Report of the County Chairman (27 page)

I began, “The Bible has a magnificent old phrase, ‘Let us now praise famous men,’ and tonight in the white heat of our campaign I should like to do just that, for in a democracy we sometimes forget the famous men who have made us strong. Colorado had such a man, Senator Ed Costigan, who in his day was one of the most gallant legislators this country had. Costigan grew up in the free spirit of Colorado, and here he developed those theories of government which he was later to advocate so ably in Washington.

“He was a liberal. He was a fighter. He was a visionary. He was a man who spent hours of his time inculcating in younger men the same idealism that he practiced. In the years that I worked so happily in Colorado, every man of stature that I knew owed his philosophy of government to Ed Costigan. This great man taught Colorado to be free. He initiated the legislation that saw us through the depression and kept us strong. He served both his state and his nation as few men are ever capable of serving.

“All the liberal ideas that have been so important in my life I learned from Ed Costigan. Before I came upon his remarkable career I thought it was proper for men to use the government for narrow purposes. Costigan knew that it should be used for the broadest possible human purposes. He illuminated my life, with insights that have grown constantly stronger the farther away from him I move. He was an adornment to this state, the noblest man you have so far produced.

“Let us therefore do as the Bible suggests and praise famous men. Let us tonight praise Colorado’s foremost son, Ed Costigan, the fighting liberal. Because the man I have come here to speak to you about is cast in the mold of Ed Costigan. I couldn’t support him if he weren’t. If Ed Costigan were alive tonight I feel sure that he would be supporting Jack Kennedy, too, because Kennedy stands for all the broad-gauge human rights that Ed Costigan stood for, and I believe that Kennedy is the true inheritor of that great liberal tradition.”

I then went into my set speech and I could see Chuck Roche relax a little, but after the program ended Whizzer White said, “I’ll bet not ten people in the audience knew who you were talking about. They forget awfully fast.”

But Professor Schlesinger said, “I was deeply impressed that you should have mentioned Ed Costigan. What a great man he was and how we need to remember what he stood for.”

White was correct. In our audience of six or seven thousand, hardly five people knew that Colorado had once produced a great man, but those five were leaders of the state, who came up to say, “I was a child of Ed Costigan’s.

He taught me all I knew.” I suspect that if I had spoken differently in Denver I might have won a few more votes to our side, but if I had been the kind of man who could have spoken differently under those circumstances, I would probably never have given a damn about Jack Kennedy in the first place.

In the speech where I allowed Chuck Roche to set the pattern completely, the results were more striking. On our way in from the airport to a small city that I would prefer not to name, the man and woman riding in my convertible explained, “This area is the center of the worst anti-Catholic agitation in the nation. Please keep your mouth shut on the religious issue. If you mention it, our side will be seriously damaged.”

I assured them: “Mr. Roche, who is pretty canny on these things, has only two topics which are absolutely forbidden. Eisenhower and religion. You don’t have to worry about us.”

My escorts sighed and said, “We’re both Protestants and we were just afraid that you might be a Catholic and that when you see what they are doing to us, you might blow your stack.”

I laughed and said, “I face this every day in my own county and I’ve learned to keep my stack unblown.”

“We’re relieved,” they sighed. “What you might hit in your talks is the farm problem and Cuba. We seem to be getting some mileage out of them.”

I started adjusting my notes to include
farm
and
Cuba
, but when we assembled at the high school auditorium where the rally was to be held, one of the other speakers showed us some literature that had been circulated that
day, and it was scurrilous. “Why don’t you comment on this?” they asked me.

“I wouldn’t touch it,” I said. I related what my guides had told me and Jeff Chandler confirmed that his escorts had warned him about the same thing. The community was torn apart by religious strife and any mention of it could only exacerbate feelings more damagingly than they already were.

But as I started to go onto the stage Chuck Roche called me aside and whispered, “Jim, have you seen what they’re doing in this town?”

“Don’t worry,” I assured him. “I’ve promised not to touch it.”

“I think you should,” he said grimly.

I was surprised at this and warned, “It can only bring trouble.”

He took me by the arm and said, “I don’t want to win this town by pussyfooting on this issue. If we have to tear it wide apart, let’s do it right now. Are you game?”

“I sure am,” I said.

“How will you handle it?” he asked.

“Not with kid gloves,” I replied.

We went to Whizzer White, who was in charge, and said, “We’re going to tackle the religious question head on.

“You’ll lose the area if you do,” he warned.

“Some areas you want to lose,” Chuck said.

“How do you see it?” I was asked.

“This time we lose,” I said. “Maybe we clear the air for next time.”

“Go ahead,” White said apprehensively.

I will not try to repeat all that I said, because it probably wouldn’t read well. I can only report that the words I said in that supercharged air that night were the best I have ever spoken. At another time they might not have been effective, and indeed they weren’t really effective in this case, for they were heard in sullen silence, but they were heard. I began in as shocking a way as possible by saying that I was supposed to be the speaker who told funny stories about the election so that people would go home in good humor, but tonight I would not speak of humorous things. I would speak of the most tense and terrible matters that were dividing this community. I said that whether they knew it or not, whether they liked it or not, on November 8 Jack Kennedy was going to win the election, and on November 9 we would all have to face up to the fact that America’s next President was going to be a Roman Catholic.

Shock waves spread across the audience and I said quietly, “But it isn’t going to be so bad, really.” And I mentioned the numerous countries that have had Catholic chiefs of state with no disastrous circumstances: France, Belgium, Italy, Australia. I said, “Those of us who hate Catholicism most forget that both of our neighbors, Mexico to the south and Canada to the north, have often been governed by Catholics, and nothing very serious has happened. “In fact,” I challenged, “if I were to read off the names of Canada’s six finest prime ministers, you wouldn’t know which three were Catholic and which three were not, and neither would most Canadians.” I assured them
that ten years from tonight, looking back upon the fears that gripped them now, they would laugh at their apprehensions.

I said, “The people you see on this platform have been traveling together for some time, in very cramped quarters. We’ve had no great trouble. Did you know that Jeff Chandler is a Jew? I suppose the Kennedy girls are Catholics. Stan Musial bats left-handed so he could be almost anything. We don’t ask. Whizzer White’s some kind of Protestant, I think. And I’m a Quaker. That’s about as far from Catholicism as you could get. Jack Kennedy believes in priests and music and incense; I believe in no priests at all, silence, and no incense. Furthermore, I’m an officer in a group studying population pressures and we advocate birth control. On this I suppose that Jack Kennedy and I are as far apart as we could be. But that doesn’t keep me from supporting Kennedy for President, and Jeff Chandler’s different beliefs don’t keep him from working for a Catholic. Our nation has got to learn what we have learned on this trip.”

I don’t believe I have ever spoken in such silence. No one moved, and from the front row Chuck Roche nodded grimly. I said in conclusion, “If there are in this audience any who feel that they positively cannot vote for a Catholic, we understand your position and we listen with sympathy to your fears. If you believe that the election of Jack Kennedy to the Presidency dooms the United States to go the way of Spain or Colombia, then you ought surely to vote against us next week. For I have no hesitancy in saying that if America were threatened with the loss of religious freedom that has overtaken Spain I would resist
to the point of death. But I am telling you as a Quaker who has no special love for Catholics that that is not going to happen in America. Under President Kennedy we shall be like Canada, and none of you will be aware that a Catholic is our President. So if you cannot vote for us now, we’ll understand. Four years from now we’ll come back and ask for your vote again. But don’t believe the poison they’ve been distributing in this community. You’re far too sensible for that.”

I have rarely received an ovation, but I got one that night, and after the meeting hundreds of people, most of them determined to vote for Nixon, gathered around me and one minister said, “Michener, you have courage.” I said, “It was Roche, whom you haven’t met, who had the courage.” The minister said, “Thank him for me.” After the election I checked the vote in this city and Kennedy lost by two to one. Next time he may do better.

The feminine counterpart of Chuck Roche was a perplexing girl. Jane Wheeler was a southern beauty with driving energy and the most unruffled calm I had seen in a long time. She had organized the tour and had been in touch with leading politicians in each of the states we visited; if anything went wrong she took immediate responsibility for correcting it, and she could be a cooing slave driver. Her natural good looks were enhanced by a permanent smile, a chuckling manner of speech, and an alertness that was infectious.

What puzzled me about Jane was that she seemed like a Republican committee woman, and not a Democrat at all. I had been awakened to this problem by a recent research article in which the author pointed out that in
the American political system it is Republican women, and not Democrats, who do the most productive campaigning, because they tend to come from homes where it is traditional for women to take an active part in community life, whereas Democratic women tend to come from social groups which expect their women to stay home. The author also claimed that Republican women tend to spend more on their appearance and are thus unembarrassed about appearing in public. And finally, Republican men have learned in business to trust women with important jobs, whereas men who tend to be Democrats have not enjoyed this experience and are inclined not to share responsibility.

At any rate, I had often reflected upon the advantage the Republicans enjoyed in this respect. In Hawaii, for example, there was simply no contest between the two parties insofar as utilizing women was concerned. The Republican women, trained in local society, did a magnificent job of getting out the vote and were one of the strongest political factors in the islands; the Democratic women had not yet mastered the tricks. It was like that across the nation.

But here was Jane Wheeler, a delightful girl who could adjust to any confusion and who was at home in any society, and she was a Democrat. I began to take hope, thinking: “We’re getting our own type of clever girl, and pretty soon we’ll match the Republicans in this field.” But then I vaguely remembered having seen Jane at the Washington airport with her husband kissing her good-bye just before we took off, and I thought: “Mr. Wheeler looked exactly like a Republican.”

We were flying over Idaho when this picture of Republican husband kissing Democratic wife good-bye flashed across my mind and I went aft to where Jane was cracking jokes with Stan Musial. “Are you a Republican?” I asked bluntly.

“Yes,” Jane replied.

“How come you’re on this trip?”

“I saw the light,” she said. “This country needs Kennedy.”

“When it’s all over, will you be a Republican again?”

“I don’t think so,” she replied. “I wouldn’t promise, but like the girl said, I saw the light.”

I thought: “We could use a lot more like you. I wish I knew where they were coming from.”

After we had been on the trip for some time it occurred to me that I had no idea as to why I had been invited. I asked about this and one of the people who accompanied us to check schedules explained, “We were in the office one day when this character blew in from Bucks County begging us for some materials. He talked very persuasively.”

“Was his name Sam Thompson?” I asked.

“That was it! We gave him about ten dollars’ worth of stickers and posters.”

I thought: “You thought you gave him ten bucks’ worth, but he waltzed off with four hundred dollars’ worth.” Aloud I asked, “But what does Sam Thompson have to do with my being on the trip?”

“Well, after he got the slip permitting him to pick up ten dollars’ worth of material he asked to see Bobby Kennedy on a matter of vital importance.”

“What was it?” I asked, for I was never able to predict what Sam might consider vital.

“Mr. Thompson told Mr. Kennedy that up in Bucks County he had an assistant who could speak better than Demosthenes. He said that if the party didn’t utilize his friend the party damned well deserved to lose. So we checked into the matter, and some of what Mr. Thompson said turned out to be true. He made a good impression.”

“You’d be surprised at some of the impressions Sam makes,” I said.

On our trip we encountered two shocking situations which served to underline our conception of what we were trying to accomplish in this election. In Boise, Idaho, our plane blew a tire and we were necessarily thrown off schedule. Our local hosts, in a burst of ill-advised generosity, cried, “You can eat here on the ground while they fix the tire. We’ll take you to the country club.”

They led our motorcade to a lovely spot on the outskirts of town where, as the evil genius who supervises elections had arranged it, the Republican women’s club of Boise was having a bridge luncheon. When I saw what we were heading into, I suggested, “Maybe it would be wiser if we ate somewhere else.” But the local hosts overrode me and said, “You’ll be entirely welcome.”