Perplexed by this impasse, I went to a dinner party given by my publisher Bennett Cerf and his partners, and I sat at a table with three gentlemen famous in American letters. In view of what I am about to say, I think it better if I refrain from disclosing two of their names, although they are free to do so if they wish. However, I must state that neither Bennett Cerf nor his partners were present at this particular table when the conversation opened with a discussion of the propriety of electing a Catholic President. The three distinguished gentlemen who shared the table were, and are, noted as American liberals, and I was surprised to find that two of them had the most serious and deep-rooted fears of a Catholic in the Presidency.
Dignitary One said firmly: “I make my living writing books, and I have found that whenever in the United States repressive action is taken against literary works, it’s always the Catholic Church that spearheads the censorship. It’s against everything I stand for. It’s dictatorial, savage in its enmities, all-consuming in its desires, and reactionary in its intentions. I speak from first-hand knowledge of a church that is positively brutal in its lust for power, and it seems to me that to put a member of that church into our highest political office is indeed unwise.”
Dignitary Two said more hesitantly: “I’ve traveled in Spain and Ireland. Have you ever been in Spain on Good Friday? For four days everything shuts down tight. No movies, no music, no games, nothing. The Spanish people don’t want this, but the Church does. And on Friday night as dusk falls, the rulers of the city, all the appointed and elected officials, line up, take off their shoes, climb into penitential garb, tie ropes about their necks to which are attached crosses, and parade barefoot through the city dragging these crosses behind them. Why? Because they’re holy men? No, they don’t give a damn for holiness. They drag those crosses to show the citizenry that they’re subservient to the Church. I don’t want any church that rules Spain as this one does, no church that has ruined Ireland the way this one has, to get a foothold in the United States. To prevent such a thing I think I would lay down my life.”
The gentlemen then asked what my experiences had been with the Church and I replied, “I’ve recently decided that I could support a Catholic for President, but I must admit that I have persistent doubts about the political influence of the Church. For example, when I was textbook editor for one of the big publishing firms we were visited one day by a priest who showed us credentials entitling him to speak for the hierarchy of the Church in New York City, and he warned us bluntly that unless we stopped using the word jesuitical as a pejorative adjective in our books, he would personally see to it that no further book from our company would ever be used in any Catholic college or school.”
Dignitary One asked, “Did you use the word jesuitical in books that you were trying to sell to Catholic colleges? That doesn’t seem intelligent.”
“You misunderstand me,” I replied. “The word was never used in textbooks because we knew it was pejorative. Another branch of our company had used the word in a book intended for the general public.”
“And the Church was threatening you on such a tenuous relationship?”
“Yes. Their pressure was constant and powerful,” I replied. “The priest insisted that we drop the word in all future editions of the book he was complaining about.”
“Did he specifically say that if you didn’t edit it out he would institute the boycott?” the eminent writer pressed.
“Yes.”
“Did you cut the word?”
“No,” I replied. “As a matter of publishing honor we couldn’t.”
“Was the boycott enforced?” my interrogator asked.
“I think not, but in all prudence we stopped using the adjective in subsequent books.”
The discussion continued for some minutes, and then the fourth man at our table spoke up, and his name I am willing to report: He was Clifton Fadiman, the brilliant essayist and wit, and he said calmly, “Gentlemen, you are talking like idiots. One of these days we shall have a Catholic President and he will probably be a very good man. For every Catholic Spain that you cite, I can cite a Catholic France, where the clergy never successfully interferes. For every repressive Ireland I can cite a Belgium, where the Church’s political influence is benevolent. Our Constitution has specific safeguards to protect us from what you fear, and the spirit of our unwritten laws is all in favor of us in any showdown such as you speak of. You,” he asked Dignitary One, “were you against the appointment of Frank Murphy to the Supreme Court?”
“Of course not,” the distinguished writer said. “I am fearful only of the ascendancy of a Catholic to the highest administrative office. I’ve seen what they can do as administrators.”
“Were you against Al Smith as governor of New York?” Fadiman pursued.
“Of course not,” the writer replied. “He was a notable governor. I voted for him.”
“You’re markedly inconsistent,” Fadiman said. “If you truly fear Catholics as much as you claim, you should initiate impeachment proceedings against every Catholic who holds a governmental position.” In a quiet, impassioned summary Fadiman then gave as good a defense of religious liberty as I had ever heard, and I sat quiet, marking his thoughts.
But when he finished, a distinguished woman who sat at our table said, “Mr. Fadiman, you make an impassioned plea for the Church that would not recognize a single postulate of your reasoning. I am a Catholic, and a reasonably faithful practicing one, and I assure you from the bottom of my being that no Catholic should ever be President of the United States. The whole tenet of my Church’s belief is against democracy, and the exercise of intelligent will, and the freedom of the individual. It’s one thing to have a Catholic serve as governor of a subsidiary state, but it’s quite a different matter to have the same Catholic serve as supreme magistrate of the land. I do not speak as a theorist. I speak as a Catholic, and I pray God I shall never see one President of this nation.”
This burst of reasonable oratory might have stunned some debaters, but Fadiman turned to the lady and in his impressive, quiet manner replied, “This is not a matter of one voter, or one country. It’s a matter of an entire world in which we are trying to find centers of reason and stability. All that you say about the Catholic Church in a given situation, or about individual Catholics in their isolated situations, may be true. But the fact remains that we are endeavoring desperately to save a world, and it cannot be saved unless we utilize all the talents of all the people. I am in no way an apologist for the Catholic Church, and I am perfectly happy enjoying the freedoms that I enjoy through not being a member of that church, but I am totally unwilling to proscribe an entire body of people from high office merely because of their religion, which history has proved is a reasonably good religion that yields reasonably good results.”
“Fadiman, you’re a fool!” the first writer snapped. “We’re not talking about high office, as you say. We’re talking about the highest office, and all the prerogatives for sentimental indoctrination that it commands. I don’t want a Catholic occupying that office and insidiously using it to propagate his faith, whether he does so consciously or unconsciously.”
Patiently Fadiman replied, “The office of the Presidency could be corrupted by a Catholic only if the entire body of our nation were disposed to let that happen. And we are not. I would protest. So would Michener. So would you. And so would this good Catholic here.”
“But,” cried the Catholic woman, “the Irish priests who rule us, they would not protest. They would use the Catholic President as if he were their toy, and in time they would have the power and not he.”
“No,” Mr. Fadiman argued, “the safeguards of our nation would not permit this.”
“Damn it all, Fadiman,” the second writer interrupted. “What we’re talking about is this. The other night a boy in my play was in New Haven and he wanted to buy a contraceptive. And he couldn’t. And do you know why he couldn’t? Because the Catholic Church said he couldn’t.”
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“No,” Fadiman reasoned quietly. “That law was passed by a Protestant legislature.”
“The hell it was!” the writer growled. “It was passed because the priests of the Catholic Church damned well dictated to the legislature—Protestant or not they never care—what bills they had to pass, and the legislature passed them. And that’s what we’re fighting about. No more power to the priests.”
“No,” Fadiman corrected, “that’s not what we’re fighting about. We’re fighting for a rational nation that uses all its talents, all its built-in safeguards, and all its historical purposes in a time of world crisis.”
“Why are you defending the Church so industriously?” one of the writers asked.
“As an act of faith,” Fadiman said. “I fear Spain as much as you do, but you don’t fight Spain by being even more stupid than Spain is.”
At this point Bennett Cerf, smiling at some outrageous story told at another table by Russel Crouse, approached to lead us into another room, and the infectious relaxation of his manner reminded us of the fact that at our table we had perhaps been taking ourselves too seriously. Even so, as we broke up, one of the writers growled, “Fadiman, you haven’t convinced me,” and three others said the same. I did not join the comment, for he had convinced me.
That night I drove home and in my small room reviewed the situation: “I’ve fought to defend every civil right that has come under attack in my lifetime. I testified on behalf of each of my friends hauled before the McCarthy Committee. I’ve tried to write as if all men were my brothers. In Hawaii I’ve stood for absolute equality, and it would be ridiculous for a man like me to be against a Catholic for President.”
I then took out a sheet of paper and wrote down every reason I could think of for not nominating John Kennedy for the Presidency. He was young. There were ugly rumors afloat about his father. I had been told that Jews wouldn’t vote for him. He had no administrative experience. He had been pathetically weak on McCarthy. And one of the television shows had claimed he hadn’t written the book for which they gave him the Pulitzer Prize. I listed a few other disqualifications that I can’t remember now, but which I was sure the Republicans would dig up during an election. Then I added the crusher: “He’s a Catholic.”
But at this point I thought of the first time I had met the handsome young man from Massachusetts. It had been in the South Pacific, and when the memory of that meeting came back to me I wrote in the other column, “But he’s also a hell of a man, and he’d make a good President.”
That night I decided to work to the fullest extent of my ability to see that John Kennedy was nominated for the Presidency and elected to it. The first thing I did was to write a brief note to Clifton Fadiman thanking him for his patient reasoning at the Random House party. Next I wrote to Senator Kennedy, volunteering whatever help I might muster. This was well before he had engaged in any primaries.
My reasons for settling upon Kennedy as my choice for the nomination were clear, and once reached were never reconsidered. True, in the twelve months that were to elapse before his election to the Presidency there would be times when I thought he might lose. But there was never a time when I did not want him to win. These were my reasons. First, I considered him a very able man with a brilliant mind, substantial courage, an enormous sense of history, and an attractive personality, cold perhaps but reassuring. Second, I was convinced he would make a much better than average President. Third, I was equally convinced that he would be a great politician, and according to my definition of the Presidency, a politician is needed to hold his party, his legislative program, and his country together. I am very fond of good politicians, for they accomplish more than most of us. Fourth, I was convinced that Kennedy would make a strong attempt to win back the labor, Negro, suburban and Jewish votes that had left the Democratic party to support General Eisenhower. Fifth, I was sure that Kennedy, from having written two good books, knew what the intellectual life was, and I suspected that he would support America’s efforts in the arts. Sixth, I knew that violent anti-Catholics would vote against him, but I also supposed that many violent Catholics would vote for him, and that the fringe bigots would thus offset each other. In letters that I wrote at the time I tried to convince my doubting friends that it was safe for the Democratic party to nominate a Catholic “because I am reasonably certain that the bigot votes we lose in the rabid country we will pick right back up in the crackpot city. We will lose Mississippi with its 8 votes, and win New York with its 45, and I call that a good exchange.” What I failed to anticipate was the violence of the anti-Catholic resentment not in the rabid southern areas but in the solid central body of our nation. Had I foreseen the anti-Catholic campaign that was to be launched by otherwise reasonable people and to be supported by others even more sensible, I might have wavered in my decision. As it was, I went through the primaries, the nominating convention and up to the campaign itself before I realized what my party was up against. As in so many other instances, in this case ignorance was bliss. There was also a final point which impressed me very much when I considered John Kennedy’s candidacy: I was convinced he could win. I thought that he could take the primaries without disrupting the party. I felt sure he could win the nomination and hold the bulk of the candidates with him. And I was very sure that in a general election he could defeat Richard Nixon. On the night that I wrote to Senator Kennedy volunteering my services I went to bed happy.
And yet the very next night the wisdom of my choice was challenged. By pure chance a neighbor who loved political discussion invited my wife and me to his home, where four other couples were present. That meant that there were twelve of us in the room, and when my wife announced with some asperity that I was not going to support Adlai Stevenson the entire room groaned, for the other ten were strong Stevenson people and in a sense the meeting had been called to see what could be done to further his candidacy.
“Who you going to support?” one of the men asked.
“Senator Kennedy,” I said.
A furious consternation erupted, and except for my wife each of these ten good Democrats, who in the past had proved their loyalty by working openly for the party in a county where Democrats have never been popular, swore, “If the Democrats nominate a Catholic for President, I’ll vote for Nixon.”
Through five or six hours of heated discussion in which I asked all the questions I was to ask so often in the future months, each of these ten good liberals hardened his determination and warned me that he spoke not only for himself but for dozens of couples like those present at our informal meeting.
I need not repeat the arguments. One of the couples was Protestant and had traveled in Spain. Two were Jewish and dreaded the prospect of a repressive Catholic domination. One wife was a Catholic and hated priests who meddled in political matters. All were of the opinion that 1960 was going to be a year in which any likely Democratic candidate for the Presidency could lick Nixon, “unless the party is stupid enough to put up John Kennedy.” As we left, all reiterated their determination to vote for Nixon if that latter dreadful contingency occurred.
On the long drive home I was an abashed political theorist. I had been quite unprepared for the vehemence of these ten people and I wondered if they did indeed speak for many like themselves. I remember going silently to my room and taking out a sheet of clean paper. On it I made a diagram which made me feel much better:
Stevenson Kennedy Undecided Nixon Goldwater
I called my wife and explained my happy discovery. “On the extreme right you have the Barry Goldwater conservatives. They may not like Nixon, but they have no place else to go. On the extreme left you have the Stevensonian liberals. They may not like Kennedy, but if he’s nominated they won’t have anywhere else to go.”
“You think those people were fooling tonight?” she asked.
“No, they weren’t fooling. They’ll be against Kennedy on New Year’s Day. They’ll be rabidly against him in the primaries. They’ll shout against
him at the convention. In August, September and October, they’ll be strongly against him, and on November 8 do you know what they’ll do?”
“Vote for Kennedy?” my wife asked.
“Right. We mustn’t upset them by arguing against their positions now,” I cautioned, and thereafter I did everything I could to conciliate the Stevenson people; I knew that no matter what they said, they had no place else to go. They might stay home from the election, but they would never vote for Nixon, no matter how strongly they threatened to do so, because for them to vote for Nixon would require that they jump from one side of the spectrum clear to the other and this men refuse to do, for it seems like a rupture of common sense.
I pointed to the Undecided and said, “These are the Republicans and Democrats who voted for General Eisenhower last time but who don’t like Nixon. For them to slide into the Kennedy camp involves no rupture of common sense at all. So all the disaffected Democrats will have to vote for Kennedy, whereas at least half the disaffected Republicans can very easily vote for Kennedy.” I pointed to the Undecided again and predicted, “That’s where we’ll win the election.”
My wife argued, “Your diagram doesn’t take into account the anti-Catholic vote.”
I replied airily, “I explained all that before. The screwballs on one extreme cancel out those on the other.”
“Don’t you wish it was as simple as that?” she asked on her way to bed.
I refused to dignify her doubt with an answer, but as I looked at my diagram I was assailed by an ugly fear and had my first premonition that John Kennedy might not win this election after all. Suppose that the Republican party had sense enough not to nominate Richard Nixon, who might not win, but Nelson Rockefeller, who most certainly could. What would be the situation then? With some apprehension I altered my diagram and studied its fateful signals: