Kennedy: The Classic Biography (20 page)

When he delivered these lines and supported the court, I was fearful of an incident, booing or food-throwing. But his courage, if not his convictions, drew surprising applause from his audience, particularly when he added, “And now I invite Mr. Yeager to tell us his views on Eisenhower and Nixon.” Afterward we talked late into the night with Mississippi’s two Senators, Eastland and Stennis, and her more moderate Governor J. P. Coleman—who several years later would be attacked by his political opponents for letting a Kennedy sleep in the Mississippi Governor’s Mansion. Southern Democratic loyalists were heartened by the Jackson incident, columnist Arthur Krock reported, but the tone of Kennedy’s mail and editorials from the Deep South began to shift against him. His trips elsewhere in the South, however, continued.

Some weekends, up through his 1958 re-election, were saved for Massachusetts. Not enough perhaps were saved for relaxation with his family. His wife, after a miscarriage and a stillbirth expecting again in 1957 had neither the physical strength nor the political zeal to make every trip, though her frequent presence was always a major attraction and her ability to speak French, Spanish and Italian was often exploited. In time she was to visit some forty-six states with him. (In 1958 they celebrated their fifth wedding anniversary in Omaha, Nebraska, an astonishing new part of the world to Jacqueline.) In Washington the Senator often met with political leaders for lunch in his office but tried to save dinners for his wife. When the National Committee or a Democratic Women’s Conference met in Washington, both Kennedys would hold a reception in their Georgetown home for friendly or influential figures. Yet his wife’s inability to make every trip led to false ugly rumors about their marriage which disturbed and discouraged the Senator.

His own health bore up surprisingly well under the strain. On a few occasions his brother Bob substituted for him—on one occasion I filled in—a few meetings were postponed or canceled—but these were rare. The rest of the time he plunged ahead, standing for hours with his bad back and overworking his supposedly deficient adrenal glands. He went hatless in the below-zero clime of Fairbanks, Alaska, where most of his audience wore fur hats and parkas, hatless in a driving rain in Wisconsin and hatless in a scorching sun in Arizona—although in one downpour in West Virginia he did accept a rain hat from a Boston reporter. He was coatless in the coldest open-car motorcades. “He’s got some ratty old trench coat,” said his wife to a friend, “but he throws it in the trunk and never wears it.” He learned to grasp a big man’s hand deep in and hard before his own was crushed. But there was no way to avoid the bruised discoloration that hours of steady handshaking always produced.

He slept in countless hotels and motels, some shiny, some shabby, in governors’ mansions and private homes, and frequently all night on a plane. During the day he napped whenever he could—once falling asleep in his tuxedo in Governor Ribicoff’s bedroom while the leading Democrats of Connecticut waited in reception below. He always insisted that my advance arrangements include two separate bedrooms so that his slumbers would not be disturbed—but on the one occasion when this proved impossible, at the home of the University of Florida President, he fidgeted so much at my every move that my slumbers were disturbed more than his.

Other advance arrangements included a bed board under his mattress; a lectern sufficiently high that he would not have to stoop to read his text; maximum television and press coverage; an opportunity to meet local Democratic leaders, with additional meetings with editors, students, labor or farm leaders where possible; and time to rest before his speech.

Motorcycle escorts were never requested but usually provided. The Senator often asked them to keep their sirens off, convinced that motorists forced off the road were not likely to vote Democratic thereafter. But he always thanked each of his police escorts in person and had me get their names for our file. Some cities also provided detectives to watch over the Senator’s suite, although in one case the two men on duty drank so much of the free beverages provided by the hotel manager that the Senator had to watch over them.

At hundred-dollar, fifty-dollar, five-dollar and one-dollar Democratic dinners, luncheons, picnics, barbecues, bean feeds, ox roasts, luaus and covered-dish, cold-plate and potluck suppers, he tasted an amazing variety of mass-produced food. Inasmuch as he could never depend on its quality, and could always depend on devoting most of his mealtime to shaking hands, signing autographs and reworking his speech, he usually tried to have a steak and baked potato in his room before dinner. Sometimes we sought out an all-night cafe in the late hours after his speech. Each morning I ordered the same breakfast for his room: milk, coffee, fresh (not frozen) orange juice, broiled (not fried) bacon, two soft-boiled (four-minute) eggs, buttered toast and jelly.

He met the press in every community, formally and informally—once, when his bags were lost, swathed only in bath towels in his hotel room. He became accustomed to provocative questions on his religion arid to badgering on his political intentions. He learned to end a press conference before all relevant topics were exhausted and the questions became merely irritants, although he would patiently answer some questions over and over for reporters who came in late. He discovered that his speeches and press conference answers were reported only locally, never nationally, enabling him to use the same material many places.

He became an expert at packing his suitcase and preparing for all kinds of weather. Laundry was often a problem. He was probably the first man in history to wash out his own shirts and socks in the luxurious Presidential suite of a Louisville hotel. Presented at many stops with the wares for which the locality was famous, he usually returned with more baggage than he started. He told one group of sombrero donors he would wear the hat in the next St. Patrick’s Day parade in Boston, but he had to leave a bushel of sweet potatoes behind in Opelousas, Louisiana, and was not certain what to do with the “worming-out medicine” he was given in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.

To save time for rest and the strain on his back, he avoided the cocktail receptions held in his honor preceding dinner until only enough time was left to meet everyone personally without getting bogged down in small talk while constantly standing. His shyness was gradually shed, although many local politicians mistook his reserve and restraint for arrogance or aloofness. He acceded to all requests for autographs and answered all questions he was asked. He learned to listen to name after name in a receiving line, to have a new smile and a few words for each individual, whether politically important or unimportant. In the South and West he was often surprised at the upper-class background of those who came through the receiving line. “Back in Massachusetts,” he remarked to me more than once, “all these people would be Republicans.” As he became increasingly at ease himself, he learned to put others at ease. He was good on his feet; he had a mental versatility that was clearly not superficial. His speech-making was often not as relaxed as his social presence or his question-and-answer sessions, but he learned to slow down and improved constantly.

He grew tired of hearing over and over again his own speeches—and particularly his own jokes—and grew respectful of those politicians barnstorming a state with him who each time could applaud and laugh anew. One of these was Lyndon Johnson, with whom we traveled through Texas in 1956 at a feverish pace. He particularly enjoyed listening between stops to the Majority Leader’s homely mixture of political wisdom and humor (sample: Senator X’s somewhat bumbling tour of the state that fall was a great success “because he made the poorest, most ignorant white man in Texas feel superior”).

As 1957 became 1958 and then 1959, the Senator gave speeches, speeches and more speeches. We continually searched for new topics, themes and writers. “I can’t afford to sound just like any Senator,” he said. We prepared a large number of “speech sections” on different subjects, put mimeographed stacks of each on his plane and put together new combinations and cover sheets for each stop. In addition to his travels and Senate duties, he became a prolific source and subject of magazine articles. His by-line appeared on articles in more than three dozen magazines, ranging from
Foreign Affairs Quarterly (“A
Democrat Looks at Foreign Policy”) to
Living for Young Homemakers
(“Young Men in Politics”) to
Life
(“Where the Democrats Should Go from Here”) to the
Progressive
(“If India Falls”). His face became familiar through a dozen cover stories.

Gradually the evidence became clearer that his hard work was paying off. Kennedy’s audiences became larger and more enthusiastic. His presence in an airport or hotel lobby brought crowds of handshakers and autograph-seekers that no other Democrat could arouse, and the increasingly frequent presence of his wife after the birth of their daughter always augmented the crowds.

POLLS AND PUBLICITY

National and state polls of public opinion, moreover, showed rising Kennedy strength as his travels, writings, publicity and labor reform fight drew growing attention to his qualities. Whether matched against other Democrats or against the two Republican hopefuls, he ran ahead of the field. Other Democratic contenders showed strength in their own areas—Kennedy showed strength in all areas. Newspaper polls of past delegates and local party leaders produced a similar result, and pains were taken to make certain that all publicly conducted polls, by Gallup and others, were properly called to the attention of those we hoped to sway.

Equally important, however, were the results of polls privately financed and conducted, polls which were primarily taken for the Senator’s information though given to friendly politicians and columnists at his discretion. More than any previous candidate in history, Kennedy sought help from the science of opinion polling—not because he felt he must slavishly adhere to the whims of public opinion but because he sought modern tools of instruction about new and unfamiliar battlegrounds. Tens of dozens of private polls were commissioned at great expense to probe areas of weakness and strength, to evaluate opponents and issues, and to help decide on schedules and tactics. Showings of strength in a particular state were often shared with the leaders of that state. States with Presidential primaries were polled more than once before he would decide on his entry, and usually many times once he entered.

More than one pollster was used. Kennedy questions were sometimes included in surveys taken by various firms for many state and local candidates. But the chief Kennedy pollster during 1959-1960—following my meeting with him in New York on December 19, 1958, an exchange of memoranda and a $100,000 guarantee—was Louis Harris, an ambitious but idealistic veteran of the opinion survey business.

All polls have their limitations. They can be most helpful in determining a rough comparison of relative strength between two well-known candidates as of the day of the survey. They can indicate how well and how favorably a candidate and his opponent are known among various voter groups. But they cannot be as precise as they pretend, provide protection against wide fluctuations or predict the final choice of the undecided. The weight of their answers often varies with the wording of their questions. They did not show us the true depth and volatility of religious bias. They told us very little about issues—except to report such profound conclusions as the fact that many voters were in favor of greater Federal spending in their own state, lower taxes and a balanced budget, and were opposed to Communism, war and foreign aid. The Senator also felt that a pollster’s desire to please a client and influence strategy sometimes unintentionally colored his analyses.

Senator Kennedy never lost his interest in polls, but his skepticism grew. He blamed his loss of one Wisconsin primary district—a crucial toss—on a last-minute Harris Poll. It showed that district as already certain for Kennedy and urged more effort in an upstate district which was supposedly close but actually hopeless. The religious divisions emphasized by those Wisconsin primary results then focused attention on the religious issue in West Virginia, causing Kennedy to tumble almost overnight in Harris’ poll from the 70-30 lead over Humphrey which had induced him to enter the state to a 40-60 minority position which seemed certain to wreck his candidacy. More will be said about the West Virginia primary later, but Kennedy aides O’Brien and O’Donnell grew suspicious of the whole process when they began to suspect that the county-by-county figures forecast by the poll were influenced by their own reports on local political leaders.

Republican front-runner Nixon was also a believer in polls. He also selectively released or “leaked” particular results to his political advantage. Inasmuch as his private polls included considerable findings on Kennedy, as ours did on him, the two principals arranged for a swap of several of their own private surveys, which their administrative assistants surreptitiously exchanged. (Although this occurred long before they were formally opponents, I compared it with Eisenhower’s “open skies” proposal to exchange military information with the Soviets.) When the two candidates met in Florida after the 1960 election, both agreed that their pollsters—Louis Harris for Kennedy and Claude Robinson for Nixon—had been overly optimistic about the final result but on the whole highly accurate and valuable, as had the published polls of Dr. George Gallup. The same could not be said of the other pollsters and experts.

In any event, both private and public polls from 1957 to 1959 were increasingly reassuring to Kennedy and increasingly discouraging to his opponents. There were disadvantages in being the “front-runner.” The Senator’s critics became more open and vocal and his every word was politically interpreted. The Republican administration, in one forty-eight-hour period, turned suddenly against three Kennedy proposals it had earlier appeared to favor: aid to India, economic relations with Poland and labor reform. Veteran politicians warned that he was starting too soon, was pressing too hard and would burn himself out. One suggested no more speeches outside of Massachusetts. More than one columnist said Kennedy would not be ready for the Presidency in 1960 in terms of age and maturity and would do better to “slow down.” Public relations experts warned of overexposure in the press.