Kennedy: The Classic Biography (42 page)

But the very narrowness of his victory had, in another sense, broadened its base. John Kennedy could not have been elected President without the votes he received from Protestants as well as Catholics and Jews—indeed, more Protestants voted for him than all his Catholic and Jewish supporters combined. He could not have been elected without both Negro and Southern support. He could not have won without the votes he received from farmers and businessmen, young and old, rich and poor, cities and suburbs. His victory actually related to regions, religions and races only in the minds of the analysts. Millions of Americans who fitted into no category other than “citizens,” and who acted on the basis of no pressure other than their own convictions, elected John Kennedy President of the United States.

One week earlier he had assailed an anonymous Republican poster distributed to San Diego defense plant workers which bore the caption: “Jack Kennedy is after your job.” “That shows,” he said, “how desperate and despicable this campaign has become…. I am after Mr. Eisenhower’s job.”

Now—after an uphill fight, against all odds, breaking all precedents and by the narrowest of margins—the job was his. That he had won at all, he admitted upon reflection, was “a miracle.”

1
In the 171 counties across the nation with the largest Catholic populations, only 3 voted more strongly for Nixon than they had for Eisenhower and only 20 were below the national average in Democratic gains, although the existence of those 23 helps disprove the fear of a solid bloc vote.

2
His electoral vote total of 303 was the same as Truman’s 1948 total and larger than Wilson’s 1916 victory.

PART THREE
The Kennedy Presidency

CHAPTER IX
THE BEGINNING

O
N THE NINTH DAY
of November, 1960, shortly after noon, John Fitzgerald Kennedy became President-elect of the United States. It was an unwieldy mouthful by which to address him, the press said, and he suggested that they continue to call him “Senator—a good title.” After a walk near the beach with Caroline on his back, he watched Nixon’s noontime concession on television, received and acknowledged the congratulatory wires of Nixon and Eisenhower, and changed his sweater and slacks for a suit and tie to make a brief statement of appreciation to the national television and press assembled at the Hyannis Port Armory. He was jubilant about his victory. At the same time he was deeply touched by it. Above all, he was tired, terribly tired. He wanted and needed long hours of sleep, seclusion, relaxation in the sun, and a peaceful life with his daughter and wife and with the new baby expected soon. But as his car returned from the Armory to his Cape cottage he counted up seventy-two days.

There were seventy-two days to inauguration.

… Seventy-two days in which to form an administration, staff the White House, fill some seventy-five key Cabinet and policy posts, name six hundred other major nominees, decide which incumbents to carry over, distribute patronage to the faithful and fix personnel policies for the future…

… Seventy-two days in which to work with Eisenhower on an orderly transfer of power, with Nixon on a restoration of national unity, with Democratic leaders on reshaping the National Committee, and with his own aides on handling all the administrative problems of the transition period, including finances, transportation, accommodations, press relations and attention to the enormous number of letters pouring in from heads of state, well-wishers, job-seekers, old friends and myriad others…

… Seventy-two days in which to make plans for the inaugural festivities, making certain nothing and no one was overlooked, arranging for the right successor to be appointed to his seat in the Senate, selling or transferring his financial holdings to avoid a conflict of interest, and writing an Inaugural Address…

… Seventy-two days in which to make plans for the organization of Congress (which would convene before his inauguration), to prepare a legislative program that could be promptly incorporated into messages and bills, and to formulate concrete policies and plans for all the problems of the nation, foreign and domestic, for which he would soon be responsible as President.

The number and nature of those problems might well have benumbed the brain of another man. The postwar world was ablaze with change. Yet the nation’s seeming indifference and opposition to needed changes had hampered progress. An endless, constantly frustrating “cold war” had only increased the appeal of extremists with short and simple answers. “I think the President [Eisenhower] is going to escape,” Senator Kennedy had said earlier in the year, “and that all the pigeons are coming home on the next President.”

In October, 1957, the Soviet Union had launched simultaneously the first space capsule to orbit the earth and a new cold war offensive to master the earth—an offensive relying on Western disunity in the face of nuclear blackmail and on anti-Western nationalism in the underdeveloped areas. In the three years that followed, the freedom of West Berlin had been threatened by a Soviet ultimatum, backed by boasts of medium-range ballistic missiles targeted on Western Europe. The existence of South Vietnam had been menaced by a campaign of guerrilla tactics and terror planned and supplied by the Communist regime in Hanoi. The independence of Laos had been endangered by pro-Communist insurgent forces. The Soviets had invested several billions of dollars in military and economic aid in the developing nations, including arms for Indonesia, the Aswan Dam for Egypt, steel mills for India and more arms for the Algerian rebels. The Russian and Chinese Communists had competed for a Central African base in Ghana, in Guinea, in Mali and particularly in the chaotic Congo. The Russians had obtained a base in the Western Hemisphere through Fidel Castro’s takeover in Cuba and his campaign to subvert Latin America. Red China was busy building its own Afro-Asian collection of client states and its own atomic bomb.

In response, American military might was too thinly stretched and too weakly financed to meet our global commitments. Our missile and space efforts had started late. Our foreign aid was underfinanced, as was the flexibility of our military potential, and populations and poverty grew faster in the developing countries than all their resources and our assistance combined. The United Nations was in disarray. The Paris Summit collapse, along with anti-American riots in Japan and Venezuela, had made democracy seem on the defensive. Our policies were not aligned in Latin America with the new forces of economic development and social justice, or abreast in Western Europe of the new forces for economic unity and growth. Other nations were uncertain
what
we meant when we talked—or
whether
we meant it when we talked—about the equality of man or about our desire for disarmament or about our commitment to defend freedom.

Within our own borders still more pigeons were coming home to roost. The third recession in seven years had caused the highest unemployment in over twenty years. The highest deficit in the nation’s international balance of payments during peacetime had depleted our gold reserves to their lowest level in over twenty years. The growing frustrations of our oppressed Negro population, the growing cost of subsidizing large farms, the growing number of overcrowded college classrooms and uncared-for elder citizens—all these and more, Kennedy knew, were not merely matters for Democratic campaign talk, but concrete problems about to confront him. And he knew that they were not as susceptible to ready political solution as the partisans of either party had argued in the campaign.

THE PROBLEMS OF TRANSITION

Seventy-two days gave him very little time. But he did not start wholly from scratch. The Brookings Institution—which deserves a large share of the credit for history’s smoothest transfer of power between opposing parties—had urged both nominees after the conventions to prepare for the problems of transition; and Senator Kennedy had named, as both his liaison with Brookings and his adviser on the interregnum, his friend from the Drew Pearson incident, Washington attorney Clark Clifford, formerly Special Counsel to President Truman and Stuart Symington’s preconvention manager. Clifford’s counsel was constantly sought during the transition—although, Kennedy quipped to one audience, Clark had asked him for nothing whatsoever in return except the right to advertise the Clifford law firm on the back of the one-dollar bill. In typical Kennedy fashion, he also asked Columbia Professor Richard Neustadt, a leading student of the Presidency, to outline, preferably without consultation with Clifford, his own views on the personnel problems with which the winner of the election would be faced.

Both men produced helpful reports, and both continued to advise throughout the transition period. With no attempt at collaboration or coordination, their recommendations in no way conflicted and largely coincided. Neustadt’s memorandum contained more cautions and more details on the problems of transition, with particular emphasis on the White House staff. Clifford’s memorandum was more basic. (“I am never certain,” one Kennedy staff member observed, “whether Clark Clifford is a genius in making the complex sound simple or in making the obvious sound profound, but either way he’s a genius.”)

With these two reports, and a more detailed analysis from Brookings, before him on the living room coffee table, the President-elect on the morning of November 10 met in his brother’s house with his closest advisers. We had instinctively risen when he came in, sensing the automatic change in our relations. He wanted the next few hours behind him so he could fly to Florida and rest. The crisp, compartmentalized approach of the campaign seemed somewhat dulled by fatigue. But he knew, as the memoranda in his hand confirmed, that certain decisions had to be immediately and carefully made.

He would need during the transition and throughout his term in the White House an aide for administration and appointments, an aide for press relations and an aide for program and policy. To these positions he named the three men who had in effect occupied them during the campaign: O’Donnell, Salinger and me. I had the honor of being named first—the title, which Clifford was anxious to see restored to its former status, was that of Special Counsel to the President—and it was the one post I wanted most. O’Brien and Shriver were placed in charge of the talent hunt for Cabinet and other officers. No specific role was spelled out for Bob Kennedy, the other man present, but clearly it would continue to be a key one.

Neustadt had recommended that, in the interest of national unity, smooth continuity and political balance, five incumbents in sensitive positions be considered nonpartisan and continued by Kennedy in those same jobs, with prompt announcement to prevent contrary pressures and speculation: the Directors of the FBI and CIA, the President’s Science Adviser, the Civil Service Commission Chairman, and the Executive Secretary of the National Security Council. Kennedy kept only the first two, whom his dinner guests the previous evening had reportedly suggested be the first to be ousted. He placed calls to Messrs. Hoover and Dulles from our meeting, and included their names in his first press announcement as President-elect.

Other business delayed his departure. Of all the messages of congratulations he received, he was most concerned about his answers to two: a cable from French President De Gaulle which rang with elegant eloquence and one from Soviet Chairman Khrushchev with a ring of “peace” propaganda. For his answer to De Gaulle’s “Welcome, Dear Partner” message, he turned to his own tutor in French language and literature, Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy, and with her drafted a warm and perceptive reply.

Khrushchev, after his outburst at Paris, had made plain his intention to have no more dealings with Eisenhower and to await the election of his successor. His message to Kennedy hinted at a summit and somewhat hypocritically called for a return to the Soviet-American relations “developing in Franklin Roosevelt’s time.” For an answer, the Presidentelect asked me to call one of the foremost Russian experts in the Foreign Service, his old friend “Chip” Bohlen. The latter’s one-sentence suggestion seemed more curt than courteous, and the President-elect, convinced that “civility is not a sign of weakness,” drafted a less brusque reply which was equally cautious in substance but more friendly and hopeful in tone.

Even as the President-elect departed for the peace of Palm Beach, the orderly transfer of executive responsibility was going forward. It was enormously aided by the cooperation of President Eisenhower. His initial wire of congratulations from Washington on November 9 (not counting the premature congratulations accidentally sent the night before) was promptly followed a few hours later by another from Augusta, Georgia, where he had flown for a brief vacation. This second message dealt wholly with the transition, offering to meet with Kennedy “at any mutually convenient time,” assigning chief aide Wilton Persons as his liaison with the Kennedy operation, and making clear that his Budget Director, his Secretary of State and all other officials stood ready to help. Kennedy asked Clifford to meet with Persons, asked me to meet with White House and Budget Bureau officials, asked each appointee when named to meet with his counterpart, and on December 6 and January 19 personally met with Eisenhower at the White House.

In both meetings Eisenhower was joined after an interval by his Secretaries of State, Defense and Treasury, and in both meetings the President-elect probed hard on the problems he was about to face. Eisenhower, who had regarded Kennedy with disdain in the campaign, and who had apparently delayed their first meeting until it was clear no recount could change the voters’ verdict, reportedly told a friend that the young Senator had “tremendously impressed” him. Kennedy in turn found Eisenhower “better than I had thought,” and he was grateful for his cooperative attitude, remarking after the second meeting, “I don’t think we have asked for anything that they haven’t done.”