The Kennedy Half-Century (8 page)

There was only one piece of unfinished business, one final gesture for the man who had carried the torch for a new generation. Bending down beside her husband’s grave, Jackie (with help from Bobby and Ted) ignited a gas and electric jet that had been installed by the Washington Gas Company. This
was no ordinary burner; it had come specially equipped so that the blaze could survive every kind of weather. The “eternal flame”—the symbol of her husband’s life and legacy—would glow for as long as the American Republic endured.
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The fire was everlasting, yet America’s and the world’s premier leader had been snuffed out in a vicious, premature way. No one could have imagined it would end like this. No one could have guessed the misery that awaited John F. Kennedy and his family when his astounding political journey had begun a few short years earlier.

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Oswald’s “patsy” remark is perhaps the most-quoted aspect of his short time in custody. Over the years, some have insisted that “patsy,” meaning an easily blamed pawn, was a signal that Oswald was a low-level flunky in a larger conspiracy. Of course, it is just as possible that Oswald was simply providing himself cover for his actions, implying that he was an available scapegoat because of his Communist ties.

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One of those strategies involved the location of her husband’s grave. Most visitors to Arlington Cemetery do not consciously notice that the eternal flame above JFK’s resting place aligns perfectly with the Lincoln Memorial, the Washington Monument, and the U.S. Capitol, which “confers upon the late President’s grave a civic consequence comparable to that possessed by the Washington and Jefferson as well as the Lincoln memorials. This is doubtless what the Kennedys intended when they chose the site, and architect John Warnecke did not fail them. He … made inspired use of every dramatic, expressive and evocative potential the land provides.” See “John Fitzgerald Kennedy Grave Research Report,” LBJ Papers—EX FG 1 3/26/68, Box 18, FG 1 3/26/68 – 4/18/68, Lyndon Baines Johnson Library, Austin, Texas. The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts is also close by.

2
“All the Marbles”

At half past eight on the opening night of the 1956 Democratic National Convention, the Honorable Paul M. Butler stood on the main stage of Chicago’s International Amphitheatre and made the following announcement: “Will the delegates please clear the aisles? The lights are going to be turned out, so you had better get into your seats, if you want to see.” What they were about to see, explained the DNC chairman, was a documentary film on the history of the Democratic Party. The delegates should hold their applause until the movie ended.
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A few minutes later, a star was born. “Ladies and gentlemen, I am Senator John F. Kennedy of Massachusetts,” said the boyishly handsome face on the screen. “To some, the Democratic Party represents a philosophy, a way of life, a point of view. Others think in terms of personalities—the great Democratic leaders of past and present … Whatever the unique quality of our party represents to each of you, I believe you will find it in the course of this film, which singles out the principal events which have given the Democratic Party special character and dignity—which make it now, as always, our nation’s best and greatest hope.”
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At the conclusion of the twenty-eight-minute film called
The Pursuit of Happiness
(which was shown on ABC and NBC, but not CBS), Butler thanked the narrator, referring to him as “one of our new young Democratic giants.”
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Kennedy “was introduced from the floor” and received “prolonged applause.” A small group of New England delegates rushed the platform and waved Kennedy placards, but they instantly vanished when Butler “asked them to clear the aisles so [that] the keynoter, Gov. Frank G. Clement of Tennessee, could be introduced.”
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Kennedy outclassed the parochial Clement, who delivered a partisan (and much parodied) speech.
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The
New York Times
called the Massachusetts senator a “movie star” and described his delivery as “excellent.” Eleven thousand delegates and millions of TV viewers witnessed Kennedy’s exemplary performance. Historian Herbert Parmet says that it made the senator “an overnight hero in Chicago” and that people mobbed him “wherever he went, on the
streets, on the convention floor.” Dore Schary, the film’s producer and one of California’s delegates, later said that “the personality of the senator just came right out. It jumped at you on the screen. The narration was good, and the film was emotional. He was immediately a candidate. There was simply no doubt about that because he racked up the whole convention.” Schary had cast Kennedy at the behest of Paul Butler, who recognized the young senator’s potential. Kennedy threw himself into the film project, contributing his own lines and patiently enduring multiple takes and rehearsals.
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Jack Kennedy was one of the few politicians who understood the emerging power of televised images. His father had made millions in the 1920s off a Hollywood studio called Film Booking Offices (FBO). The elder Kennedy turned FBO into a profitable company by focusing on low-cost productions rather than big-budget blockbusters. Kennedy’s target audience was theater owners in small towns and rural areas who usually featured new films every couple of days. Before long, Kennedy had established a lucrative niche for FBO. During the first year of his stewardship, the studio generated nearly $9 million worth of revenue. It remained a profitable company in the years that followed before merging with Keith-Albee-Orpheum (KAO) to form RKO Pictures, one of the studio giants of Hollywood’s golden era. The money that came from FBO, the stock market, and other investments allowed Joe—FDR’s ambassador to the United Kingdom between 1938 and 1940—to pamper his nine children. Although descended from poor Irish Catholic immigrants who had come to America in the nineteenth century, the twentieth-century Kennedys lived like Boston Brahmins. John Kennedy wore the nicest clothes, ate the best-prepared foods, and attended the finest schools, including Choate—a posh prep school in Connecticut—and Harvard. His father had taught him to play hard and to win at any cost. This lesson gave him the strength to rescue three sailors from a sinking PT boat during World War II, the ambition to run for Congress before he turned thirty, and the temerity to challenge and defeat an old-moneyed WASP named Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr., for a U.S. Senate seat in 1952. And in 1956, this same feisty, competitive spirit convinced JFK to try for the Democratic Party’s vice presidential nomination.
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According to Ted Sorensen, Kennedy knew “early in 1956” that he was under consideration for the number two slot on the party’s ticket. Adlai Stevenson’s handlers told Theodore White (who in turn told Sorensen and Kennedy) that two southerners—Senator Al Gore, Sr., of Tennessee and Frank Clement—as well as two Catholics—JFK and New York Mayor Robert F. Wagner, Jr.—were under consideration for the running mate job. Connecticut governor Abraham Ribicoff was the first politician to publicly endorse Kennedy; Governor Dennis Roberts of Rhode Island quickly followed
suit. So did Governor Luther Hodges of North Carolina, who thought that JFK would be acceptable to the southern wing of the party. Newspapers and magazines also played up the possibility of a Kennedy vice presidency during this period.
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During the convention, the delegates and media speculated on who Stevenson, the presumed nominee, would choose as a running mate. The influential former First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt made it clear that she did not want Kennedy on the ticket. Several weeks before the convention, she received a letter from a friend who wanted her to endorse the ambassador’s son. “Across the bottom of her reply, Mrs. Roosevelt added that, before she would support Senator Kennedy for the second spot, he would have to declare his views on Senator [Joseph] McCarthy (R-Wis.) so that she could know ‘how he really stands.’ ” McCarthy, a Kennedy family friend and enemy of the left, had made a name for himself in the early 1950s by accusing prominent people of supporting Communism without real evidence. Careers had been ruined and reputations besmirched as a result of the senator’s witch hunts. Kennedy had never publicly denounced fellow Irish American McCarthy, aware that many of the voters in his district supported the Wisconsin senator. During the convention, Kennedy made a backhanded attempt to appease Mrs. Roosevelt by telling her that he would make his views on McCarthy known “when the occasion presented itself.” Mrs. Roosevelt was not satisfied and continued giving JFK the cold shoulder.
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On August 14, the
New York Times
reported that Al Gore, Sr., was Stevenson’s “personal choice” for vice president. But Gore was reluctant to pick a fight with Estes Kefauver, a fellow Tennessean, who he purportedly said would “attract more widespread voting support to Mr. Stevenson than any other Democrat.” Gore was honest enough, however, to admit that Kefauver—perceived as too liberal by many southerners—might be a drag on the ticket in the former Confederate states. John Kennedy was Gore’s second choice. On August 15, the
Times
reported that the Stevenson camp was leaning toward Kefauver or Minnesota’s Hubert Humphrey but preferred a man who would be acceptable to the various factions represented at the convention. Thus, John Kennedy’s name made Adlai’s short list.
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The same day, Kennedy received word “by a circuitous route” that he was no longer under consideration as the party’s vice presidential nominee. In response, Kennedy sought, and received, an audience with Stevenson, who insisted to JFK that he was noncommittal. The presidential nominee-to-be did, however, ask JFK to deliver his (Stevenson’s) official nomination speech. Kennedy accepted but interpreted the offer as effective proof that he was no longer in the running for the vice presidential slot. One of Stevenson’s aides delivered a prewritten speech to Kennedy that had been slap-dashed together,
partly by Arthur Schlesinger. Kennedy and Sorensen worked late into the night redrafting it.
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The senator scored big political points the next day (August 16) when he read the new and improved speech before the convention. He received “a great cheer” when he appeared on the platform. “Sometimes in the heat of a political convention, we forget the grave responsibilities which we as delegates possess,” said Kennedy.

For we here today are selecting a man who must be something more than a good candidate, something more than a good speaker, more than a good politician, a good liberal, or a good conservative. We are selecting the head of the most powerful nation on earth, the man who literally will hold in his hands the powers of survival or destruction, of freedom or slavery, of success or failure for us all. We are selecting here today the man who for the next four years will be guiding, for good or evil, for better or worse, the destinies of our nation and, to a large extent, the destiny of the free world. I ask you, therefore, to think beyond the balloting of tonight and tomorrow—to think beyond even the election in November and to think instead of those four years that lie ahead, and of the crises that will come with them.
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Kennedy also took the required pot shots at the GOP, which entertained his partisan audience. He wisely chose to attack the often-reviled Nixon instead of the popular Eisenhower: “Our party will be up against two of the toughest, most skillful campaigners in its history—one who takes the high road, and one who takes the low.” According to Sorensen, this line “was picked up by subsequent speakers and became part of that year’s campaign vocabulary.”
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Looking ahead to the 1960 presidential race (or perhaps worried about the current vice presidential one), the senator made passing reference to “the nation’s distressed farmers.” Kennedy had earned the ire of this group in April 1956 by voting against “90-percent-of-parity price supports for one year,” which basically amounted to a new government welfare program for farmers.
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Kennedy closed his speech with a tribute to Stevenson, whom he described as a man of “compassion” and “courage” who also happened to be “the top vote-getter in the Democratic Party.” “Fellow delegates,” he proclaimed, “I give you the man from Libertyville—the next Democratic nominee and our next president of the United States—Adlai E. Stevenson.” The crowd cheered. Jacqueline Kennedy, six weeks pregnant at the time, stood on her chair and waved a Stevenson placard from the convention floor.
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Shortly after eleven P.M., Stevenson threw the convention into an uproar when, in a move unprecedented in modern times and apparently with no
advance word to any of the possible contenders, he asked the delegates to choose his running mate for him. “The choice will be yours,” said the Illinois politician. “The profit will be the nation’s.” Stevenson wanted to highlight the differences between the two parties by showing that Democrats were the only true supporters of majoritarian rule. The decision also relieved him of the politically risky burden of choosing a running mate.
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Kennedy and his energetic supporters instantly swung into action. Bobby and John Bailey held an impromptu meeting at the Stockyards Inn and began handing out assignments and lining up key backers. Eunice lobbied state delegations for support. Jack buttonholed Robert Wagner in the men’s room of the Blackstone Hotel sometime after midnight and proposed a deal: the candidate who came up short after the first ballot would throw his support to the other. The New York City mayor agreed. “By sunrise that morning, overnight button factories had produced Kennedy-for-Vice-President stickpins, which went on sale outside the International Amphitheater.”
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