An Unfinished Life: John F. Kennedy 1917-1963 (29 page)

Kennedy believed it imperative for the United States to align itself with the emerging nations. But he acknowledged this as no easy task. Because of its wartime and post-1945 policies, America was “definitely classed with the imperialist powers of Western Europe.” “We are more and more becoming colonialists in the minds of the people,” he noted in a trip diary. “Because everyone believes that we control the U.N.—because our wealth is supposedly inexhaustible, we will be damned if we don’t do what they [the emerging nations] want done.” America needed to throw off the image of a great Western power filling the vacuum left by British and French decline and to demonstrate that its enemy was not just communism but “poverty and want,” “sickness and disease,” “injustice and inequality,” which were the daily fare of millions of Arabs and Asians. “It is tragic to report,” he said in his radio address, “that not only have we made no new friends, but we have lost old ones.” U.S. military strength was only part of the equation. “If one thing was bored into me as a result of my experience in the Middle as well as the Far East,” he said, “it is that Communism cannot be met effectively by merely the force of arms. The central core of our Middle Eastern policy,” Jack asserted, “is [or should be] not the export of arms or the show of armed might but the export of ideas, of techniques, and the rebirth of our traditional sympathy for and understanding of the desires of men to be free.”

The U.S. dilemma was most pronounced in Indochina, where America had “allied ourselves to the desperate effort of a French regime to hang on to the remnants of empire. . . . To check the southern drive of Communism makes sense,” Jack also said prophetically, “but not only through reliance on the force of arms. The task is rather to build strong native non-Communist sentiment within these areas and rely on that as a spearhead of defense rather than upon the [French] legions. . . . And to do this apart from and in defiance of innately nationalistic aims spells foredoomed failure.”

For Jack and Bobby the trip evoked a mutual affinity for noblesse oblige—the family’s moral imperative, bound up with Rosemary’s disability, to emphasize the obligations of the advantaged to the disadvantaged, the need of the rich and powerful few to help the less fortunate many. Joe had always had an evangelical streak that made him such an outspoken isolationist, and he had clearly instilled in his children an affinity for crusading fervor. Now his sons had together found a cause worth fighting for.

Yet Jack’s enthusiasm was largely self-generated; back home and among Americans abroad, his journey of discovery evoked more indifference and hostility than encouragement or praise. In the Middle East, he crossed paths with Franklin D. Roosevelt Jr., who told an Arab leader urging U.S. sympathy for nationalistic revolutions that the really important issue was the U.S.-Soviet struggle. FDR Jr. had “simply, completely missed the whole point of the nationalist revolution that is sweeping Asia,” Bobby wrote his father. Bobby personally did not think there was a chance of changing anything unless the whole State Department crowd was swept aside.

In India, where they dined with Nehru, the prime minister seemed bored, looking at the ceiling and speaking only occasionally to Pat Kennedy, Bobby and Jack’s attractive twenty-seven-year-old sister. When Jack asked Nehru about Vietnam, he condescendingly dismissed the French war as an example of doomed colonialism with U.S. aid being poured down a “bottomless hole.” Like a schoolmaster lecturing mediocre students, Nehru explained that communism had offered “something to die for” and the West proposed nothing but the status quo. French officials in Saigon, who were more in need of Nehru’s lecture than Jack and Bobby, complained to the State Department that the Kennedys were trying to undermine their policy. Nor did most U.S. diplomats see Jack’s criticism as helpful.

Jack’s call for a change in perspective and policy did not alter his father’s thinking, either. He followed Jack’s radio address with one of his own, urging not an effort to align ourselves with the struggling masses but to shun additional alliances that could further undermine our autonomy in dealing with international affairs. “Perhaps our next effort will be to ally to ourselves the Eskimos of the North Pole and the Penguins of the Antarctic,” he sarcastically announced.

IN SEPTEMBER 1951
, Jack asked his sister Pat, who was working in television in New York, to arrange a weekly “public service type” telecast of ten or fifteen minutes, “with me interviewing important people down in Washington about their jobs, etc., and about problems of the day.” The idea was to get it shown throughout Massachusetts.

More important than immediate efforts to expand Jack’s visibility in the state was the decision on whether to run for governor or senator. Jack much preferred to be a senator than be the chief executive of Massachusetts. He thought of the latter as a job “handing out sewer contracts.” The office had limited powers: The mayor of Boston had greater control over patronage than the governor, and any Democrat in the State House would likely have to deal with a Republican-controlled legislature, with all that meant for making much of a record as chief executive. To get anything done, Jack believed he would have “to be on the take,” as he put it, or bypass the legislature and the politicians in the State House by going to the people, and since he would have entered office with “no standing,” it seemed unlikely that he would accomplish much.

Jack’s interest in foreign affairs also made the Senate more attractive, as did his father’s unqualified preference for a Senate bid. Joe predicted that Jack “would murder [incumbent Henry Cabot] Lodge,” but because sophisticated political observers told Joe that the chances against Lodge were only fifty-fifty and Joe did not want anyone to be overconfident, he also declared that “the campaign against Lodge would be the toughest fight he could think of, but there was no question that Lodge could be beaten, and if that should come to pass Jack would be nominated and elected President of the United States.” Frank Morrissey, who ran Jack’s Boston office, remembered Joe, “in that clear and commanding voice of his,” saying to Jack, “‘I will work out the plans to elect you President. It will not be any more difficult for you to be elected President than it will be to win the Lodge fight.’” Chuck Spalding recalled that Jack saw the Senate race as a bigger challenge than the governor’s chair, but that “if he was going to get anywhere . . . he’d have to be able to beat somebody like Lodge. . . . So I think he made the decision, ‘I’ve been long enough in the House, it’s time for me to move ahead. If I’m going to do it I’ve got to take this much of a chance.’” Jack talked to Justice William O. Douglas, who encouraged him to run for the Senate seat. In December 1951, during an appearance on NBC’s
Meet the Press,
Jack said he was “definitely interested in going to the Senate” and was considering running next year.

Only incumbent governor Paul Dever stood in the way. After winning the State House twice in 1948 and 1950, Dever was interested in running for the Senate. But he was uncertain of beating Lodge, whose famous name and three terms in the Upper House made him something of a Massachusetts icon. For his part, Jack saw a fight with Dever as hurting his chances of defeating Lodge. Nevertheless, Jack was confident that Dever’s own assessments would discourage him from taking on Lodge, and thus Kennedy. Jack decided to wait on an announcement until Dever made up his mind. He also approached Dever with an offer. Jack told him early in 1952, “If you want to run for the United States Senate, I’ll run for governor. If you want to run for governor, then I’ll run for the United States Senate. Will you please make up your mind and let me know?” This may have been more than a bit of a ploy. William O. Douglas remembered that when he and Kennedy spoke, Jack only casually mentioned the governorship. “By the time that he was talking to me, I think he had discarded that [a run for governor] essentially and had decided to run for the Senate.” In any case, Dever was so slow in deciding that Jack prepared a statement announcing his Senate candidacy. Fortunately, before he acted on it, Dever called to say that he would seek reelection as governor. Jack was relieved and happy, telling an aide, “We got the race we wanted.”

According to daughter Eunice, Joe “had thought and questioned and planned for two years,” and he now made Jack’s election his full-time concern. One campaign insider said that Joe, as in 1946, “was the distinct boss in every way. He dominated everything.” He took a comfortable apartment at 84 Beacon Street, near Jack’s place on Bowdoin Street, where he supervised campaign expenditures, publicity, the preparation of speeches, and policy statements. “The Ambassador worked around the clock,” a speechwriter Joe brought up from New York said. “He was always consulting people, getting reports, looking into problems. Should Jack go on TV with this issue? What kind of an ad should he run on something else? He’d call in experts, get opinions, have ideas worked up.”

To make Lodge seem overconfident, Joe leaked the story to the press that Lodge had sent him word not to waste his money. In a race against Jack, he expected to win by 300,000 votes. Lodge later denied that he ever predicted an easy victory—to Joe or anyone else. On the contrary, he saw the contest as “much harder” than his three previous races. “All along,” he said, “I always knew if there came a man with an honest, clean record who was also of Irish descent, he’d be almost impossible to beat.”

Joe’s fierce commitment to winning sometimes made him abusive to campaign workers and ready to cut corners. During the campaign, Jack enlisted Gardner Jackson, a liberal with strong ties to Americans for Democratic Action (ADA) and labor unions, to help him win support from liberal Democrats. Jackson persuaded the ADA to back Jack. But to solidify his hold on liberals, he wanted Kennedy to sign a newspaper ad declaring “Communism and McCarthyism: Both Wrong.” Since ninety-nine Notre Dame faculty members and John McCormack agreed to sign, Jack did, too, but he asked Jackson to read the statement to his father and some of his aides. Jack, who no doubt knew what his father’s reaction would be, left for early-morning campaign business before Jackson began. Almost immediately, Joe jumped up, tilting the card table they were sitting around against the others and began to shout, “You and your sheeny friends are trying to ruin Jack.” Joe’s tirade attacking liberals, labor unions, Jews, and Adlai Stevenson (the Democratic presidential nominee) concluded with the promise that the statement would never be published, which it was not. Though Jack rationalized his father’s behavior by telling Jackson that Joe was acting out of “love of his family,” he also conceded that “sometimes I think it’s really pride.” But whatever Joe’s motive, Jack was not averse to squelching the ad; it was poor politics. McCarthy remained very popular with the state’s 750,000 Irish Catholics. Indeed, before Adlai Stevenson made a September trip to Boston, he was advised by a member of Jack’s campaign staff not to attack McCarthy. “He is very popular with people of both parties.”

As in 1946, Joe supported Jack with large infusions of money. The campaign finance laws were an invitation to break the rules. Although the candidate himself could spend only $20,000 and individuals were limited to $1,000 contributions, there was no bar to indirectly using state party funds to boost a nominee; nor was there any limitation on giving $1,000 to any and all political committees that might be set up on a candidate’s behalf. Joe organized four thinly disguised committees—in addition to Citizens for Kennedy, there was a More Prosperous Massachusetts committee and three “improvement” committees, supposedly working to advance the shoe, fish, and textile industries. Joe may have put several million dollars into the campaign, which more than matched the $1 million the state Republican party spent to support Lodge. The Kennedy money paid for billboard, newspaper, radio, and television ads; financed Jack’s trips around the state; and paid for the many local campaign offices, postage for mailings, telephone banks, receptions, and famous Kennedy teas that attracted thousands of women. A person “could live the rest of [their] lives on [his] billboard budget alone,” one commentator asserted. “Cabot was simply overwhelmed by money,” Dwight Eisenhower later said. Lodge agreed, saying that he lacked the financial wherewithal to keep up with the Kennedy spending machine.

The single most telling expenditure Joe made in the campaign was a loan of $500,000 to John J. Fox, the owner of the
Boston Post,
who after he bought the paper for $4 million in June 1952 faced a financial crisis. The paper was losing half a million dollars a year and needed to replace an antiquated physical plant and introduce a home-delivery system to return to profitability. In the fall of 1952, Joe helped rescue the paper from bankruptcy with his loan. Although there is no hard evidence of a quid pro quo, Jack did get a
Post
endorsement on October 25, less than two weeks before the election. Because the
Post
’s backing was believed to be worth forty thousand votes and because five other newspapers with a combined circulation 20 percent greater than the
Post
’s were supporting Lodge, the Kennedys had been particularly eager for the
Post
’s endorsement. (The
Globe,
then the second-most-read paper in Boston, with half the
Post
’s circulation, held to its tradition of not endorsing candidates.) Lodge claimed that Fox had promised to back him. “I’ve never doubted for a moment that Joe Kennedy was the one who turned Fox around,” Lodge said later, “though I imagine he handled it pretty subtly, with all sorts of veiled promises and hints rather than an outright deal.” In 1960, when the journalist Fletcher Knebel asked Jack about the loan, he said, “‘Listen that was an absolutely straight business transaction; I think you ought to get my father’s side of the story.’” But as he got up to leave, Knebel said that Jack added, “‘You know we had to buy that fucking paper.’ As if he just had to level.” Knebel never published Jack’s last remark.