Kennedy: The Classic Biography (31 page)

I had submitted to the Senator and brother Bob several weeks earlier, as had many others, a list of potential Vice Presidential nominees. On my list twenty-two names were reduced to fifteen and then to six. The Vice President-picking process invariably begins with a search for someone who will strengthen the ticket and invariably ends with a search for someone who won’t weaken it. Those ruled out on my list were too liberal, too conservative, too inarticulate, too offensive to some groups in the party, too much like Kennedy in strengths and weaknesses or too young (“We don’t want the ticket referred to as ‘the whiz kids,’” I wrote). I placed at the top of my list, as did many others, the name of one man who had none of these disqualifications and many qualifications: Lyndon B. Johnson.

Many stories have circulated about Kennedy’s choice of Johnson: that his father dictated it—that Johnson, or Rayburn on Johnson’s behalf, took the initiative on it with an ultimatum to Kennedy—that Johnson and Kennedy secretly agreed on it before the convention opened—that Johnson told Kennedy he would fight for the nomination if Kennedy, having suggested it, later retracted. None of these stories is true.

Despite the regional nature of his support for the Presidency, Johnson was more of a national figure than a Southerner. The youngest Majority Leader in history, a Senator’s Senator who had accomplished more in the Congress during the previous eight years than Eisenhower, he certainly was no stranger to agriculture and the West. He had strong voter appeal in areas where Kennedy had little or none. He was a Protestant with a capital P. His work on behalf of foreign aid, social legislation and particularly civil rights had modified liberal opposition. His assistance with a Kennedy Congress would be indispensable.

Above all, Kennedy respected him and knew he could work with him. Lyndon Johnson was, in his opinion, the next best qualified man to be President. He admired from firsthand observation Johnson’s tireless ability to campaign, cajole and persuade. He admired his leadership of the party during its dark days and his sure-footed finesse in the Senate. Referring to Johnson’s powerful position when introducing him to a Boston audience in 1959, he had observed, “Some people say our speaker might be President in 1960, but, frankly, I don’t see why he should take a demotion.” In his notes for that night, he had scrawled out many genuine compliments: “…the most skillful parliamentary leader since Henry Clay…speaks not just for Texas but for the country…the man whose personal friendship I value…a great American.”

Johnson, in turn, had been grateful to Kennedy for defending him when liberal Democrats sought a post-1956 scapegoat. “I have always had great faith in your integrity and your independence of thought,” Johnson wrote him, “and you have never let me down.” And Johnson’s selection of Kennedy over Kefauver for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 1957 had helped cement relations.

The campaign had not altered their friendly regard for each other. Johnson had started late, preferring his Senate position to the primaries and wary of losing face by losing a race with a younger Senator. Sam Rayburn did not think a Catholic could win or should win, but no hint of religious bias ever appeared in Johnson’s speeches. He made no mention of Kennedy in announcing his own availability, and he repudiated the Connally-Edwards charge that Kennedy was too sick to be President. It was generally agreed that, if nominated, he would want Jack Kennedy as his running mate. (“I can see it now,” one magazine had claimed a Johnson aide said. “Hell be standing there in the hotel room after the nomination and hell say, ‘We want that boy for Vice President. Go get him for me!’”)

Although the Massachusetts Senator had not been as close to the Majority Leader as many of his colleagues and competitors, he had refused to seek the favor of liberal Democrats—even in Wisconsin, where he needed their votes—by joining in their criticism of the Texan’s leadership. He had tossed a few gibes Johnson’s way. Referring to the latter’s statement that the party needed a man “with a little gray in his hair,” Kennedy told a crowd of enthusiastic supporters at Los Angeles that “we put that gray in his hair and we will continue to do so.” In private he would sometimes speak far more sharply. But his basic attitude remained one of admiration and affection. A rumor that, if elected, he intended dislodging Johnson as Majority Leader was wholly false. Asked on television whether, as President, he could continue to work with Johnson as Majority Leader after “he said some rather harsh things about your youth and inexperience,” Kennedy replied emphatically that he could.

As runner-up in the Presidential balloting (409 votes compared to Kennedy’s 806), as leader of the party in the Senate, as candidate of the area most opposed to Kennedy, as spokesman for a large state that would be difficult for Kennedy to carry, Johnson was the strongest potential running mate and the logical man to be given “first refusal” on the job. Al Smith, the only previous Catholic nominee, had picked a Protestant Southern Senator, Joseph Robinson; and Franklin Roosevelt had picked a Texas Congressional leader, John Garner. Johnson, Kennedy felt, would strengthen the ticket in the South. And he was less certain that the Midwest and West, his other areas of weakness, could be carried by the Democrats in 1960 no matter whom he selected.

Yet neither Kennedy nor anyone else could have expected that Johnson would accept, just as Johnson had not expected to be asked. Kennedy had publicly stated in January that he did not think Johnson, Humphrey or Symington would accept second place. A Johnson aide had reportedly said, “Can you imagine Lyndon sitting there watching someone else trying to run his Senate?” Senate Majority Secretary Robert Baker, a Johnson confidant, cautioned me in June not to be so certain that his boss would reject a Kennedy-Johnson ticket. But Johnson himself commented emphatically only one day before the convention opened: “I wouldn’t want to trade a vote for a gavel, and I certainly wouldn’t want to trade the active position of leadership of the greatest deliberative body in the world for the part-time job of presiding.” Earlier he had said, “The Vice Presidency is a good place for a young man who needs experience…a young man who needs training.”

But friends of both men—particularly Philip Graham, publisher of the Washington Post, and columnist Joe Alsop—had urged Kennedy to try Johnson’s availability; and a warm congratulatory telegram from Johnson after the balloting helped persuade the nominee to make a serious effort in that direction.

With only a few hours of sleep, he returned to his Biltmore headquarters and called Johnson around 8
A.M.
He asked to talk with the Majority Leader in Johnson’s suite in that same hotel in two hours (Johnson had been awakened by his wife to take the call). At the meeting, laying stress on national and party unity, Kennedy asked about the Vice Presidency. Johnson said he was interested, and both men agreed to discuss it with other leaders.

Johnson encountered some opposition and considerable reluctance from those in his own camp who disliked Kennedy, the platform and the idea of second place. “Some changed their minds and some didn’t,” he said later. Some of his friends angrily refused to speak to him for weeks. But Speaker Rayburn, after talking with both Johnson and Kennedy, expressed a willingness to back LBJ’s own decision to accept this new challenge and experience. So, ultimately, did Johnson’s wife. “I felt,” he said later, “that it offered opportunities that I had really never had before in either…the House or the Senate…. I had no right to say that I would refuse to serve in any capacity.”

Kennedy, meanwhile, was encountering disappointment among the backers of Symington, Freeman and Henry “Scoop” Jackson—who were the most likely alternatives considered for the post—but found general support in the party, with one major exception. Several labor and liberal delegates were outraged at what seemed to be a concession to the defeated “bosses” and Southerners. They threatened a convention floor fight. Leaders of New York’s Liberal Party threatened to nominate a ticket of their own. Bob Kennedy had the unpleasant task (not, as some have speculated, on his own initiative but at his brother’s request) of conveying their views to Johnson, and mentioned the National Committee chairmanship as an alternative. Johnson’s supporters—many of whom were not enthusiastic about second spot anyway—were angry at what they thought was a change in signals by Bob; but the Majority Leader said he would risk a floor fight if Senator Kennedy would.

By this time both principals had made up their minds, and both stuck by their initial view. The announcement was made, the emotional outbursts of many delegates were weathered or moderated, all possibilities of a floor revolt were quelled, and no alternative candidate was available. By a voice vote the rules were suspended, a roll call was avoided and Johnson’s nomination was voted by acclamation.

Another precedent had been broken: it was the first ticket in history composed of two incumbent Senators.

There remained only the matter of the acceptance address. The nominee and I had received many suggested drafts but had hammered out the final text in the course of the convention week. Our final session was held at the private residence borrowed by his father, on the evening of the Vice Presidential race. Some elements of the speech were clearly needed:

• Acceptance of the nomination and platform.
  

• An olive branch of praise to Johnson, Symington, Stevenson and Truman in order to rebuild party unity (“I feel a lot safer now that they are on my side again”).
  

• An effort to allay anti-Catholic suspicions (“The Democratic Party has…placed its confidence in the American people and in their ability to render a free, fair judgment—and in my ability to render a free, fair judgment”).
  

• An attack on Nixon, which some advised against, and which later proved to be the one part of the speech most vulnerable to criticism, but which Kennedy felt, considering the size of his television audience, should be included (“His speeches are generalities from
  Poor Richard’s Almanac”).
  ²
  

• A nonpartisan appeal to independents (“We are not here to curse the darkness but to light a candle…. My call is to the young in heart, regardless of age, to the stout in spirit, regardless of party”).
  

• An account of the mounting problems this nation faced at home and abroad (“Seven lean years of drought and famine have withered the field of ideas…. More energy is released by the awakening of these new nations than by the fission of the atom itself”).
  

But the highlight of the speech was a summation of the Kennedy philosophy: the New Frontier. Many of the ideas and much of the language in this speech came from the drafts of other writers as well as earlier Kennedy speeches, including the televised reply to Truman. But the basic concept of the New Frontier—and the term itself—were new to this speech. I know of no outsider who suggested that expression, although the theme of the Frontier was contained in more than one draft. Kennedy generally shrank from slogans, and would use this one sparingly, but he liked the idea of a successor to the New Deal and Fair Deal. The New Frontier, he said,

sums up not what I intend to offer the American people but what I intend to ask of them. It appeals to their pride, not to their pocketbook; it holds out the promise of more sacrifice instead of more security.

But I tell you the New Frontier is here whether we seek it or not…uncharted areas of science and space, unsolved problems of peace and war, unconquered pockets of ignorance and prejudice, unanswered questions of poverty and surplus….

The American people stood, he said, “at a turning point in history,” facing a choice

not merely between two men or two parties, but between the public interest and private comfort, between national greatness and national decline, between the fresh air of progress and the stale, dank atmosphere of “normalcy.”

Speaking outdoors in a coliseum too vast for the occasion, speaking as the sun went down on what was once the last frontier, the Democratic nominee for President delivered his address with an air of conviction and determination:

All mankind waits upon our decision. A whole world looks to see what we will do. We cannot fail their trust. We cannot fail to try…. Give me your help and your hand and your voice and your vote.

Earlier, as he had finished dressing for the occasion, his long-time aide Ted Reardon had asked him to autograph for Reardon’s son a press release copy of the speech, and the Senator had written: “To Timmy, with best personal regards from your old friend, John Kennedy.” Beneath his signature, he scratched initials which Ted thought were “N.D.” for Notre Dame as a potential future school for Timmy. Was that it? he asked. “Hell, no,” said John Kennedy. “That’s N.P.—Next President. Let’s go.”

1
It should be noted that powerful Kennedy supporters are referred to in this book as “political leaders,” those in the opposition camp are called “bosses.” By convention time, recognizing their inability to defeat him, most of the “bosses” had become “political leaders.”

2
Unfortunately my lack of English history showed in a reference, while listing unfit heirs to power, to Richard Cromwell as the nephew of Oliver. Some Massachusetts elders, moreover, were astonished that Kennedy would mention Cromwell at all.

CHAPTER VII
THE CAMPAIGN