Kennedy (21 page)

This last controversy was raised by a formal statement on population pressures by the American Catholic Bishops meeting in Washington in late 1959. The term “population explosion,” they said (a term frequently used by Senator Kennedy in his speeches on the developing nations), “was a recently coined terror technique phrase.” Some press and political observers thought the issue had doomed Kennedy’s chances for the Presidency, and the Senator was sharply irritated that so sensitive and divisive an issue had been needlessly dragged into the headlines on the eve of his official campaign. The bishops’ declaration furthered his belief that the hierarchy did not want him to be a candidate—that they had either deliberately issued this statement at that critical time or were else thoughtlessly unaware of the damage it would do to his chances. (“Does he suppose,” said the author of the declaration to a Catholic cleric, “that every public statement on matters we must continue to defend or oppose is aimed at him?”)

Rumors but never concrete proof of opposition within the hierarchy had frequently reached the Senator’s ears. Whether they considered his political or his religious views too liberal, or feared a revival of religious controversy, or felt Protestants would be more likely to woo their support, was never clear. His only public reference to their position was to joke at the height of the controversy: “They’re working on a package deal—if the Electoral College can be changed into an interdenominational school, they’ll open up the College of Cardinals.”

His own attitude had always been one of respectful independence, far less impressed by the political power of the church than many of his Protestant critics. “Naturally most of the hierarchy are extreme conservatives,” he said to me one day while driving. “They are accustomed to everyone bowing down to them, to associating with the wealthiest men in the community. They like things as they are—they aren’t going to be reformers.” He was irritated by reports of local bishops’ allegedly opposing interfaith activities or public school bond issues, just as later he would be furious when, in the midst of his Wisconsin campaign, a leading Catholic clergyman in that state forbade his members to join the YMCA. Still later, as President, he would say to a Catholic Youth Convention: “In my experience monsignors and bishops are all Republicans while sisters are all Democrats.”

He never hesitated to joke in public about eminent churchmen as well as his church. Appearing at a dinner with a somewhat rotund monsignor, he called it an “inspiration…to be here with…one of those lean, ascetic clerics who show the effect of constant fast and
prayer, and bring the message to us in the flesh.” And in the midst of the campaign he claimed at a New York dinner that he had “asked Cardinal Spellman what I should say when people ask me whether I believe the Pope is infallible, and the Cardinal replied,‘I don’t know, Senator—all I know is he keeps calling me Spillman.’”

While attacking the religious issue directly, he was also attacking it indirectly by demonstrating his appeal to all voters. We had no vast campaign organization in those early years, despite the rumors resulting from his progress. In advance of each trip, I worked on the speeches, schedules, transportation, accommodations, arrangements and publicity. Wires or letters would ask his supporters in each area to meet with him upon his arrival. On the plane, prior to each stop, I tried to brief him on whatever I had been able to learn about the state, its problems, leaders, candidates, factions and method of choosing delegates. In each city I arranged with a friendly state or county chairman or contact to collect all names and addresses for our growing political files. The Senator, neglecting neither the importance of an impressive speech nor the indispensability of personal contact—for he was one of the few politicians who excelled at both—talked in each state with key Democratic leaders, telephoned those not present, met with the press and visited with old friends. When there was an honorarium for his speech, he donated it to a local or national charity.

Back in Washington, we kept in touch with new and old political contacts through letters, Christmas cards, invitations and occasional telephone calls—sent out autographed copies of
Profiles in Courage
and later
The Strategy of Peace
—-and built up a comprehensive state-by-state file of information on some seventy thousand party leaders, officeholders, labor leaders, fund-raisers, delegates, “key Kennedy contacts” and “grass-roots supporters.”

The hectic schedule of appearances, and the other demands on our time, often diminished the quality of his speeches and often increased the number of generalities. With most college and many after-dinner audiences, he would call for questions from the floor and overcome the impression of a heavy speech with a sparkling command of all topics raised. In his speeches, moreover, he did not pull his punches or talk down to his audiences, but continued to spell out his high-minded views on controversial subjects. He chastised the United States Chamber of Commerce for its opposition to foreign aid, criticized several audiences of lawyers for the profession’s indifference to racketeering members, and engaged in verbal battles with many local unions who were unaware of
their stake in labor reform legislation. He spoke in factual and scholarly fashion, without “corn” or oversimplification, about the swift revolutions of our age—in weapons, nationalism, automation and life expectancy.

He would not, however, engage in any direct attacks on President Eisenhower. Upon his return to the Senate after his 1955 convalescence, he had replied to a question on Eisenhower’s popularity: “He seems to be standing up pretty well in Palm Beach.” In these pre-1960 years he felt Eisenhower was standing up pretty well everywhere, and inasmuch as Ike would not be the candidate in 1960, Kennedy saw no reason to take him on except by indirection. Whatever his differences with the President, moreover, he retained a basic respect for the office. When his mention of Eisenhower was hissed at a Dartmouth speech, he quickly interjected, “You mustn’t hiss the President of the United States.” And when a Democratic meeting in Tucson asked him about Mrs. Eisenhower’s trip to a “beauty ranch,” allegedly at the taxpayers’ expense, he replied softly, “I wouldn’t criticize anything she does—she is a very fine woman.”

Whether his speeches were controversial or commonplace, it was clear that we were shorthanded in the speech-writing department. Final drafts with all his changes were often completed and retyped only hours before delivery. In Los Angeles in 1956 his reading copy was handed to him as he sat calmly but without manuscript listening to the toast-master introduce him. In Oak Ridge, Tennessee, in 1959, my briefcase, containing his only speech copy, was delayed with me en route to a Rotary luncheon. It was with horror that I heard him introduced on the car radio, and with relief that I heard him give the essence of his text extemporaneously.

We made political mistakes as well. Some state party leaders on whose support we were counting deserted us when the showdown approached. Some gubernatorial candidates we were advised to support in their primary fights were defeated, and their victors not surprisingly had little regard for John Kennedy. One friendly Governor, Oklahoma’s Howard Edmondson, lost control of his state’s delegation. Local Kennedy leaders in some states proved unable to make good on their predictions. At least two of the experienced “professionals” we recruited for their political contacts produced a net loss. One antagonized more delegates than he won, and the other turned up as a chief organizer for Stevenson. One National Committeeman asked Kennedy to be the star attraction at a barbecue he was giving at his home for that state’s leading Democratic donors—and then billed Kennedy for the cost. Letters and telegrams of invitation sent to unknown names in our massive files sometimes garnered eccentrics, children and Republicans.

On trips with several stops, the Senator, after an intensive visit of one
state, would sometimes sigh at the prospect of “starting all over again” in another, meeting new faces and seeking new friends. Yet at the close of each visit he often expressed amazement at the number of men and women willing to devote time away from their jobs and families to help his candidacy, often with no thought and certainly with no assurance of any reward or recognition. He despaired in private at his inability to remember faces and names, but in time excelled all other candidates in this attribute. He also deprecated in private his knowledge of areas other than his own, but his zeal for learning and his ability to absorb information served him well.

In short, the primary purpose of these speech-making trips was not to talk but to listen and learn. He learned to tell the difference between volunteer workers who could talk and those who could also work, between a friendly comment (“Well do all we can for you”) and a firm commitment. (One governor, I noted in a 1959 memorandum to Abe Ribicoff before the National Governors’ Conference, “has succeeded, at various times, in convincing the Kennedy, Stevenson and Johnson camps that he is really for their man.”)

He learned also to tell the difference between those who were party leaders in name and those who actually spoke for delegates. In New York, for example, Congressman Charles Buckley had considerably less national fame but considerably more delegation influence than former National Chairman James Farley. In Illinois at that time, National Committeeman Jake Arvey had the national publicity, but Chicago’s Mayor Dick Daley had the votes. In Puerto Rico Governor Munoz Marin had more wisdom and stature, but State Chairman Jose Benitez had more Democratic delegates. Buckley, Daley and Benitez were for Kennedy.

Most of his fellow Senators, Kennedy found, had comparatively little political power in state and national conventions. Neither the veteran Carl Hayden of Arizona nor the freshman Tom Dodd of Connecticut, for example, could translate their endorsements of Johnson into a single vote in their pro-Kennedy unit-rule convention delegations.

He found factionalism and rivalries, based more on competing personalities than on ideologies, dividing the Democrats in nearly every state, and he learned to pick his way carefully through these contending forces. He did not confine his search for help to the possessors of high office. John Reynolds (later Governor of Wisconsin), Joseph Tydings (later Senator from Maryland), Robert McDonough (later State Chairman in West Virginia) and Teno Roncalio (later Congressman at Large from Wyoming), to name but four examples, were enlisted in the Kennedy cause long before their talents were equally recognized throughout their home states.

Just as John Kennedy represented a new era in Massachusetts
Democratic politics, he gradually built up a corps of new Kennedy Democrats throughout the fifty states. Some were old friends from college or Navy days (it must have been a very large PT boat to have contained all the shipmates we met). Some were delegates who had supported him at the 1956 Convention and enjoyed the special bond that created. Some were friends from the Congress or candidates he had helped. Some were Catholics who felt a strong affinity for his hopes for a political breakthrough—although we took pains not to have Catholics as the most prominent Kennedy leaders in any state. But most of these recruits were simply Democratic workers and voters whose response to our various mailings and meetings indicated their attraction to the unique Kennedy brand of energetic idealism and common sense. Few promises of future patronage were asked and none was given, although it was made clear that, if Kennedy were elected, he would be looking for talented people whom he knew, trusted and could work with.

In many of the smaller states the Kennedy nucleus was started by a series of meetings I held in 1959 and 1960. I also represented the Senator at conferences of the Western and Midwestern Democratic organizations (telling one protesting Michiganer that I still voted in Nebraska and resided in a state—Virginia—-which extended further west than Detroit). While attending the Midwest Conference in Milwaukee, I asked—at the suggestion of Pat Lucey and John Reynolds—Mayor Ivan Nestingen of Madison, liberal, Lutheran and Scandinavian, to be our leader in Wisconsin. While attending the Western States Conference in Denver, I asked—at the suggestion of our key contact, Joe Dolan—an old Kennedy friend, Byron “Whizzer” White, to be our leader in Colorado. Both White and Nestingen were superb, as were others similarly recruited. In one state our Protestant-Scandinavian chairman not only had great ability and loyalty but so looked, talked and acted the part of the rustic, raw-boned corn-husker from what Eastern city dwellers called “the sticks” that the Senator accused me of finding him through some Hollywood type-casting studio.

But I knew full well that a national campaign required many more hands and far more experienced hands than my own. In a memorandum discussed with the Senator in December, 1958, in New York, I attempted to put his prior efforts into perspective and proposed the addition of several campaign aides. The most urgent need was for an administrative assistant to take over our lists of key Democrats, scheduling arrangements and political mail, and we agreed that his brother-in-law Steve Smith, who had smoothly overseen the administrative side of his 1958 Senatorial campaign, was the logical choice.

Steve did an outstanding job, quietly opening a political headquarters in the Esso Building located at the foot of Capitol Hill, and taking with
him my card files, memoranda and assistant Jean Lewis. In time he was joined by two long-time Kennedy friends and hardheaded political aides from his Massachusetts Senate races, Larry O’Brien and Kenny O’Donnell; by Bob Wallace, formerly with Senator Douglas; by Pierre Salinger, a former newsman who left his post as investigator for the Senate Rackets Committee to become a superb campaign press secretary; and, finally, by Robert Kennedy, whose organizational and administrative skills, as well as his political judgment and ferocious dedication, made him the Senator’s first and only choice for campaign manager, though neither he nor anyone else had a formal title and there was no organization chart. Bob’s work with the Rackets Committee had made him controversial as well as famous, but the Senator shrewdly observed, “I’ll take all his enemies if I can have all his friends, too.”