Kennedy: The Classic Biography (23 page)

The Strategy of Peace
is incontestably the best campaign document I can imagine, for it communicates what various other books and most news reports inadequately convey…. You emerge from the book as the kind of reflective and purposeful candidate that many of us seek.

Despite all this activity, the formal preconvention organization remained small. Contrary to reports, no public relations agency or expert was employed, no nationally known political professionals were placed on the full-time payroll, and none of his father’s associates or employees was involved in campaigning. We did not have a paid political worker in every state, and although the Senator did privately contribute to the Congressional or Senatorial campaigns of numerous friends, many of them were not delegates and many who were delegates voted for other hopefuls. Irritated by Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt’s statement on television that his father was spending lavish sums on his candidacy, he repeatedly asked her for a retraction, which she refused on the grounds that her “information came largely from remarks made by people in many places.” (He took in better humor a 1958 Gridiron skit which portrayed him, to the tune of “My Heart Belongs to Daddy,” as singing “Just send the bill to Daddy.” In his own speech that followed, he claimed to have just received a wire from his “generous Daddy” reading: “Dear Jack: Don’t buy a single vote more than is necessary—I’ll be damned if I’m going to pay for a landslide.”)

Our first organizational meeting took place in the Kennedy home in Palm Beach on April 1, 1959. Most of us flew in the night before. In attendance were John F. Kennedy, Joseph P. Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy, Stephen Smith, Lou Harris, Larry O’Brien, Kenny O’Donnell, Bob Wallace and myself. Since only the Senator, Steve Smith and I were at that point engaged in the campaign, the meeting was a bit disorganized. But each state was reviewed, assignments were improvised, strategy was discussed and key names were checked. Polls were ordered for certain states and delayed for certain others. Bob Kennedy’s role as a labor rackets-buster having secured him both popularity and speaking invitations throughout the South, it was decided that he could, even before devoting full-time to the campaign, make contacts in states less likely to invite the Senator.

Among the notes taken of that meeting, in addition to the state-by-state notations, are the following:

… Publicize poll results to key people…. Have Protestant staff member go out to certain states…. Get list of labor delegates…. Definite commitments…. System of checks on workers within states…. Keep the field crowded…. Foreign policy, peace emphasis…. Run against the other candidates—not God.

The atmosphere throughout the meeting, as at all subsequent meetings, was one of quiet confidence: there was a job to be done which could be done; we had the best man; no state was impossible, no effort was too great, no detail was too small. Indeed, this air of confidence permanently characterized the entire Kennedy campaign. It was not smug or strident, but it reassured his followers and impressed the skeptics. It also impressed his wife, who loyally wanted whatever he wanted but had been worried about the strains of the Presidency on his health and family life. “I see, every succeeding day I am married to him,” she wrote in a personal note in 1959, “that he has what may be the single most important quality for a leader—an imperturbable self-confidence and sureness of his powers.”

At Palm Beach, and in all subsequent meetings, the Senator was in full command. He was still his own chief campaign manager and strategy adviser. He knew each state, the problems it presented, the names of those to contact—not only governors and Senators but their administrative assistants as well, not only politicians but publishers and private citizens. He coordinated the talks and travels of his campaign staff. He squeezed in with his Senate duties a series of private man-to-man conferences and phone calls with local political leaders and an increased schedule of travel. He invited friendly members of Congress to lunch in his office and sought their advice and assistance. He kept in touch with the Kennedy men in every state, acquired field workers for the primary states, made all the crucial decisions and was the final depository of all reports and rumors concerning the attitudes of key figures.

Rumors spread fast in politics—few secrets hold fast. Reports on who said what about whom poured steadily into our offices. Whenever word reached him of a politician who was being privately and persistently antagonistic, the Senator would often ask a third party to see the offender—not because he hoped for the latter’s support but because “I want him to know that I know what he’s saying.” His own political agents were under instructions never to attack his competitors or argue with their supporters. Our approach instead was: “Once your man is out of the race, why not come with us?”

On October 28, 1959, a second organizational meeting was held in the Robert Kennedy house in Hyannis Port. Present were the participants in the Palm Beach conference and these additions: Ted Kennedy, John Bailey, Dennis Roberts, Pierre Salinger, Hy Raskin (a veteran of two Stevenson campaigns), Dave Hackett (friend and aide to Bob Kennedy), Marjorie Lawson (able Washington attorney working with Negro voters) and John Salter (an aide to Senator Henry Jackson). Again the Senator conducted the meeting, displaying his mastery of the political situation in each state. He knew without notes who was friendly and who was hostile, which states had primaries and which primaries were binding, which delegations might be governed by the unit rule, which could be instructed by state conventions and which contained wholly free agents.

No one at the meeting could match his knowledge of detail. The lines of responsibility were still unclear or overlapping in many areas. But to a far greater degree than had been true at Palm Beach in April, he was talking with a going political team which had a better grasp of its task. His travels that fall in twenty-two states had been better planned and executed, with efficient advance men and mailings to set up his public audiences and private conferences. Most of those present had already traveled extensively on his behalf, probing strengths and weaknesses, presenting arguments, building an organization. No one there had ever participated in the direction of a successful Presidential election campaign. All had different backgrounds, abilities and opinions of each other. But all were dedicated to the election of John Kennedy.

State by state the outlook was reviewed and assignments handed out. Larry O’Brien, under Bob Kennedy’s general supervision, was given responsibility for the states with Presidential primaries:

The Manchester delegate situation [an internal feud] should be straightened out….A speaking date should be set up for the Negro district in Baltimore…. See DiSalle and make sure he is going to meet his commitment…. After local election is over, get invitation to Lake County [Indiana]…. Call Boyle [Nebraska] every so often to keep in touch…. Organization well set up in Wisconsin…. Make sure Mrs. Green [Oregon] selects an executive secretary…. No decision on West Virginia until poll has been taken…. Find out source of story stating that friends say Kennedy will run in California.

Those are but a few of the Senator’s directions on the Presidential primary states as noted by a secretary. Omitting Minnesota, Missouri, Texas and the South (as strongholds of Humphrey, Symington and Johnson respectively), all states were similarly reviewed and assigned—including Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands and the Panama Canal Zone, each of which is entitled to convention delegates. Reporting procedures were established. Trips were planned. Campaign films were planned. Polls were requested for Ohio and Wisconsin, delayed for Nebraska, West Virginia and California. A contemplated trip to Africa in December as chairman of the Senate African Affairs Subcommittee was ruled out for lack of time. A picture Christmas card was discussed which would be sent to every name in the political file. And near the close of the meeting the Senator disclosed his intention to’ announce—in a letter to some seventy thousand names in our files on January 1, 1960, and in a Washington press conference on January 2—his candidacy for the Presidency of the United States.

CHAPTER V
THE PRIMARIES

P
ROMPTLY AT 12:30 P.M., ON SATURDAY, JANUARY 2
, Senator John Fitzgerald Kennedy strode into a crowded press conference and read a one-page declaration of his candidacy for the Presidency.

He was forty-two years old—and so youthful a candidate had never been elected President, nor in this century even been nominated by a Democratic Convention. He was a Roman Catholic—and no member of that faith had ever been elected President nor, after 1928, even been seriously considered. He was a United States Senator—and only one Republican and no Democrats had ever been elected President from the Senate, nor had the Democrats even nominated a Senator for a hundred years. They had not nominated a New Englander for even longer.

Yet Kennedy hardly acted like a loser. Tanned and rested from a Jamaican holiday, he was not only crisp but confident:

I am announcing today my candidacy for the Presidency of the United States…. In the past forty months, I have toured every state in the Union and I have talked to Democrats in all walks of life. My candidacy is therefore based on the conviction that I can win both the nomination and the election.

He knew he could not be coy or halfhearted in this statement. His supporters around the country needed to know he would go “all the way” and not leave them out on a limb. Political leaders who would soon make commitments needed to know he would make a real effort. He decided not to mention his religion directly but answered all questions on the subject without concern or hostility. He emphasized, as an answer to doubts about his age, his twenty years of travel “in nearly every continent and country” and his eighteen years “in the service of the United States, first as a Naval officer in the Pacific…and for the past fourteen years as a member of the Congress.” He made no direct or downgrading references to other potential candidates—of whom only Humphrey had already announced—but challenged them to meet him in the primaries.

He flatly refused to consider accepting the Vice Presidential nomination “under any condition.” Appearing on
Meet the Press
the next day, he said the situation was “somewhat different” than in 1956, and if he were not to be the Presidential nominee, “then I think I can best serve the party and the country in the Senate…. I don’t want to spend the next eight years…presiding over the Senate…voting in the case of ties [which]…rarely occur, and waiting for the President to die.” He might have added, as he did privately, that he could not accept his party’s rejection for first spot on the ticket because of his religion and then its insistence that he take second spot because of his religion. He also believed, but did not say, that second spot on any other Democratic candidate’s ticket in 1960 was likely to be second spot on a losing ticket.

The pundits of the press persisted throughout that first weekend, however, in believing that Kennedy was actually a candidate for the Vice Presidency or, in any event, had no reason to be as confident as he sounded about the Presidency. In the judgment of those political reporters who rarely left Washington, practically nobody who was anybody was for him. Almost all the nationally known Democrats thought he had the wrong religion, the wrong age, the wrong job and the wrong home state to be nominated and elected President. They all favored him for Vice President, partly to avoid charges of anti-Catholicism. He was everybody’s No. 1 choice for the No. 2 place. But hardly anyone of whom anyone had ever heard favored him for the only place he would take.

Every Democratic leader of the House and Senate—except, it was assumed, for the inactive John McCormack—favored Johnson. The “titular leader” of the party, Adlai Stevenson, was publicly uncommitted and privately for himself. The past Democratic President, Harry Truman, was for Symington. The influential widow of Franklin Roosevelt was for Stevenson or Humphrey.

A poll of House Democrats favored Symington. A poll of Senate Democrats favored Johnson. A poll of editors predicted Stevenson. A poll of state chairmen predicted Symington. A poll of “influential intellectuals” favored Stevenson. The liberal ADA preferred either Humphrey or Stevenson. Most Negro leaders talked first of Humphrey. Most labor leaders, particularly those angered by the antirackets investigation and legislation, talked first of Humphrey or Symington. Most Southern leaders talked first of Johnson.

Among the best-known professional politicians, such as McKinney of Indiana, Lawrence of Pennsylvania and DeSapio of New York, most favored Johnson or Symington as more their type of candidate. Some, including the Catholics, were convinced that no Catholic could win, and nearly all preferred to take uncommitted delegations to the convention to “deal” with a compromise candidate. With such important exceptions as Daley of Chicago, Green of Philadelphia and Buckley of the Bronx, most of the leading Democratic politicians who were Catholics were against Kennedy—because they had conflicting ambitions of their own, because they wanted to avoid any anti-Catholic controversy in their own states, because they feared a charge of favoritism, or because they simply sincerely preferred one of his several opponents. Catholic Democrats running for state and local office thought their own faith would be less of a handicap if a Protestant headed the ticket. Those with Vice Presidential ambitions knew they had no chance if Kennedy headed the ticket. (A few with whom he had served in the Congress, Kennedy thought, were simply jealous.) National Chairman Paul Butler, to be sure, was by 1960 very friendly to Kennedy, but unfortunately he had more enemies than delegates.