Kennedy (23 page)

He flatly refused to consider accepting the Vice Presidential nomination “under any condition.” Appearing on
Meet the Press
the next day, he said the situation was “somewhat different” than in 1956, and if he were not to be the Presidential nominee, “then I think I can best serve the party and the country in the Senate…. I don’t want to spend the next eight years…presiding over the Senate…voting in the case of ties [which]…rarely occur, and waiting for the President to die.” He might have added, as he did privately, that he could not accept his party’s rejection for first spot on the ticket because of his religion and then its insistence that he take second spot because of his religion. He also believed, but did not say, that second spot on any other Democratic candidate’s ticket in 1960 was likely to be second spot on a losing ticket.

The pundits of the press persisted throughout that first weekend, however, in believing that Kennedy was actually a candidate for the Vice Presidency or, in any event, had no reason to be as confident as he sounded about the Presidency. In the judgment of those political reporters who rarely left Washington, practically nobody who was anybody was for him. Almost all the nationally known Democrats thought he had the wrong religion, the wrong age, the wrong job and the wrong home state to be nominated and elected President. They all favored him for Vice President, partly to avoid charges of anti-Catholicism. He was everybody’s No. 1 choice for the No. 2 place. But hardly anyone of whom anyone had ever heard favored him for the only place he would take.

Every Democratic leader of the House and Senate—except, it was assumed, for the inactive John McCormack—favored Johnson. The “titular leader” of the party, Adlai Stevenson, was publicly uncommitted and privately for himself. The past Democratic President, Harry Truman, was for Symington. The influential widow of Franklin Roosevelt was for Stevenson or Humphrey.

A poll of House Democrats favored Symington. A poll of Senate Democrats favored Johnson. A poll of editors predicted Stevenson. A poll of state chairmen predicted Symington. A poll of “influential intellectuals” favored Stevenson. The liberal ADA preferred either Humphrey or Stevenson. Most Negro leaders talked first of Humphrey. Most labor leaders, particularly those angered by the antirackets investigation and
legislation, talked first of Humphrey or Symington. Most Southern leaders talked first of Johnson.

Among the best-known professional politicians, such as McKinney of Indiana, Lawrence of Pennsylvania and DeSapio of New York, most favored Johnson or Symington as more their type of candidate. Some, including the Catholics, were convinced that no Catholic could win, and nearly all preferred to take uncommitted delegations to the convention to “deal” with a compromise candidate. With such important exceptions as Daley of Chicago, Green of Philadelphia and Buckley of the Bronx, most of the leading Democratic politicians who were Catholics were against Kennedy—because they had conflicting ambitions of their own, because they wanted to avoid any anti-Catholic controversy in their own states, because they feared a charge of favoritism, or because they simply sincerely preferred one of his several opponents. Catholic Democrats running for state and local office thought their own faith would be less of a handicap if a Protestant headed the ticket. Those with Vice Presidential ambitions knew they had no chance if Kennedy headed the ticket. (A few with whom he had served in the Congress, Kennedy thought, were simply jealous.) National Chairman Paul Butler, to be sure, was by 1960 very friendly to Kennedy, but unfortunately he had more enemies than delegates.

Most governors of large Democratic states leaned to Stevenson, enough to keep Kennedy away from a convention majority. The spectacular number of potential favorite-son candidates—Governors Brown of California, Williams of Michigan, Meyner of New Jersey, Lawrence of Pennsylvania, Collins (or Senator Smathers) of Florida, Tawes of Maryland, Hodges of North Carolina, DiSalle (or Senator Lausche) of Ohio, McNichols of Colorado, Docking of Kansas, and Loveless of Iowa, plus Senators Hartke in Indiana and Morse in Oregon—seemed certain to deny to Kennedy the early-ballot victory he would need as front-runner.

But the Senator, while not ignoring those at the top, had been building his strength from the bottom up. Relying on new methods and new faces to match this formidable array of obstacles, he had acquired some formidable assets of his own. His power base was not Washington, where the big names were, but out in the states, where the delegates were. There were more voters, more rank-and-file Democrats, for Kennedy than for any other candidate.

Local party leaders—who usually possessed more delegate strength than those more nationally known—were influenced by Kennedy’s popularity with their neighbors and friends and by his repeated visits to their states. He had spoken at their dinners and rallies, raised and given money for their campaigns, sought their advice and assistance, and maintained a genuine interest in them all. He never refused a phone
call, ignored a letter or turned away a visitor. Political leaders, labor leaders, Negro leaders, intellectuals, had all been deluged with mail from Kennedy, from Kennedy’s office and from their counterparts in Massachusetts; and all had been deluged as well with articles by and about Kennedy, phone calls from Kennedy, books by and about Kennedy and polls showing Kennedy ahead.

At the root of all other motivations, local political leaders and candidates want a winner, to help the local ticket and to replenish party patronage. To strengthen their future claims for help, they want to be with that winner early. Likely losers may be admired, advised and even quietly assisted, but they are rarely endorsed.

Kennedy did not look much like a politician, but increasingly he looked like a winner. He had a history of political victories which carried lesser candidates in with him. Perhaps more important, he gave the impression that he was playing for keeps. His organization, though inexperienced, was both competent and confident; and his “new pros,” like O’Brien and O’Donnell, worked harder and knew more than the nation’s best-known old “pros.” He had a solid political base, comparable in size to any big state, in a united New England delegation.

Moreover, word was gradually spreading (with the encouragement of Kennedy supporters) that the North and East would block Johnson’s nomination, that the South and East would block Humphrey, that Stevenson would not run and that Symington could not win. The latter two were the most acceptable compromise candidates, but uncommitted party leaders grew nervous waiting for Stevenson to declare and for Symington to get his campaign off the ground. Kennedy had taken pains to be “personally obnoxious” to no one. Many liberals preferred Kennedy to Johnson. Many conservatives preferred Kennedy to Stevenson. Symington was the second or third choice of almost everyone but the first choice of almost no one.

Within this perspective, each Democratic governor had to weigh his own ambitions for a role in the convention or future administration. If Kennedy’s candidacy survived the primaries, he would be consulted about the convention’s keynote speaker and he would need someone to place his own name in nomination. If nominated, he would need a Protestant Vice Presidential running mate from the Midwest or South. If elected, he would need a Cabinet.

The Senator and his staff quietly beamed on all such speculation. No commitments were made, no deals worked out, no falsehoods told. But both hints and frank talk flowed from the Kennedy camp to several governors about the kind of running mate and other talents needed, and all suggestions and applications were gratefully received from their spokesmen, their aides and, in a few cases, their wives. Notations on
other Democratic governors in the aforementioned 1959 memorandum to Ribicoff illustrate these considerations (without divulging names):

But casting a shadow over all these bright spots was still the issue of Kennedy’s religion. Democrats wanted a President, not a principle. If a Catholic could not be nominated, or, if nominated, could not be elected, no matter how outrageous the reason, that was sufficient grounds for any Democratic politician to oppose Kennedy’s nomination without being guilty of bigotry. Many did. Nor did Kennedy regard every Democrat who doubted the electability of a Catholic as a bigot. He was not enlisting crusaders in a drive to remove the ban on Catholics from the White House. He had no deep desire to avenge the discrimination his grandparents had encountered in Boston. And he was not, contrary to some reports, interested in whatever glory attached to being the first Catholic President. He simply wanted to be President and happened to be a Catholic. Although his formal position was an expression of confidence in voter tolerance, he replied to one question with a wry
smile: “I’ll get my reward in the life hereafter—although I may not get it here.”

He knew that his religion gave him certain political assets, as in the 1956 Vice Presidential speculation, although the thesis advanced by one friend that his religion was his greatest asset he regarded as “exaggerated.” It gave him a link with potential political workers in many of the states he visited. And, if nominated, it gave him at least some hope of recapturing a portion of those Catholic voters who had stopped voting Democratic nationally. But he was never under the illusion that all Catholics, much less the Church hierarchy, would support him. On the contrary, all talk of a Catholic voting bloc—to which the 1956 Bailey Memorandum had contributed—would only encourage Protestant voting blocs. He was not surprised when Republican periodicals resurrected and reprinted the Bailey document, but he instructed his own aides never to talk in terms of Catholic voting strength—1960 was not 1956. Vice Presidential prospects were often judged in terms of their appeal to some particular sector of the electorate—farmers, Southerners or liberals, for example. But Kennedy was no longer a Vice Presidential prospect, answering arguments about the liabilities of his religion with offsetting statistics. In 1960, as he wrote me in a discussion of our approach:

Thus he repeatedly said that he did not want anyone to vote either for him or against him on grounds of religion, that he did not expect to win because of or in spite of this irrelevant standard. He did not threaten his party, as some charged, with retribution from Catholic voters if the party failed to name him. He had neither the desire nor the power to use the feelings of Catholic voters as a bludgeon—and “I cannot believe,” he said, “our convention will act on such a premise.” But he was aware of the fact that, if he swept the primaries and led the polls and had the most delegates, he could be denied the nomination only by a few party leaders saying, “We won’t take him because he’s a Catholic”—and this, he knew, they would find politically difficult to do.

If he swept the primaries…Only in this way could he demonstrate his electability, prove that a Catholic could win, scatter the favorite-son candidates, pick up a bloc of committed delegates and knock one or more competitors completely out of the race. Only then could he translate
his voter strength in such states as New York, Illinois and Pennsylvania into solid delegate strength. Only by thus getting Humphrey and Morse out of the race could he secure his own majority by picking up some of whatever votes they acquired. And only by winning in an early convention ballot could he secure the nomination. “If it ever goes into a back room,” he said, “my name will never emerge.”

Actually he never took Morse’s candidacy seriously and never thought Humphrey, in the absence of a Kennedy withdrawal, could claim more than 200 delegate votes. Nor, in his view, could Humphrey be nominated even if he knocked Kennedy out in the primaries. Campaigning had its supposed joys, he knew, but it also took its physical, emotional, financial and political toll. For Humphrey or anyone else to campaign without hope of success, no matter how loudly the crowds applauded or how hopefully one’s managers talked, seemed to him—as he remarked to one reporter—“just a waste of time…. Why does Hubert do it?”

His real opposition, he knew, would be Symington, Johnson and Stevenson. The latter’s participation in the 1956 primaries entitled him to vow he was not a candidate in 1960, but Kennedy argued that Johnson and particularly Symington should not be seeking nationwide delegate support without proving their voter appeal. At times he exempted Johnson from this charge because of his duties as Majority Leader. But often he referred generally to all his inactive opponents. “If the voters don’t love them in March, April or May,” he told a New Hampshire audience, “they won’t love them in November.”

Privately he thought that Symington, had he organized earlier, might have been able to defeat him among the more conservative Democrats of Indiana or Nebraska; and one defeat would have been enough to deny Kennedy the nomination. But Symington, he felt, preferred the strategy of compromise. Johnson, he was certain, would not enter and could not win any of the 1960 primaries in which Kennedy was running—although he would later speculate that LBJ might have carried West Virginia “if he’d made a fight out of it.” But the Majority Leader’s decision to stick to his Senate duties and enter no primaries at all was a fatal flaw in the Johnson campaign, Kennedy believed, the flaw that prevented Johnson’s nomination.