If Bobby was the taskmaster, the relentless overseer demanding superhuman efforts from everyone, Jack was the conciliator, the candidate eager to bring everyone to his side in the service of progressive goals. "This was a politician who knew what his duties were and he accepted them not without relish," Henry Brandon, the Washington correspondent for the London Sunday Times, Sunday Times, noted in a memo to himself after a conversation with Jack in June. "He is a child of his times. He instinctively knows how to use all the techniques of the modern ma.s.s media to his best advantage... . He may lack warmth, he may be cold and calculating, but those eager to work for him suspect or at least hope that he would follow up ideas with action." By contrast with Bobby, for example, whose visceral dislike of LBJ clouded his political judgment, Jack let practical electoral calculations be his guide. noted in a memo to himself after a conversation with Jack in June. "He is a child of his times. He instinctively knows how to use all the techniques of the modern ma.s.s media to his best advantage... . He may lack warmth, he may be cold and calculating, but those eager to work for him suspect or at least hope that he would follow up ideas with action." By contrast with Bobby, for example, whose visceral dislike of LBJ clouded his political judgment, Jack let practical electoral calculations be his guide.
Similarly, despite his personal antagonism toward Stevenson, Jack met with him at the Cape at the end of July to ask for his help with New York liberals. When Stevenson suggested the creation of a foreign policy task force to prepare for a possible transition to the presidency, Jack immediately agreed and asked him to head it. In early August, Jack went to Independence, Missouri, to seek Harry Truman"s support. Campaign imperatives dissolved his anger toward Truman for having been against his nomination. Truman, who despised Nixon, was receptive to Jack"s appeal. He told Abe Ribicoff, "I never liked Kennedy. I hate his father. Kennedy wasn"t so great as a Senator... . However, that no good son-of-a-b.i.t.c.h d.i.c.k Nixon called me a Communist and I"ll do anything to beat him." Asked by reporters how he could see Kennedy as now ready for the presidency after having described him in July as too young and inexperienced, Truman replied with a grin, "When the Democratic convention decided to nominate him, that"s when I decided."
Kennedy then traveled to Hyde Park, New York, to enlist Eleanor Roosevelt in his cause. Like Truman, the onetime antagonist was now eager to help. Jack gave her "the distinct feeling that he is planning to work closely with Adlai. I also had the feeling," she wrote a friend, "that here was a man who could learn. I liked him better than I ever had before because he seemed so little c.o.c.k-sure, and I think he has a mind that is open to new ideas... . My final judgement is that here is a man who wants to leave a record (perhaps for ambitious personal reasons, as people say), but I rather think because he really is interested in helping the people of his own country and mankind in general. I will be surer of this as time goes on, but I think I am not mistaken in feeling that he would make a good President if elected."
Kennedy"s success with Truman, Stevenson, and Eleanor Roosevelt did not translate into gra.s.s roots enthusiasm for his candidacy among liberals. Although Kennedy had voiced his support for progressive legislation during a special August congressional session, liberal interest in his campaign remained flat. Part of the reason was a lack of liberal positions on the Kennedy platform. After Stevenson saw Jack at the Cape, he had written Mrs. Roosevelt that Kennedy"s "interest and concentration seemed to be on organization not ideas at this stage." Schlesinger, who doubted the wisdom of giving highest priority to building a campaign organization, as Jack and Bobby planned, told Jack at the end of August, "Organization has an important role to play, of course; but to suppose that organization per se per se will win New York or California is nonsense." Jack needed "to elicit the all-out support of the kind of people who have traditionally provided the spark in Democratic campaigns... . The liberals, the reformers, the intellectuals ... people who have entered politics, not because it is their livelihood, but because they care deeply about issues and principles... . Once the issue-minded Democrats catch fire, then the campaign will gather steam." Harvard professor Henry Kissinger, "who hardly qualifies as a bleeding heart," Schlesinger wrote a few days later, "... said to me, "We need someone who will take a big jump-not just improve on existing trends but produce a new frame of mind, a new national atmosphere. If Kennedy debates Nixon on who can best manage the status quo, he is lost. The issue is not one technical program or another. The issue is a new epoch."" will win New York or California is nonsense." Jack needed "to elicit the all-out support of the kind of people who have traditionally provided the spark in Democratic campaigns... . The liberals, the reformers, the intellectuals ... people who have entered politics, not because it is their livelihood, but because they care deeply about issues and principles... . Once the issue-minded Democrats catch fire, then the campaign will gather steam." Harvard professor Henry Kissinger, "who hardly qualifies as a bleeding heart," Schlesinger wrote a few days later, "... said to me, "We need someone who will take a big jump-not just improve on existing trends but produce a new frame of mind, a new national atmosphere. If Kennedy debates Nixon on who can best manage the status quo, he is lost. The issue is not one technical program or another. The issue is a new epoch.""
Kennedy was receptive to Schlesinger"s prodding. "I don"t mind criticism at this point," he told him. "I would rather have you tell me now than to wait until November." In the middle of September, Kennedy met the problem head-on with a strong speech before the Liberal party in New York, where he sounded familiar liberal themes, which began to evoke the sort of excitement Schlesinger saw as essential to a winning campaign.
IT WAS APPARENT by September that much more than liberal enthusiasm was essential if Jack was going to beat Nixon. The Republican convention at the end of July-a coronation of sorts for Nixon and running mate Henry Cabot Lodge, featuring effective speeches about the Soviet challenge and the nominees" superior capacity to enhance national security-boosted Republican poll numbers. Gallup trial heats showed Nixon ahead by 53 to 47 percent in one survey and 50 to 44 percent in another. As troubling, 31 percent of Nixon-Lodge supporters said they were "very strongly" committed to their candidates, while only 22 percent of Kennedy-Johnson backers expressed the same intensity. Happily, from Kennedy"s viewpoint, 60 percent of Americans said that they had paid little or no attention to the presidential race so far. by September that much more than liberal enthusiasm was essential if Jack was going to beat Nixon. The Republican convention at the end of July-a coronation of sorts for Nixon and running mate Henry Cabot Lodge, featuring effective speeches about the Soviet challenge and the nominees" superior capacity to enhance national security-boosted Republican poll numbers. Gallup trial heats showed Nixon ahead by 53 to 47 percent in one survey and 50 to 44 percent in another. As troubling, 31 percent of Nixon-Lodge supporters said they were "very strongly" committed to their candidates, while only 22 percent of Kennedy-Johnson backers expressed the same intensity. Happily, from Kennedy"s viewpoint, 60 percent of Americans said that they had paid little or no attention to the presidential race so far.
The Kennedys expected Nixon to fight hard and dirty. During four years together in the House, Kennedy and Nixon had enjoyed a civil relationship. During the fifties, however, Nixon"s campaign tactics and harsh attacks on the Democrats, which echoed some of McCarthy"s excesses, had diminished Kennedy"s regard for him. To be behind in the polls before Nixon unleashed any trademark kidney punches was discouraging.
By the end of August, a new poll showed Nixon and Kennedy locked in a dead heat. Neither man had convinced a majority of voters that he was better qualified to be president. Nixon"s reputation for excessive partisanship and Kennedy"s youth and Catholicism dulled public enthusiasm for seeing one or the other in the White House.
Despite the improvement in Jack"s public standing, the Kennedys were still distressed. While Nixon moved freely about the country in August, emphasizing his fitness for the highest office, the special congressional session kept Jack tied down in Washington. Teddy White saw a firsthand demonstration of the Kennedy frustration during a visit to Jack"s campaign headquarters. While he sat chatting with two Kennedy staffers, Bobby emerged from an inner office and began to shout: ""What are you doing?! What are we all doing? Let"s get on the road! Let"s get on the road tomorrow! I want us all on the road tomorrow!" And without waiting for a reply, he clapped the door shut and disappeared."
Fueling Bobby"s explosion were emerging attacks on Jack"s character and record that put him on the defensive and distracted him from an affirmative appeal to voters. In response, the campaign produced a "Counterattack Sourcebook" for use in answering derogatory a.s.sertions about Kennedy"s religion, health, inexperience, profligate campaign spending, voting record on labor, civil liberties, and civil rights, opposition to southern interests, Senate attendance, response to McCarthyism, and opposition to France"s repressive Algerian policy.
Warnings that Kennedy"s Catholicism and youth made him unfit for the White House worried Jack and Bobby the most. "Senator Kennedy is an attractive young man, but he is untrained for the job of President," Republicans a.s.serted. He had never held an executive position or had any experience in strategic military planning or in dealing with the communists. At the age of forty-three,"he would be the youngest man ever elected to the White House," and at the age of thirty-one, his "wife is too young to be First Lady." John Kenneth Galbraith told the brothers that after speaking with more than "a hundred journalists, farm leaders, dirt farmers and Democratic professionals," he had concluded that "religion in the rural corn belt, Great Plains and down into rural Texas has become an issue greater than either income or peace... . In the absence of a clear view of what either candidate stands for or can do about these issues, religion is entering as a deciding factor." And the complaints came from both sides: Some prominent Catholics were unhappy with Jack"s opposition to "the Catholic position on many public issues."
A more muted concern was gossip about Jack"s womanizing. In June 1959, the FBI had received letters and a photograph "containing allegations regarding personal immorality on the part of Jack Kennedy. Apparently," the FBI"s memo noted, "this data has received widespread distribution-correspondent allegedly sent copies to "about thirty-five reporters."" The memo also noted that "some months ago," the Bureau "had received from a reliable source information ... on Senator Kennedy"s s.e.x life. You will also recall that we have detailed substantial information in Bu[reau] files reflecting that Kennedy carried on an illicit relationship with another man"s wife during World War II." In March 1960, the agent in charge of the New Orleans Bureau office reported that members of the mob, in conjunction with Frank Sinatra, were financially supporting Kennedy"s campaign. The agent also related "a conversation which indicated that Senator Kennedy had been compromised with a woman in Las Vegas, Nevada." There were also reports that an airline hostess in Miami had been "sent to visit Sen. Kennedy." In May, the Bureau received a photo published in a right-wing newspaper of Jack "leaving his girlfriend"s house at 1 o"clock in the morning. She is a glamour employee of his."
Rumors about Kennedy"s philandering were so common that Henry Van Dusen of the Union Theological Seminary in New York asked Adlai Stevenson "to sit down with ... some ... friends who would like to silence the stories about Senator Kennedy." But Stevenson, who knew "nothing himself first hand," was unwilling to give credence to the gossip. He believed that Kennedy "may have been overactive in that direction prior to 1955," when acute back problems had put his survival in doubt. But after a series of operations gave him "a normal expectancy he seems to have settled down to preparing himself for his ambition-the Presidency." Stevenson found confirmation for this conclusion in the fact that "most of the stories about his private life seem to date from 1955 and before. My view, therefore, is that such rumors are out of date and largely unsubstantiated. And I must add even if they were true they would hardly seem to be crucial when the alternative is Nixon! Having been the victim of ugly rumors myself, I find this whole business distasteful in the extreme!"
Stevenson was not the only one who saw public discussion of an elected official"s s.e.x life as out of bounds. William Randolph Hearst, the great press baron who was "a pioneer of slash-and-burn a.s.saults on public figures," drew the line at probing into private lives, and Hearst-vulnerable himself to charges of being a libertine-was quite representative of media mores in the 1950s and early 1960s. Humphrey, Johnson, Nixon, and even Jimmy Hoffa, who despised the Kennedys and would have done almost anything to beat Jack, said many unflattering things about him, but, in a universe of harsh a.s.saults on political enemies, discussions of s.e.xual escapades crossed the line. The thirty-five reporters mentioned in the FBI memo, for example, never used the information in a story. It may be that they could not find sufficient confirmation of the rumors. Or, in Nixon"s case, like Hearst, he may have feared attacks on himself as a hypocrite. Congressman Richard Bolling had heard stories about Nixon"s having a girlfriend, and Bolling learned that Joe Kennedy was ready to unleash an airing of such if Nixon made an issue of Jack"s philandering. But the standards of the time made such a t.i.t for tat almost impossible to imagine, and Jack did not worry that his womanizing would play any significant part in the campaign, unlike attacks on his religion and youth.
Religion remained an obstacle. On September 7, the New York Times New York Times carried a front-page article about the ironically named National Conference of Citizens for Religious Freedom, an organization of 150 Protestant ministers led by Dr. Norman Vincent Peale; they said that the Roman Catholic Church, with its dual role as both a church and a temporal state, made Kennedy"s faith a legitimate issue in the campaign. Like Khrushchev, one member declared, Kennedy was "a captive of a system." Although the clergymen were all conservative Republicans eager for Nixon"s election (and were guilty of transparent hypocrisy in doing what they said Kennedy"s church would do-interfere in secular politics), their political machinations did not cancel out the effects of their warnings. carried a front-page article about the ironically named National Conference of Citizens for Religious Freedom, an organization of 150 Protestant ministers led by Dr. Norman Vincent Peale; they said that the Roman Catholic Church, with its dual role as both a church and a temporal state, made Kennedy"s faith a legitimate issue in the campaign. Like Khrushchev, one member declared, Kennedy was "a captive of a system." Although the clergymen were all conservative Republicans eager for Nixon"s election (and were guilty of transparent hypocrisy in doing what they said Kennedy"s church would do-interfere in secular politics), their political machinations did not cancel out the effects of their warnings.
Estimates suggested that unless this propaganda was countered and the anti-Catholic bias overcome, Kennedy"s religion might cost him as many as 1.5 million votes. The Kennedy campaign quickly organized a Community Relations division to meet the religious problem head-on. James Wine, a staff member at the National Council of Churches, headed the operation. Wine was as busy as any member of Jack"s campaign team, answering between six hundred and a thousand letters a week and urging lay and clerical Protestants to combat the explicit and implicit anti-Catholicism in so much of the anti-Kennedy rhetoric.
A highly effective and much publicized appearance Kennedy made before a group of Protestant ministers in Houston, Texas, on September 12 helped. Bobby, Jack"s campaign staff, Johnson, and Rayburn all advised against the appearance. "They"re mostly Republicans and they"re out to get you," Rayburn told Kennedy. But Kennedy believed he had to confront the issue sometime, and he wanted to do it early in the campaign so that he could move on to more constructive matters. "I"m getting tired of these people who think I want to replace the gold at Fort Knox with a supply of holy water," he told O"Donnell and Powers. In fact, his knowledge of Church doctrine and ties to the Church were so limited that he brought in John Cogley, a Catholic scholar, to coach him in preparation for his appearance.
Although he saw his speech and response to audience questions, which were to follow his remarks, as a crucial moment in the campaign, Kennedy went before the audience of three hundred in Houston"s Rice Hotel Crystal ballroom (and the millions of television viewers around the country) with no hesitation or obvious sign of nervousness. The sincerity of what he had to say armed him against his adversaries and conveyed a degree of inner surety that converted a few opponents and persuaded some undecided voters that he had the maturity and balance to become a fine president.
He began his speech by emphasizing that although the religious question was the one before them tonight, he saw "far more critical issues in the 1960 election ... for war and hunger and ignorance and despair know no religious barrier." But his religion was the immediate concern, and he stated his views and intentions without equivocation. He declared his belief in "an America where the separation of church and state is absolute... . I believe in a President whose views on religion are his own private affair, neither imposed on him by the nation or imposed by the nation upon him as a condition to holding that office... . I am not the Catholic candidate for President," he declared. "I am the Democratic Party"s candidate for President, who happens also to be a Catholic. I do not speak for my church on public matters-and the church does not speak for me... . If the time should ever come ... when my office would require me to either violate my conscience, or violate the national interest, then I would resign the office, and I would hope that any other conscientious public servant would do likewise." He ended with a plea for religious tolerance that would serve the national well-being. "If this election is decided on the basis that 40,000,000 Americans lost their chance of being President on the day they were baptized, then it is the whole nation that will be the loser in the eyes of Catholics and non-Catholics around the world, in the eyes of history, and in the eyes of our people."
Although some of the questions that followed showed an indifference to his pledges, he responded with such poise and restraint that the ministers stood and applauded at the close of the meeting, and some came forward to shake his hand and wish him well in the campaign. Rayburn, who watched the speech on television, shouted, "By G.o.d, look at him-and listen to him! He"s eating them blood raw. This young feller will be a great President!"
THE HOUSTON APPEARANCE temporarily muted the religious issue and allowed Kennedy to concentrate on convincing voters that he was not too young or inexperienced to be president. The surest way to counter these a.s.sertions was to compete directly with Nixon in a debate. Eisenhower advised Nixon against accepting the unprecedented challenge of a televised confrontation: He was much better known than Kennedy, had eight years of executive experience as vice president, and had established himself as an effective spokesman and defender of the national interest by standing up to a stone-throwing mob in Caracas, Venezuela, in 1958 and to Khrushchev in the Moscow "kitchen debate" in 1959. But Nixon relished confrontations with adversaries and, remembering his successful appearance before the TV cameras in the 1952 campaign (his Checkers speech-a response to allegations of accepting illegal gifts-was the most successful use of television by an American politician to that date), he agreed to four debates. He also believed that saying no to a debate could cost him politically in the new TV age. temporarily muted the religious issue and allowed Kennedy to concentrate on convincing voters that he was not too young or inexperienced to be president. The surest way to counter these a.s.sertions was to compete directly with Nixon in a debate. Eisenhower advised Nixon against accepting the unprecedented challenge of a televised confrontation: He was much better known than Kennedy, had eight years of executive experience as vice president, and had established himself as an effective spokesman and defender of the national interest by standing up to a stone-throwing mob in Caracas, Venezuela, in 1958 and to Khrushchev in the Moscow "kitchen debate" in 1959. But Nixon relished confrontations with adversaries and, remembering his successful appearance before the TV cameras in the 1952 campaign (his Checkers speech-a response to allegations of accepting illegal gifts-was the most successful use of television by an American politician to that date), he agreed to four debates. He also believed that saying no to a debate could cost him politically in the new TV age.
Kennedy was as confident, especially after his Houston appearance, that he could establish himself as more worthy of the White House by besting or even just holding his own against Nixon before the press and millions of TV viewers. Either outcome would refute a.s.sertions about his being too immature to merit election.
Consequently, on the evening of September 26, in Chicago"s CBS studio, the two candidates joined Howard K. Smith, the moderator, and a four-member panel of television reporters to discuss campaign issues before some seventy million Americans, nearly two thirds of the country"s adult population. Kennedy had spent most of the day preparing responses to possible questions. As campaign historian Theodore White described him, Kennedy lay on his bed in the Amba.s.sador East Hotel dressed in a white, V-neck T-shirt and khaki pants and holding a pack of "fact cards" prepared by aides; he reviewed a variety of topics, tossing each card onto the floor as he finished a subject. Suggestions from his speechwriters for an eight-minute opening statement did not satisfy him, and he dictated his own version to a secretary.
Although he and Nixon spent a great part of the contest arguing over specific issues, Kennedy gained an early advantage by addressing his opening statement directly to the American people. He did the same in his closing statement. By contrast, Nixon used his introduction and summary to draw contrasts between himself and Kennedy. The difference was telling: Kennedy came across as a leader who intended to deal with the nation"s greatest problems; Nixon registered on voters as someone trying to gain an advantage over an adversary. Nixon"s language was restrained, but in comparison to Kennedy he came off as unstatesmanlike, confirming the negative impression many had of him from earlier House, Senate, and vice presidential campaigns. Henry Cabot Lodge, his running mate, who had urged Nixon not to be abrasive, said as the debate ended, "That son of a b.i.t.c.h just lost the election."
Kennedy, as was universally agreed, also got the better of Nixon because he looked more relaxed, more in command of himself, or, as Theodore White wrote, "calm and nerveless... . The Vice-President, by contrast, was tense, almost frightened, at turns glowering and, occasionally, haggard-looking to the point of sickness." The camera showed Nixon "half slouched, his "Lazy Shave" powder faintly streaked with sweat, his eyes exaggerated hollows of blackness, his jaws, jowls, and face drooping with strain." ("My G.o.d!" Mayor Daley said, "They"ve embalmed him before he even died.") In addition, against the light gray stage backdrop, Nixon, dressed in a light gray suit, "faded into a fuzzed outline, while Kennedy in his dark suit had the crisp picture edge of contrast." Not yet fully recovered from a recent hospitalization to care for an infected knee injured in an accident, and exhausted by intense campaigning, Nixon appeared scrawny and listless. Ironically, Kennedy, whose medical problems greatly exceeded anything Nixon had, appeared to be the picture of robust good health.* Kennedy further seized the advantage during the debate when he looked bored or amused as Nixon spoke, as if he were thinking, "How silly."
At the end of the debate, as they stood on stage exchanging pleasantries, Nixon, watching photographers out of the corner of his eye, "put a stern expression on his face and started jabbing his finger into my chest, so he would look as if he were laying down the law to me about foreign policy or Communism," Kennedy said. Again, the image was not one of command but of a schoolyard bully.
ALTHOUGH POLLS and larger, more enthusiastic crowds encouragedthe belief that Kennedy had won the first debate, he knew it would be folly to take a lead for granted. And by contrast with TV viewers, the radio audience thought that Nixon had defeated Kennedy, demonstrating how important the contrasting visual images were before the cameras. Kennedy saw the race as still too close to call, and as likely to turn on voter feelings about past and current Republican failings. Attacks on the GOP, however, needed to exclude mention of Eisenhower, who remained popular. Journalist John Bartlow Martin, who had written speeches for Stevenson and was now doing the same for Kennedy, urged Jack to answer complaints that improper makeup had hurt Nixon in the debate by saying, "No matter how many makeup experts they bring into the television studio, it"s still the same old Richard Nixon and it"s still the same old Republican party." The way to capture "the large body of independents," a doc.u.ment on "Campaign Reflections" stated, was by highlighting "the and larger, more enthusiastic crowds encouragedthe belief that Kennedy had won the first debate, he knew it would be folly to take a lead for granted. And by contrast with TV viewers, the radio audience thought that Nixon had defeated Kennedy, demonstrating how important the contrasting visual images were before the cameras. Kennedy saw the race as still too close to call, and as likely to turn on voter feelings about past and current Republican failings. Attacks on the GOP, however, needed to exclude mention of Eisenhower, who remained popular. Journalist John Bartlow Martin, who had written speeches for Stevenson and was now doing the same for Kennedy, urged Jack to answer complaints that improper makeup had hurt Nixon in the debate by saying, "No matter how many makeup experts they bring into the television studio, it"s still the same old Richard Nixon and it"s still the same old Republican party." The way to capture "the large body of independents," a doc.u.ment on "Campaign Reflections" stated, was by highlighting "the demerits of Mr. Nixon demerits of Mr. Nixon." The staff put together "a nearly exhaustive volume of Nixon quotes" containing "an up-to-date a.n.a.lysis of contradictions and inconsistencies in Nixon statements over the years." Kennedy portrayed Nixon as a conventional reactionary. "I stand today where Woodrow Wilson stood, and Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman stood," Jack said. "d.i.c.k Nixon stands where McKinley stood, where Harding and Coolidge and Landon stood, where Dewey stood. Where do they get those candidates?"
Eisenhower helped. Ike had long been sensitive to suggestions that he had "reigned rather than ruled," and he personally resented suggestions by Nixon that the vice president had been running the government. When a journalist asked the president to name a single major idea of the vice president"s that he had adopted, he replied, "If you give me a week, I might think of one. I don"t remember."
Yet however a.s.sailable Nixon was as a contradictory figure and an abrasive personality-Ike"s secretary described him as someone who was "acting like a nice man rather than being one"-it was his identification with recent economic and foreign policy stumbles that made him most vulnerable to defeat. And those were the issues, under the heading "Let"s Get the Country Moving Again," on which Kennedy criticized him most effectively in the last weeks of the campaign.
Although Kennedy had no well-developed economic program to put before voters, he was able to point to a number of problems that had bedeviled Eisenhower and Nixon. Between 1953 and 1959, economic growth had averaged only 2.4 percent a year, compared with 5.8 percent since 1939 under the Democrats; the industrialized economies of Western Europe and j.a.pan were expanding faster than America"s, while, according to CIA estimates, recent Soviet increases were more than 7 percent a year. The fifties had also seen two recessions, joblessness and underemployment at 7 percent, rising inflation, and a gold drain produced by an unfavorable balance of payments. Another economic downturn beginning in April 1960 and lasting through the campaign gave resonance to Kennedy"s complaints. When Nixon a.s.serted that unemployment would not be a significant issue unless it exceeded 4.5 million, Kennedy replied, "I ... think it would become a significant issue to the 4,499,000 ... unemployed."
"Foreign policy for the first time in many years will be the great issue, as Mr. Nixon has so often told us," Kennedy wrote former secretary of state Dean Acheson, and despite Nixon"s credentials as an anticommunist, Kennedy believed that his own travels, writings, public addresses, and service on the Foreign Relations Committee made him more than a match for the vice president. Kennedy"s 1958 Foreign Affairs Foreign Affairs article, "A Democrat Looks at Foreign Policy," and a 225-page book published in 1960, article, "A Democrat Looks at Foreign Policy," and a 225-page book published in 1960, The Strategy of Peace, The Strategy of Peace, a compilation of his recent speeches on international affairs and national security, were meant to show that he had prepared himself to manage the great overseas challenges certain to confront the next president. a compilation of his recent speeches on international affairs and national security, were meant to show that he had prepared himself to manage the great overseas challenges certain to confront the next president.
In July 1960, Gallup reported that "the overwhelming majority of those interviewed regard relations with Russia and the rest of the world as being the primary problem facing the nation today." Fidel Castro"s pro-Soviet regime in Cuba, coupled with Khrushchev"s warnings that Moscow was grinding out missiles like sausages and that communism would bury capitalism, stirred fears of attack against which the United States had no apparent defense. When people in cities around the world were asked if U.S. prestige had increased or decreased in the last year, 45 percent said it had decreased and only 22 percent believed it had increased.
Kennedy saw clear political advantages in emphasizing international dangers to the United States. In August 1958, he had given his notable Senate speech on the missile gap. Warning that America was about to lose its advantage over the Soviet Union in nuclear weapons, he quoted air force general James Gavin, who saw "our own offensive and defensive Missile capabilities" lagging "so far behind those of the Soviets as to place us in a position of great peril." Kennedy a.s.serted that the Soviet combination of intercontinental and intermediate-range missiles, "history"s largest fleet of submarines," and long-range supersonic jet bombers might give them the ability to "destroy 85 percent of our industry, 43 of our 50 largest cities, and most of the Nation"s population." He added, "We tailored our strategy and military requirements to fit our budget"-instead of the other way around. Over the next two years, Kennedy repeatedly came back to this problem in his public p.r.o.nouncements, so much so that in September 1960, John Kenneth Galbraith complained to Lou Harris, "J.F.K. has made the point that he isn"t soft. Henceforth he can only frighten."
In August 1960, when the public gave higher marks to the Republicans than the Democrats as the party best able to manage world peace, Kennedy intensified his efforts to publicize the Eisenhower-Nixon shortcomings on defense. But his focus on relative U.S. military weakness was not strictly motivated by politics. He had genuine concerns that America was facing a crisis that demanded new thinking and initiatives. In this, he was following the lead of many defense experts who warned that the United States was falling behind the Soviets. In addition to Gavin, H. Rowan Gaither Jr., of the Ford Foundation, who had chaired a committee studying national security in the atomic age, concluded that "our active defenses are not adequate" and our pa.s.sive or civilian defenses "insignificant." "Gaither practically predicted the end of Western civilization," one historian said. Gaither also described the Soviets as having a more expansive economy than the United States, as spending more on defense, and as out-building the U.S. in nuclear weapons, ICBMs, IRBMs, submarines, and air defenses, not to mention s.p.a.ce technology.
Whether the gap existed was, even at the time, debatable. Eisenhower had solid evidence from U-2 spy planes that there was no missile gap, and he instructed his military chiefs to persuade Kennedy of this, but Eisenhower"s fear of leaks and his conviction that Kennedy would lose made him reluctant to share his sources. He also believed that authoritative denials of a gap would agitate the Soviets into a buildup; as long as the public record suggested that Moscow was getting ahead of the United States, Ike a.s.sumed that Khrushchev would hold back from investing in a large, costly expansion of ICBMs. But the administration"s reluctance to give Kennedy fuller information persuaded Jack that Eisenhower did not want to acknowledge a failing that could cost Nixon the election. Kennedy was in possession of numbers showing frightening and growing gaps between Soviet and American military strength. When he asked CIA director Allen Dulles about the missile gap, Dulles replied that only the Pentagon could properly answer the question. It was a signal to Kennedy that Dulles did not have enough information to rule out the possibility of a significant Soviet advantage.
Other Democrats warned Kennedy that Nixon would not only deny the reality of our defense problem but, if this did not work, would then try to blame the country"s vulnerability on the Democrats. Indeed, Nixon hoped to scare voters into thinking that Kennedy would either risk war with an unnecessary buildup or continue his party"s alleged policies of failing to invest enough in defense. Kennedy may have known about a Nixon memo to Attorney General William Rogers asking him to supply information for speeches showing that JFK "would be a very dangerous President, dangerous to the cause of peace and dangerous from the standpoint of surrender." But it was a tactical blunder: The missile gap was an easy issue to explain to voters, and it was hard for Nixon to escape the box Eisenhower and Kennedy had put him in.
While Kennedy truly cared about the possibility of a missile gap, political opportunism was more at work in his response to Castro"s Cuba. Frustration at the rise of a communist regime "ninety miles from America"s sh.o.r.e" was an irresistible campaign issue, especially in Florida, an electoral battleground. To be sure, Kennedy was sincerely concerned about the potential dangers to the United States from a communist regime in Latin America. "What are the Soviets" eventual intentions?" a prescient staff memo written early in the campaign asked. "Do they intend to use Cuba as a center for Communist expansion in Latin America, or as a missile base to offset ours in other countries?" Dean Acheson counseled Kennedy to "stop talking about Cuba-I didn"t think this was getting anywhere... . He was likely to get himself hooked into positions which would be difficult afterwards," Acheson remembered later. He urged Kennedy to focus instead on broad foreign policy questions. But the political advantage in emphasizing that Castro"s ascent had come on the Eisenhower-Nixon watch was too inviting to ignore. The potency of the issue led to overreach: In October the campaign issued a statement that suggested Kennedy favored unilateral intervention in Cuba. The outcry from liberals, who warned against ignoring Latin American sensibilities, and from Nixon, who favored intervention but cynically condemned Kennedy"s statement as a dangerous challenge to Moscow, forced Jack to amend the statement and take Acheson"s advice about dropping Cuba as a fit topic of discussion.
Civil rights was an even more difficult issue to manage in the campaign. The conflict between pressures for economic, political, and social justice for black Americans and southern determination to maintain the system of de jure and de facto segregation presented Kennedy with no good political options. He was mindful of the political advantages to himself from a large black turnout, and of the transparent moral claims to equal treatment under the law for an abused and disadvantaged minority. But he was also greatly concerned with the counterpressure from white southerners who were antagonistic to the Democratic party"s advanced position on civil rights. Virginia senator A. Willis Robertson reflected the division in the party in a letter to Kennedy saying he would support the entire party ticket in November but refused to "endorse and support the civil rights plank that was written into our Party platform over the protests of the delegates from Virginia and other Southern States." LBJ"s vice presidential nomination had been, as intended, some solace to southerners, but not enough to counter Kennedy"s aggressive commitment to civil rights.
Once again, political imperatives determined Kennedy"s course of action. Liberals were already angry at Johnson"s selection, and if Kennedy gave in to southern pressure on civil rights, it would mean losing their support (not to mention black votes). Kennedy signaled his intentions by writing Robertson, "I understand the problem the platform presents to you," but he offered nothing more than the "hope [that] it will be possible for us to work together in the fall."
Kennedy was not happy about having to choose between the party"s competing factions, but once he chose, he moved forward. When he saw civil rights advocate Harris Wofford in August, he said, "Now in five minutes, tick off the ten things a President ought to do to clean up this G.o.dd.a.m.n civil rights mess." Although he was uncomfortable adopting an aggressive civil rights agenda, he nevertheless followed all of Wofford"s suggestions: They set up a civil rights section in the campaign and appointed Marjorie Lawson, a black woman, and William Dawson of Chicago, the senior black congressman, to head the division; chose Frank Reeves, who had NAACP contacts all over the country, to travel with Kennedy; enlisted the help of Louis Martin, a black publisher, to handle a variety of media a.s.signments; paid $50,000 to New York congressman Adam Clayton Powell, who enjoyed "wide popular appeal among blacks," to give ten speeches; and encouraged the Reverend Joseph Jackson of Chicago to organize a National Fellowship of Ministers and Laymen to lead a nationwide voter registration drive among blacks. By the end of a special congressional session in August, it had become clear to Senator Richard Russell of Georgia that "Kennedy will implement the Democratic platform and advocate civil rights legislation beyond what is contained in the platform."
Kennedy agreed to speak before several black conventions, praised peaceful sit-ins at segregated public facilities across the South, criticized Eisenhower for failing to integrate public housing "with one stroke of the pen," and sponsored a national advisory conference on civil rights. In a speech, he described civil rights as a "moral question" and promised not only to support legislation but also to take executive action "on a bold and large scale." And the more he said, the more he felt. By the close of the campaign, he had warmed to the issue and spoke with indignation about American racism. After Henry Cabot Lodge announced that Nixon would appoint a black to his cabinet-which angered Nixon-Kennedy declared on Meet the Press Meet the Press that jobs in government should go to the best-qualified people, regardless of race or ethnicity. But he emphasized the need to bring blacks into the higher reaches of government. "There are no Federal District Judges-there are 200-odd of them; not a one is a Negro," he said. "We have about 26 Negroes in the entire Foreign Service of 6,000, so that particularly now with the importance of Africa, Asia and all the rest, I do believe we should make a greater effort to encourage fuller partic.i.p.ation on all levels, of all the talent we can get-Negro, white, of any race." that jobs in government should go to the best-qualified people, regardless of race or ethnicity. But he emphasized the need to bring blacks into the higher reaches of government. "There are no Federal District Judges-there are 200-odd of them; not a one is a Negro," he said. "We have about 26 Negroes in the entire Foreign Service of 6,000, so that particularly now with the importance of Africa, Asia and all the rest, I do believe we should make a greater effort to encourage fuller partic.i.p.ation on all levels, of all the talent we can get-Negro, white, of any race."
Nothing tested Kennedy"s support of black rights during the campaign more than the jailing of Martin Luther King. Arrested for trying to integrate a restaurant in an Atlanta department store and then sentenced to a four-month prison term at hard labor for violating his probation on a minor, trumped-up traffic violation, King was sent to a rural Georgia prison. His wife, who was five months pregnant, feared for his life. In October, two weeks before the election, she called Wofford to ask his help in arranging King"s release. The desperation in her voice moved Wofford to call Sargent Shriver and ask for Kennedy"s moral support. After O"Donnell, Salinger, and Sorensen-who, fearful of losing southern votes, seemed certain to object-had left the room, Shriver urged Jack to call Mrs. King. Kennedy, partly out of political calculation and partly from sympathy for the Kings, made the call at once. Jack expressed concern for King"s well-being and offered to help in any way he could.
When Bobby Kennedy learned of the call, he upbraided the instigators for risking Jack"s defeat in three southern states that might decide the election. Still, Bobby was personally outraged at the injustice of the sentence and the embarra.s.sment to the country from the actions of a judge he privately called a "b.a.s.t.a.r.d" and "a son of a b.i.t.c.h." With the story in the news, he decided to phone the judge, who had promised Georgia"s governor, Ernest Vandiver, that he would release King if he got political cover for himself-namely a phone call from Jack or Bobby. Bobby"s call freed King. The Kennedy phone calls and Nixon"s failure to do anything gave Jack a big advantage among blacks and may have helped swing five states-Delaware, Illinois, Michigan, New Jersey, and South Carolina-to his side.
And as election day results showed, every vote and every state mattered. By the middle of October, Kennedy had surged to a 51 to 45 percent lead. On October 20, veteran Democrat Jim Farley believed that "the situation looks marvelous" and predicted that Kennedy would not lose many states. But with Eisenhower agreeing to put aside health concerns and campaign in late October, and with the public possibly having second thoughts about giving the White House to so untested a young man, whose religion also continued to leave doubts, Nixon closed the gap. The final Gallup poll, three days before the election, showed a dead heat: Kennedy-Johnson, 50.5 percent, to Nixon-Lodge, 49.5 percent.
But Kennedy held an edge in a different way. At the start of the campaign, newspaper columnist Eric Sevareid had complained that Kennedy and Nixon were the same: tidy, b.u.t.toned-down junior executives on the make. He saw no political pa.s.sion in either man; they were both part of the Fraternity Row crowd, "wearing the proper clothes, thinking the proper thoughts, cultivating the proper people." It seemed to some that the choice was between "the lesser of two evils." By November, however, observers saw a striking change in the two men. Nixon, who had started out projecting "an image of calm, of maturity, the dignity of the experienced statesman," had become angry and grim. A posture of indignation had replaced the earlier "quiet, chatty manner." Harrison Salisbury of the New York Times New York Times said, "The crowds tensed him up. I watched him ball his fists, set his jaw, hurl himself stiff-legged to the barriers at the airports and begin shaking hands. He was wound up like a watch spring... . No ease." said, "The crowds tensed him up. I watched him ball his fists, set his jaw, hurl himself stiff-legged to the barriers at the airports and begin shaking hands. He was wound up like a watch spring... . No ease."
By contrast, CBS commentator Charles Kuralt said, "the change in Kennedy has been the reverse of the change in Nixon. It is hard to recognize in the relaxed, smiling, and confident Kennedy ... the serious man who ... in July ... seemed all cold efficiency, all business." Eleanor Roosevelt believed, as she told Arthur Schlesinger Jr., that no one "in our politics since Franklin has had the same vital relationship with crowds." It was as if running against someone as humorless and possibly ruthless as Nixon strengthened Kennedy"s faith in himself-in the conviction not only that he would be a better president but that the energy to get the job done could come not just from within, and not just from family dynamics, but from the sea of American faces that smiled when he stepped toward them.
Yet for all this, Kennedy himself might have thought that Roosevelt"s view was a little too romantic. He had no illusion that his positive impact on voters was as strong as she believed. On election night, as he watched the returns at the family"s Hyannis Port compound, the results ill.u.s.trated his marginal hold on the electorate. When he went to bed at 3:30 in the morning, the election still hung in the balance. He was reasonably sure he had won, but with Pennsylvania, Missouri, Illinois, Minnesota, Michigan, and California too close to call definitively, he refused to a.s.sume a victory. Despite the uncertainty, he was so exhausted he slept for almost six hours. When he awoke at about nine, Ted Sorensen gave him the news in his upstairs bedroom: He had carried all six states. In fact, California was still a toss-up and ultimately went for Nixon, but it didn"t matter; the other five states were enough to ensure Kennedy"s election. But even then, it was not until noon, when final returns came in, that they knew with any certainty that he had won. Only when Nixon"s press secretary issued a concession statement a little after that did Kennedy agree to appear before the press in the Hyannis Port armory as the president-elect. There, Joe Kennedy, more elated than Jack or Bobby at winning a prize he had long hoped for, appeared in public with Jack for the first time since the start of the campaign.
Although Jack ended up with 303 electoral votes to Nixon"s 219, his popular margin was a scant 118,574 out of 68,837,000 votes cast. True, he and Nixon had generated enough interest to bring 64.5 percent of the electorate to the polls, one of the highest turnouts in recent history. But he had won the presidency with only 49.72 percent of the popular vote. (Senator Harry F. Byrd of Virginia, running as a segregationist, siphoned off 500,000 votes.) Although Kennedy joined a long line of minority presidents, including Woodrow Wilson, who had gained the White House in the three-way 1912 election with barely 42 percent popular backing, it was small comfort. Kennedy"s margin was the smallest since Grover Cleveland"s 23,000-vote advantage over James G. Blaine in 1884, and Benjamin Harrison had turned back Cleveland"s bid for a second term with 65 more electoral votes but 100,456 fewer popular votes.
Any number of things explain Kennedy"s victory: the faltering economy in an election year; anxiety about the nation"s apparently diminished capacity to meet the Soviet threat; Kennedy"s decidedly greater personal charm alongside Nixon"s abrasiveness before the TV cameras and on the stump; Lyndon Johnson"s help in winning seven southern states (Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Louisiana, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Texas); an effective get-out-the-vote campaign among Democrats, who, despite Eisenhower"s two elections, remained the majority party; the black vote for Kennedy; and the backing of ethnic voters, including but much broader than just Catholics, in big cities like New York, Buffalo, Chicago, Newark, Philadelphia, and Pittsburgh. Kennedy"s margins in Detroit, Minneapolis-Saint Paul, and Kansas City helped give him 50.9, 50.6, and 50.3 percent majorities in Michigan, Minnesota, and Missouri, respectively. Contributing to Kennedy"s win was an unwise Nixon promise to visit all fifty states, which had diverted him from concentrating on crucial swing areas toward the end of the campaign. Ike"s blunder in dismissing Nixon"s claims of executive leadership and his failure, because of health concerns, to take a larger role in his vice president"s campaign may also have been decisive factors in holding down Nixon"s late surge.
Almost immediately, Nixon supporters complained that fraudulent voting in Illinois and Texas (where Kennedy won by 8,800 and 46,000 votes, respectively) had given Kennedy the election, but the accusations were impossible to prove. Daley"s machine probably stole Illinois from Nixon (before the final tally was in, he reported Illinois for Kennedy), but Jack would have won even without Illinois. As for Texas, 46,000 fraudulent votes would have been more than the most skilled manipulator of returns could have hidden. Although Nixon publicly took the high ground by refusing to challenge the outcome, Senator Thurston B. Morton, Republican National Committee chairman, urged state and local Republican officials in eleven states "to take legal action on the alleged vote fraud." But no one could demonstrate significant fraud anywhere. Recounts in Illinois and New Jersey, for example, made no change in the final vote, and in other states, judges found insufficient evidence to order recounts. However close, Kennedy"s victory represented the will of the electorate.
In the final a.n.a.lysis, the most important question is not why Kennedy won but why his victory was so narrow. Harry Truman was amazed at the closeness of the race. "Why, even our friend Adlai would have had a landslide running against Nixon," he told Senator William Benton of Connecticut. Given the majority status of the Democrats, the discontent over the state of the economy and international affairs, and Kennedy"s superior campaign and campaigning, he should have gained at least 52 or 53 percent of the popular vote. Everyone on his staff had predicted a victory of between 53 and 57 percent. The small margin shocked them. What they missed was the unyielding fear of having a Catholic in the White House. Although about 46 percent of Protestants voted for Kennedy, millions of them in Ohio, Wisconsin, and across the South made his religion a decisive consideration. It was the first time a candidate had won the presidency with a minority of Protestant voters.
Forty-three years after the election of 1960, it is difficult to imagine the importance of something that no longer seems significant in discussions about suitability for the White House. Whatever gains and losses John Kennedy"s presidency might have brought to the country and the world, his election in 1960 marked a great leap forward in religious tolerance that has served the nation well ever since.
PART FOUR
The President
Most of us enjoy preaching, and I"ve got such a bully pulpit!
- Theodore Roosevelt, 1905.
The Presidency is not merely an administrative office. That"s the least of it. It is more than an engineering job, efficient or inefficient. It is pre-eminently a place of moral leadership. All our great Presidents were leaders of thought at times when certain historic ideas in the life of the nation had to be clarified.
- Franklin D. Roosevelt, September 11, 1932.
On my desk I have a motto which says "The buck stops here."
- Harry S Truman, December 19, 1952
CHAPTER 9
The Torch Is Pa.s.sed
I am an idealist without illusions.
- attributed to John F. Kennedy by Arthur Schlesinger Jr., c. 1953
JACK KENNEDY"S ELECTION to the presidency by the narrowest of margins frustrated and exhilarated him. He was "more perplexed than bothered by the narrowness of his victory," Arthur Schlesinger Jr. recalled. Kennedy was clearly "jubilant" and "deeply touched" at becoming only the thirty-fourth American to become president. But after seeing him, journalist Henry Brandon thought that the result had actually somewhat "hurt his self-confidence and pride." Kennedy himself asked Kenny O"Donnell, "How did I manage to beat a guy like this by only a hundred thousand votes?" to the presidency by the narrowest of margins frustrated and exhilarated him. He was "more perplexed than bothered by the narrowness of his victory," Arthur Schlesinger Jr. recalled. Kennedy was clearly "jubilant" and "deeply touched" at becoming only the thirty-fourth American to become president. But after seeing him, journalist Henry Brandon thought that the result had actually somewhat "hurt his self-confidence and pride." Kennedy himself asked Kenny O"Donnell, "How did I manage to beat a guy like this by only a hundred thousand votes?"
But Kennedy had little time to savor or question his victory; the transition from candidate to president-elect confronted him with immediate new pressures. The problems he had complained of during the campaign-an uncertain public lacking inspired leadership in the Cold War, the missile gap, a nuclear arms race, Cuba, communism"s appeal to developing nations, a stagnant economy, and racial injustices-were now his responsibility.
In the seventy-two days before he took office, he had first to overcome campaign exhaustion. The day after the election, during the press conference at the Hyannis Port Armory, his hands, although out of camera range, trembled. One reporter, responding to Kennedy"s appearance the following day, asked whether rumors about his health problems were true. Two weeks after the election, when Ted Sorensen visited him at his father"s vacation retreat in Palm Beach, he had not fully recovered. His mind was neither "keen" nor "clear," Sorensen recalls, and he "still seemed tired then and reluctant to face up to the details of personnel and program selection." As he and his father drove to a Palm Beach golf course, Jack complained, "Jesus Christ, this one wants that, that one wants this. G.o.dd.a.m.n it, you can"t satisfy any of these people. I don"t know what I"m going to do about it all." Joe responded, "Jack, if you don"t want the job, you don"t have to take it. They"re still counting votes up in Cook County."
Kennedy knew he could not afford to show any signs of flagging in public. How could he get the country moving again or create the sense of hope, the belief in a better national future that had been so central to his campaign if he gave any indication of physical or psychological fatigue? Thus, in response to the reporter"s question about his health, he declared himself in "excellent" shape and dismissed rumors of Addison"s disease as false. "I have been through a long campaign and my health is very good today," he said. An article based largely on information supplied by Bobby Kennedy echoed Jack"s a.s.sertions. Published in Today"s Health, Today"s Health, an American Medical a.s.sociation journal, and summarized in the an American Medical a.s.sociation journal, and summarized in the New York Times, New York Times, the article described Jack as in "superb physical condition." Though it reported some adrenal insufficiency, which a daily oral medication neutralized, the journal a.s.sured readers that Jack would have no problem handling the demands of the presidency. the article described Jack as in "superb physical condition." Though it reported some adrenal insufficiency, which a daily oral medication neutralized, the journal a.s.sured readers that Jack would have no problem handling the demands of the presidency.
The reality was, of course, different. Kennedy"s health remained as uncertain as ever. Having gone from one medical problem to another throughout his life, he believed his ongoing conditions were no cause to think that he could not be president. But whether someone with adrenal, back, colon-stomach, and prostate difficulties could function with high effectiveness under the sort of pressures a president faced was a question that remained to be answered. True, FDR had functioned brilliantly despite his paralysis, but he was never on a combination of medicines like the one Kennedy relied on to get through the day. When he ran for and won the presidency, Kennedy was gambling that his health problems would not prevent him from handling the job. By hiding the extent of his ailments, he had denied voters the chance to decide whether they wanted to join him in this bet.
Kennedy"s hope was to return the center of decision to the Oval Office, rather than let it remain in the hands of the subordinates who were supposedly running Eisenhower"s government. But obviously he needed a cabinet, and selecting it was not simple. Appointing prominent older men could revive campaign charges that Kennedy was too young to take charge and needed experienced advisers to run his administration. At the same time, however, Kennedy did not want to create the impression that he would surround himself with pushovers and ciphers who would not threaten his authority. He wanted the most talented and accomplished people he could find, and he was confident that he could make them serve his purposes.
He also understood that his thin margin of victory gave him less a mandate for fresh actions than a need to demonstrate lines of continuity with Eisenhower"s presidency. The margin convinced him that it was essential to conciliate Republicans and indicate that as president he would put the national interest above partisan politics.
Indeed, Kennedy"s announcement of appointments two days after the election suggested not new departures but consistency with the past. At a dinner with liberal friends the day after the election, Kennedy"s mention of the CIA and the FBI had brought pleas for new directors and novel ways of thinking about Cold War dangers. To his friends" surprise, the next morning he announced that Allen Dulles and J. Edgar Hoover would continue to head the CIA and the FBI, respectively. Kennedy hoped this would put Democrats on notice that he would not be beholden to any party faction and would make up his own mind about what would best serve the country and his administration. (He may also have been guarding against damaging leaks from Hoover about his private life. As Lyndon Johnson would later put it, better to keep Hoover inside the tent p.i.s.sing out than outside p.i.s.sing in.) Four days later, Kennedy flew in a helicopter to Key Biscayne to meet Nixon. When O"Donnell asked him what he would say to Nixon, he replied, "I haven"t the slightest idea. Maybe I"ll ask him how he won in Ohio." The meeting had its intended symbolic value, showing Kennedy as a statesman above the country"s political wars. The New York Times New York Times reported Kennedy"s determination not to exclude the Republicans from constructive contributions to his administration, though Nixon himself would not be offered any formal role. Nevertheless, Kennedy could not ignore their political differences. O"Donnell recalled the conversation between Kennedy and Nixon as neither interesting nor amusing. Nixon did most of the talking. "It was just as well for all of us that he didn"t quite make it," Kennedy told O"Donnell on the return ride to Palm Beach. Nixon did not reveal his Ohio strategy, Kennedy said later. reported Kennedy"s determination not to exclude the Republicans from constructive contributions to his administration, though Nixon himself would not be offered any formal role. Nevertheless, Kennedy could not ignore their political differences. O"Donnell recalled the conversation between Kennedy and Nixon as neither interesting nor amusing. Nixon did most of the talking. "It was just as well for all of us that he didn"t quite make it," Kennedy told O"Donnell on the return ride to Palm Beach. Nixon did not reveal his Ohio strategy, Kennedy said later.
In any case, the outgoing vice president was basically irrelevant; relations with Eisenhower, however, were crucial to the transition and coming a.s.sumption of power. Though election as the youngest president and service as the oldest separated Kennedy and Eisenhower, the two were among the most attractive personalities ever to occupy the White House. Ike"s famous grin and rea.s.suring manner and JFK"s charm and wit made them almost universally likable. The "almost" certainly applied here: The two men did not have high regard for each other. Kennedy viewed Ike as something of an old fuddy-duddy, a sort of seventy-year-old fossil who was a "non-president" more interested in running the White House by organizational charts than by using executive powers. In private, he was not above making fun of Ike, mimicking him and calling him "that old a.s.shole." Eisenhower privately reciprocated the contempt, sometimes intentionally misp.r.o.nouncing Kennedy"s name and referring to the forty-three-year-old as "Little Boy Blue" and "that young whippersnapper." Ike saw the Kennedys as arrivistes and Jack as more celebrity than serious public servant, someone who had done little more than spend his father"s money to win political office, where, in the House and Senate, he had served without distinction.
Truman and Ike, whose differences in the 1952 campaign had carried over into the postelection transfer of power, had only one twenty-minute meeting at the White House, which was formal and unfriendly. Kennedy was eager to avoid a comparable exchange, so he seized upon an invitation to consult with Eisenhower at the White House in December. "I was anxious to see E[isenhower]," Kennedy recorded. "Because it would serve a specific purpose in rea.s.suring the public as to the harmony of the transition. Therefore strengthening our hands."
At an initial meeting on December 6, Kennedy wanted to discuss organizational matters, "the present national security setup, organization within the White House ... [and] Pentagon organization." Kennedy also listed as topics for discussion: "Berlin-Far East (Communist China, Formosa)-Cuba, [and] De Gaulle, Adenauer and MacMillan: President Eisenhower"s opinion and evaluation of these men." Above all, Kennedy wanted "to avoid direct involvement in action taken by the outgoing Administration." Yet despite his reluctance to enter into policy discussions, he prepared for the meeting by reading extensively on seven foreign policy issues Ike had suggested they review: "NATO Nuclear Sharing, Laos, The Congo, Algeria, Disarmament [and] Nuclear test suspension negotiations, Cuba and Latin America, U.S. balance of payments and the gold outflow." Only one domestic topic made Eisenhower"s list: "The need for a balanced budget."
The meeting