The Kennedy Half-Century (10 page)

In October 1957, JFK published an article in
Foreign Affairs
in which he accused the Eisenhower administration of diplomatic obtuseness. “To an observer in the opposition party there appear two central weaknesses in our current foreign policy,” the senator argued. “First, a failure to appreciate how the forces of nationalism are rewriting the geopolitical map of the world—especially in North Africa, southeastern Europe and the Middle East; and second, a lack of decision and conviction in our leadership, which has recoiled from clearly informing both our people and Congress, which seeks too often to substitute slogans for solutions, which at times has even taken pride in the timidity of its ideas.” Kennedy wanted the United States to provide more economic support for struggling countries (even Communist ones) and embrace a more flexible foreign policy. He accused Secretary of State Dulles of falling prey to a dangerous teleological rigidity, not unlike the kind that had convinced the Soviets of capitalism’s imminent demise. Instead, the United States should show greater diplomatic flexibility by accepting “partial gains in order to undercut slowly the foundations of the Soviet order.” Another part of the solution, argued Kennedy, lay in championing the nationalistic aspirations of people living in the world’s newest nations. He again referenced the Algerian crisis, which he claimed had spilled “over into the rest of free Africa,” and undermined the strength of NATO and the United Nations.
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Kennedy’s opinions endeared him to “Third Word nationalists” and Frenchmen who were opposed to the war in Algeria. They also convinced some American political elites that he had a keen understanding of international affairs. Meanwhile, “a major publicity blitz accompanied Kennedy’s heightened Senate activity. Joe Kennedy generated much of it, quietly using … friends such as
[Time
publisher Henry] Luce and
[New York Times
reporter Arthur] Krock.” Kennedy staffers cranked out a steady stream of articles under their boss’s byline for
Look, Life, McCall’s
, and other popular periodicals. In October 1957, ABC television broadcast
Navy Log
, the story of JFK’s PT-109 adventures, with the lead role played by actor John Baer.
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Kennedy, who had served as a consultant during production, admitted that he was impressed by the show’s special effects, but also “slightly embarrassed” by its campy dialogue. In December 1957, JFK made the cover of
Time
. The accompanying article described him as the Democratic Party’s “Man Out Front” who was leaving “panting politicians and swooning women across a large spread of the U.S.” in his “unabashed run” for the nomination.
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Kennedy was careful to cultivate ties with the various factions inside the Democratic Party—not easy given the uneasy marriage between Northern
liberals and Southern conservatives that all gathered under the same party label. The civil rights issue in particular proved to be a bed of nails. On September 23, 1957, an angry mob harassed nine black students as they tried to enter Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas. President Eisenhower responded by federalizing the Arkansas National Guard and deploying 1,000 paratroopers to quell the unrest. Prior to the incident, Kennedy had promised Congressman Frank Smith that he would address a group of Young Democrats in Jackson, Mississippi, but now it seemed a risky move. Yet Kennedy was determined to keep his promise to Smith even though he couldn’t predict the outcome. White Mississippians were angry over the civil rights issue and outside interference in what they perceived as a strictly local matter, and Kennedy represented to them the Northern politicians pushing “too much change.” Sensing an opportunity, Mississippi’s Republican state chairman asked Kennedy to clarify his position on segregation. “I have no hesitancy in telling him … the same thing I have said in my own city of Boston,” Kennedy replied, “that I have accepted the Supreme Court’s decision on desegregation as the law of the land. I know we do not all agree on that issue—but I think most of us do agree on the necessity to uphold law and order in every part of the land. I now invite [the] Republican chairman … to tell us his views on President Eisenhower and Mr. Nixon.” The crowd of fifteen hundred clapped and whistled. Carroll Kilpatrick, a reporter for the
Washington Post
, interpreted the applause as a sign of respect rather than full agreement. What is more likely is that the crowd was responding to Kennedy’s dig at the administration. After all, Republicans were the ones sending troops into Arkansas, not Democrats, and most white Southerners at the time were still loyal members of the party of Andrew Jackson. Still, as this episode demonstrates, Kennedy’s reputation as a leading civil rights supporter has been exaggerated. At least until his final months, JFK viewed civil rights as a distraction—a powder keg that could blow a hole in his political career. Although reckless in his private life, Kennedy usually took a cautious, pragmatic approach to politics and governing.
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The senator’s public statements on organized crime were much more direct. During a speech in Gainesville, Florida, on October 20, 1957, he lambasted lawyers who accepted jobs from corrupt union bosses. JFK talked about his work on the McClellan committee and the ugly cases of professional misconduct that it had uncovered. Both he and Bobby were becoming known as honest reformers. In an earlier era, Theodore Roosevelt and Robert La Follette had battled corruption and corporate malfeasance; now two great-grandsons of Irish immigrants were following in the footsteps of Protestant patricians. The torch of American progressivism had been passed to a new generation. Of course, Kennedy’s critics accused him of playing politics with
the McClellan hearings. Why was a Republican such as Teamsters boss Jimmy Hoffa under investigation, they wondered, while allegedly corrupt liberals such as Walter Reuther, president of the United Auto Workers union, were exempt? JFK denied that he had a partisan agenda.
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John Kennedy also chose to identify with the battle against Communism. This was an easy decision, since any hint of being “soft on Communism” would have been a career breaker. If anything, Kennedy was more hawkish than many Republicans, at least while he was in campaign mode. His was a tough Democratic posture that left no room on the right for Republicans to claim to be the party of military might, as became the case in the 1970s and 1980s. The same month that JFK spoke in Florida, Americans learned that the Soviet Union had launched the world’s first manmade satellite, a 22-inch orb known as
Sputnik
. The ensuing public panic led to “a crash program of upgrading mathematics and science teaching” and acceleration in the U.S. space program. Kennedy capitalized on the event by claiming that America was losing the “satellite-missile race” due to Republican parsimony and ineptitude. At the same time, he joined labor leaders in denouncing the Soviet occupation of Eastern Europe. Labor, one of the Democratic Party’s most vital constituency groups, was traditionally anticommunist—reinforcement for Democratic candidates such as JFK in positioning himself as rough on the “Reds.”
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Aware that his Catholic background offended many Democratic Protestants, Kennedy worked hard to neutralize the religious issue. On November 24, 1957, he told a television audience that there was no logical reason why Catholics should be prevented from seeking the presidency. “Now, what church I go to on Sunday or what dogma of the Catholic Church I believe in is a personal matter,” he explained. “It does not involve public questions of policy or as the Constitution defines responsibilities of the president, senator, or member of the armed forces.” Several months earlier, Kennedy had told the press that he thought the American public was running ahead of the political establishment on the faith issue: “People are more interested in a man’s talent than his religious convictions.” As the campaign progressed, Kennedy could be seen pretesting the themes that would enable him to sidestep, though never fully overcome, the Catholic issue in the general election of 1960.
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By June 1957, JFK was leading the pack of Democratic presidential contenders. A Gallup poll showed that a majority of Democrats favored his candidacy over Kefauver, a stark reversal from four months earlier.
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The Kennedy campaign continued to gather steam the following year. In March 1958, the senator introduced the Kennedy-Ives Bill, which targeted corruption among union leaders. Although the bill failed, Kennedy reinforced his image as a reformer. This was also another example of his political pragmatism. He supported anticommunist unions that advocated for fair
wages but also distanced himself from the dishonesty that existed in parts of organized labor—a major reason for public distrust of unions. Further, Kennedy issued warnings about the alleged “missile gap” with the Soviet Union, which he said would place the United States in “a position of grave peril”—a charge he would often make during the 1960 presidential race.
Look, Life
, the
Saturday Evening Post, Redbook, Parade
, and other popular magazines ran favorable stories about the senator and his attractive family. In November, Massachusetts voters sent their favorite son back to the Senate with 1,362,926 votes. Kennedy’s relatively unknown Republican opponent, Vincent Celeste, garnered 488,318 votes. It was “the largest [popular-vote] margin ever” achieved by a Bay State candidate.
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Not everyone backed Jack, though. Eleanor Roosevelt continued to criticize Kennedy for ducking the McCarthy issue, and in May she told a reporter that she doubted whether a President Kennedy would be able to make decisions without the Vatican’s approval. In today’s pluralistic society, it is hard to fathom Roosevelt’s comments or understand why Kennedy’s faith mattered so much to many Americans. But at the time, both conservative and liberal Protestants believed that Catholics took their marching orders from Rome, a situation they saw as antithetical to republican self-government.
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Mrs. Roosevelt’s comments reflected a deep strain of anti-Catholicism in American life that had been present since the nineteenth century, when large numbers of Catholic immigrants first began arriving in largely Protestant eastern cities. In addition, many Democrats were still haunted by the ghost of 1928, when the Catholic New Yorker Al Smith lost the White House in a landslide to Herbert Hoover, a conservative Quaker from the Midwest.

Of course the Catholic issue wasn’t Kennedy’s only hurdle. James Reston, the influential
New York Times
columnist, raised reasonable questions about his youth and inexperience, while
Washington Star
columnist William White attributed Kennedy’s political successes to his father’s deep pockets. Kennedy fought back against these attacks with humor. At the 1958 Gridiron Dinner, which annually brings together top journalists and politicians for good-natured roasting, he addressed the rumor that his father was trying to buy the election: “I have just received the following wire from my generous daddy: ‘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.’ ”
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He went on to poke fun at his Democratic rivals: “I dreamed about 1960 the other night, and I told Stuart Symington and Lyndon Johnson about it in the cloakroom yesterday. I told them how the Lord came into my bedroom, anointed my head, and said: ‘John Kennedy, I hereby anoint you President of the United States.’ Stu Symington said: ‘That’s
strange, Jack, because I, too, had a similar dream last night, in which the Lord anointed me and declared me, Stuart Symington, President of the United States
and
outer space.’ And Lyndon Johnson said: ‘That’s very interesting, gentlemen: because I, too, had a similar dream last night—and I don’t remember anointing either one of you!’ ”
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The speech was a hit, the result of careful preparation. According to Ted Sorensen, none of Kennedy’s Senate speeches “worried him longer or more deeply.” The senator enlisted the help of a number of “experts,” including Clark Clifford, whom Kennedy referred to as “Washington’s best wisecrack artist.”
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In January 1959, Stephen Smith, Kennedy’s brother-in-law, quietly opened the “first presidential headquarters of the Kennedy campaign” in Washington. Three months later, JFK met with his team in Palm Beach to discuss critical details. Which primaries should they enter? Who were the key decision makers in the various state delegations? Where and when should the candidate speak? Knowing that he had his work cut out for him, Kennedy stayed on the road and out of the Senate for much of the year giving “speeches, speeches, and more speeches.” “In October and November, he spent four days in Indiana, one day each in West Virginia, New York, and Nebraska, two days in Louisiana, made a stopover in Milwaukee on the way to Oregon, flew back to New York, followed by three- and four-day stays in Illinois, California, and Oregon, and briefer visits to Oklahoma, Delaware, Kansas, and Colorado. He addressed audiences of every size on street corners, at airports, on fairgrounds, and in theaters, armories, high schools, state capitols, restaurants, gambling casinos, hotels, and pool, union, lodge, and convention halls. The groups he addressed were as varied as the venues—farmers, labor unions, chambers of commerce, bar associations, ethnic societies, state legislatures, college and university students and faculties, and civic organizations.”

As candidates always do, Kennedy made sure that he ingratiated himself with each Democratic voting bloc. He told the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association, popular with farmers, that “REA rates must remain low—more generating capacity must be developed” and “the vast resources of nuclear energy must be tapped.” In Indianapolis, he told a racially diverse audience that there were “few educational drives more important or of more vital significance than that of the United Negro College Fund.” At the National Civil Liberties Clearing House Annual Conference, he recited the preamble to the Declaration of Independence. In August he told a roomful of AFL-CIO members to watch out for the “Republican-Southern Democratic coalition in the House of Representatives.” “I come to you today as a friend of labor,” he gushed. “I have never concealed or apologized for my friendship with labor, and I do not intend to start now.”
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