Kennedy: The Classic Biography (27 page)

Then came the television debate. Kennedy had agreed to debate Humphrey in West Virginia—which he never would in Wisconsin, believing Democrats should debate only Republicans—because he knew he was behind and hoped for a breakthrough. As he had predicted, there was no real clash, except for one acrimonious exchange about the “stop-Kennedy gang-up.” Humphrey seemed less tense and more spirited than Kennedy. But Kennedy, speaking in softer tones and shorter answers, without notes, scored with local illustrations and specifics aimed chiefly at West Virginia. He held up a skimpy surplus food package and cited real-life cases of distress. He spoke in simple, straightforward terms. Local newspapers the following few days showed votes switching to Kennedy on the strength of this debate.

Making the most of his underdog position, Kennedy continued to deride the stop-Kennedy coalition, now aided by West Virginia mine workers and Teamsters angered by the labor reform movement. On the Saturday before primary day, Lyndon Johnson spoke in Clarksburg. The Symington backers were busy circulating their own slogan: “Symington for President, Kennedy for Vice President, Stevenson for Secretary of State and Nixon for Sports Writer” (the latter a reference to one of the many careers Nixon had asserted he once wanted to enter). One of Humphrey’s West Virginia managers admitted he was actually for Stevenson or Symington. West Virginia’s Senator Robert Byrd, an avowed Johnson supporter, openly endorsed Humphrey for the May 10 primary with the warning: “If you are for Adlai Stevenson, Senator Stuart Symington, Senator Johnson or John Doe, this primary may be your last chance to stop Kennedy.” Other Johnson and Symington backers agreed. The people of West Virginia, Kennedy calmly replied, should be more interested in stopping Nixon.

Humphrey, meanwhile, asserting desperation for funds despite his continued confidence of victory, pushed the poor boy vs. rich boy theme to new heights. He went beyond stressing his own humble origins and Kennedy’s wealthy background and began charging the Kennedys with illegal acts:

I don’t think elections should be bought. Let that sink in deeply…. I can’t afford to run through this state with a little black bag and a checkbook…. I can’t buy an election…. American politics are far too important to belong to the moneyman…. Bobby said if they had to spend a half a million to win here they would do it…. Kennedy is the spoiled candidate and he and that young, emotional, juvenile Bobby are spending with wild abandon…. Anyone who gets in the way of…papa’s pet is going to be destroyed…. I don’t seem to recall anybody giving the Kennedy family—father, mother, sons or daughters—the privilege of deciding…our party’s nominee.

Weary, discouraged and angered by Humphrey’s attacks, Kennedy said in an unaccustomed public complaint, “I have never been subject to so much personal abuse.” Kennedy discussed with his campaign team whether to capitalize on his war record. Upon more sober reflection, he decided in the negative. An equally weary Frank Roosevelt, while driving through the state, was not at his thoughtful best when he told an interviewer that Humphrey was “a good Democrat, but I don’t know where he was in World War II.” It was an unfair comment, promptly headlined by the press and immediately regretted by Kennedy. Both he and Roosevelt later apologized to Humphrey; and though his own wounds in West Virginia were deep, he told a questioner even then that he was certain that he and Humphrey could be good friends again—“but it may take a day or two.”

One issue still plagued him—Catholicism. Repeated newspaper surveys showed well over half of Humphrey’s support was based solely on Kennedy’s religion. It lay heavily on the minds of all Kennedy’s listeners. It cropped up in every poll and press interview. It gave rise to anti-Kennedy sermons in all kinds of pulpits. Even the Humphrey campaign song was sung to the tune of “Give Me That Old Time Religion.” “Protestants have nothing against Kennedy,” said the Democratic leader of Madison, West Virginia. “They think he is intelligent…. But they are going to vote against him. That’s the way they have been reared. It’s like they like women, but won’t vote for them for public office.” “People here aren’t anti-Kennedy,” said the publisher of the
Coal Valley News.
“They are simply concerned about the domination of the Catholic Church.”

In a complete switch in tactics, Kennedy decided that it was time to meet the issue head on. If he was to be downed by religious bigotry, he intended to go down fighting. In a series of telephone calls to me in Washington, he outlined three basic approaches: (1) He switched the subject of his address that month to the nation’s editors in Washington from foreign aid to religion. (2) He wanted nationally prominent Protestant clergymen, in an open letter to their colleagues, to call for an end to religious divisions and prejudice. (3) He would make a direct and positive appeal in West Virginia for fair play and a fair chance.

His address to the American Society of Newspaper Editors was a success. It was his first full exposition of his views on church and state. He reviewed his position on education, birth control and relations to the Vatican and emphasized:

There is only one legitimate question…. Would you, as President, be responsive in any way to ecclesiastical pressures or obligations of any kind that might in any fashion influence or interfere with your conduct of that office in the national interest?…My answer was—and is—no. I am not the Catholic candidate for President. I do not speak for the Catholic Church on issues of public policy, and no one in that Church speaks for me…. Are we to say that a Jew can be elected Mayor of Dublin, a Protestant can be named Foreign Minister of France, a Moslem can sit in the Israeli Parliament but a Catholic cannot be President of the United States?

He would not, he made clear, accept the advice of those who wished him to withdraw to avoid the issue:

If there is bigotry in this country, then so be it, there is bigotry. If that bigotry is too great to permit the fair consideration of a Catholic who has made clear his complete independence…then we ought to know it.

When he concluded, he called for questions, but there were no questions. The Senator was disappointed. Many of the editors in attendance, he told me, had printed stories—and would continue to print stories—about Vatican claims on all Catholics, about Catholic voting blocs and about their use by Kennedy as a candidate. He had answered all those questions and more. He wanted to answer them directly to the editors.

Meanwhile I was working on the public appeal to and from Protestant clergymen. I made it clear to those ministers whom I approached that the statement would not be released by the Kennedy office and that my role would not be made known to the press. It was to be no more than a nonpartisan appeal for tolerance and for an end to the religious issue.

Nevertheless I encountered difficulty from the outset. The Senator, encouraged by a conversation he had held with the Chaplain of the Senate, the Rev. Frederick Brown Harris, in which the latter expressed his confidence in Kennedy’s ability to put his country first, suggested I start with him. Rev. Harris told me how much he admired Kennedy, how much he deplored bigotry and how unwilling he, was to take part. Evangelist Billy Graham, encountered by chance by Pierre Salinger, gave it prayerful consideration and decided that his signing would help make religion an issue. (Later in the year he coupled negative comments on the Catholic Church with the declaration that religion would definitely be a legitimate, major issue, “whether we like it or not,” and he proceeded that fall to lead a Nixon rally in prayer.) Other prominent pastors approached through friends in Protestant or political circles refused to sign. One said it might impair his efforts to raise funds for a Baptist hospital in Alabama.

But two courageous clergymen helped get the project under way. One was the Very Reverend Francis B. Sayre, Jr., Dean of the Washington Episcopal Cathedral, and grandson of President Woodrow Wilson, who instantly saw that the ugly repercussions of continued religious divisions could irreparably harm the nation. He agreed to serve as coordinator for the letter and drafted the basic document.

The other was Methodist Bishop Oxnam, whose long years of opposing the Catholic hierarchy as a leader of the POAU gave him impeccable credentials as a signer of this letter. Two years earlier, the Senator had joshed at the Gridiron Dinner, “Should I be elected, I do hope that Bishop Bromley Oxnam of the POAU will be my personal envoy to the Vatican—and he is instructed to open negotiations for that transatlantic tunnel immediately.” But since then the Senator had appeared with Oxnam before the Methodist Council of Bishops and a seminar for Illinois Methodist ministers, corresponded with him about the Cushing article and answered all questions on church and state. The Bishop agreed to meet me in New York and after some improvement in the wording, Bishop Oxnam agreed to sign the letter and to help seek other signers.

Other Protestant leaders began to respond favorably. Finally, on May 3, one week before the West Virginia primary, an “open letter” to their “Fellow Pastors in Christ” was issued from Dean Sayre’s office over the signature of thirteen nationally known Protestant leaders. “Quite apart from what our attitude toward the Roman Church may be,” the letter read, religious lines should not be drawn. Protestant ministers should preach “charitable moderation and reasoned balance of judgment…. We are convinced that each of the candidates has presented himself before the American people with honesty and independence, and we would think it unjust to discount any one of them because of his chosen faith.”

Copies of the letter went to every Protestant minister in West Virginia. Like the ASNE speech earlier, it had a beneficial effect in West Virginia, where plans for a mass of anti-Catholic sermons on the Sunday before the primary had previously reached our ears.

The Senator, meanwhile, was presenting himself with the honesty and independence of which the letter spoke. Shortly after the Episcopal Bishop of West Virginia announced his opposition to a Catholic President, Kennedy pleaded for fairness. “If religion is a valid issue in the Presidential campaign,” he hoarsely told his audience, “I shouldn’t have served in the House, I shouldn’t now be serving in the Senate, and I shouldn’t have been accepted by the United States Navy.” For the oath of office was practically identical in each case, he pointed out—an oath sworn on the Bible to defend the Constitution.

While a Baptist minister in Chelyan, West Virginia, was distributing copies of a bogus Knights of Columbus oath, which showed Catholics seeking a war on Protestants, Senator Kennedy was at Bethany College telling questioning students that he did not approve of clerical political power in Spain, that he had no desire to impose his personal views on birth control or any other subject, and that, if he received a political directive from his Archbishop, “I simply would not obey it.” He recalled that no one questioned his oath of allegiance “before I spent long months in a Veterans Hospital, or before my brother died on a mission to Germany.” No priest or Pope would influence his decisions, he said, and no pastor or anti-Catholic pamphlet should influence their vote. He thought West Virginia deserved a fair shake, and he hoped West Virginia would give him one.

This was not a constant theme of his speeches—economics was still his chief issue—but it was stressed in his preliminary remarks and in his answers to questions. The Kennedy charm worked, too, even on his religious antagonists. One Kenneth Klinkert from Wisconsin, who had peddled anti-Catholic literature at Kennedy rallies in that state and then followed him around in West Virginia, suddenly returned to Wisconsin. The Senator had spoken kindly to him, he said, and showed no anger: “It takes a big man to…come up smiling and genuinely friendly after his religion is being constantly attacked.” Klinkert was for Kennedy.

Finally, in a moving televised question-and-answer session with Franklin Roosevelt that closed the primary campaign, he made his position clear as West Virginia crystal. He answered fully and fervently the toughest religious questions I could devise for Frank to ask. He was opposed to the persecution of Protestants abroad, he could attend as President any Protestant funeral service, and he could, above all, swear unswerving allegiance to the Constitution. As President he

would not take orders from any Pope, Cardinal, Bishop or priest, nor would they try to give me orders…. If any Pope attempted to influence me as President, I would have to tell him it was completely improper…. If you took orders from the Pope, you would be breaking your oath of office…and commit a sin against God…. You would be subject to impeachment and should be impeached.

Catholic Boston, he said, had in 1948 overwhelmingly supported Baptist Harry Truman “because of the man he is. I would like the same fairness Harry Truman was shown.”

Some said his answers were only “fanning the controversy.” Others said he was “running on the religious issue in West Virginia.” And still others said he could hardly complain inasmuch as his candidacy had created the issue. The Senator made no complaint, but he steeled himself for defeat, arguing that he would still be in the race by virtue of his other victories. “After all,” he said, “Franklin Roosevelt didn’t win all the primaries in 1932.” Putting aside the gloomy press and expert forecasts (the
Wall Street Journal
predicted a 60-40 Humphrey victory), he remained in Washington on Primary Day and tried to relax at a movie.

Whatever his secret hopes, the returns late that night must have amazed him. The people of West Virginia, anxious to disprove the charge of bigotry, and convinced that this was the man who could relieve their plight, gave Jack Kennedy a thunderous endorsement by a 61-39 margin. He carried all but seven of its fifty-five counties. He carried towns dominated by the Mine Workers Union. He carried Negro wards (which linked Robert Byrd with the Ku Klux Klan), and he carried Robert Byrd’s home town. He carried farm areas and urban areas. But, above all, he heavily carried the white Anglo-Saxon Protestant vote. He flew that night back to West Virginia, and there he accepted Hubert Humphrey’s gracious statement of withdrawal from the Presidential race. The religious issue, he said with jubilation, had been “buried here in the state of West Virginia.”