The Patriarch (24 page)

On January 2, 1932, Hearst had announced in a nationwide radio broadcast and on the front pages of his daily newspapers that he was supporting John Nance Garner of Texas, the Speaker of the House, for the Democratic nomination because he was the only candidate who was not an internationalist. The Hearst papers had been relentlessly pushing the Garner candidacy since then. On April 19, 1932, either on his own or at the suggestion of the Roosevelt campaign, Kennedy returned to Los Angeles after a two-year absence, checked into the Beverly Wilshire Hotel, and wired Hearst at San Simeon to ask if he could “fly up tomorrow morning, arriving about 1 o’clock.” They spent the next day talking politics, movies, business, and the campaign. Hearst listened politely to everything Kennedy had to say but showed no signs of changing his mind about Roosevelt. His candidate remained John Nance Garner of Texas.
¹²

Two weeks later, on May 3, Garner soundly defeated Roosevelt in the California primary. Garner had no chance of winning the nomination, but he—and Hearst, his sponsor—now controlled two of the largest delegations to the convention, Texas and California. Roosevelt invited Kennedy to spend the weekend at Warm Springs, no doubt to discuss Hearst. Anxious to establish himself as a campaign “insider,” Kennedy intimated to the press that he was an old friend of the candidate, which he was not. “I have known Governor Roosevelt for fifteen years and I remember what a fighter he was in the Navy Department. He cut more red tape and accomplished more than anybody thought could be accomplished. Certainly his record then and since ought to persuade every one that he is a real doer.”
¹³

The day after his visit with Governor Roosevelt, Kennedy wired Hearst at San Simeon: “If you care to hear my observations will call you on phone between four thirty and seven your time Wednesday night.”
¹⁴

On June 1, Kennedy, identified in the press now as a “New York banker and long-time associate of the executive,” was invited to lunch with the governor in Albany. It was a heady time for Kennedy, whose association with Roosevelt had opened the door to wealthy, well-placed New Yorkers he had never before had occasion to come into contact with. Among his newfound acquaintances was the influential and omnipresent Herbert Bayard Swope, the gregarious, well-connected man-about-town, Democratic insider, former editor of the
New York World,
and at age forty-seven so striking (redheaded and jut-jawed, according to
Time
magazine) that
Lucky Strike cigarettes hired him to pose with a “Lucky” in his mouth in its full-page magazine advertisements. Swope, who had a talent for making, maintaining, and amusing friends, had taken to Kennedy on meeting him. Kennedy, who gravitated to those whose connections, wealth, and wit were equal to his own, took to Swope as well. “He used to be with him a lot,” Rose remembered, “because [Swope] had a sharp mind and [was] interested in politics. . . . We used to go to the theater and to his house and eat. . . . It was gay and . . . Irving Berlin used to come there too.” Through Swope, Kennedy met Bernard Baruch, whom he had always admired from a distance. Baruch was a South Carolina Democrat and Jew, in his early sixties now, tall, stately, white-haired, fiercely handsome, always nattily dressed in the most expensive suits and ties. As Rose recalled, he was “quite a name in those days. And we had come from Boston where you’d heard about those people but didn’t associate with them.”
¹⁵

Swope and Baruch became not only friends, but business partners when they joined Kennedy and Elisha Walker in a scheme to gain control of the Brooklyn-Manhattan Transit Corporation (BMT), in anticipation of the huge price rise that was expected when state officials concluded the “cooperative,” cost-cutting, revenue-enhancing consolidation agreement among the city’s three subway lines that had been in the works for some time. Kennedy invested nearly half a million dollars in BMT stock, ten to twenty times more than his other “long” investments. Though the consolidation agreement would not be consummated for several years, the stock price jumped as soon as the negotiations began. Within three years, Kennedy’s $489,000 investment would be worth more than $1 million. By the time he sold his stock, it would be worth even more.
¹⁶

—

I
n late June, Kennedy flew to Albany for lunch and a meeting with the governor and his campaign staff. Raymond Moley, the Columbia University professor who had become Roosevelt’s chief adviser on policy issues, recalled Kennedy as “a ruddy-faced, vigorous, and highly colorful talker. I arrived just as Kennedy was leaving and I well remember that when he paused at the door he turned to Roosevelt and said, ‘I will keep my contact with W.R. [Hearst] on a day-and-night basis.’”
¹⁷

Together with a small team of Roosevelt advisers and accompanied, as always, by the amiable, effective, and ever-present Eddie Moore, Kennedy boarded the
20th Century Limited
in Albany, bound for Chicago and the nominating convention. They checked into the Blackstone Hotel, where Kennedy began at once to lobby arriving delegates, explaining why he, a banker and businessman, was for Roosevelt.

It was imperative, the Roosevelt team believed, that their candidate win on an early ballot. No one dared predict what would happen if he did not. Because Roosevelt already had a majority of the delegates, but not the two thirds necessary for nomination, several of his supporters wanted to petition the rules committee to change the two-thirds requirement to a simple majority. Senator Burton Wheeler, who was in Chicago at the time and supported the change, recalled that Kennedy opposed it because he thought, rightly, that it might needlessly alienate southern delegates. At some point during the internal debate on whether to petition for the change, Kennedy, according to Wheeler, called FDR in Albany and urged him to abandon the effort. We don’t know if Kennedy’s call had any effect, but on Monday morning, as the convention was officially gathered to order, Roosevelt “issued a statement from Albany abandoning the fight” for a rules change.
¹⁸

The convention opened on Monday, but it was not until 4:28 
A.M.
on Friday, July 1, that the roll call of the states was called. Roosevelt polled 666¼ votes, 89 more than a majority but 104 short of the necessary two thirds. He picked up 11½ votes on the second ballot, then another 5 on the third, but when the convention adjourned at 9:15 that morning, he was still 87 votes short of nomination. The scenario that he and his advisers had so feared was unrolling before their eyes. The convention hall and hotels were filled with rumors that the anti-Roosevelt forces and those who feared a deadlocked convention were prepared to rally behind Newton Baker, a successful corporate attorney who as a former reform mayor of Cleveland, secretary of war, and advocate for the League of Nations appeared to be the perfect compromise candidate. Since Al Smith had no intention of releasing his delegates, Roosevelt was going to have to get the votes he needed from Garner and his sponsor, William Randolph Hearst.

All evening long, members of the Roosevelt team tried to reach Hearst at San Simeon by telephone. Kennedy got through early in the morning and was able to persuade Hearst that Garner was not a viable candidate and that if the convention remained deadlocked, the delegates were likely to turn to Newton Baker, who was even more of an internationalist that Roosevelt. “I felt there was nothing to do,” Hearst later wrote his wife, Millicent, in New York, “but communicate with Speaker Garner and tell him the truth about the whole situation.” Garner agreed to withdraw, the California and Texas delegations switched their votes to Roosevelt, and he was nominated. No one in the convention hall was terribly surprised when Roosevelt named Garner as his running mate.
¹⁹

Hearst would take full credit for Roosevelt’s nomination and Kennedy full credit for bringing Hearst into the fold. Both men exaggerated their roles. It is likely that even without Hearst’s intervention enough delegates would have shifted to FDR on the fourth or fifth ballot to guarantee him the nomination. Still, whatever his role, Kennedy emerged from the Chicago convention an important member of the Roosevelt campaign team.

When, on July 11, nine days after he accepted the party’s nomination, Franklin Roosevelt set sail from Port Jefferson, Long Island, on what was ostensibly a fishing trip with his sons, he invited key campaign advisers, financial backers, and Kennedy along. Kennedy rented a seaplane for the occasion and, with Edward Flynn, the Bronx political boss, made a spectacular entrance, flying out onto Long Island Sound to join the party. After two nights on Roosevelt’s yacht, Kennedy flew off, returned that afternoon for another meeting, then took off again for New York City, this time with Jesse Straus, the president of Macy’s, as his passenger.
²⁰

—

T
he summer of 1932 was a glorious one for all the Kennedys, save perhaps Jack, who had been in and out of the infirmary and done poorly in his first year at Choate, failing both French and Latin. George St. John, the headmaster, fearing that Rose was too soft on the boy, had written directly to Kennedy, imploring him to send Jack to summer school. “We have kept constantly in mind Mrs. Kennedy’s desire that Jack should not have Summer work to do,” but there was, the headmaster warned, no other alternative. “It hurts me to have to admit partial defeat with a boy to whose development we have given everything we had, but in Jack’s case I have to admit it. If Jack were my own boy, I should send him to Summer School for the full six weeks.” Kennedy ordered Jack to summer school.
²¹

Kennedy, who had been absent—in Hollywood or in Europe—for the past several summers, planned to spend as much of this one as he could with his children at Hyannis Port. He enjoyed nothing so much as being with his children, who adored him as he did them. He was a near-perfect father as far as they were concerned. He never scolded or spanked, seldom raised his voice, was patient and generous. His only requirements were that they be courteous, watch out for one another, and always be on time.

Those who wanted to go riding with him had to get up at six
A.M.
when he did. They were given a five-minute warning—the amount of time it took to get the car out of the garage. If they weren’t downstairs and ready to go when the car arrived, their father left without them. They rode on big, friendly Irish horses, side by side when possible, the children chattering away. Jean was a bit afraid of her horse but never let that get in the way of spending time with her father. When the farmer who owned the farm where they rode and stabled their horses raised the rent to what Kennedy thought was an exorbitant rate, he bought the property for $18,000, which, he claimed, was the best deal he ever made on any property.
²²

He played golf almost every day at the nearby Hyannisport Club, not the fanciest course in the land, but just right for him. As the children got older, they joined him. When the club, which had always teetered on the edge of solvency, came close to bankruptcy, he lent the board of directors 60 percent of what they required and helped raise the rest, his only condition being that should the club be sold or go bankrupt, he would get back his money.
²³

Though he never learned to sail, he made sure his children did, and cheered them on when they began to race. He had, he often told them, bought a house on the water (two, in fact—one in Hyannis Port, the other in Palm Beach) so that they would want to spend time there. Joe Jr., now seventeen, square-jawed and ruggedly handsome, was the family’s master sailor. He collected brochures from the brokers, and advised his father on what boats to buy, from whom, and for how much. Jack crewed for him. Kick and Eunice learned by following the lead of their big brother.
²⁴

—

F
ranklin Roosevelt spent much of his summer in Albany, consulting with the professors who would come to be known as his brain trust and doing his damnedest to rid himself of his personal incubus, New York City mayor James Walker. A state legislative committee, led by chief counsel Judge Samuel Seabury, had that past year investigated and uncovered widespread, blatant corruption in the Walker administration. Roosevelt, knowing that the Republicans would do everything possible to tie him to Tammany corruption, held his own hearings that summer and personally cross-examined Walker. “As long as the Walker hearings go on, I am engaged at the Capitol until about 5
P.M.
but after that I am usually reasonably free,” he wrote Kennedy, who had inquired if he might visit him. Mayor Walker resigned on September 1, sparing Roosevelt further political embarrassment.
²⁵

In early September, against the advice of several of his advisers who didn’t think him strong enough, Roosevelt embarked on a whistle-stop, cross-country train tour that would eventually bring him from Albany to Los Angeles. Kennedy was invited along. On September 8, he telegraphed A. P. Giannini, president of the Bank of America, and asked him to meet with Roosevelt in San Francisco: “I know he would be anxious to have a chat with you.” He contacted Hearst as well: “If you have a few minutes this afternoon or this evening, would like to discuss this political situation as I personally see it. I will telephone you whatever number or time at your convenience.”
²⁶

The reporters who covered the campaign were intrigued by the fact that Kennedy had been invited on the Roosevelt train. “Is he the Barney Baruch of the Roosevelt campaign?” asked one westerner who was trying to puzzle out Mr. Kennedy’s place in the picture. The
Boston Sunday Globe
insisted that while Kennedy was “officially listed. . . . as a ‘member of the Democratic finance committee,’” he was now a member of the candidate’s “inner circle,” was consulting with Professor Moley on policy, and “discussing political tactics” and “business matters” with Governor Roosevelt himself.
²⁷