Six Crises (53 page)

I had no illusions, however, that this margin could be maintained without an extraordinary effort. Kennedy's problem was simply to get the Democrats to stay in their own party and vote for him. My problem
was to hold virtually all the Republicans and then persuade five to six million Democrats to leave their own candidate and vote Republican. I recognized that I could accomplish this only as President Eisenhower had—by acting and speaking not just as a Republican partisan but as a representative of all the people. My trips to Caracas and Moscow had provided an opportunity for me to appear in this role. And it was only after these trips that my strength rose the necessary level above that of my party.

One more opportunity to demonstrate “national” leadership occurred before the campaign year of 1960. A crippling 116-day steel strike—running from July 15 through November 7, 1959—had been suspended by a Taft-Hartley injunction which was due to expire on January 26, 1960. President Eisenhower, on December 3, began a trip which would take him to Europe, the Middle East, and South Asia and would continue until December 22. Before he left the country, Secretary of Labor James Mitchell and I discussed the strike with him and he approved a plan for us to attempt to mediate the dispute in his absence. After numerous preliminary “feeler” sessions and then eight days and nights of the most intensive discussions I have ever participated in, we were able to work out a settlement—on January 4, 1960—acceptable to both sides. The settlement, which would run until July 1962, was attacked in some quarters as being inflationary, but the critics overlooked the fact that this was the first steel labor contract since World War II which was not accompanied by a price boost. And whereas the postwar pattern of annual wage increases had averaged out to about 8 per cent, this new contract provided for an average of less than 3 per cent—almost exactly in line with the annual “productivity” factor. At any rate, the political effect of the settlement was to sustain my narrow lead over Kennedy in the trial polls into the early months of 1960, and to project Jim Mitchell into the foreground as a potential vice presidential candidate.

Len Hall had proved to be a good prophet. As a result of two events none of us could foresee in the discouraging winter of 1958–59—my Russian trip and the steel settlement—the almost prohibitive odds against me a year before had now shifted. As the campaign year began, I was a strong favorite to win the Republican nomination and was running practically a dead-heat in the public opinion polls against the strongest Democratic candidate—Jack Kennedy.

•  •  •

But now both Kennedy and Rockefeller were beginning to make
their moves and the decisive battles would shortly be under way. Early in January, I invited some of the key men in my campaign—Len Hall, Cliff Folger, Bob Finch, Herb Klein, Fred Scribner, Jim Shepley, Fred Seaton, and Claude Robinson—to lunch in my Capitol office to discuss our strategy for the period up to the Republican Convention in July.

We foresaw no serious difficulty in winning the Republican nomination. The problem was to win it in such a way as to strengthen rather than weaken our chances to win the November election. And this was the only real threat that Rockefeller's candidacy posed to us. His stock had dropped considerably since his victory in New York in 1958. His political advisers had shown appallingly bad judgment on several occasions. Most recently, for example, he had made the error of publicly suggesting that I should settle the steel dispute—at the very time that Jim Mitchell and I were in the process of negotiating a settlement. To become a serious contender for the nomination, he had only one course of action open to him—to enter and win one of the earlier primary contests. When he failed to take this step, what little chance he had to win the nomination was lost. When he finally made his move, through a late spring attack on me, it was too little and too late.

However, with mounting belligerence, Rockefeller was taking a line very similar to that of the Democratic critics of the Eisenhower Administration. He favored, for example, putting the “senior citizen” medical care program under Social Security, and he attacked the President's defense policies even more strongly than some of the Democratic candidates. Anti-Administration columnists and commentators, as well as Democratic candidates, gleefully seized on every statement he made and used them effectively against the Administration and, thus, against me. But while these attacks were irritating, we all recognized that they would not be decisive. In the end, once the Convention choice was made, I had every confidence that Rockefeller would campaign for the Republican nominee.

Our primary subject for conversation that afternoon in January was the problem we would confront in winning the election itself. I insisted from the outset that Kennedy was most likely to be nominated and would be the hardest to beat. While some of those present dissented from this view, Len Hall agreed with me.

I listed Kennedy's assets as I saw them at the time. From a personal standpoint, he had high intelligence, great energy, and a particularly effective television personality. He also had unlimited money which already had enabled him to employ a large, skilled staff of organizers,
speech-writers, pollsters, and others essential for a successful campaign. He had a head start with a personal staff who had begun their drive back in 1956, soon after he had come so close to winning the Democratic nomination for Vice President.

But Kennedy's most decisive asset, as far as getting nominated was concerned, was the weakness of his opponents.

Adlai Stevenson had strong emotional support but he was a two-time loser and none of the Democratic professionals, who control the votes at national conventions, gave him any serious chance.

Hubert Humphrey was a tireless campaigner, a good speaker, and had strong support among the liberal elements of the Democratic Party in the North and West. But while he had become more restrained and moderate in recent years, some of his more radical and irresponsible positions of the early days in Washington could not be lived down. The Southerners and the big city bosses of the party would never take him.

Stuart Symington had never been able to recover from what many observers had considered a rather mediocre performance during the Army-McCarthy hearings.

Lyndon Johnson was the strongest and ablest of Kennedy's prospective opponents for the nomination but, despite his efforts to portray himself as a Westerner rather than a Southerner, the Southern tag would inevitably deny him the support of the big delegations from the Northern states and of organized labor.

In summary, Kennedy had going for him, therefore, not only his own affirmative assets but also the powerful negative factor which is as true in politics as in any other field: you can't beat somebody with nobody.

Claude Robinson, a polling and public opinion expert, summarized Kennedy's potential liabilities in this order: youth, inexperience, wealth, and religion. I responded that each of these potential liabilities could be turned into an asset by an intelligent candidate, and that no one should ever underestimate the intelligence of Kennedy or of his corps of close associates and advisers.

As far as youth was concerned, I pointed out that he was only four years younger than I, and had begun his career in Washington the same year.

As for his inexperience, I recognized that one of my major assets was my experience as Vice President. But experience, itself, can be a liability and inexperience an asset in a political campaign. To
gain experience, a man must make decisions. And when he makes decisions, he makes enemies. Then too, he must assume responsibility for the consequences of those decisions. As long as the peace and prosperity issues held up, my experience would be a decided advantage; but to the extent that public confidence in the Administration on either score was shaken, I would also lose support. The advantage of Kennedy's inexperience was the very fact that he had not participated in the making of critical decisions—and thus there was very little for his opponent to shoot at. All that the voter could judge him on was what he said, rather than what he had done, and voters quickly forget what a man says. They remember much longer what he has done.

Turning to Kennedy's wealth, I admitted that there was a time when great wealth might have been a liability in a presidential campaign. But that time has long since passed. Indeed, the time may have come in America, in view of the length and tremendous cost of presidential campaigns, when far from being a liability, personal wealth is actually a necessity for a candidate.

Kennedy's religion was obviously going to be a major factor in the election, and there was sharp disagreement in our group as to its probable effect. From the outset, though, I had no doubts whatever on this score: I believed that Kennedy's religion would hurt him in states he could afford to lose anyway, and that it would help him in states he needed to win. There were several reasons why I reached this conclusion.

First, I knew that I, personally, would never raise the question and would not tolerate any use of the religious issue by anyone connected with my campaign, directly or indirectly. I did not believe it to be a legitimate issue. There were several questions as to Kennedy's qualifications for the presidency, but I never at any time considered his religion in this category.

A second reason for my conclusion was this: although there were groups and individuals in different parts of the country who had undeniably launched an anti-Kennedy campaign based solely on his religion, I felt that the nation had come a long way in terms both of political sophistication and religious tolerance since the election of 1928—which Al Smith probably would have lost in any event but in which the margin of his defeat was increased because of the effect of the religious issue.

The most convincing argument in support of the view that Kennedy's religion would probably be helpful rather than harmful to him
came from his own campaign organization. During the 1956 Democratic Convention, Kennedy's staff prepared and circulated a memorandum filled with past election statistics to show that a Catholic candidate on the national ticket could assure a Democratic victory—not despite but rather because of his religion. This memorandum—later printed verbatim in
U. S. News & World Report
on August 1, 1960—predicted the final 1960 results with great accuracy. It stated in part:

There is, or can be, such a thing as a ‘Catholic vote,' whereby a high proportion of Catholics of all ages, residences, occupations and economic status vote for a well-known Catholic or a ticket with special Catholic appeal . . .

But the Catholic vote is far more important than its numbers—about one out of every four voters who turn out—because of its concentration in the key states and cities of the North. These are the pivotal states with large electoral votes, which vary as to their party support and several of which are inevitably necessary for a victory in the Electoral College . . .

His campaign would be largely concentrated in the key states and cities . . . If he brought into the Democratic fold only those normally Democratic Catholics who voted for Ike, he would probably swing New York, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, Pennsylvania and Illinois—for 132 electoral votes. If he also wins the votes of Catholics who shifted to the Republicans in 1948 or earlier, he could also swing New Jersey, Minnesota, Michigan, California, Wisconsin, Ohio, Maryland, Montana, and maybe even New Hampshire—for a total of 265 electoral votes (needed to win: 269) . . .

Claude Robinson produced perhaps the most convincing evidence of all of Kennedy's potential strength. Every poll since late in 1958 showed him running stronger than any other Democratic candidate against me and the other potential Republican candidates.

We made one important decision at the conclusion of our meeting: to enter my name in all the primary contests. This was, in many respects, a risky maneuver. I would be unable to campaign extensively in the primary states while Congress was still in session. I had broken more tie votes since becoming Vice President than any other Vice President in history, and I knew that if I were away campaigning at the time such a vote occurred in the Senate, this fact could be used devastatingly against me. This meant that an opponent for the Republican nomination could select one primary state, concentrate his efforts there, and conceivably pull off a victory due to my inability to
campaign on the scene. The state in which we feared this the most was New Hampshire, in view of Nelson Rockefeller's many close ties and considerable strength there. When he failed to file in New Hampshire, we concluded that we were pretty much out of the woods as far as this danger was concerned.

There were several reasons behind our decision to enter all the primaries. First, we wanted to give Republicans an opportunity to vote for their candidate at the time the Democrats would be flocking to the polls because of the sharp contest in their party. Second, we wanted to show confidence and, at the same time, make it clear we were taking nothing for granted. And third, we wanted to give our campaign organization an opportunity to try out some of its tactics before the election itself—provide it with a “shake down cruise” in effect.

The primary campaigns made a great deal of news at the time but, in retrospect, they were relatively unimportant except that they made Kennedy's nomination at Los Angeles inevitable. The fact, however, that in each of the primary states Kennedy was beating somebody and I was running unopposed naturally gave him more attention in press, television, and radio than I received. This was reflected in the polls. Before the first primary—in New Hampshire in April—Gallup showed the race Nixon 53 per cent—Kennedy 47 per cent. After all the primaries and immediately prior to the Democratic Convention, Kennedy had pulled ahead, with Gallup showing a 52 to 48 per cent margin. In view of the much greater exposure he had had in this period, I was not greatly concerned by this shift. I was convinced that once the conventions were over and I was no longer tied down by the Senate session, I would be able to devote my entire time to campaigning, regain the lost ground, and move into the lead again.