Kennedy (16 page)

Earlier in the year, in connection with a newspaper story, the author of this
Look
article, Fletcher Knebel, had brought a similar report to the Kennedy office. The Senator, wholly willing to be rejected for the Vice Presidency but not on grounds of his religion, asked me to turn over to Knebel some material I had been gathering showing potential “Catholic vote” gains that might help offset any losses. Knebel asked me to develop the material further for his
Look Magazine
piece—and the result some months later was a sixteen-page memorandum of statistics, quotations, analysis and argument summarizing Stevenson’s need to recapture those strategically located Catholic voters who normally voted Democratic.

It was, I wrote in an accompanying letter to Knebel, a “personal” document which I was “extremely reluctant to let out of my hands.” But gradually and inevitably the memorandum and its subsequent refinements were shown on a limited basis to key newsmen and politicians.

Word of its existence spread. Two magazines reprinted it in full and a half-dozen presented summaries. Political leaders sought copies. The Stevenson camp asked for more. The backers of Senator Hubert Humphrey of Minnesota issued a scornful attack on these claims for the “Catholic vote” and put forward a much longer and less documented memorandum of their own making equally broad claims about the “anti-Catholic vote” and the “farm vote.”

No candidates were mentioned in my document. But Senator Kennedy disliked the growing focus on his religion, and disliked even more the danger that his own assistant would be publicized as promoting this issue. We arranged with Connecticut State Chairman John Bailey, a strong supporter, to assert responsibility for the memorandum. I kept Bailey supplied with copies. He kept me entertained with tales of gullible inquiries. Most newspapers at the time accepted Bailey’s statement of sponsorship; but when a more skeptical politician such as Jim Finnegan telephoned me to request six copies for Stevenson headquarters, I successively and unsuccessfully feigned ignorance, surprise, reluctance and the hope that I could “get hold of some” for him.

Like most political-statistical analyses aimed at laymen, the “Bailey Memorandum,” as it became known, oversimplified, overgeneralized and overextended its premises in order to reach an impressive conclusion. That conclusion was both more sweeping than the evidence supported and more valid than its critics alleged. The document did not purport to be original research but applied existing studies and surveys to particular states and elections. It sought to answer Democratic fears of an “anti-Catholic vote” by raising hopes of recapturing a greater share of the “Catholic vote”—and while neither phenomenon can be measured with the precision this memorandum attempted, their existence and importance had long been assumed by most political and public opinion analysts.

The “Bailey Memorandum” made no pretense at being a comprehensive and objective study. It was a political answer to the sweeping assertions made against nominating a Catholic for Vice President. While I acknowledge its limitations as a scientific analysis, its political impact would surely have been somewhat more limited if, instead of discussing the “Catholic vote,” I had followed the advice more recently offered by one professorial critic and referred to “situations in which Catholicism is an independent variable of fluctuating salience with respect to the voting choice.”

The politicians who read the document were more concerned with probabilities than with certainties—and, whatever the memorandum’s faults, the widespread attention accorded its contents at least reopened the previously closed assumption that a Catholic on the ticket spelled defeat. By the summer of 1956, as the result of President Eisenhower’s poor health and Stevenson’s commanding lead for the nomination, the Vice Presidency was being discussed more each day, and Kennedy’s name was no longer automatically dismissed in those discussions.

The Senator’s own interest in the nomination was growing, more out of a sense of competition than of conviction. While his father and wife were willing, as always, to back whatever course he chose, the latter preferred that her husband’s first full year since convalescence be spent in the quiet of his home, and the former (who did not even interrupt his customary summer vacation in the South of France for the convention) saw no merit in second place on a ticket still certain to lose. But with the Senator’s skeptical encouragement, I made a quick trip to New England to seek support from friendly Democrats in Maine, advice from Stevenson speech-writer Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. and counsel from Ribicoff and Bailey. It was generally agreed that Stevenson would surely consult with his political associates and advisers before selecting his running mates, and our chief task was to make certain that these men were informed of John F. Kennedy’s qualities.

Assets other than his religion were being stressed once again, to the Senator’s relief. “The Senator feels,” I wrote Schlesinger on August 1, 1956, “that if he is to be chosen, he would prefer that it be on this basis [his other qualifications] and not because of his religion.” And on the same day I had written to John Bailey:

A day earlier Kennedy told a reporter he was flatly not interested in a nomination that was due to his religion.

An opportunity to stress these other qualifications was presented by a letter to me from Stevenson’s research director (later Congressman) Ken Hechler, requesting that I prepare for that camp’s consideration “the strongest case for Kennedy.” My reply stressed those qualities which I thought distinguished him from other possibilities and politicians “regardless of Governor Stevenson’s need to rewin the Catholic vote”—as a contrast to Nixon, as a campaigner and vote-getter, as an author, television personality, family man, war hero, experienced legislator, friend of labor, champion of minorities, political moderate and complement to Stevenson. (At the Senator’s request I struck from this list the advantages of having a wealthy running mate.) But I also emphasized that “Senator Kennedy is not pushing this matter—and whatever the final decision may be, it will in no way diminish his support and enthusiasm for Governor Stevenson.”

While Kennedy’s other assets were being stressed, so were his other liabilities. Kennedy was “unacceptable” to the Midwest, said Minnesota’s Governor Orville Freeman, because of his votes on farm legislation.

Minnesota’s Senator Humphrey, whose name led the list of some two dozen possibilities, declared himself an open candidate for the Vice Presidency. With what he thought was Stevenson’s blessing, he initiated a nationwide campaign for the job. Estes Kefauver, after his Presidential hopes were ended by Stevenson in the primaries, was also angling for second spot. Kennedy, while interested and available, refused to consider himself a candidate or to permit a “campaign” worthy of the name.

While I was more eager, I had never been to a convention and knew no delegates. John Bailey talked to a few party leaders, as did the Senator. But no public endorsements were sought. Plans for a Hyannis Port meeting of all New England delegates with Stevenson were abandoned lest some pressure or preference be read into it. We stimulated a few meetings and mailings, but most of the Kennedy endorsements received by the Stevenson circle were made without our knowledge.
Most of the analyses of the situation I drew up—the comparative qualifications of the candidates, for example, and possible plans for convention action—were for my own guidance only, enabling me to respond to friendly inquiries and to talk concretely with the Senator.

In one of these talks—which occurred as he drove me home one summer evening—we discussed a letter from Schlesinger, who was then working in Stevenson’s office, saying “Things look good.” Said Kennedy in effect, “After all this I may actually be disappointed if I don’t get the nomination.” His statement was contrary to all we had previously assumed and I so remarked. “Yes,” he went on, “and that disappointment will be deep enough to last from the day they ballot on the Vice Presidency until I leave for Europe two days later.”

We left for Chicago and the convention in August with stacks of material—reprints of favorable editorials and stories, one-sided summaries of Kennedy’s shaky farm record, the Midwest response to his Seaway support and biographical data sheets—but with very few lists of names on whom we could count. At the suggestion of Schlesinger, who had quietly kept us informed of thinking within the Stevenson camp, I went out several days in advance to test the water. Among the Stevenson aides (aside from Arthur), I found Newt Minow enthusiastic, Bill Blair friendly, the rest noncommittal. With the help of Kennedy brother-in-law Sargent Shriver and the Chicago Merchandise Mart (a Joseph Kennedy establishment which he helped direct), I was able to make arrangements for our accommodations and credentials—but very little political headway. I also encountered and refuted rumors about the Senator’s health, about a financial contribution he had supposedly made to Nixon and about a tremendous campaign for the Vice Presidency being masterminded by his father.

Our far-from-tremendous campaign began in Chicago the Sunday before the convention opened. It consisted of a few friends meeting in our hotel suite. “You call them,” the Senator had said to me with a smile. “You’re responsible for this whole thing.” “No,” I said, “I’m responsible only if you lose. If you win, you will be known as the greatest political strategist in convention history.”

Circumstances, more than political strategy, enabled the Kenned} face and name to be brought favorably to the attention of the convention. Many delegates who had served with Kennedy in Congress were willing to work within their own states. Massachusetts delegates spread the word in convivial get-togethers with those from other areas. The Chicago
Sun-Times
gave Kennedy an editorial boost widely read in the convention. With the exception of the Kefauver delegation from New Hampshire, most of the New England delegates who gathered each morning for breakfast (a Roberts-Ribicoff-Kennedy innovation) liked Kennedy and
wanted to help. A luncheon for a local Illinois candidate, attended by key Stevenson leaders, featured Kennedy as a speaker. Several delegations invited Kennedy to address them.

On opening night Kennedy’s assets were favorably displayed in his previously filmed role as narrator of the “keynote” motion picture—a documentary history of the Democratic Party which outshone the fiery, flourishing keynote speech of Frank Clement. At its close, Kennedy was introduced from the floor, and our friends around the hall had no difficulty in getting others to join in prolonged applause.

With all these boosts, Kennedy banners, buttons and volunteers began to appear from New England and Chicago sources. One Massachusetts delegate in a big Stetson hat and cowboy boots carried a sign reading “Texans for Kennedy.” But buttons and banners were not the equivalent of a Stevenson endorsement. A visit to Governor Stevenson by Ribicoff, Roberts and Massachusetts Governor Paul Dever had no visible results. The plan of a mutual friend to obtain backing from a key Stevenson supporter, Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt, collapsed, for she used the occasion to chastise the Senator in a roomful of people for being insufficiently anti-McCarthy.

Finally, on Wednesday noon, word came by a circuitous route that Kennedy was no longer under consideration. After consultation with his brother Bob, whose cool judgment and organizational skills were once again available and invaluable, the Senator sought and received a direct talk with Stevenson. Stevenson did not answer the Vice Presidential question with finality, but asked Kennedy’s views on all those considered (Kennedy liked Humphrey). He then asked the Senator if he was willing to make the principal Presidential nominating speech. “I assumed,” the Senator later told me of his feelings at that time, “that when I was given the opportunity to nominate Stevenson they had decided on another candidate [for Vice President]….I thought the matter was closed and was not especially unhappy.”

The Stevenson staff had hinted the previous week that Kennedy was a possible choice for nominator. Delaying the decision, they assured me, was no problem inasmuch as a fine speech had already been written. That afternoon—less than twenty-four hours before nominations opened—a speech draft was brought to us by Stevenson aide Willard Wirtz. From a brief conversation with Wirtz I mistakenly inferred that Kennedy had been definitely ruled out for Vice President. I also learned that even his role as Stevenson’s nominator could not be final until (1) a courtesy clearance was received from Stevenson’s fellow Illinoisan, Senator Douglas, and (2) that evening’s fight on the party platform was over, should any schism require a Southerner in the slot of chief nominator.

The Senator asked me to review the speech and to rework it in his
style while he attended the convention. It was an impossible assignment. The draft we were handed was a wordy, corny, lackluster committee product. I finally caught up with the Senator well after midnight, when the platform fight was over and he had been told definitely he would speak the next day. He looked at the original draft, then at my redraft, and said, “We’ll have to start over.”

He talked about a fresh opening, the points to make in a new draft and the length he desired, and asked me to bring it to his room by 8
A.M.
the next morning. I did. There he reworked it further, sitting in bed. I rushed back to my room to get it retyped, and then we hurried out to Convention Hall.

Owing to our haste, one page from his copy was missing, and the Senator refused (wisely, it turned out) to rely on the teleprompter. I snatched the missing page from the teleprompter office, promising to return it as soon as it was copied. A helpful reporter, Tom Winship of the Boston
Globe
, borrowed a typewriter at the press table and banged it out.

The teleprompter failed but the speech was a success. Its reference to the two different types of campaigners on the Eisenhower-Nixon ticket—one who took the high road and one who took the low—was picked up by subsequent speakers and became a part of that year’s campaign vocabulary. Illinois leader Richard Daley later said this speech helped convince him that Kennedy was needed on the ticket.