Kennedy: The Classic Biography (36 page)

The Senator’s desire was to state his position so clearly and comprehensively that no reasonable man could doubt his adherence to the Constitution. All year his critics had pointed to the Catholic attacks on his
Look
interview as proof that his church would resist his position. In the hopes of avoiding any loose wording this time that would unnecessarily stir up the Catholic press, I read the speech over the telephone to the Rev. John Courtney Murray, S.J., a leading and liberal exponent of the Catholic position on church and state. On the plane to Houston, the speech, along with all possible questions that might follow from the floor, was also reviewed with both James Wine and his temporary aide, John Cogley, a Catholic scholar formerly with
Commonweal
magazine. The Senator, resting his strained vocal chords, wrote out his questions and comments on a scratch pad, laughing at his lack of theological training and showing no apprehension over the trial he was about to face.

That night, in the ballroom of Houston’s Rice Hotel, I sat in the audience with Cogley as we waited for the program to begin. Inasmuch as the meeting was to be televised throughout the state of Texas, all were silently in their places waiting for the hour to strike. The Senator, in black suit and black tie (but wearing brown shoes, his black shoes having been accidentally left on the plane to the chagrin of Dave Powers), flanked by the two ministers who presided, sat somewhat nervously behind the lectern. Glaring at him from the other side were the Protestant ministers of Houston. “They’re tired of being called bigots for opposing a Catholic,” Pierre Salinger had earlier reported to the Senator as he dressed. Also on hand was a large number of national press pundits who had flown in for the great confrontation. A sense of tension and hostility hung in the air. The few minutes of waiting seemed endless. John Cogley whispered to me, “This is one time we need those types that pray for Notre Dame before each football game!”

At last the Senator was introduced, and the atmosphere eased almost at once. It was the best speech of his campaign and one of the most important in his life. Only his Inaugural Address could be said to surpass it in power and eloquence. Both Protestants and Catholics acclaimed his succinct summation of belief: “not what kind of church I believe in, for that should be important only to me, but what kind of America I believe in.”

I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute—where no Catholic prelate would tell the President (should he be Catholic) how to act, and no Protestant minister would tell his parishioners for whom to vote—where no church or church school is granted any public funds or political preference…an America that is officially neither Catholic, Protestant nor Jewish—where no public official either requests or accepts instructions on public policy from…any…ecclesiastical source…where there is no Catholic vote, no anti-Catholic vote, no bloc voting of any kind…and where religious liberty is so indivisible that an act against one church is treated as an act against all.

He reminded his listeners that other faiths—including the Baptist—had been harassed in earlier days. “Today,” he said, in a passage he had inserted in the final draft, “I may be the victim, but tomorrow it may be you.”

The religious views of the American President, he said, must be “his own private affair, neither imposed by him upon the nation nor imposed by the nation upon him as a condition to holding that office.” Citing his record on church-state issues, he asked to be judged on that basis and not on the

pamphlets and publications…that carefully select quotations out of context from the statements of Catholic Church leaders, usually in other countries, frequently in other centuries….

I am not the Catholic candidate for President, I am the Democratic Party’s candidate for President who happens also to be a Catholic. I do not speak for my church on public matters, and the church does not speak for me.

In the most controversial paragraph of the speech, Kennedy said he would resign his office rather than violate the national interest in order to avoid violating his conscience. That passage, which the Senator had long deliberated and which he rightly predicted would be criticized, was based on my talk months earlier with Bishop Wright. Although Kennedy did “not concede any conflict to be even remotely possible,” this single sentence was designed to still those Protestant critics who were certain he would succumb to pressure and those Catholics critics who were certain he would stifle his faith. “I hope,” he added, that “any conscientious public servant would do the same.”

After the speech came a barrage of questions, none of them wholly friendly. More than one question related to the story circulated by a well-known preacher, publicist and onetime Republican candidate for Mayor of Philadelphia, the Rev. Daniel Poling. Congressman Kennedy had been invited by Dr. Poling to a fund-raising dinner in honor of a chapel, located in a Baptist church, which paid tribute to the heroic four chaplains (including Dr. Poling’s son) who went down with the S.S.
Dorchester
in the Second World War. As stated in the Reverend’s
Autobiography
, released in late 1959, Kennedy was to be the “spokesman for his Roman Catholic faith” at the dinner. A prominent Protestant and Jewish leader were also scheduled to speak. When the Congressman belatedly learned that the Archdiocese of Philadelphia did not support the project or dinner, he told Rev. Poling with some embarrassment that he could not accept the invitation after all because he had no credentials “to attend in the capacity in which I had been asked.” He could and would have attended, he said repeatedly in 1960, in the role of Congressman, ex-serviceman or private citizen. Nevertheless, the incident was cited by Poling, and subsequently by thousands of others, as proof of Kennedy’s subservience to the hierarchy.

“I had been in politics probably two months and was relatively inexperienced,” said the Senator. “I should have inquired before…. [But] is this the best that…can be charged after fourteen years?” He had concluded a series of letters to Dr. Poling in July, 1960, by emphasizing that he would have no “reluctance in accepting an invitation to any public occasion in my capacity as a Massachusetts legislator or public official, without regard to any requests not to keep that engagement emanating from any source, ecclesiastical, political or otherwise.” But the original story was still circulated in anti-Catholic literature, and Dr. Poling ignored Kennedy’s reply when he was in touch with the Houston ministers.

The Senator fielded all questions with ease and without evasion. Asked if he would intercede with Cardinal Cushing to obtain the Pope’s approval of his position, he said no ecclesiastical official should interfere in public policy and no public official in ecclesiastical policy. Asked if he had the approval of the Vatican for his statement, he said he did not need such approval. Asked what his response would be if his church attempted to influence his public duties, he said he would “reply to them that this was an improper action on their part…one to which I could not subscribe, that I was opposed to it…[as] an interference with the American political system.”

He made clear that he had not read and was not bound by all the documents and doctrines quoted to him—that he believed not all but the “overwhelming majority of American Catholics” shared his views—that he could attend in his capacity as President any Protestant funeral or other service—and that he did not look upon those who sincerely asked his views as bigots. He concluded with the hope that the discussion would assist them “to make a careful judgment,” although “I am sure I have made no converts to my church.”

The Houston speech did make some converts to his candidacy. It impressed all who watched it then and later. “As we say in my part of Texas,” said Sam Rayburn, “he ate ’em blood raw.”

The Houston confrontation did not end the religious controversy or silence the Senator’s critics, but it was widely and enthusiastically applauded, not only in the Rice Hotel Ballroom but all across Texas and the nation. It made unnecessary any further full-scale answer from the candidate, and Kennedy, while continuing to answer questions, never raised the subject again. It offered in one document all the answers to all the questions any reasonable man could ask. It helped divide the citizens legitimately concerned about Kennedy’s views from the fanatics who had condemned him from birth.

But the issue did not die. Many who approved of the Houston speech demanded a statement by the Pope as well. Others said Kennedy was lying. Some said Kennedy was fine, but his election would pave the way for future Catholic Presidents who might not share his views. Some said they would still vote against Kennedy as a protest against his church. Others invented quotations of what he had said or cited Catholic criticisms of his earlier statements. “It’s frustrating,” said the Senator. “I’ve made my views clear month after month and year after year. I’ve answered every question. My public record is spread out over fourteen years…but it seems difficult to ever give some people the assurance they need that I’m as interested in religious liberty as they are.”

But he maintained his good humor on the subject. When Harry Truman was chastised by Nixon for telling Southerners who vote Republican to go to hell, Kennedy said he would wire the former President “that our side [must] try to refrain from raising the religious issue.”

To avoid charges that his side was raising the issue—a charge which always angered him, as he undertook only to defend himself—the Senator repudiated two labor-backed pamphlets which by implication connected Nixon and the Republicans with anti-Catholic propaganda. At all times he acquitted Nixon and Nixon’s party of any responsibility for the growing tide of intolerance.

The Republicans were, in fact, handling the religious issue very shrewdly. To be sure, they continually mentioned the issue by deploring it.
⁶
Nixon repeatedly declared that both candidates should refrain from discussing the subject.
⁷

Kennedy did refrain from raising it, but not his attackers. The President of the Southern Baptist Convention, Dr. Ramsey Pollard, insisted as he campaigned vigorously for Nixon:

No matter what Kennedy might say, he cannot separate himself from his church if he is a true Catholic…. All we ask is that Roman Catholicism lift its bloody hand from the throats of those that want to worship in the church of their choice…. I am not a bigot.

In another “unbigoted” talk, the same Dr. Pollard warned: “My church has enough members to beat Kennedy in this area if they all vote like I tell them to.”

There were, to be sure, scattered “declarations of conscience” by Protestant and Jewish groups denouncing the issue, commending Kennedy’s stand or pointing out that the separation of church and state should not apply to Catholics only. But these were lonely voices, particularly among Southern Baptists, the Church of Christ and other Fundamentalist and evangelical sects. Opposition on religious grounds was not confined to any one group. While it was more open in the South, it was felt in all sections. While it was led by clergymen, it was aided by laymen. While it was worse in rural areas, it was bad in the cities. While the professional hatemongers were all active, they were outnumbered by supposedly respectable Protestant leaders.

Well over three hundred different anti-Catholic tracts, distributed to more than twenty million homes, and countless mailings, chain letters, radio broadcasts, television attacks and even anonymous telephone calls inflamed and assaulted the voters’ senses, at a cost to someone of at least several hundred thousands of dollars. One rightist publication could not decide whether Kennedy’s election was a Popish plot or Communist conspiracy, but thought the two worked together anyway. Another said Kennedy stirred up the religious issue to conceal the fact that he was a Communist. One theme persisted: that the Pope would soon be governing America. (Bishop Wright had told me that in 1959 Pope John, who had been trying to learn English, asked him about Kennedy’s chances. “Very good,” Bishop Wright replied—and the Pope, fully aware of the 1928 stories, jokingly added, “Do not expect me to run a country with a language as difficult as yours.”)

Not all the peddlers of venom denied the label of bigotry. The Rev. Harvey Springer, self-named “the cowboy evangelist of the Rockies,” seemed proud to be called a bigot. “Let the Romanists move out of America,” he cried. “Did you see the coronation of Big John [Pope John]? Let’s hope we never see the coronation of Little John…. How many Catholics came over on the
Mayflower?
Not one…The Constitution is a Protestant Constitution.”

But others who rationalized the religious attack spoke in more subtle terms. David Lawrence, in his national news magazine, justified all religious votes for Nixon on the grounds that it was traditional that “citizens do vote their prejudices.” Dr. George L. Ford of the National Association of Evangelicals declared that “religion definitely should not be an issue in politics—and wouldn’t be if the Catholic Church hadn’t made it so.” His Association led, although with limited success, an attempt to convert Reformation Sunday on October 30, nine days before the election, into an excuse for anti-Catholic, anti-Kennedy sermons and rallies.

TELEVISION AND THE DEBATES

Kennedy realized that his most urgent campaign task was to become better known for something other than his religion. Over five hundred speeches, press conferences and statements in forty-five states would help, but even the most enormous crowds could total only a tiny fraction of the entire electorate. The answer was television.

Kennedy’s style was ideally suited to this medium. His unadorned manner of delivery, his lack of gestures and dramatic inflections, his slightly shy but earnest charm, may all have been handicaps on the hustings, but they were exactly right for the living room. He had seen in West Virginia tiny ramshackle shacks with no plumbing, and no newspapers or magazines, but with large television aerials. He had seen surveys showing twice as many Americans citing television as their primary source of campaign information as those citing press and periodicals. Appearing on the Jack Paar network variety show was inappropriate for a dignified nominee, he concluded, after Nixon had appeared (and a Kennedy appearance had been promised). But otherwise the Kennedy campaign organization sought every possible use of the medium—obtaining state-wide television for his major address in each state, taping a series of presentations by the candidate on individual issues, showing as commercials selected excerpts from his campaigning in different areas, and making a few nationwide TV addresses, always before enthusiastic audiences instead of a studio camera. The timing of his half-hour shows was carefully selected with an eye to what programs would be displaced, thus displeasing their fans, and what programs would compete for an audience. Five-minute “spot” presentations were also strategically placed at the end of popular shows.