The Kennedy Half-Century (96 page)

72
. Paul A. Smith and Richard E. May, eds.,
Official Report of the Proceedings of the Democratic National Convention and Committee: John F. Kennedy Memorial Edition with History of Democratic Party
(Washington, DC: National Document Publishers, 1964), 143; Dallek,
Unfinished Life
, 266.

73
. Community Television Network, “Pachios and Moyers Special,”
http://ctn5.org/shows/pachios-news/pachios-and-moyers-special-1397
 [accessed December 1, 2011].

74
. The dislike was fueled by perceived, often petty slights that accumulated over the years. For example, during a hunting trip to Texas, when Bobby’s shotgun recoiled in his face and left a nasty cut, LBJ remarked, “Son, you’ve got to learn to handle a gun like a man.” Bobby was furious. Questioning a Kennedy’s manhood was simply not done. Sorensen,
The Classic Biography
, 163; Dallek,
Unfinished Life
, 267–69; Schlesinger,
Thousand Days
, 50–56; Schlesinger,
Robert Kennedy
, 210.

75
. Rick Hampson, “Obama Outdoor Speech Echoes JFK’s 1960 Move,”
USA Today
, August 27, 2008; Todd S. Purdum, “From That Day Forth,”
Vanity Fair
, February 2011,
http://www.vanityfair.com/society/features/2011/02/kennedy-201102
 [accessed January 24, 2011].

76
. Smith and May,
Official Report
, 243. Kennedy waited until after the convention to explain the details of the New Frontier. On October 29, he highlighted seven key domestic challenges during a speech in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania: (1) “the new frontier of population” (requiring more economic growth, more housing, etc.); (2) “the new frontier of longevity” (retirees entitled to “dignity and security and recognition”); (3) “the new frontier of education” (more classroom space, more teachers, more funding); (4) “the new frontier of suburbia” (need for additional schools, transportation, “community facilities” to prevent
suburban “slums”); (5) “the new frontiers in science and space” (air travel safety, airports, space exploration, satellites, desalinization plants, new sources of food and energy); (6) “the new frontier of automation” (“machines are replacing men, and men are looking for work”); (7) “the new frontier of leisure time” (preserve national parks and forests; “If more and more cars on more and more superhighways, requiring more and more parking places replace parks and playgrounds and scenic routes, if we permit the great medium of television to occupy more and more of our time with poorer and poorer programs appealing to the lowest common denominator, then we will be failing the public interest on this frontier …”). Edmund S. Ions,
The Politics of John F. Kennedy
(London: Routledge, 1967), 44–48.

77
. Telephone interview with Nancy Pelosi, May 26, 2011.

3. VICTORY WITHOUT A MANDATE

1
. Father Kell, undated letter, Bruce Ferengul, August 19, 1960, Marsha Casper, August 20, 1960, Carol Burke to Marsha Casper, August 23, 1960, Sandra Cara, August 24, 1960, R. Sargent Shriver Papers, Box 3, Series 1.1, “1960 Presidential Campaign Correspondence,” John F. Kennedy Library, Boston, Massachusetts.

2
. A. V. Gallagher, July 30, 1960, Joanne Hardman, undated letter, Susan Jacobs, Janis Sherwin, Terri Dee, undated letter, R. Sargent Shriver Papers, Box 3, Series 1.1, “1960 Presidential Campaign Correspondence,” John F. Kennedy Library, Boston, Massachusetts.

3
. C. David Heymann,
RFK: A Candid Biography of Robert F. Kennedy
(New York: Dutton Books, 1998), 158–59.

4
. Ted Ruhig to Elmo Hohman, undated letter, Lewis A. Lincoln, undated letter, R. Sargent Shriver Papers, Box 4, Series 1, “Senior Citizens for Kennedy, October 1960,” John F. Kennedy Library, Boston, Massachusetts.

5
. Theodore H. White,
The Making of the President, 1960
(New York: Atheneum House, 1961), 247; Clayton Knowles, “Citizens for Kennedy,”
New York Times
, July 25, 1960; Milton Viorst, “Kennedy’s Top Strategists Organize,”
Washington Post and Times Herald
, July 27, 1960. Carmine De Sapio controlled New York’s Tammany machine; Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., spoke for African Americans; Eleanor Roosevelt and Herbert Lehman led New York’s Reform Democrats. Each group distrusted the others.

6
. William G. Weart, “Robert Kennedy Cautions Party,”
New York Times
, August 3, 1960; White,
Making of the President, 1960
, 247. The 1956 presidential election was never thought to be tight and wasn’t especially interesting, but every late public poll in 1960 suggested that the Kennedy-Nixon matchup would be highly competitive. The excitement of that campaign was remarkable, and many marginal voters clearly got caught up in it after the TV debates. Higher turnout was one result.

7
. Land, “Kennedy’s Southern Strategy,” 43–63. Putting LBJ in charge of the Southern campaign was a good move. Kennedy captured all but three southern states (Virginia, Tennessee, and Florida) on election day. This doesn’t necessarily mean that Southerners liked JFK, however. Many Dixiecrats considered him to be the “best of a sorry lot.” See Claude Sitton, “Kennedy Scores Heavily in South,”
New York Times
, November 9, 1960, and Robert T. Hartmann, “Kennedy Faces Many Problems,”
Los Angeles Times
, February 29, 1960.

8
. “Lag in Poll Fails to Upset Kennedy,”
New York Times
, August 18, 1960; Edward L. Bernays to John Martin, September 15, 1960, Martin Papers, Box 73, Folder 13, Library of Congress Manuscript Division, Washington, DC.

9
. Bill Adler, ed.,
The Kennedy Wit
(New York: Citadel Press, 1964), 7; Don Forsyth, undated press release, R. Sargent Shriver Papers, Box 8, Series 1, “Response to Anti-Catholic Literature,” John F. Kennedy Library, Boston, Massachusetts; John Martin, “Pennsylvania Memo,” October 11[?], 1960, “Indiana—Briefing Memo,” “Michigan—briefing sheet (JBM),” “Memo to TCS. California Campaign,” John Bartlow Martin Papers, Box 73, Folders 4, 6, 7, 9, 11, Library of Congress Manuscripts Division, Washington, DC.

10
. Personal interview with Herbert Meza, April 6, 2011.

11
. Theodore C. Sorensen,
Kennedy
(New York: Harper and Row, 1965), 189–91; Douglas Martin, “Milton Gwirtzman, Adviser to Kennedys, Dies at 78,”
New York Times
, July 26, 2011.

12
. Donald E. Pelotte, S.S.S.,
John Courtney Murray: Theologian in Conflict
(New York: Paulist Press, 1976), 76.

13
. Sorensen,
Kennedy
, 190–91; personal interview with Herbert Meza, April 6, 2011. Shortly before his death, the columnist David Broder wrote an essay for the
Washington Post
in which he called the Houston address “one of the best political speeches I ever heard.” Broder also remembered the positive response from his fellow journalists: “At the end, Peter Lisagor of the
Chicago Daily News
turned to a knot of other reporters and said, ‘If the editors of this country were smart, they’d pull every reporter covering Kennedy tonight off him for the rest of the campaign. You can’t have watched this and still say you’re neutral.’ I thought he was right.” See David S. Broder, “When JFK Defused the Catholic Question,”
Washington Post
, September 12, 2010. Mark Massa (Catholic Studies, Fordham) says that JFK’s Houston speech “secularized” the presidency and helped “privatize” religion. “Precisely because John F. Kennedy was a Roman Catholic—an adherent (however poorly) of a religious tradition that had been successfully excluded from the ‘high priesthood’ of American politics for almost two centuries—it might be argued that he had to ‘secularize’ the American presidency in order to win it.” See Mark S. Massa, S.J., “A Catholic for President? John F. Kennedy and the ‘Secular’ Theology of the Houston Speech, 1960,”
Journal of Church and State
39 (1997): 297–317.

14
. Robert Dallek,
An Unfinished Life: John F. Kennedy, 1917–63
(Boston: Little, Brown, 2003), 284.

15
. “Santorum Takes On JFK,”
Metropolis
, September 19, 2010,
http://www.phlmetropolis.com/2010/09/god-rick-santorum.php#
 [accessed January 31, 2011]. In her book
America by Heart: Reflections on Family, Faith, and Flag
(New York: HarperCollins, 2010), Sarah Palin criticized JFK for failing to reconcile his faith with his public life. RFK daughter Kathleen Kennedy Townsend in turn criticized Palin for missing JFK’s point: American public officials are not supposed to be subjected to religious tests (183–86). See K. K. Townsend, “Sarah Palin Is Wrong About John F. Kennedy, Religion and Politics,”
Washington Post
, December 3, 2010,
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/12/03/AR2010120303209_pf.html
 [accessed October 10, 2012].

16
. Ted Sorensen, interview by David Gregory,
Meet the Press
, NBC, September 24, 2010; Stephen Ambrose,
Eisenhower
, vol. 2:
The President
(New York: Simon and Schuster, 1984), 601; Kayla Webley, “How the Nixon-Kennedy Debate Changed the World,”
Time
, September 23, 2010,
http://www.time.com/time/printout/0,8816,2021078,00.html
 [accessed November 26, 2010].

17
. On August 17, during a campaign stop in Greensboro, North Carolina, Nixon injured his knee on the door of his car. He was forced to go to the hospital after the wound became infected. When he was released, he put in long hours to catch up on the huge backlog of
work. He then contracted the flu, but he continued to push himself. Nixon was wan and not yet fully recovered when the first debate was televised.

18
. John W. Self, “The First Debate over the Debates: How Kennedy and Nixon Negotiated the 1960 Presidential Debates,”
Presidential Studies Quarterly
35 (June 2005): 361–75.

19
. Ibid., 366.

20
. Some sources place the number as high as 80 million.

21
. White,
Making of the President, 1960
, 279–87; “Transcript of the first Kennedy-Nixon Presidential Debate: September 26, 1960,” Museum of Broadcast Communications website,
http://www.museum.tv/debateweb/html/greatdebate/92660transcript.htm
 [accessed February 1, 2011].

22
. Rick Perlstein, ed.,
Richard Nixon: Speeches, Writings, Documents
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008), 97–98.

23
. White,
Making of the President, 1960
, 289.

24
. Richard Stout, “Aides Did Makeup on Nixon, but They Blame the TV Camera,”
Chicago Daily News
, September 30, 1960; Stephen E. Ambrose,
Nixon
, vol. 1:
The Education of a Politician, 1913–62
(New York: Touchstone, 1987), 575.

25
. Barbara A. Perry,
Rose Kennedy: The Life and Times of a Political Matriarch
(New York: W. W. Norton, 2013), 253.

26
. James N. Druckman, “The Power of Television Images: The First Kennedy-Nixon Debate Revisited,”
Journal of Politics
65 (May 2003): 559–71; Webley, “Nixon-Kennedy Debate”; Mary Ann Watson,
The Expanding Vista: American Television in the Kennedy Years
(Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1994), 13. According to Druckman, a political science professor at the University of Minnesota, “There exists no valid empirical evidence that images played any role in the [first] debate. In their exhaustive review, Vancil and Pendell (1987) find that most of the evidence is anecdotal and impressionistic with one exception—the survey by a [nonpartisan] market research firm, Sindlinger & Company. The survey reported that more self-identified radio listeners thought Nixon won the debate, whereas more self-identified television viewers thought Kennedy won: thus, [the TV] image appears to cause a viewer-listener disagreement. However, a number of problems plague the survey, including a failure to report methodological specifics such as sample size (making statistical significance unclear), a reliance on self-reported measures of debate exposure that can be highly unreliable, and a potentially significant time delay between the debate and data collection. Even more important, the survey makes no attempt to control for a variety of variables including pre-debate preference, religion, and party identification.”

27
. Sorensen,
Kennedy
, 202; Don Shannon, “Kennedy—Debates Were Key,”
Los Angeles Times
, November 13, 1960; Kenneth P. O’Donnell, Western Union telegram dated October 8, 1960, Gerald Bruno Papers, Box 1, “1960 Campaign Trips,” John F. Kennedy Library, Boston, Massachusetts; “Dixie Governors Give Kennedy Full Support,”
Los Angeles Times
, September 28, 1960. According to Chris Matthews, “Kennedy’s triumph in the first debate made him the country’s number-one box office attraction. Traveling through Ohio the next day, he was confronted by a new phenomenon in the political world—the ‘jumper’—the teenager or young woman who literally jumped up in the crowds to get a better look at the most exciting male sex symbol since the debut of Elvis Presley.” Christopher Matthews,
Kennedy and Nixon: The Rivalry That Shaped Postwar America
(New York: Simon and Schuster, 1996), 157. However, Ohio went for Nixon. Only two Democrats
since 1900 have won the presidency without Ohio—Franklin Roosevelt in 1944 and John Kennedy in 1960.