An Unfinished Life: John F. Kennedy 1917-1963

  The greatest impediments to Jack’s nomination seemed to be liberal antagonism and doubts that a Catholic could or should win a general election. The two were not mutually exclusive. “Catholic-baiting is the anti-Semitism of the liberals,” one conservative declared. The Church frightened progressive Democrats, who regarded it as an authoritarian institution intolerant of ideas at odds with its teachings. Suspicion of divided Catholic loyalties between church and state was as old as the American Republic itself, and since the 1830s, when a mass migration of Catholics to America had begun, Protestants had warned against the Catholic threat to individual freedoms. In May 1959, 24 percent of voters said that they would not cast their ballots for a Catholic, even if he seemed to be well qualified for the presidency.

  Most liberals subscribed to the view of Kennedy as an ambitious but superficial playboy with little more to recommend him than his good looks and charm. On none of the issues most important to them—McCarthyism, civil rights, and labor unions—had Jack been an outspoken advocate. As Arthur Schlesinger Jr. said later of liberal antagonism to Jack, “Kennedy seemed too cool and ambitious, too bored by the conditional reflexes of stereotyped liberalism, too much a young man in a hurry. He did not respond in anticipated ways and phrases and wore no liberal heart on his sleeve.” Joe Kennedy’s reputation as a robber baron and prewar appeaser of Nazi Germany also troubled liberals. And, despite numerous examples of political divergence between father and son, they saw Jack as little more than a surrogate for Joe, whom they believed to have been planning to buy the White House for one of his children since at least 1940.

  Kennedy’s threat to a third Stevenson campaign was an additional source of liberal antagonism. Liberals hoped that despite Stevenson’s two defeats by Eisenhower, he might be able to win against Nixon in 1960. Some journalists shared this belief. (James Reston privately lamented “the effects upon this country of the advertising profession, the continual deterioration of our citizens, the lulling of their consciences, the degradation of their morals, and Adlai seems to me to be the only one that can raise our sights. He is the only one who speaks with the voice of a philosopher, of a poet, of a true leader.”) Journalist Theodore White wrote that California, Illinois, New York, Oregon, and Wisconsin “youngsters Stevenson had summoned to politics with high morality in 1952 had now matured and were unwilling in their maturity to forsake him.”

  To discourage a stop-Kennedy drive, Jack publicly denied that he was a candidate. In 1958, he said that his campaign for reelection to the Senate required all his attention and that he needed to “take care of that matter before doing anything else.” When a journalist pointed out that he was giving speeches in five western and midwestern states in just one month, Jack explained that he was “interested in the Democratic party nationally” and was “delighted to go where I am asked.” In 1959, a reporter asked when Jack was “going to drop this public pretense of non-candidacy.” The time to declare his future intentions would be in 1960, he replied.

  Early in 1958, as Jack’s presidential candidacy was gaining momentum, Eleanor Roosevelt published a magazine article in which she repeated her complaint that he had “dodged the McCarthy issue in 1954.” In May 1958, she made a more direct attack on Jack’s candidacy, telling an AP reporter that the country was ready to elect a Catholic to the presidency if he could separate the church from the state, but that she was “not sure Kennedy could do this.” In December, she stepped up her opposition to Jack in a television appearance, expressing doubts about his readiness for the presidency and noting his failure to demonstrate the kind of independence and courage he had celebrated in his book.

  Jack avoided any public fight with her, answering her opposition in a private letter. He challenged her to support an allegation made during her TV appearance that his “father has been spending oodles of money all over the country and probably has a paid representative in every state by now. . . . I am certain you are the victim of misinformation,” Jack wrote, and asked her to have her “informant back up the charge with evidence.” She replied that if her comment was untrue, she would “gladly so state,” but she cited his father’s declaration that “he would spend any money to make his son the first Catholic President of this country, and many people as I travel about tell me of money spent by him on your behalf.” In response, Jack expressed disappointment that she would “accept the view that simply because a rumor or allegation is repeated it becomes commonly accepted as a fact.” He asked her to “correct the record in a fair and gracious manner.” When she published a newspaper column quoting Jack’s letter, he pressed her for a fuller retraction. When she agreed to write another column if Kennedy insisted, Jack told her not to bother, saying, “We can let it stand for the present.” Jack’s suggestion that they “get together sometime in the future to discuss other matters” provoked a snide telegram: “MY DEAR BOY I ONLY SAY THESE THINGS FOR YOUR OWN GOOD. I HAVE FOUND IN [A] LIFETIME OF ADVERSITY THAT WHEN BLOWS ARE RAINED ON ONE, IT IS ADVISABLE TO TURN THE OTHER PROFILE.”

  MRS. ROOSEVELT’S REPRIMAND stemmed partly from a conviction that Jack’s denials about his father were misleading. She had no direct evidence of Joe’s spending in his son’s behalf, but she believed that all the rumors were more than idle gossip. And of course she was right. Joe had financed all Jack’s campaigns, including the 1958 romp, when he spent an estimated $1.5 million to ensure the landslide that would help launch Jack’s presidential bid.

  As important, between 1958 and 1960, Joe became the campaign’s principal behind-the-scenes operator in the nomination fight. “You do what you think is right,” Joe told Jack after he was elected to the Senate, “and we’ll take care of the politicians.” And anything else that needs to be done, he might have added. When Jack wanted prominent civil rights advocate Harris Wofford to join his campaign, Joe pressed Father John Cavanaugh, Notre Dame University’s former president, to get sitting president Father Theodore Hesburgh to release Wofford from teaching duties at the law school. When Wofford told Sargent Shriver about Joe’s intervention, Shriver replied, “‘Don’t ever underestimate Mr. Kennedy.’ This was the only time I personally saw the long hand of Joe Kennedy,” Wofford wrote, “but if he would intervene so vigorously on such a small matter, I could imagine what he was like when he dealt with Mayor Daley for delegates. ‘And that is exactly who did deal with Daley most of the time,’ said Shriver.” Although Jack would pay ceremonial visits to Daley, “the long, tough talks were between the mayor and Joe Kennedy. Shriver said this was true of the negotiations with the Philadelphia leader, Congressman William Green, and with other Irish-Americans of the old school who were in key positions in a number of city and state Democratic organizations, including California and New York.”

  “[Joe] knew instinctively who the important people were, who the bosses behind the scenes were,” New York congressman Eugene Keogh said. “From 1958 on he was in contact with them constantly by phone, presenting Jack’s case, explaining and interpreting his son, working these bosses.” Tip O’Neill remembered that when Joe learned that Joe Clark, a Pennsylvania state official, was the power behind Congressman Bill Green, he flew Clark to New York for a meeting in his suite at the Waldorf-Astoria. Joe also went to see Pennsylvania governor David Lawrence. During a secret meeting at a Harrisburg hotel, Joe was, as Lawrence remembers, “very vigorous.” When Lawrence asserted that a Catholic could not win the White House, Joe recounted a story about a New York bank president who said the same thing. “I was so goddamn mad at that fella,” Joe added. “I had nine million dollars in that bank and I felt like I’d pull out of that bank that day.”

  New York party leader Mike Prendergast recalled how Joe “sent a lot of people in to donate money to the state organization, which we used for Jack’s election.” In July 1959, syndicated columnist Marquis Childs asserted that Joe had already spent one million dollars on Jack’s campaign and was the brains behind the whole operation. Jack’s acquisition of a plane leased to him by a Kennedy family co
rporation belied Kennedy denials that Joe had anything to do with the campaign. Harry Truman echoed the concerns about Joe when he told friends, “It’s not the Pope I’m afraid of, it’s the pop.” Jack knew this was the perception, but there seemed no other route to the presidency but along this tightrope.

  THE 1958 CONGRESSIONAL ELECTIONS had given the Democratic party a decidedly liberal tilt. A recession producing higher unemployment nationwide and farm failures in the Midwest, Republican support of integration in the South and anti-union right-to-work laws in industrial states, and the “missile gap”—fears that America was losing the arms race to Russia—had translated into nearly two-to-one Democratic margins in both houses; their twenty-eight-seat gain in the Upper House was the most one-sided party victory in Senate history. Of the fifteen new Democratic senators, five were liberals and ten were moderates.

  Because liberals would thus have a major say in who became the Democratic nominee, Jack had attempted to win Adlai Stevenson’s support. But Stevenson was uncooperative. After 1956, he had consistently denied any interest in another campaign, but when one of his law partners privately confided his own intention to back Kennedy, Stevenson predicted that “the Catholic issue is going to be badly against him, and, after all, Nixon must be beaten.” The partner took this to mean: “I want to be urged to run, and I want to be nominated.” Stevenson also told Newton Minow that Kennedy was too young and inexperienced to handle the job. Stevenson confided his doubts to Time reporter John Steele as well, setting Jack down as too ambitious and maybe even a little foolish, a young man reaching too quickly for the coveted prize. He was even more blunt with the British economist Barbara Ward Jackson. “I don’t think he’d be a good president,” Stevenson said. “I do not feel that he’s the right man for the job; I think he’s too young; I don’t think he fully understands the dimensions of the foreign affairs dilemmas that are coming up.”

  With Stevenson refusing to help, Jack explored other means of bringing liberals to his side. In March 1958, when a TV interviewer asked him, “Do you think that the candidate in the Democratic party would have to be definitely associated with the liberal wing of the party in 1960?” Jack replied, “I do.” “Do you believe that you are in that wing?” the reporter continued. “I do,” Jack answered. “Do you count yourself as a liberal?” the reporter persisted. “I do,” Jack responded unequivocally.

  His answers were part of a larger campaign to convince party liberals that he was one of them, or at the very least would be responsive to their concerns. But he also felt that liberals were uninformed about his record on civil liberties, civil rights, and labor. Consequently, between 1957 and 1960, he publicly emphasized that he had established his “independence from the Democratic party,” but that this was “essentially an independence from party organization rather than from its credo.” He believed that his votes on progressive issues compared favorably with those cast by congressional liberals. His speeches from this period are replete with references to his support of advanced progressive ideas. Liberals nevertheless remained reluctant to embrace him as a reasonable alternative to Stevenson, and this frustrated and angered him, partially because he believed it unrealistic of liberals to hope that Stevenson could be an effective candidate. In 1960, during a conversation with Peter Lisagor, who predicted that Stevenson would be the nominee, Kennedy “leaned forward—I remember this so vividly,” Lisagor said. It was “almost the only time I ever saw him angry . . . and he said, ‘Why, that’s impossible. Adlai Stevenson is a bitter man. He’s a bitter, deeply disillusioned, deeply hurt man.’” As Jack told another journalist regarding Stevenson, “People who want to be deluded are going to be deluded no matter what they are told.” In September, after economist John Kenneth Galbraith publicly supported Kennedy’s candidacy, Jack wrote him, “I rather imagine your voice will be drowned out by the antiphonal choruses of support for [California governor] Pat Brown, [Michigan governor] Soapy Williams and [New York mayor] Bob Wagner!”—all more acceptable liberals.

  The gulf between Kennedy and party liberals came partly from an unbridgeable difference in perspective. New Deal-Fair Deal Democrats thought in terms of traditional welfare state concerns—economic security, social programs, racial equality. But as Jack told Harris Wofford, “The key thing for the country is a new foreign policy that will break out of the confines of the cold war. Then we can build a decent relationship with developing nations and begin to respond to their needs. We can stop the vicious circle of the arms race and promote diversity and peaceful change within the Soviet bloc. We can get this country moving again on its domestic problems.” He conceded that “Stevenson may see this, but he’s a two-time loser and has no real chance; nor has [Chester] Bowles or Humphrey, with whom I agree even more. The most likely alternatives are Johnson or Symington, but if either of them is nominated we might as well elect Dulles or Acheson; it would be the same cold-war foreign policy all over again.” (This was certainly prophetic about the Johnson presidency.)

  Kennedy also gave voice to his thinking through James MacGregor Burns, who was writing Kennedy’s campaign biography, chiefly from interviews. Kennedy’s “mixed voting record” and resistance to being labeled as a New Dealer or a Fair Dealer made people question his liberal credentials, Burns wrote in his book. But Kennedy was a new kind of liberal, Burns asserted. Because the New Deal and the Fair Deal had “become properly entrenched in our way of life, and hence [were] no longer a disputed political issue,” Kennedy believed that “liberalism must be rethought and renewed.” As for foreign policy, a series of questions Burns posed to him made it clear that Kennedy was trying to craft fresh ways of thinking about the Cold War. In particular, Jack cautioned against overblown hopes: “It takes two to make peace,” he said. “I think it would be misleading to suggest that there are some magic formulas hitherto untried which would ease the relations between the free world and the communistic world, or which would shift the balance of power in our favor.”

  He hoped nevertheless that “paramount” military power might “encourage the Russians and the Chinese to say a farewell to arms,” which could produce a competitive shift “to nonmilitary spheres.” Kennedy then foresaw “a struggle between the two systems . . . a test as to which system travels better, which system of political, economic, and social organization can more effectively transform the lives of the people in the newly emerging countries.”

  Schlesinger signed on to Kennedy’s campaign principally because he saw him as a more realistic liberal than Stevenson, and it was Schlesinger who helped Jack find a distinctive liberal outlook. Eager to give “his campaign identity—to distinguish his appeal from that of his rivals and suggest that he could bring the country something no one else could,” Kennedy seized upon a memorandum Schlesinger wrote arguing that “the Eisenhower epoch, the period of passivity and acquiescence in our national life, was drawing to its natural end, and that a new time—a time of affirmation, progressivism and forward movement—impended.”

  Schlesinger noted in his journal at the time: “This, I suppose, is the real irony. I have come, I think, to the private conclusion that I would rather have K as President than S. S is a much richer, more thoughtful, more creative person; but he has been away from power too long; he gives me an odd sense of unreality. . . . In contrast K gives a sense of cool, measured, intelligent concern with action and power. I feel that his administration would be less encumbered than S’s with commitments to past ideas or sentimentalities; that he would be more radical; and, though he is less creative personally, he might be more so politically.”

  A lack of clear definition, however, made Kennedy’s “new” liberalism suspect. Indeed, the details of his domestic program sounded much like the old liberalism or little different from what progressive Democrats were advocating in 1960: “comprehensive housing legislation . . . a ten-point ‘bill of rights’ for improved living standards for older people . . . [a] bill to outlaw the bombing of homes, churches, schools, and community cent
ers”; antilynching and anti- poll tax bills; a higher minimum wage; and an end to loyalty oaths. On foreign and defense policies as well, Kennedy seemed to be treading on familiar ground. True, he called for fresh thinking about Africa, Latin America, Asia, and the Middle East, emphasizing economic assistance, but a focus on military strength and the “‘magic power’ on our side [of] the desire of every person to be free, of every nation to be independent” gave little indication of just how he might turn the Cold War in a new direction.

  BECAUSE THERE WERE only sixteen state primaries, the road to the nomination in 1960 principally involved winning over state party leaders. Direct contacts between Jack and prominent Democrats across the country seemed essential. Beyond wooing local party leaders, however, no one around Kennedy at the end of 1958 had a clear conception of how to proceed. O’Donnell and Powers thought the nomination fight would be a larger version of Kennedy’s 1952 and 1958 Senate races. As in Massachusetts, where they had largely shunned party chiefs, they initially thought in terms of a 1960 grass roots campaign. Bobby Kennedy agreed, telling a reporter that they could not rely on “the politicians” who controlled the big state delegations to the convention. “We have to get organized in those states,” he said, “and have secretaries in every major city.” The secretaries were to set up Kennedy clubs, or “citizen organizations,” mounting a “grass roots appeal over the party regulars.” The Republican nominations of Wendell Willkie in 1940, Tom Dewey in 1944, and Eisenhower in 1952 were models of how to wrest the nomination from the “bosses.”