Kennedy: The Classic Biography (18 page)

Meanwhile, the second ballot was already under way and a Kennedy trend had set in. The South was anxious to stop Kefauver, and Kennedy was picking up most of the Gore and Southern favorite-son votes. He was also getting the Wagner votes. Kefauver was gaining more slowly, but hardly a handful of his delegates had left him. Bob Kennedy, John Bailey and their lieutenants were all over the floor shouting to delegations to come with Kennedy.

When New Jersey and New York in rapid succession gave Kennedy 126½ votes he had not received on the first ballot, the press chaos was transferred from Kefauver’s corridor to ours. Our television set showed wild confusion on the convention floor and a climbing Kennedy total. But the Senator was as calm as ever. He bathed, then again reclined on the bed. Finally we moved, through a back exit, to a larger and more isolated room.

The race was still neck and neck, and Kennedy knew that no lead was enough if it could not produce a majority. Oklahoma stayed with Gore (“He’s not our kind of folks,” the Governor of Oklahoma said to a Kennedy pleader, summing up in six words the Senator’s inability to dent the Western Protestant farm and ranch areas). Wagner’s votes in Pennsylvania went to Kefauver instead of Kennedy. “Lawrence,” muttered the Senator. Puerto Rico stayed with Wagner, despite his withdrawal. “They didn’t get the word,” said the Senator somewhat ruefully.

Tennessee, torn by the conflicting ambitions of its two Senators and Governor, stayed with Gore. Then Lyndon Johnson rose for Texas. With the help of several Congressmen, he had beaten down the anti-Catholic sentiment within his delegation, including that of Sam Rayburn, and he announced the full 56 votes of Texas “for that fighting Senator who wears the scars of battle…the next Vice President of the United States, John Kennedy of Massachusetts.”

I stretched out a hand of congratulation. “Not yet,” said the Senator. But as his total grew, he finished dressing and, between glances at the television, began to discuss what he should say to the convention if nominated. North Carolina, which had passed on the second ballot, now switched half its votes to Kennedy. Kentucky’s chairman announced that his delegation, “which has consistently been with the minority all through this convention, enthusiastically joins the majority and changes its vote to John Kennedy.”

It almost was a majority—but not quite. In the entire nineteen-state West-Midwest area between Illinois and California, excepting Nevada, Kennedy could get no more than 20 of their 384 convention votes. Suddenly the tide turned again.

Albert Gore earlier in the year had seemed to endorse Kennedy (“I would like to see Jack Kennedy in either the first or second place on the Democratic ticket in either 1956, 1960 or 1964”). But now he released his Tennessee delegates to Kefauver. Oklahoma switched from Gore to Kefauver. Minnesota and Missouri switched their Humphrey votes to Kefauver. Illinois and South Carolina tried to stem the avalanche by switching a few more votes to Kennedy. But it was to no avail. The Kennedy current had run its course. More Kefauver votes followed.

The Senator remained silent until the television screen showed Kefauver with a majority. “Let’s go,” he said and plunged through the maelstrom outside his door to walk to the convention platform. Brushing aside those officials who wished him to wait until it was all over, he strode to the rostrum with a tired grin. Speaking briefly and movingly without notes, he thanked those who had supported him, congratulated Stevenson on his open-convention decision and moved to make Kefauver’s nomination unanimous.

Afterward, we reviewed the accidents of chance that prevented a few dozen more delegates from putting Kennedy over the top:

• If the large electric tote board in the back of the hall had not been dismantled the night before, so that all delegates could have seen Kennedy nearing a majority…

• If Convention Chairman Sam Rayburn had called for a recess and a third ballot instead of second-ballot switches…

• If some of our friends had not unknowingly left town the day before…

• If Kennedy had possessed an organized campaign machine with a communications and control center…

• If South Carolina, Illinois and Alabama, which wished to announce switches favoring Kennedy, had been recognized by Mr. Rayburn before Tennessee, Oklahoma, Minnesota and Missouri…

• If additional Kennedy supporters in the California, Indiana and other delegations had not been prevented from switching their votes to the Senator when his “bandwagon” was still rolling…

• If there had been time for the television viewers back home to make their views known to the delegates…

But Jack Kennedy paid little attention to the “ifs.” The basic fact was that he had run out of potential votes and could get no more in the Midwest or West. Back in his room at the inn, joined by Jacqueline and members of his family, the Senator was quiet. He was neither angry like Bob nor crying like Ben Smith. He had a few caustic comments on supposed friends who had let him down, and he composed with more sarcasm than hurt an imaginary wire to David Lawrence, who had earlier asked him to Pittsburgh. But his disappointment did not even last until his departure for Europe—it was vanquished that evening in a noisy, joking dinner with family and friends.

The convention adjourned that night on a note of intergroup harmony, with Negro soprano Mahalia Jackson singing “The Lord’s Prayer” accompanied by the Chicago Swedish Glee Club. The Senator flew off to Europe with no foolish claims, charges, tears or promises to retract or regret. He was content.

Perhaps he already realized that his prominent role in the convention, his tense race with Kefauver and his graceful acceptance of defeat had made him overnight a nationally acclaimed figure. Perhaps he knew that his showing among Southern delegates—even if many of them had been motivated by their opposition to Kefauver—was the first chink in the Al Smith myth that no Catholic could win national office. And, more importantly, perhaps he already knew that were he to occupy second place on a losing Stevenson ticket in 1956, neither he nor any other Catholic would be considered again for several decades.

In later years, weary of the myth that he had entered politics as an involuntary substitute for his deceased brother Joe, he commented that Joe was more of a winner, that he, too, would have won the Congressional and Senatorial elections Jack did, that he, too, would have sought the Vice Presidency, but that he would have won the nomination—“And today Joe’s political career would be a shambles.” Certainly there was far more truth than humor in his quip at the Gridiron Dinner two years later:

I am grateful…to “Mr. Sam” Rayburn. At the last Democratic Convention, if he had not recognized the Tennessee and Oklahoma delegations when he did, I might have won that race with Senator Kefauver—and my political career would now be over.

1
Since the 1958 campaign and the Kennedy pre-eminence in Massachusetts state politics must be seen as a whole, I shall tell the ’58 story before going back to the relatively brief bid for the Vice Presidential nomination in 1956.

PART TWO
The Kennedy Candidacy

CHAPTER IV
THE CONTENDER

J
OHN
F. K
ENNEDY WANTED SOMEDAY
to be President of the United States.

This wish did not suddenly seize him at some particular time. It was not an obsession to which all other interests were subordinated. It was not inherited from his brother, imposed by his father or inspired by his illness. He was not dissatisfied with his life as a Senator, had no fascination with power for the sake of power and needed no glory for his ego. He would not have felt cheated and frustrated had the office never been his; and, prior to the events of 1956 which thrust it within the realm of possibility, he had no timetable or plans for obtaining it. Nor did he seek the job in the belief that he was fulfilling his nation’s destiny or because he had some grand design for the future.

John Kennedy wanted to be President simply because, as he told a newsman early in 1956 when he had no specific intentions toward the office, “I suppose anybody in politics would like to be President”—because, as he said so often in 1960, “that is the center of action, the mainspring, the wellspring of the American system”—because, as he said in 1962, “at least you have an opportunity to do something about all the problems which…I would be concerned about [anyway] as a father or as a citizen…and if what you do is useful and successful, then…that is a great satisfaction.”

As a Democrat he believed four more years of Republican rule would be ruinous. As a citizen he feared for the course of his country in the sixties. As a politician and public servant he aspired, as many men do, to reach the top of his profession. As a member of both houses of Congress he was daily more aware of how limited was their power to improve our nation and society. Nothing could better sum up his reasons for seeking the Presidency than seven words he used constantly in the campaign: “because I want to get things done.”

To his father, who warned that its pressures could make it “the worst job in the world,” he said these problems still had to be solved by human beings. He knew the responsibilities of the office would be lonely and demanding. But he had confidence in himself, in his judgment, his courage, his knowledge of public affairs, his years of experience in the House and Senate, his background of world travel and his conversations with chief executives in this country and many others. With his usual candor he told one interviewer before the 1960 convention, “The burden is heavy…[but] this job is going to be done. I am one of the four or five candidates who will be considered to do it. I approach it with a feeling that I can meet the responsibilities of the office.”

In private he could be even more explicit, listing the men who in his lifetime had held, sought or were among the four or five then seeking the job—men whose talents were at best not superior to his own. Of the other possible contenders he regarded Johnson as the ablest and Symington as the most likely compromise choice. He liked and respected both of them and Stevenson and Humphrey also. But Stevenson, having twice been his party’s standard-bearer, said flatly he would not run again; and Kennedy objectively considered his own ability to be nominated
and
elected
and
to lead the nation through a perilous period superior to that of all four men.

Kefauver, whom he bested in a competition for a seat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee early in 1957, appeared likely to be a candidate in 1960 only for re-election to the Senate. Governors Brown of California, Williams of Michigan, Collins of Florida, Chandler of Kentucky and Meyner of New Jersey, all of whom were mentioned by local boosters, had no visible nationwide following, although Meyner tried hard to acquire one.

Neither Republican candidate, in the Senator’s opinion, was unbeatable. Richard Nixon, he wrote in 1957, would be a “tough, skillful, shrewd opponent…. It will take more than abusive statements to beat Mr. Nixon—those he can read riding in the 1961 Inaugural parade.” But he felt that Nixon’s ambitions exceeded his ability and that neither his platform presence nor his past inspired confidence among the voters.

He did not know Nelson Rockefeller prior to his election as Governor of New York. When the two were paired as speakers at the annual Al Smith Dinner in 1959, the Senator regarded it as a competition. Throughout the dinner, as he anxiously worked over his own speech, he worried all the more watching the Governor confidently smiling and talking, never glancing at his text. But the contrast could not have been greater as Rockefeller stumbled through a long and listless speech followed by Kennedy’s brief, humorous and more pertinent remarks. “I’d like to appear with him every night of the week!” he exclaimed to me on the phone the next morning.

These were the men, then, Republicans and Democrats, from whose ranks the next President would be picked; and the Senator said, in effect, that someone has to do it, these are, the men considered, therefore “Why not me?”

All this was not vanity but objectivity. He was as objective about his liabilities as he was about his assets. Often, to the incredulity of newsmen and to the dismay of his followers, he would objectively list those liabilities in public. He knew that no Catholic had ever been elected President of the United States, where church membership was more than two to one Protestant—that no forty-three-year-old had ever been elected President—and that for these reasons in particular his party was unlikely to pick him. On the other hand, he knew that both his religion and his youthful appearance, while mistrusted by some, had also set him apart from most politicians and helped attract a nucleus of followers.

Perhaps, if he could have been guaranteed the Democratic Presidential nomination for any future year he chose, he would not have chosen 1960. Eight or twelve more years would have removed the age handicap, softened the religious handicap and possibly weakened the Republicans. But he had no such guarantee and was not in that respect free to choose. Circumstances, events and his own competitive instincts propelled him toward making the race in 1960, and once that die was cast, he felt, it was 1960 or never. Many advised him to wait, to step aside, to settle for second place—columnists, competitors, friends and strangers. As he campaigned one day early in 1960 on the streets of Eau Claire, Wisconsin, an elderly lady whose hand he grasped said, “Not now, young man, it’s too soon, it’s too soon.” And he replied gently but almost teasingly, “No, Mother, this is it. The time is now.” And she left him with a smiling “God bless you.”

Jack Kennedy did not accept—or publicly pretend to profess—the familiar fiction that this office seeks the man. “Nobody is going to hand me the nomination,” he told a reporter in 1957. “If I were governor of a large state, Protestant and fifty-five, I could sit back and let it come to me.”