TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/election/60elect/60elect.008

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                /                ë<                            =            ╚November 7, 1960

DEMOCRATS

Candidate in Orbit



     [In Annapolis, Joe Curnane, a Massachusetts undertaker who
looks after Jack Kennedy's political interests in Maryland, hooked
his forefingers in his vest and put the heat on 48 Tidewater ward
lords for sizable campaign contributions. "It gets better every
day," he said. "I'd hate to see Maryland end up in the wrong
column the day after the election. Don't miss the boat, gentlemen.
Don't miss the boat."

     In New Jersey, a Kennedy lieutenant received his instructions
to stand by in heavily Democratic Hudson County on election night,
grab the predictably heavy pro-Kennedy first returns and flash
them to the West Coast, where (because of the time difference)
polls would still be open for three hours and there still might
be time to exploit a last-minute psychological flurry for Kennedy.

     In Manhattan, a dazed girl stood in the torrent of humanity
that swirled around a black convertible. "She touched him!"
shrieked her companion. "Quick, Mary, let me touch your hand, and
then Sally can touch mine, and then . . ."]


     As he took a breather in Scranton, Pa., Jack Kennedy was grey
with fatigue, and his right hand was sore from being grabbed,
squeezed, clutched at in some twelve hours of campaigning. It had
been a day to remember: all through the mine-scarred countryside
of Pennsylvania, from Bethlehem to Allentown to Wilkes-Barre, the
people poured out, half a million strong, screaming, tossing food
and gifts into Kennedy's open Ford, waving flags.

     "These people look to this fellow like a Messiah," muttered
old Governor Dave Lawrence. "There's never been anything like this
in the history of Pennsylvania -- including Roosevelt." What
Kennedy said made no difference: he could have recited the Boy
Scout oath and brought forth ovations. Everywhere it was the same
last week: through Republican heartland from Iowa to Michigan, the
throngs eddied around him. Each campaign day topped the previous
24 hours. When he flew into Manhattan for a rally in the garment
district, a wall-to-wall carpet of humanity spread out for 12
blocks around him.

     "Why doesn't he go back to Hyannisport and do the rest from
his front porch?" asked a weary reporter. Instead, Kennedy stepped
up the tempo, exhorted his fagged aides to renewed action. "This
is no Dewey operation," he said to them in a husky voice. "We're
not going to take any time off from now on. Nixon could still win
this campaign."

     Cool Calculation. Viewed by the warm-eyed crowds who had
lined the curbs in 46 states (he missed Mississippi, Louisiana,
North Dakota and Nevada) or through the flinty eyes of unforgiving
political bosses, the Kennedy campaign two weeks before election
seemed almost faultless -- even down to the plans for dredging the
last votes out of California on election night. With the same cool
calculation that had won him the Democratic nomination in Los
Angeles, Jack Kennedy had brought dissident party factions into
line, stirred up the Northern Democratic organization as it had
not been stirred in eight years, met head-on the political problem
of his Roman Catholic faith, may even have turned it into a
sizable political asset. And by dint of ceaseless campaigning and
the television debates with Vice President Richard Nixon, he had
made himself a known, familiar and respected figure to millions of
U.S. voters, who may very well choose him next week as the 35th
President of the U.S. He has come a long way fast.

     To the U.S. electorate, John Fitzgerald Kennedy comes through
as a somewhat paradoxical figure who radiates confidence while he
talks of grave troubles to come. To a nation winding up eight
comfortable years under the leadership of one of the most popular
Presidents in U.S. history, he brings a message of anxiety and
discontent. To a nation strong enough to flex its power from
Lebanon on one side of the world to Formosa Strait on the other,
he preaches a warning of declining prestige. To a country that has
marched down the middle of the road behind Dwight Eisenhower to
the highest level of shared prosperity of any nation in history,
he campaigns with Depression fervor for welfare-state reform ("I
am not satisfied that 17 million Americans go to bed hungry every
night . . .").

     Relentless Underscoring. Kennedy's panacea for these problems
is simple: himself. Elect me, he says, and I will start the U.S.
moving forward again. His specific proposals are often vague. In
foreign affairs, he promises to make America liked and respected
as it was in Roosevelt's day, but thanks to relentless
underscoring by Dick Nixon, the major foreign policy discussion
of the campaign has been disengagement from Quemoy and Matsu or
aid to anti-Castro Cuban revolutionaries, neither of which gives
much evidence of how foreign crises would be met (Nixon used the
first to accuse Kennedy of retreat; Kennedy used the second to
prove that he would be tougher than Nixon). On the domestic front,
Kennedy promises most of the programs in the liberal Democratic
book; federal aid to education, medical care for the aged, aid to
depressed areas, lower interest rates, etc. -- overall a sizable
increase in federal spending, to be accomplished without
unbalancing the budget. He suggests that the extra burdens are to
be carried by expanded national growth, but just how this is to
be brought about he never makes clear. Even some of his own
Harvard economic advisers don't understand what Kennedy's farm
program is.

     There was, in fact, very little in the Kennedy message to
make the crowds bust the barricades, to explain the ecstasy of
teenagers or the wild urge of the throngs to touch him. The more
he campaigned, the more he seemed endowed with the same charisma
that won and held popularity for Dwight Eisenhower. In appearance
he is a slender man with a boyish face, an uncontrollable shock
of hair, a dazzling smile. In manner he is alert, incisive,
speaking in short, terse sentences in a chowderish New England
accent that he somehow makes attractive (even when he pronounces
Cincinnati as "Since-in-notty" in Cincinnati), reaching with no
apparent effort into a first-class mind for historical anecdotes
or classical allusions. Like Ike, who is 27 years his senior, he
projects a kind of conviction and vigor even when talking of
commonplace things in a commonplace way.

     His politics are essentially to be for Kennedy, with complete
faith that Kennedy will be good for whatever cause he chooses to
lead. "The political world is stimulating," he told a TIME
correspondent a month before his nomination last July. "It's the
most interesting thing you can do. It beats following the dollar.
It allows the full use of your powers. First, there is the great
chess game -- the battle, the competition. There's the strategy
and which pieces you move, and all that. And then in government
you can do something about what you think."

     Or, as he once put it, another way: "In my family we were
interested not so much in the ideas of politics as in the
mechanics of the whole process."

     A Breed Apart. As the son of one of the richest men in the
U.S. -- and a millionaire in his own right on his 21st birthday --
he might well have become a minted conservative. But the Kennedys
were a breed apart: Father Joe Kennedy was a Wall Street nabob and
a man of many reactionary convictions, yet he swallowed Franklin
Roosevelt's New Deal whole. Later, as U.S. Ambassador to Britain
on the eve of war, he broke emphatically with Roosevelt on the
issue of U.S. involvement in World War II. In the salad days of
the New Deal, Jack grew up, absorbing his father's ambiguous
politics, listening to the famous men and women who gathered
around the Kennedy dinner table, reading prodigiously on his own.
Unlike many of his generation (Hubert Humphrey and Richard Nixon,
for example), he was untouched by the Depression and unaware,
except through reading and conversations, of the traumatic effect
it had on the U.S. His Catholic father insisted on a secular
education for him, and Jack went to Choate, Harvard and the
London School of Economics. Extensive travel in Europe, a wartime
hitch as skipper of a Navy PT boat (his brother, Joseph Kennedy
Jr., a naval aviator, died in an air explosion over the English
Coast), a brief turn as a Hearst correspondent gave him a
kaleidoscopic political, international and economic background.
By the time he decided to enter public life, Kennedy was a cool
and detached young man and a political mugwump.

     Mixed Package. His decision was almost capricious. There was
the strong undertow of the family's political traditions and
connections, to be sure, but no pressures were brought to bear on
him, Jack insists. "I was at loose ends at the time," he once
explained. "It seemed the logical thing to do."

     When he first entered the House of Representatives in 1947,
a gangling, 29-year-old youth still wearing his South Pacific
suntans and a complexion yellowed by treatment for wartime
malaria, there was considerable doubt about what Congressman
Kennedy really did think. He seemed like a mixed package, partly
conservative, partly liberal and a little bewildered, and Kennedy
accepts the early label as accurate: "I'd just come out of my
father's house at the time, and these were the things I knew." He
meticulously served the parochial interests of his district --
Boston's poorest -- voting for housing, urban renewal, veterans'
pensions, social security, codfish. For the larger issues,
Kennedy had little time or interest. Much of his time was spent
in pursuit of pretty girls and higher elective office, and his
absenteeism was notorious (in six years in the Lower House, he
missed more than a quarter of the 604 roll-call votes).

     "The Suicide Senator." When a big issue caught his attention,
though, Kennedy studied it thoroughly, held it up to the light and
voted intelligently and courageously. During his second term in
the House, he advocated reducing economic aid to Europe and the
Middle East (and incurred the terrible wrath of Harry Truman), not
because of any ingrained isolationism -- he has always been a
committed, Eastern-seaboard internationalist -- but out of the
conviction that Western Europe and the Arab world should
contribute more to their own recovery.

     In the Senate in 1954, Kennedy was the first Massachusetts
Senator or Representative to vote for the St. Lawrence Seaway. His
longshoremen constituents were furious, and the New England press
dubbed him "the Suicide Senator" for supporting a scheme that
could only damage the port of Boston. But Kennedy reasoned that
Canada would undoubtedly build the seaway alone if the U.S. held
aloof, decided that the nation might as well share in its ultimate
benefits.

     In the liberal Democrats' catalogue of sins, Kennedy has one
that ranks in liberal legend with Nixon's rough campaign for the
Senate against Helen Cahagan Douglas. Jack Kennedy was silent on
the condemnation of Joe McCarthy, who was, in fact, a friend of
Joe Kennedy's. For months after the Senate voted for condemnation,
Kennedy pleaded that he had been critically ill at the time, as he
was. But there was time to let his sentiments be known, and no
need to have been one of two Senators to go unrecorded. (The
other: Wisconsin's Alexander Wiley, McCarthy's colleague.)
Finally, taxed by Eleanor Roosevelt for his silence, he announced
that he had intended to vote for condemnation -- on the technical
ground that McCarthy had offended the dignity of the Senate.

     Changed Man. In his congressional years, Kennedy matured
politically. He also veered more toward the liberal left. Looking
back, most of his associates date his emergence as a bona fide
liberal -- and probably as a presidential aspirant -- to the years
1955-56. His serious 1954 operation to correct a wartime back
injury -- double fusion of spinal discs, with complication from
Addison's disease -- brought Kennedy to the brink of death; last
rites of the Catholic Church were pronounced. In the long months
of convalescence, he had opportunity to contemplate his political
future. (Wife Jacqueline Kennedy rejects the theory that this was
his moment of political truth: "That way you can sort of tie it up
with Campobello and all that. To me, he never wavered on his path.
I never knew what it was, but it was obviously toward the
presidency.")

     Whatever happened, Kennedy was a changed man on his return to
the Senate in May 1955. He took his place as a leader among the
Northern Democrats; his mind, as sharply honed as a barber's
razor, turned to every major project on the agenda, and his eyes
fastened on the White House. When Presidential Nominee Adlai
Stevenson threw open the 1956 Democratic Convention for vice-
presidential nominations, Kennedy plunged into a trial run. To
his surprise, he came within a thin 38 1/2 votes of defeating
Tennessee's Estes Kefauver -- corralling, along the way, a strong
voting strength from the South, the Eastern Seaboard and his
native New England. Kennedy's case was powerfully helped when
Connecticut Democratic Boss John Bailey circulated a memo showing
that Kennedy's Roman Catholicism would be a political asset to
the ticket in the industrial states.

     A few weeks after the convention, Kennedy and his faithful,
brainy aide, Ted Sorensen, a Nebraska Unitarian, sat down and
plotted the Senator's course toward the White House in 1960.

     Small Anchor. Skeptics suggest that Kennedy drew the mantle
of New Deal-Fair Deal liberalism around him because he sensed that
liberalism offered the only way for a Democrat to win back labor
and the minorities from Dwight Eisenhower, and with them the
powerful Northern cities. Whether by design or scruple, Kennedy
indeed did change his thinking in several areas: his position on
farm subsidies switched from Benson's flexible supports to down-
the-line 90% of parity. His biographer, James MacGregor Burns,
calls him a genuine liberal who "had the helm fixed toward port
but . . . was still dragging a small anchor to starboard."

     Kennedy was always too much himself to turn into a
doctrinaire liberal. He did not take part in the abortive
campaigns of such Senate liberals as Wisconsin's William Proxmire
and Pennsylvania's Joe Clark against Majority Leader Lyndon
Johnson. He provoked thunderclouds from labor by helping to write
the Landrum-Griffin labor reform bill (Teamster Boss Jimmy Hoffa
still calls it the Kennedy-Landrum-Griffin bill), and his horse-
trading skill in a joint Senate-House conference blunted some of
the bill's provisions but got it enacted into law.

     Polite Blackmail. Kennedy's Senate performance may have
written a record for him to run on, but it offered mighty little
that interested the political bosses when Kennedy let it be known,
in 1959, that he would like the 1960 Democratic nomination. After
all, he was only 42. Nonetheless, he and Sorensen carefully laid
down the plan he would run hard in the primaries and arrive at Los
Angeles with a basketful of votes and substantial proof that a
Catholic could be elected. The Wisconsin primary proved beyond
doubt that he could overturn voting patterns by drawing a
Catholic-bloc vote. The West Virginia Primary proved that he knew
how to meet the religion issue head-on in Protestant country and
had enough other assests (war record, personality, good looks) to
carry him to victory. When such powerful bosses as Pennsylvania's
Lawrence (himself a Catholic) were reluctant, the Kennedy forces
were not above polite blackmail. Wouldn't the Democrats stand a
chance of alienating the big Catholic vote, they suggested, if
they should turn down a Catholic candidate who was a proved
winner?

     As Kennedy marched toward Los Angeles, he had the advantage
of something of a double image. He was at once a friend to labor
by virtue of his votes on minimum wages, organizational picketing,
etc., and a stern monitor of big labor by virtue of his service
-- and Brother Bobby's -- on the McClellan labor-management-
rackets investigating committee. He was a far-out liberal on
domestic issues, yet carried the conservative aura of his father,
Multimillionaire Conservative Joe Kennedy. He sought foreign
policy counsel of such men as Adlai Stevenson and Chester Bowles;
he did not fear that the right-wing objection to their policies
would rub off on him, benefiting from his church's militant line
in dealing with the Communists. Those who tried to figure out
just what hue of Democrat Jack Kennedy was only wound up in
confusion -- unless they reached the valid conclusion that he was
first and foremost a highly talented, independent political
natural.

     This, more than anything, came clear at the convention. To
get the nomination, he encouraged the vice-presidential hopes of
half a dozen Midwestern Governors. With the presidential
nomination in hand, he turned his back on the Midwest and
selected Texas' Lyndon Johnson, his convention archenemy and the
darkest of villains to Northern liberals -- with instructions to
deliver the Solid South. At the same time, Chester Bowles and
others wrote, with his blessing, the most liberal platform in
history.

     Rule of Reason. Says Jack Kennedy, in a moment of self-
analysis: "The policies I advocate are the result of the rule of
reason." Then, in his millrace fashion, he pours out the reasons
why he is of liberal persuasion in 1960: "It is reasonable to say
we've got to do something about low-income housing, we've got to
do something about minimum wages, we've got to do something about
our schools. Reason tells me we've got to do these things.

     "The common definition of a liberal today is an ideological
response to every situation, whether it fits reason or not. I
don't have an automatic commitment to provide these things. But I
don't know how any reasonable man would arrive at any other idea
in 1960. If the rule of reason brings you to the position that
happens to be the liberal position, it is the one you have to
take, but not just because it is liberal. In 1960 that is my
position. It was Roosevelt's back in 1932."

     Overnight Raise. Since winning the nomination, Kennedy has
dispelled the double view of himself. He is running strongly
liberal. He has told labor that its goals are his goals, he has
told the depressed areas that they have been robbed of their due
by an Eisenhower veto, he has told schoolteachers that the
Republicans are responsible for run-down school buildings and low
teacher salaries. He took hold of an attack on his religion led by
the Rev. Norman Vincent Peale and turned it into an assest with
his courageous question-and-answer session with the Houston
minister  -- and his lieutenants saw to it that the film of the
session was telecast in key Catholic as well as Protestant areas.
In the grueling ordeal of the presidential campaign, his qualities
of steadiness served him well.

     With all this, Kennedy was still miles behind Vice President
Nixon, for the simple reason that Nixon was better known to
millions through his two national campaigns and headlines on his
spectacular trips to Latin America and Russia. Then came the TV
debates, which raised Kennedy overnight to Nixon's stature and
showed the nation that he was quite a man under fire. (In
Hyannisport last August, a friend asked him how he expected to win
the election. Without a moment's hesitation, Kennedy twanged: "In
the debates.")

     As he has climbed the political heights, ever sure of
himself, Jack Kennedy has demonstrated beyond any shadow of a
doubt that he is the young political master. In his band of merry
men are idealist professors and throat-cutting politicians. They
give Kennedy advice, he listens attentively, blots up their words,
and then makes his own decision. "Nobody tells Jack what to do,"
growls Joe Kennedy, "unless he wants to be told." Jack moves
swiftly to consolidate his leadership. Harry Truman, Lyndon
Johnson and Sam Rayburn were as withering in their criticism of
Kennedy before the conventions as Dick Nixon has been since the
campaign heated up. Yet Kennedy swiftly and diplomatically won
their allegiance, and now they march with -- but a step behind --
Jack Kennedy. He is the absolute boss of the Democratic Party in
1960.

     Fresher Faces. If Kennedy next week becomes the youngest
President-elect in history, he will move on Washington like an
arrow. Already Clark Clifford, an old White House hand from the
days of Truman, is at work on a what-to-do program for the
transition months between election and inauguration. Plans are
under way for a complete overhaul of the executive branch:
Clifford has a list of 204 top jobs that would be filled by
Dec. 1, another 406 to be filled by Jan. 1. Clifford is working
closely with the Brookings Institution on a table of organization
patterned on Dwight Eisenhower's efficient White House
arrangements.

     On Capitol Hill Kennedy will, if elected, use Vice President
Lyndon Johnson as his chief operative and liaison man. He plans to
take a personal hand in congressional affairs as well: "I know
more about them, having served in Congress for 14 years." The
Cabinet and, in fact, the whole Government would be filled largely
with younger men, fresher faces. Jack Kennedy owes very little in
the way of political debts -- he has been his own best promoter
and manipulator -- and can choose his team as he pleases. Since he
is not a state Governor and has no incumbent Administration in
Washington to provide Democratic manpower, he would have to
assemble his team from scratch.

     Change of Atmosphere. There is no doubt that a Kennedy
Administration would start off with a national rollercoaster ride
across the New Frontier. Kennedy is well aware of the political
grace period -- he thinks it is about 90 days -- for a new
Administration, plans to move fast, with a far-reaching program of
social and economic legislation at home and some bold ventures in
the field of foreign policy and national defense. His first
concern is to beef up and streamline the armed forces. And,
sidestepping the nations of Western Europe, he gives his highest
foreign policy priority to aid programs for Latin America
("They've been shortchanged"), India and Africa. He would also
try for a summit conference, and one last effort at disarmament,
by May 1961.

     "I will try to get more intellectually vigorous people in
Washington," he says. "It's been rather a pale atmosphere." Says
a top aide, ignoring the speculation about Adlai Stevenson and
Chester Bowles: "Kennedy will be his own Secretary of State. His
Secretary of State will be an adviser and an administrator of John
Kennedy's foreign policy." Republicans would be invited to
participate in the area of national security ("It is not just a
Democratic concern"), but, on balance, Kennedy's Washington would
be partisan, egghead and dominated by one man: President Kennedy.

     The plans were bold, and bolder still was the willingess to
discuss them with the election still to be won. But then, if John
Fitzgerald Kennedy had been shy, retiring and modest, he never
would have got to the point where they were worth discussing at
all.