The Kennedy Half-Century (13 page)

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This was all too typical of the chances taken at the time not just by candidates for president, but by presidents themselves. Airtight security was almost never present, and a fatalistic, Pollyanna-like mantra of “nothing bad will happen” was the dominant philosophy of the age.

3
Victory Without a Mandate

With the convention safely behind him, Kennedy turned to the daunting task of convincing the American people to elect him their thirty-fifth president. Many needed no persuasion, and were already offering to help with the campaign. Young people in particular were attracted to Kennedy’s youth and vigor. “I am a Chicago student, 16 years old,” began a letter from one young man, “I may be too young to vote but I am not too young to be interested in politics. I live in the 45th ward 31st precinct and would do almost any work at home or in my precinct.” Kennedy’s speeches had caused him to think seriously about his country’s future. “In days like these it is indeed (if I may quote) ‘A time for greatness.’ In the upcoming years the fate of all America … will hang more precariously than ever in our history on whoever is the upcoming president. For this position Mr. Kennedy is not a need but a
must.”
A group of teenaged girls asked for permission to “start a Kennedy for President Club” in their hometown. They received the Kennedy blessing along with twenty-five JFK buttons. Another group of teenagers sent in a cheer they’d written for Jack: “Hurray for Kennedy! One, two, three, four, who are you going to vote for? Kennedy, that’s who!”
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Scores of other songs, shouts, and slogan ideas poured into Kennedy’s campaign offices during this period. A. V. Gallagher suggested “I’ll Back Jack” or “K and J All the Way.” Miss Joanne Hardman penned new lyrics to the
Notre Dame Victory March:
“Vote, vote for John Kennedy … He’ll do the most for you and for me.” Susan Jacobs, Janis Sherwin, and Terri Dee changed the title of “Dearie,” a golden oldie that had once been a mainstay for Guy Lombardo, to “Kennedy.”
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Professional singers got in on the act as well. Frank Sinatra remade his hit song, “High Hopes,” with new lyrics from the tune’s originator, Sammy Cahn: “Everyone wants to back Jack, Jack is on the right track, ‘Cause he’s got high hopes, He’s got high hopes, Nineteen Sixty’s the year for his high hopes!” It was played frequently on the campaign trail at rallies, and became almost as ubiquitous in jukeboxes as the original.
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Nor were these outpourings of affection limited to young people and
celebrities. Senior citizens responded favorably to Senator Kennedy’s call for a national health insurance program for the aged. Ted Ruhig appreciated JFK’s “forthright” and compassionate position on the issue, which he contrasted against “the pauper’s oath approach of Mr. Nixon.” Seventy-three-year-old Lewis Lincoln, a distant relative of the nation’s sixteenth president, was equally direct. He called on seniors to ignore past party affiliations and vote Democratic. Otherwise, Lincoln warned, the “oldsters” wouldn’t “get anything worth a whoop in better Social Security and medical care.”
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The Kennedy campaign team developed a sophisticated strategy focused on the nine states that could deliver the most electoral votes (Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Illinois, California, and Texas). In New York the team made an end run around the regular Democratic organizations by establishing “Citizens for Kennedy.” This new group allowed voters to back Jack without getting entangled in the New York Democratic Party’s messy internecine war. JFK and Bobby also made sure that the Democratic National Committee worked hand in hand with the Kennedy campaign, something that had not always happened in previous presidential contests.
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Aware that new voters could determine the outcome of the election, Democratic leaders held eleven regional conferences on registering voters over an eight-day period. “Of the 107,000,000 Americans old enough to vote in 1960, approximately 40,000,000, it was estimated, had not bothered to register.” Kennedy’s campaign managers guessed that the majority of these eligible voters leaned left. Congressman Frank “Topper” Thompson (D-NJ), a colorful and vocal JFK backer from Trenton, was asked to spearhead the voter registration drive. Thompson’s strategy bore fruit. On election day, the turnout exceeded the presidential election of 1956 by nearly seven million votes, although much of the increase may have been due to the perceived closeness of the 1960 contest.
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Lyndon Johnson was put in charge of JFK’s strategy in the South. The Texas senator went on a whistle-stop train tour of Dixie aboard the
LBJ Special
. At each stop he twisted arms and warned Southerners not to stray from the party of their forebears. Kennedy made only a handful of speeches in areas of the South believed friendlier to a Yankee candidacy.
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A Gallup poll taken immediately after the political conventions showed Kennedy trailing fellow Irish American Nixon by six percentage points. JFK knew that his Catholic background was one reason he was behind, especially after Protestant leader Norman Vincent Peale and a group of conservative ministers called the Citizens for Religious Freedom convened at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington to discuss the “religious issue.” Protestants were not the only voters concerned about JFK’s religion. In September 1960,
Edward Bernays, a prominent member of New York’s Jewish community, wrote to JFK campaign aide John Martin about the reservations of his fellow Jews: “I know that many Americans of Jewish background who might otherwise have voted the Democratic ticket are concerned about Kennedy’s candidacy because he is a Catholic, and that they are intending to stay away from the polls and vote for no presidential candidate.” Martin conceded the point. “I have just returned from campaigning,” he wrote. “Everything I heard in New York—and in parts of Los Angeles—confirmed what you say.”
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Kennedy fought back against the Peale group with withering witticisms. “We had an interesting convention at Los Angeles and we ended with a strong Democratic platform which we called ‘The Rights of Man,’ ” he told a supportive crowd in New York. “The Republican platform has also been presented. I do not know its title, but it has been referred to as ‘The Power of Positive Thinking’ ” (the title of Peale’s popular self-help book). Kennedy’s campaign workers also did their best to defend their candidate’s religion. When a Baptist minister in Illinois was caught mailing anti-Catholic literature to voters, the Springfield office of “Citizens for Kennedy-Johnson” published the offending clergyman’s name and address. Kennedy’s official “Pennsylvania Memo” in October 1960 contained a number of sober warnings about the faith issue. “Governor [David] Lawrence strongly advises avoiding religion,” wrote Martin. “Lawrence thinks we are OK in Philly and Pittsburgh—That Religious Feeling is Hurting Us in the Rural Areas—And So We Are Going to Whistle-stop Tomorrow to Show Them We Are Nice Guys Without Horns.” John Martin’s other memos to JFK made frequent mention of the religious issue: “Jersey City—Briefing Sheet. Population 300,000. Hudson County. Heavily Democratic. Heavily Catholic. Local issue: Irrelevant (except Catholic).” He described Indiana as a pro-southern conservative backwater that “would like nothing better than to return to the 19
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century … Many of its people are still anti-Catholic, pro–[Joseph] McCarthy, isolationist as to foreign policy … We are getting hurt badly by a strong and organized anti-Catholic campaign that feeds on the KKK hangover.” Martin advised his boss to make only one passing reference to his religion during their stay in the Hoosier State—the “right of everyone to a job regardless of race or religious faith.” Although confident that Michigan would prove friendlier, Martin warned that the campaign would be stopping in “some Dutch anti-Catholic Lutheran territory.” The number one problem in California, he insisted, would be “anti-Catholic feeling in the valley, where Bible belt type farmers are numerous.”
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By September Kennedy decided that he should try to reduce the impact of the religious issue by going into the lion’s den. He accepted an invitation to speak at the Greater Houston Ministerial Association. The meeting had been arranged by the Reverend Herbert Meza, the group’s program chairman
and an associate pastor at Bellaire Presbyterian Church. Meza did not realize he was making history when he invited Kennedy to speak. His main motivation was simply to rekindle interest in the ministerial association. Meza also invited Nixon, but the vice president, not wanting to involve himself directly in his opponent’s religious problem, politely declined. Lyndon Johnson asked if he could be introduced alongside Kennedy, but Meza—worried that the event had already become too political—rejected Johnson’s request. LBJ was furious. “No damn little preacher is going to tell me what to do in Texas,” he told an aide. When Johnson continued to press the issue, Meza threatened to step aside and make LBJ moderate the meeting, effectively ruining the occasion’s potential impact as a “nonpolitical” forum. LBJ desisted and watched the speech on TV instead. But he never forgot or forgave Meza for snubbing him. Three full years later, when they met again in Texas, then-president Johnson refused to shake Meza’s hand.
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Actually, LBJ should have been grateful; he was lucky he had not caused the forum to be canceled or downgraded. This heavily covered event was critical in helping Kennedy overcome, barely, the religious prejudice that might have denied both JFK and Johnson their turns at the White House.

Sorensen recalled working on JFK’s Houston speech: “My chief source of material was Kennedy’s own previous statements on religion to the ASNE [American Society of News Editors], to the convention, to press conferences and to
Look
magazine.” Sorensen and Kennedy realized that the Houston speech could determine the outcome of the election. While drafting the speech, Sorensen asked another Kennedy aide, Milton Gwirtzman, to find out how many Roman Catholics had died at the Alamo. When Gwirtzman could only come up with a list of names that sounded Catholic, Sorensen powerfully improvised: “… side by side with Bowie and Crockett died McCafferty and Bailey and Carey, but no one knows whether they were Catholics or not. For there was no religious test at the Alamo.”
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The Unitarian Sorensen also asked a Catholic clergyman named John Courtney Murray for advice at the eleventh hour. Murray cannot remember what, if any, changes he may have suggested. “I told Sorensen at the time that it was unfair to ask me for an opinion just on hearing the speech on the phone, [and] he was standing by the side of a plane just about to take off for Houston,” Murray later remarked. “My impression is that Sorensen wrote the speech himself.”
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On September 12, 1960, Kennedy walked toward the podium in the ballroom of the Rice Hotel. He was visibly tense. Meza noticed that the senator’s hands were shaking. Three hundred skeptical Protestant ministers glared at him. He knew that this speech could make or break his campaign. His nervousness fell away when he began speaking, and he ended up delivering a memorable plea for religious tolerance:

I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute—where no Catholic prelate would tell the president (should he be Catholic) how to act, and no Protestant minister would tell his parishioners for whom to vote—where no church or church school is granted any public funds or political preference … an America that is officially neither Catholic, Protestant nor Jewish—where no public official either requests or accepts instructions on public policy from … any … ecclesiastical source … where there is no Catholic vote, no anti-Catholic vote, no bloc voting of any kind … and where religious liberty is so indivisible that an act against one church is treated as an act against all.

Kennedy’s next sentences made the newspapers the next morning, and the history books in the years that followed:

I am not the Catholic candidate for president, 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.
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After the speech, Kennedy patiently fielded questions from audience members who remained unconvinced. But he knew that he had already won the public relations battle. Several ministers conceded as much by coming forward to shake the candidate’s hand once the speech had concluded. U.S. House Speaker Sam Rayburn, who had been watching the speech on TV, said, “By God, look at him—and listen to him! He’s eating them blood raw. This young feller will be a great president!”
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In recent years, some conservative politicians, including Catholics, have criticized JFK for delivering a speech that they say “secularized” the presidency. Rick Santorum, a former Republican U.S. senator from Pennsylvania who unsuccessfully sought the 2012 GOP presidential nomination, said the Houston speech, once he read it many years later, made him “want to vomit.” The Catholic Santorum argued that Kennedy created “a purely secular public square” in Houston that has since led to an increase in religious bigotry and scurrilous attacks on people of faith. Former Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin, a nondenominational Christian, agreed. She found JFK’s speech “defensive … in tone and content” and believes that it initiated an “unequivocal divorce” between religion and public service. Both politicians assert that JFK should have emphasized his faith.