Six Crises (70 page)

He is like Sherman Adams in one respect—he never wastes a word in a telephone conversation: no introduction, no amenities, just the substance of whatever is at hand. I said, “Hello, Chief.” He replied: “The Ambassador
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has just called me and suggested that it would be a good idea for you and the President-elect to get together for a visit. If you approve of the idea, the President-elect, who is now in Palm Beach, would like to phone you to make the necessary arrangements.”

I asked him what he thought I should do. He said: “I think we are in enough trouble in the world today; some indications of national unity are not only desirable but essential.” I answered that under the circumstances, I would of course be willing to have a talk with the President-elect and that he could so inform the Ambassador.

After this conversation with Mr. Hoover, I called the White House operator in Washington and asked her if she could get me through to Augusta, Georgia, where President Eisenhower was vacationing. He knew that it was my practice never to call him outside office hours unless the matter was of great importance; and so, within a few seconds, the phone rang in the pay booth and Eisenhower was on the line. I told him of my conversation with Mr. Hoover and said I felt I should report it to him, especially because there had already been newspaper reports to the effect that, because of the closeness of the election, some of Kennedy's advisers were urging him to bring Republicans into the new Administration. There had even been suggestions that he should offer me some kind of a post. Eisenhower, who had made a similar gesture toward a defeated opponent—to Senator Robert A. Taft, at the 1952 Republican Convention in Chicago—agreed that it was only appropriate for me to meet with Kennedy. “You would look like a sorehead if you didn't,” he said. He suggested, however, that in any such conversations I should reserve judgment on the advisability of top Republicans going into the Kennedy Administration. “A true coalition government is possible only in a period of national emergency,” he said. “And a coalition, to be truly effective, must give members of the minority party who take positions in the Administration
independent authority and responsibility. I do not think it would be in the best interests of the two-party system for Republicans to go into the new Administration in purely secondary or ceremonial positions which might give the color of coalition and the appearance of shared responsibility, when that was actually not the case at all.”

I talked to Eisenhower for only a couple of minutes and then returned to the table. I was just about to tell the others of these two conversations when Don Hughes came up hurriedly and said, “Kennedy is calling.”

When I picked up the phone, Kennedy was already on the line. He made no mention of the call I had received from Hoover or of his father's previous call. He began the conversation pleasantly and informally by asking how the weather was and if we were finally getting some rest from the campaign. I replied in the same vein and then quite casually he said, “I would like to fly down from Palm Beach to have a chat with you—if it won't interfere with your vacation.” I replied that I would welcome the opportunity to talk with him, but added: “I would be glad to come up to Palm Beach to call on you. After all, that's the proper thing to do in view of last Tuesday's results.” He laughed and said, “No, I have a helicopter at my disposal and it would be easier for me to come to you.” I asked him what day would be most convenient and we agreed to meet at the Key Biscayne Hotel on Monday, November 14. As I hung up and walked slowly back to our table, it dawned on me that I had just participated in a probably unprecedented series of conversations. In the space of less than ten minutes, I had talked to a former President of the United States, the present President, and the President-elect!

But I found very little appreciation of the historic significance of the occasion when I reported it to Tricia and Julie the next day. They both berated me roundly: “How can you possibly talk to him after what he said about you in the campaign?” I replied, “After all, he won the election and this is the only proper thing for me to do under the circumstances.” But Julie still protested: “He didn't win. Haven't you heard about all the cheating in Illinois and Texas?” I could see that I was not going to win this argument and so, quickly as possible, I changed the subject.

But for weeks and even months afterward, I was to see repeated evidence of a lesson I had learned years before in my political career: women basically find it much harder to lose than do men. This is probably a credit to them. Once they or those they admire and love are
committed to battle, they enter into the contest with all their hearts and souls. They work harder and fight harder than men. Their commitment is generally more total and their loyalties more lasting.

Tricia, Julie, Pat, and my mother, typically, were to find it terribly difficult to reconcile themselves to the fact of defeat—and the same was true among the secretaries on my staff. Not a day was to pass until after Kennedy's inauguration on January 20 but that Julie would ask me: “Can't we still win? Why can't we have a recount in Chicago?”
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When some of our friends sent the girls small checks with which to buy presents for themselves at Christmas, they insisted that I forward the proceeds to the Chicago Recount Committee.

Their attitude was far from an isolated instance. In my travels around the country over the next several months, I was to meet scores of couples who had supported me in the campaign where the husband had adjusted to the fact of defeat but where the wives insisted that “they would never give up.” And they meant it, too. The best advice I can give to those planning to run for public office is simply this: get a corps of dedicated women committed to you and working for you—and you have it made!

Florida's weather was at its fabled best on Monday the fourteenth, when Kennedy came to see me at the Key Biscayne Hotel. It was a warm day, but a light breeze kept the heat from being oppressive. I stood at the hotel entrance with Bob Neale, the manager, surrounded by scores of reporters and photographers, waiting for Kennedy to arrive. Finally the Dade County police escort came up the drive. Behind them was the Secret Service escort car, traditionally used to protect Presidents and Presidents-elect. Kennedy was in the next car—riding in the back of a convertible and, despite the officials surrounding him, looking almost lonely.

As the car pulled up, I opened the door for him and we shook hands for the photographers. Then we walked together through the hotel grounds to a private detached villa where I had often stayed before on my visits to the Key Biscayne and which Bob Neale had made available for our conference. I insisted that Kennedy walk on my right as his new rank now entitled him to do. As former naval officers, we joked about the protocol involved.

When we reached the villa, we decided to sit on the porch so that we could get the benefit of the balmy air. There were some soft drinks in the refrigerator and I fixed one for each of us.

He started the conversation by saying, “Well, it's hard to tell who won the election at this point.” I agreed that the verdict had been close but that the result was pretty well determined, despite the fact that California would end up on my side. He asked what, for me, had been the biggest surprise of the election and I answered, “Probably Texas. I really thought we would win there.” He said that Ohio was the most surprising result as far as he was concerned. His polls had indicated that he would carry the state decisively, he had been in the state more than I had, and his crowds had been big on every occasion. He asked me how I evaluated Claude Robinson—who had done my private polling. I told him that “Robinson called the election even from the beginning, right after the national conventions, and his polls in individual states were almost miraculously accurate.”

He went on to say that, for him, the farm problem had been the most difficult of the domestic issues. His polls indicated, as ours had, that two weeks after our speeches at the Plowing Contest the farmers were leaning my way. “It is terribly difficult to develop a farm program that is both politically appealing and economically sound,” was his comment.

I asked him whether he was getting any rest after the hard campaign, and he replied that for the first time he was feeling real fatigue. “During the campaign, some way or other, you are sustained and inspired by the crowds. But now that the campaign is over I find that even driving from the airport to the hotel today, standing and waving to the crowd was tiring.” I told him that that had been exactly my own reaction after each of the national campaigns in which I had participated.

Another aspect of the campaign about which we found ourselves in agreement was the great difficulty of adequately tapping and then making good use of the scholars' groups that each of us had set up for preparing basic research and speech material. We had had the same trouble: the material prepared by Washington staffs, with whom we could not have day-to-day contact, proved less and less useful as the campaign proceeded. “In the end,” he said, “I found myself relying more and more on Sorensen, who was with me on the campaign tour and who therefore could react to and reflect up-to-the-minute tactical shifts in our basic strategy.” I told him I had run into the
same difficulty, and that one of my major regrets was that I had not been able to make better use of the fine group of scholars who prepared material for my speeches and statements.

Then we turned to more current issues. He asked for my opinion of the career people in CIA, USIA, and the State Department. I told him very candidly the conviction I had reached after my very first trip abroad in 1953, and from which I had not deviated—that our careerists in these agencies are for the most part devoted, loyal, and efficient public servants. But many times they lack imagination, or are fearful of using it. All too often they are more concerned with keeping a good job than with doing one. I made two recommendations.

As far as CIA was concerned, I felt that its assignment was presently too broad. It should continue to have primary responsibility for gathering and evaluating intelligence, in which it was doing a good job. But I said it had been my plan, had I been elected, to set up a new and independent organization for carrying out covert para-military operations.

I also expressed my strong opinion that under no circumstances should he follow the line of appointing only career people to top ambassadorial posts. “The foreign service,” I said, “needs a leavening of top-notch, hard-driving, non-career people who will not be completely controlled by the more rigid, even stodgy, career officers. It needs an element with no vested interests.”

I then brought up an issue which I told him was one on which I had particularly strong views—the recognition of Red China and its admission to the UN. I did so because just the day before, Senator George Smathers had told me that Chester Bowles and some of Kennedy's other foreign policy advisers were urging him to reappraise our position on that issue. Kennedy said that he was opposed to recognition of Red China. He indicated, however, that strong arguments had been presented to him in favor of the so-called “two Chinas policy.” Under this policy, Nationalist China would retain its seat on the Security Council, and Red China would have only a seat in the Assembly. This would mean that Red China would have only one vote out of about a hundred in the Assembly and would not be able to block UN action by veto. Kennedy said that proponents of this policy were contending that Red China could not do any damage in the UN under such circumstances.

In expressing my strong opposition to this policy, I pointed out that
the issue wasn't whether Red China had one vote in the Assembly, or even the veto power. What was really at stake was that admitting Red China to the United Nations would be a mockery of the provision of the Charter which limits its membership to “peace-loving nations.” And what was most disturbing was that it would give respectability to the Communist regime which would immensely increase its power and prestige in Asia, and probably irreparably weaken the non-Communist governments in that area.

Kennedy expressed some concern about the probable fate of his domestic programs, in view of the makeup of the new Congress. His observation, I thought, was acutely perceptive on this score. He said: “A Republican President can probably get more out of a Congress where his domestic policies are concerned because of his ability to get support from the natural coalition of conservative southern Democrats and most of the Republicans, who also have conservative views. On the other hand, a Democratic President, unless northern and western Democrats make up a clear majority of the House and Senate—which, of course, will not be the case in the new Congress—will find that his more liberal programs will fall short because of the strength of the conservative coalition arrayed against him.”

Finally, Kennedy touched briefly on the subject I had expected might be a major topic of conversation during our visit. He said: “In view of the closeness of the election, there have been several suggestions that it might be well for me to appoint some Republicans to positions in the Administration. I am not thinking at this time of appointing Republicans to Cabinet posts, because I realize that there cannot be divided responsibility as far as major policy decisions are concerned. What I had in mind were appointments to posts abroad which would create an impression of unity and bipartisanship as far as our allies and potential enemies are concerned.”

He indicated that Lodge and Dillon were among those he had considered for such posts and then added, “I wondered, in fact, if after a few months you yourself might want to undertake an assignment abroad on a temporary basis.”

I thought I could sense that he was making this suggestion mainly because he thought it was expected of him—“the thing to do”—and not because he had become convinced in his own mind that the idea was a useful one. In any event, I replied: “I appreciate very much your thinking of me in this connection, but it seems to me the very fact that the election was so close makes it all the more imperative for me
not to accept an assignment in the new Administration, even on a temporary basis, unless there should be a real national emergency. Any other course of action would be widely misinterpreted and could be a very damaging blow to the concept of a two-party system and party responsibility.” I sensed that he was considerably relieved when I answered his suggestion in this way; he readily dropped the subject.