Kennedy: The Classic Biography (15 page)

In 1954, when Furcolo sought election to the Senate against the incumbent Republican Leverett Saltonstall, Kennedy agreed to make a major television appearance with the two state-wide Democratic candidates on October 7, the night before he entered the hospital. The Senator, resting at Hyannis Port, sent me to Boston in advance to help work out the script. On the afternoon of the broadcast, harmony prevailed. The three representatives agreed on the final script and their principals agreed by telephone to review it at the studio some ninety minutes before air time.

Senator Kennedy arrived at the studio that night in considerable pain. That pain increased as he waited with gubernatorial candidate Robert Murphy for over an hour without any sign of Furcolo. “Five minutes before we were to go on the air,” as Kennedy later described it, “he arrived—and asked that the script be changed.” He wanted a stronger endorsement. The Senator, who had encountered constant trouble with Furcolo in the 1952 campaign, was furious. For a moment the whole telecast was in doubt. When it proceeded, Kennedy’s closing endorsement pointedly refrained from mentioning Furcolo by name.

Afterward, in the car outside the studio, his fury remained. The Murphy camp had earlier asked him to lend them my speech-writing services. The Senator asked me to stay in Boston, living in his apartment at 122 Bowdoin Street while he was in the hospital. In addition to my completing some voter surveys for him, he gave me two assignments: (1) help Democrat Murphy; (2) help Republican Saltonstall.

I did what I could in this latter vein—primarily suggesting means of Saltonstall’s attracting Kennedy supporters and using Kennedy’s name. Nor was any friendly newspaper left in doubt about Kennedy’s failure to mention Furcolo in the telecast. Saltonstall won, and Kennedy, when asked on television two years later why he was supporting Furcolo as the then Democratic nominee for Governor, refused to go beyond a carefully worded reply:

Q: Why are you endorsing him this year when you failed to endorse him two years ago?

JFK: I think he is
superior
to his
present
opponent.

Q: Do you mean that he is a better man now?

JFK: I think he is superior to the man he is running against….

The Kennedy-Saltonstall cooperation continued, to the personal pleasure and political benefit of both men, as noted earlier. Another Republican for whom Kennedy publicly expressed respect if not agreement was the late Senator Robert A. Taft of Ohio. Kennedy nominated him for “man of the year” in 1953—devoted a chapter to him in
Profiles in Courage
—and was chairman of a Special Senate Committee which selected Taft as one of five outstanding Senators of the past whose portraits were to hang in the Senate lobby.

The selection of these five was a fascinating exercise. After a poll by Kennedy of scholars and Senators, Webster, Clay and Calhoun had been obvious choices. The committee, operating under a self-imposed rule of unanimity, decided the other two slots should be divided between a liberal and a conservative. Taft was the “conservative” selection over an Ohio predecessor, John Sherman. Robert LaFollette, Sr., was the “liberal” choice after the leading candidate, Nebraska’s George Norris, was blocked by Republican committee member Styles Bridges (either because he had tangled with Norris many years earlier, as he admitted, or because he was acting for Nebraska’s conservative Senator Carl Curtis—whose earlier request that each state’s current Senators be permitted to block the selection of any previous Senator from their state had been politely rejected by Kennedy).

John Kennedy’s expressions of respect for Bob Taft pleased not only Joseph P. Kennedy but a key supporter and friend, Basil Brewer. Publisher of the influential New Bedford, Massachusetts,
Standard Times
, Brewer was a conservative Massachusetts Republican, an old friend of the senior Kennedy and an old foe of Henry Cabot Lodge. After Lodge had helped Eisenhower obtain the Republican nomination over Taft in 1952, the
Standard Times
endorsed Kennedy over Lodge for the Senate, and the 22,000 extra votes Kennedy piled up in the New Bedford area had helped provide his winning margin of only 70,000 votes.

RE-ELECTION TO THE SENATE

That margin was sufficiently narrow that “anybody in the state can come into this office,” Kennedy told me, “and claim credit for my winning.” With this margin in mind, his 1958 Senate campaign began the day after his 1952 campaign ended.
¹
During the nearly six years that preceded the official opening of his re-election campaign, no preoccupation with other matters and no prediction of easy victory were permitted to interfere with five fundamental approaches to 1958:

1. Contact was maintained with the personal organization he had carefully nurtured in every corner of the state. The chief Kennedy men in each community were called “secretaries,” thus avoiding both offense to the local party “chairman” and a hierarchy of titles within the Kennedy camp.

2. Each year a comprehensive report was mailed throughout the state on what legislative and administrative actions he was seeking by way of doing “more for Massachusetts.” We justified the use of Congressional franking privileges for this document on the legislator’s historic responsibility to account for his stewardship to his constituents; and when we were unable to find a sufficiently brief quotation from an early American statesman to this effect, Lee White and I invented one and attributed it to “one of our founding fathers.”

3. The Senator spent an increasing number of weekends speaking throughout the state—to the Sons of Italy one night and an American Legion post the next—to the Massachusetts Farm Bureau and the United Polish Societies—to the Council of Catholic Nurses and a Bonds for Israel dinner—to chambers of commerce, labor unions, Rotary luncheons, and conventions, clubs and conferences of every imaginable kind. Most of his speeches, particularly in the small towns, were non-partisan and moderate in flavor.

4. The favor of the Massachusetts newspapers, largely Republican and almost entirely Lodge-oriented in 1952, was carefully cultivated. Reporters, editors and publishers were always welcome in the Senator’s office. Newspaper executives who needed a speaker, a guest editorial or a helping hand with some governmental problem found their Senator eager to be of service. As a result, in sharp contrast with 1952, not a single Massachusetts newspaper opposed Kennedy’s re-election in 1958, and nearly all of them, including such consistently Republican spokesmen as the Boston
Herald
, openly endorsed him (the
Herald’s
endorsement following right on the heels of a Kennedy endorsement by the Massachusetts ADA).

5. Never forgetting his supporters, the Senator constantly wooed his opponents. He was always willing to forget differences and forgive detractors. He bore no lasting grudges and thought politics no place for revenge. Republicans were frequently reminded of his cooperation with Senator Saltonstall, his support of Eisenhower foreign policy measures and his independent voting record. Businessmen were kept informed of his efforts to boost the state’s economy and to curb labor rackets. Budget-cutting advocates were told of his Senate leadership on behalf of the Second Hoover Commission Report, and given the reprints of a warm letter of appreciation from another old friend of his father’s, Herbert Hoover. Italo-Americans who were offended by his feud with Furcolo, longshoremen disgruntled by his support of the St. Lawrence Seaway, Teamsters and other union members upset by his efforts for labor reform, Negroes suspicious of his voting for the jury trial amendment—all these and other groups received material which emphasized his efforts on their behalf, his friendship for their causes and his endorsement by their leaders. In addition, of course, he made certain all mail was answered promptly, all visitors were greeted cordially and as many state problems as possible were handled by him personally.

The Kennedy approach to campaigning, which would later be applied to the Presidential primaries and then on a nationwide scale, was unique in many ways. While remembering to stir up the faithful, he concentrated on the uncommitted. Running even with his party in the urban Democratic strongholds, he won by running far ahead of his party in the suburbs and towns. Remaining deferential to local party organizations, he sought new and attractive faces for his “secretaries.” Soliciting support from wealthy contributors and prominent names, he knew that hard, routine, usually boring work by large numbers of lesser known, less busy and less opinionated adherents was more important to win elections. He sought to get a little work from a lot of people. An endless number of committees was formed, giving more and more voters an opportunity to feel a part of the Kennedy organization.

He turned for a campaign manager, not to an experienced professional (“Most of them are available,” he said, “only because they are experienced in losing”), but to one of his own brothers, enabling the Senator to trust completely the campaign manager’s loyalty and judgment.

In March of 1959 I summed up the Kennedy approach in a talk to the Midwest Democratic Conference by suggesting eight “modern clichés” to replace the standard campaign myths:

1. One devoted volunteer like Paul Revere is worth ten hired Hessians.

2.
Personal letters count more than prestige letterheads.

3. Fifty $1 contributors are better than one $100 contributor.

4. A nonpolitical talk to the unconvinced is better than a political talk to the already convinced.

5. One session in a vote-filled poolroom is worth two sessions in a smoke-filled hotel room.

6. (Regarding issues) It is better to rock the boat than to sail it under false colors.

7. No one’s vote can be delivered with the possible exception of your mother’s—and make sure she’s registered.

8. One hour of work in 1957 is worth two hours of work in 1958.

This last “cliché” struck at the oldest and best-entrenched political myth that Kennedy challenged. “In every campaign I’ve ever been in,” he told me in 1959, “they’ve said I was starting too early—that I would peak too soon or get too much exposure or run out of gas or be too easy a target. I would never have won any race following that advice.”

Between 1952 and 1958 he did not follow it, and in 1958 the Massachusetts Republicans could not find a significant candidate willing to oppose him. Some Republican strategists counseled no opposition in order to keep down the Democratic turnout for Kennedy. One Boston
Herald
columnist even suggested that both parties endorse him. The Republicans “can’t possibly lick him,” wrote the late Bill Cunningham. “They couldn’t borrow a better man and they surely haven’t any like him…. Why not make it unanimous?”

It nearly was. In the end, his opponent was an unknown lawyer named Vincent Celeste. Vinnie, as his friends called him, was a fiery orator when making sweeping charges against the Kennedys in public. But he was more subdued in the one private conversation I had with him, after he had walked out on a League of Women Voters-sponsored public debate in which I had represented the Senator, shouting as he left a series of protests at the speech I had half-completed.

Understandably the Kennedy campaign workers at the outset had an air of overconfident lethargy. But we were shocked by a light primary turnout in which Furcolo received a larger Democratic vote seeking reelection as Governor than Kennedy did as Senator. “I’m glad it happened and got everyone off their backs,” said the Senator, and he launched an intensive handshaking, speech-making, nonstop automobile tour of the state of several weeks’ duration, which took him and Jacqueline within six miles of every Massachusetts voter. On occasion she would speak a few words in French or Italian to audiences of those extractions.

Every hand in sight was shaken; ever since 1946, when Dave Powers had spirited him up the back stairs of the “three-decker” apartments in Charlestown (“so we could catch them in the kitchen,” said Dave), he had known there was no substitute for personal contact. Aides marveled at his stopping the car on the fatigue-ridden last night of the campaign to shake one more hand, that of an elderly woman alone on the street.

John Kennedy rolled to his fifth straight political victory by a margin of more than 873,000 votes, a record three-to-one ratio. It was the largest margin and largest total vote ever accorded any candidate in the history of Massachusetts.

He carried in with him the entire state Democratic ticket and the state’s first Democratic legislature as well. With the 1960 Presidential election in mind, Kennedy had made the desired impression on politicians around the nation. He had won bigger than any other contested candidate for major office in the country.

He was also the first office-seeker in Massachusetts history to carry every city and county in the state regardless of its political, economic or ethnic complexion. Instead of losing ground among Negro voters, as predicted a year earlier, he ran ahead of Negro legislator Lincoln Pope in the latter’s own ward.

In Massachusetts Kennedy was no longer regarded by the professionals as a political amateur and upstart. No one in the state could match or fault his performance; no one could doubt or challenge his leadership; and no one remembered that two years earlier the former Democratic State Committee chairman had vowed to run against Kennedy in the 1958 primary.

MASSACHUSETTS DEMOCRATIC CONTROL

Any explanation of the Senator’s involvement in that 1956 State Committee fight must revolve around three names: Adlai Stevenson, William H. Burke and John Fox.

Adlai Stevenson was not the most popular figure in Massachusetts in those days, and Democratic politicians in that state traditionally kept apart from other candidates. But Kennedy was a warm Stevenson supporter for the Democratic Presidential nomination in 1956 as in 1952. Stevenson’s leading opponents were Senator Estes Kefauver of Tennessee and Governor Averell Harriman of New York, and it was generally believed that House Majority Leader John McCormack was seeking a Massachusetts favorite-son designation to aid Harriman, block Stevenson and show the nation that he spoke for Massachusetts Democrats.