The Kennedy Half-Century (16 page)

From the vantage point of 2013, it is clear that some Kennedy supporters in Illinois and Texas stole votes. What we will never know is whether these votes would have made the difference in the election. Edmund F. Kallina, a professor of history at the University of Central Florida who researched the matter, acknowledges that “the counting of paper ballots in Chicago” was “unbelievably sloppy and inaccurate.” But he also argues that partial recounts conducted in 1960 and 1961 demonstrate that fraudulent votes did not determine the outcome. “While there will never be a completely satisfactory account of the election in Illinois,” Kallina argues, “Republican charges that the election was stolen must be presently regarded as unproven.”
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Moreover, accusations of fraud were not enough to diminish the magnitude of the moment. On November 8, 1960, the American people—just enough of them—decided to give a forty-three-year-old Catholic the leadership of the free world. JFK’s presidential résumé was thin by historical standards, and he was younger than a large majority of governors, senators, and representatives—not to mention all White House predecessors save Theodore Roosevelt. Kennedy was only the second person ever elected directly from the Senate to the White House.
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People at home and around the world marveled at the election’s astounding result. Journalist Joseph Alsop captured the mood of many Democrats when he wrote to Ted Sorensen, “No other choice that our people have had to make in my time has ever seemed to me so absolutely decisive. When you consider all the factors, it is a miracle that the right choice was made, even by the narrow margin.”
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And whether or not one believes John F. Kennedy was the right choice, it remains astonishing that the nation was willing to take such a leap into the unknown, to risk so much on a relatively untested politician.

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Warren G. Harding was the first and Barack Obama would be the third; in general, Americans prefer presidents who have executive rather than legislative experience.

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The Torch Is Passed

It was a cross between a coronation and a Hollywood extravaganza. On the eve of the 1961 inauguration, singer Frank Sinatra and actor Peter Lawford, the president-elect’s brother-in-law and a member of Sinatra’s “Rat Pack,” hosted a star-studded black-tie event at the Washington, D.C., Armory. Ticket holders trudged through eight inches of snow to witness the spectacle. Leonard Bernstein opened the evening with an original piece, “A Fanfare for Inauguration,” followed by a rousing rendition of John Philip Sousa’s “The Stars and Stripes Forever.” Next, the entire cast, assisted by a number of college glee clubs, came out on stage and sang a schmaltzy song entitled “Walkin’ Down to Washington.”

I’m walkin’ down to Washington to shake hands with President Kennedy Walkin’ down to Washington, like we used to do

I’m walkin’ down to Washington to shake hands with Lyndon Johnson Walkin’ down to Washington, like we used to do
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When they had finished singing, the nation’s man of the hour triumphantly entered the arena, smiling and waving, his entourage in tow. Flashbulbs popped and rapt well-wishers stretched out their hands. Bernstein’s band struck up “Anchors Aweigh,” a tribute to John Kennedy’s days as a PT boat commander. From the presidential box, he listened to Mahalia Jackson sing “The Star-Spangled Banner” and then laughed and clapped as Bette Davis, Sidney Poitier, Laurence Olivier, Ella Fitzgerald, Gene Kelly, Alan King, Tony Curtis, Nat King Cole, Jimmy Durante, and Milton Berle gave performances.
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The celebrations continued the next day, warming the biting chill of winter in Washington. Congressmen, foreign dignitaries, artists, writers, academics, and VIPs from all fifty states congregated on the east steps of the Capitol to hear his inaugural address, which soared through the cold January air like an eagle riding a thermal updraft: “Let the word go forth from this time and place, to friend and foe alike, that the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans—born in this century, tempered by war, disciplined
by a hard and bitter peace, proud of our ancient heritage—and unwilling to witness or permit the slow undoing of those human rights to which this nation has always been committed, and to which we are committed today at home and around the world.” The American people, declared the president, would “pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, to assure the survival and the success of liberty.” But they could only do so by serving their fellow citizens rather than their own parochial interests: “And so, my fellow Americans: Ask not what your country can do for you—ask what you can do for your country.”
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This line became an instant classic; it may be the sentence most associated with John F. Kennedy even today.

Far more memorable than most inaugural addresses, Kennedy’s speech resonated with Americans, especially young people who were searching for purpose in their lives. Donna Shalala, the future secretary of Health and Human Services in the Clinton administration and president of the University of Miami, remembers watching it on a black-and-white TV in the lounge of her college dormitory. “Before I heard the speech I was thinking of being a journalist, a war correspondent as a matter of fact,” Shalala says. Instead, she joined the Peace Corps before launching a successful career in education and public service. Gonzalo Barrientos was also in college when Kennedy took the oath. The president’s inaugural address convinced him to focus on sociology, economics, and government instead of business. In 1974, Barrientos “became one of the first Mexican Americans elected to the Texas state legislature,” where he remained for thirty-one years.
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Future House Speaker Nancy Pelosi attended the inauguration and remembers feeling overwhelmed when she heard the new president’s speech. “It was so clear and it was so inspiring and so uplifting,” she says. “His words were … I want to say, otherworldly. He was so enhanced as a person. Here was this lovely, young, brilliant, talented, politically astute person who was now the president of the United States. He was speaking for the ages. It was spectacular.”
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Kennedy’s inaugural address contains some of the most familiar words in our political lexicon: “Ask not …” “Let us never negotiate out of fear, but let us never fear to negotiate.” “The torch has been passed to a new generation …” “So let us begin anew.” Fifty years later, people are still talking and writing about it; young people who see it for the first time are still inspired. On January 20, 2011, top congressional leaders and White House officials gathered in the grand rotunda of the U.S. Capitol to hear it read aloud once more.
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Few know how much work went into the address. According to Ted Sorensen, JFK’s primary wordsmith, no Kennedy speech had ever undergone so many drafts. “Each paragraph was reworded, reworked and reduced,” Sorensen recalled. In 2011 Sorensen’s former secretary, Gloria Sitrin, found one of those drafts—the earliest known copy, in fact—sitting in a dusty box in her
garage. Thanks to her discovery, we are now aware of the existence of some awkward lines, including “our strength, like our dream, must be a seamless web” and “a Walpurgis Night dance of hideous destruction and death.” Fortunately, they never made it into the final draft. More telling is a reference to racial discrimination that was deleted: “Our nation’s most precious resource, our youth, are developed according to their race or funds, instead of their own capability.” Kennedy feared the controversy this reference to civil rights might spark; his failure to embrace it in his life’s most memorable speech is understandable but not admirable. Two of his advisers, Louis Martin and Harris Wofford, had to fight hard just to get Kennedy to add “at home” to the sentence on human rights—a small, opaque reference to the ongoing struggle for civil rights.
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After finishing the inaugural ceremonies, JFK did what new presidents always do: watch scores of floats and bands pass by from his reviewing stand near the White House. A half million people lined the route. That night, he attended a slew of official balls and galas, sneaking in brief sexual encounters at some places. One of his mistresses, a twenty-eight-year-old actress named Angie Dickinson, described sex with the president as “the most memorable fifteen seconds of my life.” Later on, after the official schedule had been completed and Jackie had gone to bed, he stopped by the columnist Joseph Alsop’s house for a nightcap. Alsop, who had been heating up leftover terrapin for “thirteen or fourteen people” when he heard the doorbell ring, was surprised to see the president of the United States, “standing there in the bright light with the snow behind” him. Alsop’s guests giggled nervously as Kennedy made jokes about their host’s taste in hors d’oeuvres. One young woman in attendance easily surrendered to Kennedy’s advances. She wept after he left, “fearful that her relationship with the president was finished forever.” The amazing part of this story is that JFK felt no inhibition about sowing wild oats in the home of a leading member of the journalistic establishment, and Alsop never reported a word of it.
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It was a fitting start of high points and low ones to a presidency that brought with it a welcome sense of style, humor, and haute couture, but also swinging-sixties titillation (or debauchery, depending on your point of view).
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With the press turning two blind eyes, JFK’s seemingly insatiable sexual desires led to brazen recklessness and predation—the unpleasant underbelly of a president who proclaimed high standards for others. Still, over the course of three years, the Kennedys managed to transform the sleepy village of Washington into a vibrant intellectual and cultural center, and the New Frontier had many attractive sides. JFK recruited “the best and the brightest” to government while Jackie worked tirelessly to give the American people a White House they could be proud of—and the First Lady was a huge part of the
Kennedy administration’s public appeal. The generation that had been born during one world war and tested by another was eager to govern, and confident that their idealism and energy would triumph over all adversity.

But old and new challenges loomed on the horizon. Communism was on the march around the globe, trampling human rights and fomenting proletarian revolutions; the accelerating nuclear arms race could have easily ended in Armageddon; poverty persisted in America’s remote mountain hollows and nearby urban neighborhoods; and the United States was at war with itself over the status of African Americans. If John Kennedy glimpsed the January-February 1961 “Special Inaugural” issue of the
Democratic Digest
with his picture on the cover, he might have seen an omen of the domestic conflict to come. “Join With Us in Celebrating Alabama’s Confederate Centennial Celebration” invited an advertisement featuring a picture of the Confederacy’s first and only president. “Re-enactment of the inauguration of President Jefferson Davis, as it happened 100 years ago, will climax Alabama’s week-long Civil War Centennial Commemoration in Montgomery, birthplace of the Confederacy. Preceding this historic event will be a spectacular pageant and inauguration parade, a pilgrimage to ante bellum homes, a gigantic Old South Commemoration Ball, and many more colorful festivities that will reanimate the stirring days of 1861.”
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The ad also featured a congratulatory letter to JFK from Alabama’s segregationist Democratic governor, John Patterson, who had supported Kennedy in 1960.
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African Americans in Alabama and other Southern states were sick of living in the past.
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On February 1, 1960, four black students from North Carolina Agricultural and Technical College challenged Greensboro’s segregation laws by sitting at a “whites only” lunch counter in a local department store. Their protest touched off a wave of similar demonstrations across the South. Meanwhile in Washington, African diplomats were having trouble finding places to live because of their skin color. As chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on Africa, Senator John F. Kennedy had recognized that the D.C. housing issue was affecting U.S. foreign policy. “I am very concerned about the unfortunate reflection which is cast on the United States by these events, particularly when they occur in the nation’s capitol,” he wrote Eisenhower’s secretary of state, Christian Herter. “As a people and as a government we purport to welcome the new African nations to independence and the community of nations. We can hardly seem other than hypocritical if when the first African delegations come as representatives to the United Nations in New York and to open Embassies in Washington, they have difficulties in finding places to live where they will be welcome.”
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Nonetheless, Kennedy seemed less concerned with making sure that his fellow citizens had equal access to housing. During the campaign, he had promised to end racial discrimination in federal housing with “the stroke of a pen.” But the close results of the election had convinced him to keep his pen in his pocket. Kennedy interpreted his narrow margin of victory, and his dependence on Southern electoral votes, as a lack of a mandate to govern decisively on the contentious issue of civil rights. In addition, Kennedy had demonstrated no congressional coattails in November 1960; Democrats had lost twenty seats in the House of Representatives and two seats in the Senate. Worse, Southern Democrats controlled most key committees on Capitol Hill. Southerners controlled two thirds of the Senate’s standing committees, while over on the House side, Southern congressmen held eleven of nineteen chairmanships.
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