The Kennedy Half-Century (12 page)

The same month, the Soviets downed an American U-2 spy plane, which led to the cancellation of a summit meeting between Eisenhower and Khrushchev. The Cold War was getting chillier, and the public thought that the next president might need to save the world from annihilation. Kennedy
blasted the Eisenhower administration for lying about the U-2 program and authorizing reconnaissance flights in the weeks leading up to the summit. Lyndon Johnson and Harry Truman, united in their desire to stop JFK, told voters that the crisis revealed the need for a mature commander in chief who had plenty of experience in international diplomacy.
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But it was too late to stop the Kennedy machine, which was feared and revered in and out of the Democratic Party. By the summer of 1960, most party insiders believed the Kennedy nomination was a fait accompli. JFK arrived in Los Angeles for the Democratic Convention brimming with confidence. He had already chosen his Washington headquarters for the general election and determined his strategy for the fall. His challengers were desperate to stop his nomination. Johnson supporters told the press that Kennedy had Addison’s disease and depended on cortisone treatments to stay alive. Robert Kennedy denied the charge, saying that Jack “does not now nor has he ever had an ailment described classically as Addison’s disease.” Bobby was lying, as were Drs. Eugene Cohen and Janet Travell when they published a report in June describing JFK’s health as “excellent” and his “vitality, endurance and resistance to infection” as “above average.” In reality, Kennedy had nagging health problems, including ulcers, colitis, and severe back pain as well as Addison’s disease. Travell would later discover that Kennedy’s left leg was three quarters of an inch shorter than his right leg, a defect that had worsened his back pain for years and would force him to wear special shoes during his presidency.
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John Connally, one of LBJ’s strongest supporters and a fellow Texan, said that he would be delighted “to submit Senator Johnson’s medical record, since his recovery from a 1955 heart attack, and have it compared with that of Senator Kennedy and any other contenders.” The Kennedy campaign refused to take the bait and the controversy was soon lost in the excitement of the convention.
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Joseph Kennedy was also trying to shield his son’s reputation in another way. He wanted to ensure that one of the Kennedy family’s darkest secrets remained hidden. He told the press that he had ordered a lobotomy for JFK’s sister Rosemary in the 1940s because she was mentally retarded and would never lead a fulfilling life. Yet Rosemary suffered from mental illness rather than mental retardation and functioned at a decent intellectual level before the lobotomy went “horribly wrong” and turned her into a “zombie.” Regrettably, mentally ill individuals were often severely stigmatized in the mid-twentieth century, and Joe Kennedy wanted no gossip about genetic “insanity” running in Jack’s family.
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JFK arrived in Los Angeles with 600 delegate votes, 161 short of what he needed to secure the nomination. Although confident of victory, Kennedy refused to take anything for granted. He knew that Senator Stuart Symington controlled between 100 and 150 delegates, Adlai Stevenson had somewhere
around 50, and the Kansas and Iowa delegations had pledged their 52 votes to their favorite-son candidates, Governor George Docking and Governor Hershel Loveless. Kennedy also understood that Lyndon Johnson posed the greatest threat to his nomination; even though the Texas senator had waited until the last minute to declare his candidacy—less than a week before the convention—LBJ had already lined up close to 500 votes. Five states were still up for grabs: Pennsylvania, California, New Jersey, Illinois, and Minnesota.
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On Monday, July 11, the opening day of the convention, JFK zipped between meetings in a white Cadillac that had a rare car telephone. At each stop, he glad-handed delegates and fielded questions from journalists. Meanwhile, at the Los Angeles Sports Arena, delegates had just settled in for a round of humdrum party speeches when a huge commotion erupted outside—hundreds of men, women, and children were marching back and forth in front of the arena, waving signs and shouting “We want Stevenson! We want Stevenson!” The demonstration encouraged the California delegation—which previously had been leaning toward JFK—to split its vote the next day between Kennedy and Stevenson. At the same time, Johnson kept up the pressure on the Kennedy camp, secretly encouraging his supporters to make hay out of the family’s religion and accusing Joseph P. Kennedy, Sr., of harboring Nazi sympathies. Johnson also challenged the young senator to a debate in the week ahead of the convention before their home Texas and Massachusetts delegations. Kennedy accepted, and confident of his forthcoming convention majority, all but ignored the brickbats Johnson hurled at him. Kennedy even said he was “strongly in support” of Johnson … for Senate majority leader.
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Unknown to Johnson or almost anyone else, Kennedy was seriously considering the Texan for the vice presidential nomination. On the opening day of the convention, in a highly unusual intervention by journalists, the newspaper columnist Joseph Alsop and Philip Graham, publisher of the
Washington Post
, stopped by Kennedy’s suite to urge him to select Johnson as his running mate. Having talked to friends of Johnson, they assured JFK that Johnson would accept the nomination if it were offered to him. Kennedy tipped his hand a bit when he readily agreed with their arguments.
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On Wednesday, the excitement of the convention reached a fever pitch when Senator Eugene McCarthy of Minnesota put Adlai Stevenson’s name into nomination. “Do not reject this man who has made us all proud to be called Democrats,” proclaimed McCarthy, his right fist clenched. “Do not, I say to you, do not leave this prophet without honor in his own party.” Stevenson’s supporters roared their approval and marched through the hall singing, clapping, and chanting. The sudden outburst irked Governor LeRoy Collins of Florida, chairman of the convention, who made a futile attempt to restore order. “Ladies and gentlemen, do you want this convention to be associated
with hoodlumism? That is exactly what you are turning this demonstration into. Now will you please take your seats? Stop the music …. Now nobody can be nominated president of the United States if we are going to conduct ourselves like a bunch of hoodlums.” Adlai’s boosters booed. Watching the scene from the comfort of a posh Beverly Hills estate, JFK told his father not to worry because “Stevenson has everything but delegates.” The Kennedy high command had made a science of delegate counting and was supremely confident. A bit later, Kennedy won the nomination on the first ballot with the support of 763 delegates—two more votes than he needed.
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The decision on the running mate was next. Kennedy’s short list included Symington, Johnson, Humphrey, Minnesota governor Orville Freeman, and Senator Henry “Scoop” Jackson of Washington State. Ted Sorensen and many party stalwarts favored Johnson. Kennedy knew that having LBJ on the ticket would help him greatly in the South and that, if he were elected, Johnson’s extraordinary legislative skills might assist him in enacting his program. The possibility of taking the second spot was broached with LBJ, and sure enough, he was receptive.

Bill Moyers was with Johnson the day JFK offered him the vice presidency, sleeping in the bathroom of the Johnsons’ hotel suite when he heard the phone ring. “I thought I would get to the phone first in the hotel room,” he recalls, “but Lady Bird picked it up. And I heard her as I came in the door saying ‘Lyndon, it’s Jack … Senator Kennedy.’ LBJ woke up, listened to the voice, hung up and said, ‘He wants to come see me.’ And Lady Bird said, ‘I hope you won’t do it.’ ” Moyers opened the door for Kennedy when he arrived a short time later, but he retreated to his assigned bathroom while the two politicians talked. Although he could not hear anything that was said, Moyers is convinced that JFK knew exactly what he was doing and had no qualms about choosing Johnson as a running mate. “When [Kennedy] left that room, I was sure that he had communicated to Johnson that he really wanted him to run, and that LBJ was going to do it.”
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Johnson thought his nomination was a done deal as word spread. Then JFK had second thoughts the very same day: What if his choice, a conservative Southerner, caused a split in the party? RFK and close aides Kenny O’Donnell and Ralph Dungan protested the possible choice. In order to line up liberal votes, they had promised to keep LBJ off the ticket. JFK also got an earful from labor leaders, who were angry with Johnson for supporting the Landrum-Griffin Act, a law they viewed as harmful to unions.

Kennedy dispatched Bobby to warn Johnson about the brewing revolt inside the party. Bobby offered Johnson the party chairmanship as an alternative, but LBJ, blinded by tears, steadfastly refused. He wanted the vice presidency; Johnson was willing to give up real power in the Senate in order to “get in line” for the presidency. “Well, then that’s fine,” replied an unhappy Bobby. “He wants you to be vice president if you want to be vice president”—not exactly the enthusiastic embrace a prospective ticket mate usually gets. Johnson never forgave Bobby for trying to drop him, and this episode was apparently the beginning of their long mutual loathing.
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Whatever the internal turmoil behind Johnson’s selection as the vice presidential nominee, it turned out to be one key to a close victory in the fall. A Northern Yankee, Kennedy could not have been elected without Southern electoral votes that Johnson added in Texas and probably other closely contested states below the Mason-Dixon Line. The implications of JFK’s decision would reverberate well beyond the election, of course. American history would have taken a different path, for good or ill, if one of the other possibilities had joined the ticket. Either Richard Nixon would have become president eight years before he actually did, or a Democratic president very unlike LBJ would have succeeded an assassinated Kennedy (assuming the murder would still have occurred). This alternate universe is fascinating to contemplate but essentially unknowable.

The world we do know proceeded from Johnson’s selection to JFK’s acceptance speech at the convention. At Bobby Kennedy’s suggestion, the Los Angeles Coliseum was chosen as the site of the address instead of the convention hall, since the one-hundred-thousand-seat stadium could hold more people and would inject additional excitement into the closing hours. RFK was sold on the idea by a twenty-nine-year-old Los Angeles councilwoman, Rosalind Wyman, who had been instrumental in bringing the Brooklyn Dodgers to Los Angeles. When the younger Kennedy expressed concerns about filling the stadium, Wyman suggested that they close off half the structure, and Bobby agreed. As campaign manager, RFK looked for ways to enhance his
brother’s image, and the coliseum speech was novel. What Bobby did not consider were the security implications. By selecting an open-air facility in front of thousands of unscreened people, Senator Kennedy would be vulnerable to attack by anyone who secured a ticket. The campaign made JFK even more vulnerable by having the candidate ride through the stadium in an open black convertible.
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Fortunately, the address proceeded without incident. JFK impressed the stadium crowd as well as a much larger audience watching on TV with a dynamic presentation that provided the label for his eventual administration, the New Frontier. “For the problems are not all solved and the battles are not all won—and we stand today on the edge of a New Frontier—the frontier of the 1960s—a frontier of unknown opportunities and perils—a frontier of unfulfilled hopes and threats. Woodrow Wilson’s New Freedom promised our nation a new political and economic framework. Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal promised security and succor to those in need. But the New Frontier of which I speak is not a set of promises—it is a set of challenges. It sums up not what I intend to
offer
the American people, but what I intend to
ask
of them. It appeals to their pride, not to their pocketbook—it holds out the promise of more sacrifice instead of more security.”
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A young Nancy Pelosi, the future Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, was in the audience with her parents. Her father, a Kennedy Democrat and former mayor of Baltimore, had supported JFK early on. When Kennedy finished speaking, Nancy asked her father if they could go to “one of those [Los Angeles] restaurants that you read about in the paper.” He took her to a ritzy eatery called Romanov’s. “So we go in,” she recalls, “and my father said, ‘Boy! Did you find the most expensive restaurant in L.A.?” Just then, the door opened and Senator Kennedy waltzed in, followed by a huge entourage. “And he came right over,” Pelosi says. “He knew how to play other politicians. He made it seem as if he had come to that restaurant to see my father. And after that, my father had no more concerns about the prices on the menu. He said, ‘How did you find this place?,’ ‘This is such a great idea,’ and ‘I’m so glad we came here.’ ”
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^c
This invented anecdote received renewed attention after Kennedy’s 1960 squeaker victory.

^d
It was wishful thinking, of course. Right through to election day, Americans weren’t sure if they were ready for a Catholic president.

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Incidentally, Moyers wrote me that his unusual location was a product of Johnson’s organization of his suite: “LBJ had asked me to move in for the duration of the convention; my cot was in that bathroom, along with my clothes bag, my toiletries, and some reading material; when I slept, I slept there—usually a couple of hours at night. LBJ didn’t ‘order’ me to stay in the bathroom so that I could eavesdrop on [John or Bobby] Kennedy; I retreated to it out of protocol anytime he wanted a private conversation with a visitor, as he most certainly did when first Jack Kennedy and then Bobby came to see him. It would have been easy in either case for me to eavesdrop, but I didn’t do so; I shut the door and because of the L-shaped configuration of the suite—the bathroom was in the foyer and LBJ and the guests were well around a corner and across on the far side of the living room—I couldn’t hear the conversations. There have been many moments since when I regretted not eavesdropping, but I didn’t, damn it, and had to rely instead on LBJ’s debriefing of Lady Bird and me after each visitor had departed.” Letter from Bill Moyers, May 29, 2012.