedy fights for civil rights,” n.d., box 93, JFK Pre-Pres; Bryant, Bystander, 36.

  30. Powers extended OH, box 9, DFPP; Polly Fitzgerald OH, JFKL.

  31. Polly Fitzgerald personal account, box 103, JFK Pre-Pres.

  32. Quoted in Martin and Plaut, Front Runner, 169–70. See also Berkshire Eagle, September 8, 1952.

  33. Martin and Plaut, Front Runner 168–9; Polly Fitzgerald OH, JFKL.

  34. Parmet, Jack, 253; Martin and Plaut, Front Runner, 178. Lodge said in another interview, “I remember thinking at the time—and I think I probably said it—that we have a two-party system in America, that it was a good thing when the parties put up men of quality, that I realized that, of course, I was going to have an opponent, and that it was in the public interest for him to be a fine man, as John Fitzgerald Kennedy was.” Henry Cabot Lodge Jr. OH, JFKL.

  35. Cabell Phillips, “Case History of a Senate Race,” New York Times Magazine, October 26, 1952; Burns, John Kennedy, 113–14.

  36. McCarthy, Remarkable Kennedys, 135; Collier and Horowitz, Kennedys, 162.

  37. Whalen, Kennedy Versus Lodge, 83; Bryant, Bystander, 39–40. Columnist Joe Alsop said: “Well, what impressed me most was all the [Kennedy] girls. They were exactly like an old-fashioned, burlesque pony ballet, wonderfully good-looking girls, with their great long legs and great manes of hair, attacking the voters sort of en masse. It was an extraordinary performance, I’d never seen anything like it before in any campaign.” Alsop OH, JFKL.

  38. O’Brien, No Final Victories, 31–32.

  39. Frank Morrissey OH, JFKL.

  40. Martin and Plaut, Front Runner, 180.

  41. Whalen, Founding Father, 424; Shaw, JFK in the Senate, 34; Savage, Senator from New England, 17–18.

  42. An excellent biography is Patterson, Mr. Republican. A brief and incisive treatment is in Farber, Rise and Fall, chap. 1.

  43. As early as July 1951, however, Joe Kennedy could write to Jack: “[Arthur] Krock also told me very confidentially that Chris Herter had a confidential talk with Eisenhower and that Eisenhower is definitely a candidate and wants the Republican nomination.” JPK to JFK, July 13, 1951, box 4, JPKP.

  44. On the GOP nomination fight, see, e.g., Hitchcock, Age of Eisenhower, chaps. 3–4; and Patterson, Mr. Republican, 509–34.

  45. On the selection of Nixon, and Eisenhower’s ambivalence, see Frank, Ike and Dick, 33–37.

  46. Stevenson refused to strike back at these and other GOP attacks. In a speech before the American Legion on “The Nature of Patriotism,” he said, “The tragedy of our day is the climate of fear in which we live, and fear breeds repression. Too often sinister threats to the Bill of Rights, to freedom of the mind, are concealed under the patriotic cloak of anti-Communism.”

  47. See Lodge, Storm Has Many Eyes, chap. 3.

  48. Whalen, Founding Father, 425.

  49. Boston Herald, August 23, 1952.

  50. Boston Herald, September 9, 1952.

  51. Ruth Karp to Francis Morrissey, September 5, 1952, box 102, JFK Pre-Pres; BG, September 17, 1952; Waltham News Tribune, September 17, 1952; Miller, Henry Cabot Lodge, 253. “Few Differences Bared in Kennedy-Lodge Debate,” read the Globe headline. According to the accompanying article, the debate was delayed by thirty-five minutes as Kennedy supporters protested plans to make a wire recording of the debate for local broadcast, and distribution of a pro-Lodge pamphlet. Kennedy put the matter to rest when he allowed the recording.

  52. Norris, Mary McGrory, 27–28; BG, September 17, 1952.

  53. It is perhaps noteworthy that Jack himself wrote his substantial opening statement for the debate, judging by the handwritten version to be found in his papers, and that he focused substantially on foreign policy. See box 94, JFK Pre-Pres.

  54. Whalen, Kennedy Versus Lodge, 89.

  55. On a typical late-campaign day, October 21, Kennedy toured Fall River and its factories in the morning, and Taunton and its factories in the afternoon. That evening he appeared in a televised American Federation of Labor panel discussion, then hustled to evening rallies in Brockton, Randolph, and Taunton. Campaign press release, October 21, 1952, box 25, DFPP.

  56. Powers extended OH, box 9, DFPP.

  57. Time, July 19, 1954.

  58. Quoted in Wicker, Shooting Star, 110. See also Frank, Ike and Dick, 74–75.

  59. BG, September 10, 1962; Whalen, Kennedy Versus Lodge, 145.

  60. “Information from Sargent Shriver,” September 19, 1952, box 47, AES; Stossel, Sarge, 109.

  61. Collier and Horowitz, Kennedys, 187.

  62. Phil David Fine OH, JFKL; Leamer, Kennedy Men, 303.

  63. Fine OH, JFKL; Hirsch Freed OH, JFKL; Whalen, Founding Father, 426; Kessler, Sins of the Father, 337.

  64. Whalen, Founding Father, 427–28. For JFK’s denial, see his letter to Westbrook Pegler in 1958, quoted in Oshinsky, Conspiracy So Immense, 241. See also Pegler’s harshly anti-Lodge column in the New York Journal-American, October 16, 1952. “This is the McCarthy bandwagon,” Pegler wrote. “It is the best bandwagon in the whole campaign. Anyone who wants a ride ought to be man enough to ask Joe publicly.” For the possibility that Kennedy over time may have sent much more money to McCarthy, see Tye, Demagogue, chap. 4. The amount cannot be known, since public reporting was not required in the period.

  65. Nasaw, Patriarch, 668; Oshinsky, Conspiracy So Immense, 241.

  66. An internal Lodge poll in September showed th
at Kennedy had made worryingly large gains in Boston. Lodge had carried the city by twenty thousand votes in 1946, but he was now projected to lose it by ninety thousand votes. Upper-income voters who generally leaned Republican were moving to Kennedy, an analyst noted. “PMS Analysis of Poll,” September 5, 1952, reel 18, HCLP II.

  67. BG, October 3, 1952, and October 23, 1952. The Lodge campaign prepared a tabulation of the two men’s voting records in 1947 to 1952; it showed Kennedy with 179 votes “absent and not recorded” and Lodge with 58. “Absent and Not Recorded—The Kennedy-Lodge Record, 1947–1952,” u.d. (fall 1952), reel 18, HCLP II.

  68. Quoted in Greenberg, Republic of Spin, 281.

  69. BP, October 25, 1952; Shaw, JFK in the Senate, 43–44; Whalen, Founding Father, 430–31. A later pro-Kennedy editorial in the Post, dated November 3, the day before the deadline, was titled “Jack Kennedy: All Man—100 % American.”

  70. O’Donnell transcripts re. Lodge, box 9, DFPP; Charles Worden to Lodge, November 8, 1952, quoted in Whalen, Kennedy Versus Lodge, 151.

  71. Macdonald OH, JFKL; RK, Times to Remember, 327; O’Brien, No Final Victories, 36.

  72. O’Donnell transcripts re. Lodge, box 9, DFPP.

  73. Matthews, Jack Kennedy, 145.

  74. O’Donnell, Brotherhood, 82.

  75. Kenneth O’Donnell transcripts re. Lodge, box 9, DFPP.

  76. See Robert Kennedy’s recollection in Meyers, As We Remember Him, 59.

  77. Whalen, Kennedy Versus Lodge, 157.

  78. “Congressman John F. Kennedy gained more prestige by defeating Senator Henry Cabot Lodge last election day than any other winner in the entire country, with the one exception of President-Elect Eisenhower,” wrote columnist Clem Norton. Lynn Telegram-News, November 16, 1952.

  79. O’Donnell transcripts re. Lodge, box 9, DFPP; Lynn Telegram-News, November 16, 1952. For a Lodge adviser’s post-election assessment, which listed several of these factors in explaining the outcome, see Sears to Shea, December 8, 1953, reel 8, HCLP II.

  80. Schlesinger, Robert Kennedy, 96–98. Lodge himself placed primary blame for his defeat on fellow Republicans: “Lodge blamed Republicans, not JFK’s early start: ‘I have a view which I think I can substantiate. What lost me that election were the Republicans who were angry at me because of the defeat of Senator Robert A. Taft at the Convention.’ ” Lodge OH, JFKL.

  81. O’Brien, No Final Victories, 27.

  82. SEP, June 13, 1953.

  83. O’Brien, No Final Victories, 31.

  84. Comparing the rival campaigns’ expenditures is not easy, but according to The New York Times they were not that far apart, at least in the final two months: “Each has large headquarters establishments in downtown Boston, with both paid and volunteer help. Each is producing bales of expensively printed literature. Each is making extensive use of local radio and television facilities. Kennedy has about 800 billboards around the state and Lodge about 500.” Cabell Phillips, “Case History of a Senate Race,” New York Times Magazine, October 26, 1952.

  85. Transcript, Meet the Press, November 9, 1952, box 105, JFK Pre-Pres.

  86. Powers extended OH, box 9, DFPP.

  CHAPTER 19: JACKIE

  1. It’s possible they had a passing encounter on a train in 1948. See Michael Beschloss, introduction to Jacqueline Kennedy: Historic Conversations on Life with John F. Kennedy, Interviews with Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., 1964, ed. Michael Beschloss (New York: Hyperion, 2011), xx.

  2. Meyers, As We Remember Him, 51; Spoto, Jacqueline, 75–76. Charlie Bartlett said later, “I used to see her up in East Hampton when she visited her father and then down in Washington. She always had these sort of English beaux and I must say they were not up to her.” At the wedding, “I spent the whole evening trying to get Jackie Bouvier across this great crowd to meet John Kennedy.” Andersen, Jack and Jackie: Portrait, 73.

  3. In the curious, doubly negative phrase, presumably approved by Jackie prior to publication (for this was an authorized, soft-focus book, penned by a friend and published just after Jackie became First Lady, in 1961, which Jackie went through line by line prior to publication), she said, “Such a heartbreak would be worth the pain.” Thayer, Jacqueline, 95. In Jackie’s recollection no asparagus was served that evening.

  4. Anthony, As We Remember Her, 71, quoted in Bradford, America’s Queen, 58; Goodwin, Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys, 770.

  5. Meyers, As We Remember Him, 64; O’Brien, No Final Victories, 42; Kennedy, Historic Conversations, 42.

  6. New York World-Telegram, December 17, 1952.

  7. Klein, All Too Human, 363.

  8. In some of these respects Jackie resembled his late sister Kick, to whom he had been so close. (In other respects, the two women were sharply different.) See Leaming, Mrs. Kennedy, 29–30.

  9. Klein, All Too Human, 183. On Jack Kennedy paying more attention to his attire during this time, see Powers extended oral history, box 9, DFPP, JFKL.

  10. Spoto, Jacqueline, 83; Levingston, Kennedy and King, 18–19.

  11. Kennedy, Historic Conversations, 27.

  12. Andersen, Jack and Jackie, 105. Gore Vidal, a distant relation of Jackie’s by marriage, spoke in similar terms: “If she hadn’t married Jack she would have married someone else with money, although it wasn’t likely she would have gotten someone as exciting as Jack in the bargain. When given a choice of glory or money, most people choose glory. But not Jackie. She also wound up with plenty of the latter, of course, but she didn’t need that like she needed to be rich.” Andersen, Jack and Jackie, 106.

  13. Kelley, Jackie Oh!, 30; Sorensen, Kennedy, 37; Andersen, Jack and Jackie, 112. Jack Kennedy quoted in Martin, Hero for Our Time, 76.

  14. Martin, Hero for Our Time, 77.

  15. Alastair Forbes OH, JFKL.

  16. Collier and Horowitz, Kennedys, 190.

  17. Quoted in Dallek, Unfinished Life, 193.

  18. Collier and Horowitz, Kennedys, 191; Leaming, Mrs. Kennedy, 7.

  19. Quoted in Andersen, Jack and Jackie, 60.

  20. Leaming, Mrs. Kennedy, 7.

  21. See her comments to Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. in March 1964, printed in Kennedy, Historic Conversations. In later years, her views shifted and she became a strong advocate for women’s rights and gender equality.

  22. Leaming, Untold Story, 5; Spoto, Jacqueline, 53. A classmate recalled Jack Bouvier’s visits to Miss Porter’s: “What we liked to do was run around and shake our behinds at him because he was an absolute lecher, absolute ravening, ravenous lecher, and Jackie, of course, knew it, and it amused her, but I don’t think she was aware—she might have been, she didn’t miss anything—of the extent to which we were teasing her father and making fun of him….He came through as this sort of cartoon example of a dirty old man and I don’t know if Jackie ever realized the extent to which we felt he was.” Ellen “Puffin” Gates quoted in Bradford, America’s Queen, 27.

  23. Perry, Jacqueline Kennedy, 27.

  24. Spoto, Jacqueline, 61.

  25. Baldrige, Kennedy Style, 12–13; Spoto, Jacqueline, 59.

  26. A penetrating assessment of the year in France is Kaplan, Dreaming in French, 7–46. Andersen, Jack and Jackie, 85; Vidal, Palimpsest, 309–10. For a skeptical view of the elevator story, see, e.g., Bradford, America’s Queen, 66–67.

  27. Prix de Paris application materials, box 1, JKOP; Kaplan, Dreaming in French, 48–49. A later winner of the competition was Joan Didion.

  28. Washington Times-Herald, April 21, 1953.

  29. Burns, John Kennedy, 117–18.

  30. Sorensen, Kennedy, 11–12.

  31. Burns, John Kennedy, 118–19.

  32. Leamer, Kennedy Men, 311.

  33. Matthews, Jack Kennedy, 151–55. For a partial defense of Kennedy’s “cutthroat approach to person
nel,” see Matthews, Jack Kennedy, 155.

  34. Sorensen, Counselor, 97.

  35. Sorensen, Counselor, 98–99. On January 12, Kennedy told the Mutual Broadcasting System’s Reporters Roundup that he approved of some of McCarthy’s conduct, but “I disapprove very strongly” of other actions of the Wisconsin senator, including the effort to go after alleged Communists on the faculties of private universities. New Bedford Standard Times, January 13, 1953.

  36. Lasky, J.F.K., 165. Kennedy’s personal secretary, Evelyn Lincoln, said of Sorensen that he was a “quiet, reserved, quizzical intellectual,” a tower of steadfast support who was “devoted, loyal and dedicated to the Senator in every way possible. Time meant nothing to him—he gave it all to the Senator.” Lincoln, My Twelve Years, 18.

  37. Oliphant and Wilkie, Road to Camelot, 4.

  38. Shaw, JFK in the Senate, 123; Sorensen, Counselor, 113.

  39. Evelyn Lincoln, “My Twelve Years with Kennedy,” SEP, August 15, 1965; Sorensen, Counselor, 114–15; Sorensen, Kennedy, 30. Jackie Kennedy would later say: “He never wanted to have people in the evening that he worked with in the daytime.” Kennedy, Historic Conversations, 23–24.

  40. Lincoln, “My Twelve Years with Kennedy.”

  41. Sorensen, Kennedy, 55–56.

  42. John F. Kennedy, May 18, 1953, Congressional Record, 83rd Cong., 1st sess., 5054–5056; John F. Kennedy, May 25, 1953, Congressional Record, 83rd Cong., 1st sess., 5466. Many of the speeches can be found in box 893, JFK Pre-Pres.

  43. John F. Kennedy, “What’s the Matter with New England?” New York Times Magazine, November 8, 1953; John F. Kennedy, “New England and the South,” Atlantic Monthly, January 1954; Shaw, JFK in the Senate, 69.

  44. Quoted in Chernus, Atoms for Peace, 94.

  45. See Osgood, Total Cold War, 71–74; and Bowie and Immerman, Waging Peace.

  46. On the war’s final phase and its resolution, see, e.g., Stueck, Rethinking the Korean War, chap. 6; and Foot, Substitute for Victory.

  47. Schlesinger, Imperial Presidency, 134–35.

  48. Wright Smith, “Too Many Generals: Eisenhower, the Joint Chiefs, and Civil-Military Relations in Cold War America,” Senior Honors Thesis, Harvard University, 2017.