Kennedy (11 page)

Interestingly enough, one crucial roll call in 1959 involved the political fortunes of most of the Presidential aspirants. Kennedy, with vigorous help from Johnson and the support of Symington, fought a high-sounding but harmful “Labor Bill of Rights” amendment offered by John McClellan. To his dismay, it passed by one vote, with Hubert Humphrey out of town. As Johnson maneuvered for reconsideration, a tie-breaking vote in its favor was cast by Vice President Nixon. Later Kennedy and Johnson succeeded in getting this decision modified, causing Barry Goldwater to cast the only vote against the bill, and causing Kennedy to remark that it was “obvious that Senator Goldwater would be satisfied with no bill that did not destroy the organized trade union movement in the United States.”

The bill went to conference with the House-passed Landrum-Griffin bill. Preferring a compromise to no bill at all, Kennedy was able to eliminate fifteen restrictions on normal union activity from the House bill while retaining his own curbs on racketeering. But although the final version was on balance closer to the Senate bill, he thought it politic that it not bear his name.

Throughout the long legislative effort the investigative probe continued. Some national and Massachusetts labor leaders were angered when he signed the McClellan Committee report. Not to have done so, he replied, would have cost him his credibility on the issue in the Senate. But there were political gains as well as losses. The television public was becoming increasingly familiar with the Kennedy brothers grilling dishonest union leaders or lecturing racketeers who had misused the funds of honest members. The committee, unlike McCarthy’s operation, gave all witnesses the right to offer prepared statements, to submit questions for cross-examination, to receive a transcript of the testimony, to refuse a one-man hearing and to exercise the full protection against self-incrimination. Although a large portion of the Senator’s mail was from those incensed by the refusal of many witnesses to give testimony, he understood both the fairness of the Fifth Amendment and the fairness of confronting all witnesses with the evidence against them, whether they desired to respond to it or not. (He could not, however, refrain from commenting to his banquet audiences on the racketeer, wholly fictional, “who took the First, Fifth, Sixth and Sixteenth Amendments—and deeply regretted the repeal of the Eighteenth.”)

Meanwhile, in Room 362 in the Senate Office Building, where the door was always open, the Kennedy Senatorial operation was satisfying both the Senator and his Massachusetts constituents.

From the beginning, the pace was frantic and the hours were long. His staff worked hard because the Senator worked hard and because his vitality and enthusiasm were infectious. Barry Goldwater remarked to a friend that the only office still active when he left at night was inevitably the Kennedy office. Vice President Nixon’s office, directly across the hall, often worked in two secretarial shifts, but the girls in the Kennedy office, with no overtime or compensatory time off, consistently worked ten, twelve or more hours with surprisingly little turnover. (Nixon and Kennedy had entered Congress together and were friendly. Guests at a 1953 Kennedy cocktail party had included all his staff, including stenographers, and the Richard Nixons. The Vice President would occasionally look in on our office and in 1955 sent a basket of fruit to welcome the Senator’s return from convalescence. Earlier, when the Democrats in the 1954 elections appeared to have regained control of the Senate by a one-vote margin, the Vice President called me in to say that he had no intention of permitting the Republicans to organize the Senate by taking advantage of Kennedy’s hospitalization.)

Official staff allowances were insufficient for a state with as many letter-writers as Massachusetts and a Senator with as many interests as Kennedy. He consequently supplemented the payroll out of his own pocket. His Administrative Assistant Ted Reardon, who had been with him since his first campaign for the House, oversaw the handling of constituent requests. The Senator would personally intervene in the most important problems, ranging from Agricultural Department funds for spraying gypsy moths to expediting the Marine Corps discharge of Boston Red Sox slugger Ted Williams (who, to Kennedy’s chagrin, endorsed Nixon in 1960). The always affable and thoughtful Reardon also administered, to the disappointment of some Massachusetts politicians, a merit system for the selection of Senatorial West Point and Annapolis appointees which made any prejudice or partisanship impossible.

The Senator’s personal secretary was my fellow Nebraskan, Mrs. Evelyn Lincoln, whose unfailing devotion and good nature more than compensated for a sometimes overly possessive attitude. (“Whatever I do or say,” President Kennedy said to me one afternoon in his White House bedroom, after an urgent telephone request to his secretary, “Mrs. Lincoln [in eleven years he never called her Evelyn] will be sweet
and unsurprised. If I had said just now, ‘Mrs. Lincoln, I have cut off Jackie’s head, would you please send over a box?’ she still would have replied, ‘That’s wonderful, Mr. President, I’ll send it right away…. Did you get your nap?’”)

In 1954 I recruited another Nebraskan, my law college classmate, Lee White, to assist us on legislation. Lee and the two men I secured to follow him, Ralph Dungan and Myer Feldman, were indispensable assets. The office was always overcrowded, with desks or corners for student “interns,” academic advisers and temporary consultants.

The Senator was not always satisfied with his staff’s work. He disliked complainers and procrastinators. He wanted the truth and both sides of an argument, but he had a special distaste for those who brought him only bad news. He always wanted more details and documentation, at the same time always seeing the larger picture into which each action or idea could fit.

The employer, like the man, was patient with his employees, but impatient with any inefficiency or incompetence. He was always accessible and ready to listen, quick to grasp a recommendation and disappointed only when there was none. He never raised his voice when expressing disagreement or dissatisfaction with our work. Indeed, he was rarely and then only briefly angry at any staff member. But he’ possessed, as a Senator, one serious weakness as an administrator: he could not bring himself to fire anyone. “I keep calling her in for that purpose,” he said of one inefficient female assistant, “but when she comes in looking so hopeful and vulnerable, I give her another assignment…. You do it.”

(The only serious case of office nonfeasance occurred during his convalescence away from the office. While the Senator’s position was never decided by the amount or nature of his mail—it was not, in his opinion, representative and much of it was not spontaneous—he was anxious that each letter be answered promptly and with as much specific information as possible. A new girl in charge of legislative mail in 1955 found that the volume of letters, despite the Senator’s absence, was greater than she could handle. Lee White, searching for an unanswered letter about which an angry constituent had telephoned him, found, stuffed in the bottom drawer of her desk, over thirteen hundred unanswered letters and postcards. She couldn’t bring herself to throw them away, she confessed, with some relief that her ordeal was over. All the girls in the office joined forces to help, all the mail was answered, and the unlucky lady found another position—in a bank!)

Mail was always a burden in the office, and constituent complaints and demands were sometimes an irritant. “All of us,” the Senator
wrote in the introductory chapter to
Profiles in Courage
, “occasionally have the urge to follow the example of Congressman John Steven McGroarty of California, who wrote a constituent in 1934:

Senator Kennedy signed very little of the correspondence he approved for his signature and dictated even less of it. Staff members composed letters in accordance with his thinking. Mass mailings employed a mechanical signature pen. Most of his individual letters—and sometimes even autographed books or pictures—were signed by secretaries so skillful in imitating his handwriting that even he could not detect the difference. He once complained to Ted Reardon that the signature affixed that year for his Senatorial mailing frank—which appeared on all his envelopes—was a poor, illegible imitation, and Ted respectfully pointed out that that year the Senator had submitted his own signature for the frank.

On the other hand he sometimes answered mail not worthy of his time or not even addressed to him. This resulted from his habit of picking up and leafing through whatever was lying on top of whatever desk he was passing. Whenever the number of items I had to bring to his attention was uncomfortably long, I found that some progress could be achieved by leaving many of them on the corner of my desk.

My original assignment in 1953 had been the preparation of a legislative program for the New England economy, and this led that year to a series of three comprehensive speeches on the Senate floor, a number of bills, related speeches and national magazine articles and a formal organization of the New England Senators’ Conference (with a Nebraskan as secretary).

Initiation of the conference, which had been suggested in his series of Senate speeches, was shared with his Massachusetts colleague, courtly Leverett Saltonstall. Thereafter both offices worked closely together on Massachusetts problems, holding a number of joint meetings and issuing joint releases.

Though Saltonstall and Kennedy usually voted differently on national policy, they retained affection and respect for each other. Each enjoyed the additional political support gained by being associated with the other, and each privately preferred sharing Senatorial prerogatives with a colleague from the opposite party rather than with a competitor
from his own. They took turns taking the lead on joint measures for Massachusetts, with the wholly unspoken understanding that they would all be known as Saltonstall-Kennedy bills in the senior Senator’s 1954 and 1960 campaigns and as Kennedy-Saltonstall bills in 1958.

At a 1963 party dinner Kennedy noted that Saltonstall, at a Republican gathering earlier in the week, had introduced Senator Barry Gold-water with the less-than-ringing endorsement: “He and I have differed on many problems, but we like and respect one another.” Kennedy paused as he repeated the words and then added, “I used to get a better introduction than that from Senator Saltonstall when I was in the Senate I”

On election night, 1960, the early returns indicated that Kennedy had won the Presidency and carried Saltonstall’s opponent in with him. Kennedy evinced genuine regret, and expressed in the midst of all his other cares a desire to make use of his old friend’s talents. “What about Ambassador to Canada?” I asked, and he replied, “He’d be perfect for it”—but Saltonstall’s final victorious vote abruptly ended his ambassadorial career.

On the Senate floor, in a Tennessee speech and in a national magazine article, Kennedy emphasized in 1953 that his efforts for New England were not directed against competition from the South or any other area, so long as that competition was fair. Substandard wages were unfair competition, and he wanted the minimum raised. But the TVA and public power were fair competition, and he wanted New England’s resources developed.

He took a similar approach to foreign competition. While assisting many Massachusetts industries in their applications for tariff relief, he was often the only Senator from New England voting for liberal trade programs.

But the severest test of whether his approach was provincial or national came early in 1954 when the St. Lawrence Seaway was once again before the Senate. For twenty years it had failed of passage, and for twenty years every Massachusetts Senator and Congressman, regardless of party or district, had voted against it. Kennedy had opposed it in his 1952 campaign. Saltonstall, in one of his rare disagreements with President Eisenhower, was opposing it in 1954. Massachusetts port and railroad interests were among the leading lobbyists against it. The Boston longshoremen, who had been faithful Kennedy supporters, condemned it as a threat to their jobs.

But the Senator characteristically asked me to collect for him an objective compilation of the facts—and the facts showed that the Seaway would not do the harm alleged, was needed in the national interest
and would in all probability (which was not clear in 1952) be built by Canada alone if the United States delayed any longer. He ordered a speech drafted in support of the project, but withheld a final decision until the next day so he could “sleep on it.”

He did not, he admitted the next day, do much sleeping. Years later he would make far more difficult and dangerous decisions without any loss of sleep, but this was in many ways a turning point for the thirty-six-year-old Senator, He had no obligation to vote for the Seaway and endanger his political base. He was not required to speak on either side. A quiet vote of opposition would have received no attention. But he was determined to represent the national interest, and he had told his constituents that a provincial outlook would only continue their neglect by the rest of the country. Still he hesitated. Then, with a shake of his head—a shake I would often see, meaning “Well, this is what I must do, for better or worse”—he walked over to the Senate floor and delivered the speech.

Citing his state’s traditional opposition, he declared, “I am unable to accept such a narrow view of my function as United States Senator.” Standing proudly at the back of the chamber, I was instantly besieged for copies. The speech was regarded as a turning point in the Seaway debate as well as in the Senator’s career. The Seaway at last became law. The Boston Post accused Kennedy of “ruining New England.” His opponent in 1958 charged that it was all designed to help Joseph Kennedy’s Merchandise Mart in Chicago. A friend on the Boston City Council warned him not to walk in the 1954 St. Patrick’s Day parade, lest catcalls and worse be hurled at him in the dockworkers’ district. But he marched—and there were no incidents. Throughout his career he refused to shrink from the possibilities of hostility in his audience—whether it was in Boston, Jackson, Houston, Caracas or Dallas.