TIME: Almanac 1995

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<text id=93HT0368> <title> 1960s: Little Brother Is Watching:RFK </title> <history>TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1960s Highlights</history> <article> <source>Time Magazine</source> <hdr> DEMOCRATS Little Brother Is Watching October 10, 1960 </hdr> <body> The rain pelted a Chrysler sedan racing through the night toward Lincoln on U.S. 6, a straight and lonely stretch of Nebraska blacktop. The elephantine semitrailers, lumbering west, flung blobs of muddy film at the windshield as the car sped past them, slowing the metronome wipers to largo tempo. Inside, the three people huddled together in the front seat were as melancholy as the weather and the night. Bob Conrad, Nebraska's Democratic senatorial nominee, hunched over the wheel, peering grimly into the darkness. Beside him, pretty, black-haired Helen Abdouch, executive secretary of the Nebraska Kennedy organization, listened silently to the complaints of the shock-headed young man on her right. Why, asked Robert Francis Kennedy, the ubiquitous campaign manager for his brother Jack, couldn't the local Democratic faction get together behind the national campaign? Why weren't the volunteers working harder? What was wrong? Under Kennedy's cross-examination, Bob Conrad's temper suddenly snapped, and he jammed the accelerator in anger. "It's not as simple as that," he rasped. But before he could say much more, a Nebraska highway patrolman flashed him to a stop. Muttering his disgust, Conrad got out of the car to talk to the cop. Bobby Kennedy, his mind still zeroing in on politics, paid no attention. Slumping down in his seat, he turned his questions on Helen Abdouch. "Can't we do something to straighten it out?" he asked plaintively. "Won't the county organizations work with you? We'll put one person in charge..." Farewell, Nebraska. By the time the unhappy threesome reached the Lincoln airport (with only a warning for speeding), Bobby had wrung a promise from his companions to try harder to weld the diffident organizations together and win the day for the Democrats. But as his plane headed for Kansas City, Bob Kennedy reached a glum conclusion: Nebraska, like much of the farm belt, was sticking with the Republican Party. Even in the Democratic tenderloin of South Omaha, only 35 of the faithful had turned out to hear him speak that morning; at Lincoln's Cornhusker Hotel there were just 25 listeners. The state organization was badly fragmented and outclassed by the well- organized Republicans, and the voters were more concerned with world crises and religion than with the price of corn. "We're behind in Nebraska," Bobby mused, "but we're behind in Illinois too. We have to have Illinois, but we don't have to have Nebraska. We should spend our time and money in Illinois." Such calculations and command decisions saturate Bobby's busy mind as he hurries restlessly around the country. For a year his thoughts, passions and supercharged energies have been directed toward one goal: to get his brother Jack elected President of the U.S. In Hyannisport this summer, he called his exhausted staff together for a meeting on the morning after their triumphant arrival from the Democratic Convention in Los Angeles. There was no time to savor the victory. "We can rest in November," Bobby announced sternly. Sleep and food are secondary to Bobby in his relentless quest, and he has paid a price for his dedication. His nerves are frayed, deep circles rim his eyes, his slight shoulders are stooped with fatigue. Jack Kennedy frequently shows the same weariness in his own grueling campaign rounds, but Jack seizes his opportunities to relax and recharge--on a midnight plane seat, between the rounds in a hotel room, during his occasional days off in Washington and Hyannisport. (Before last week's TV debate, he holed up in a Chicago hotel room, slept eleven hours, napped another two.) Bobby never stops. Says Jack: "He's living on nerves." He is also living on the absolute conviction that he and Jack are going to win in November. Farewell, Cities. With Election Day just five weeks off, few Democrats share Bobby Kennedy's certainty of victory. Although the professionals exude the usual public confidence, many politicians in both parties are privately jittery and uncertain about the outcome. All the current polls show Kennedy and Nixon running neck and neck, with as much as 25% of the electorate still undecided on how to vote. Even in traditionally "safe" states, the margin of safety is uncomfortably close, and neither party can breathe easily. Nixon's claim on California is as shaky as Kennedy's on North Carolina, and while Kennedy seems to be luring the big Northern cities back from Eisenhower, Nixon seems to be luring the up- and-coming Southern cities away from Kennedy. Most of the big, pivotal states where the election will be decided are still no cinches. Barring an unforeseen crisis at home or abroad, or a dramatic change in the political weather, the 1960 political campaign should go down to the line as the closest, most hair- rising race since 1916 though in the end the electoral margin may be wide. Wherever Jack Kennedy and Dick Nixon went, they drew record crowds, roaring responses. In Cleveland last week 200,000 swarmed around Kennedy (and Senator Frank Lausche, habitually a loner, hastened to climb on the bandwagon). Roaring through Democratic Dixie, Nixon drew an astounding throng of 70,000 in Memphis. In their first joint television appearance, the two men seemed as evenly matched--though differing in style and pace--as a pair of Tiffany cuff links. Among independents and waverers, however, who had not felt the magic of personal contact, there remain lingering doubts and misgivings about both candidates. The candidates, with much more traveling ahead, and much more television, will do what they can to resolve doubts and arouse enthusiasm. But at least in the eyes of the pros, the main burden of getting out the vote now rests--as Adlai Stevenson learned, to his sorrow, in 1956--on a fast-moving, hard-working, well-integrated political organization. And in Kennedy terms, that means Jack and Bobby, the most successful brother act in U.S. politics. Extrasensory Contact. Amid the complexities and problems of his first nation-wide campaign, Bobby Kennedy is an organizer to reckon with. "I don't have to think about organization," says Jack Kennedy. "I just show up." The brothers have an extrasensory communication system with each other: Bobby rarely has to consult Jack when confronted with a difficult decision: he acts quickly and instinctively. A young man of brutal honesty and impeccable integrity, Bobby frequently antagonizes politicians with his blunt opinions and untactful tactics. Says Jack: "Every politician in Massachusetts was mad at Bobby after 1952 [when he managed Jack's first, successful Senate campaign], but we had the best organization in history." In the 1960 campaign, Bobby is running a taut ship. He has an abhorrence of laziness, works like a stevedore himself and demands the same kind of dedicated performance of his workers. In return he gives complete loyalty. (When the Senate labor rackets committee was winding up its investigation of corruption in the nation's labor unions, Chief Counsel Bob Kennedy called in each of his 50 hardworking staffers, talked at length about their problems, and arranged at least one job prospect for each man and woman.) Except for a handful of top assistants, Bobby trusts no one, feels compelled to assure himself of every situation. Many politicians and field workers accuse him of ruthlessness, and in his single-mindedness he often conveys that impression. In New York, at the campaign's outset, he made no friends with a tough speech to the reform Democrats who were warring with the regular organization: "Gentlemen, I don't give a damn if the state and county organizations survive after November, and I don't give a damn if you survive. I want to elect John F. Kennedy." Many of his listeners were offended, but Bobby achieved his purpose, and the feuding forces of Tammany Hall and the Eleanor Roosevelt reformers agreed to work together--separately--under the direction of a coordinator who was a Washington, D.C. neighbor of Jack Kennedy's. Campaign workers grumble at Bobby's battering-ram methods ("Little Brother Is Watching" is a sub rosa slogan at San Francisco's Kennedy headquarters), but they work as hard as they complain. Says Bobby's father, Joe Kennedy: "Ruthless? As a person who has had the term applied to him for 50 years, I know a bit about it. Anybody who is controversial is called ruthless. Any man of action is always called ruthless. It's ridiculous." Bobby, says his father, is just dedicated: "Jack works as hard as any mortal man can. Bobby goes a little further." Political Harvester. While Jack relaxed on the beach last summer, recovering from the primaries and the convention, Bobby hustled down to Washington. The machine that he and Jack had built had proved its mettle in a string of primary victories and at the convention. In the primaries the old, outmoded political organizations were bulldozed aside, the old, skeptical politicians brought into line or surrounded. But would the streamlined political harvester that had worked so efficiently and winningly in the furrows of Wisconsin and West Virginia and the Los Angeles Memorial Sports Arena be adequate in the back forty of the entire nation? At first Bobby acted as though it would. Washington's able Senator Henry Jackson had agreed to serve as Democratic national chairman until Jan. 1--a job that, under normal circumstances, would put him in charge of the campaign. But Bobby quickly and quietly asserted his authority, and Jack confirmed it. Nowadays, everybody works for Bobby, and Scoop Jackson is a titled figurehead and troubleshooter (this week he was off in his own Washington State trying to retrieve a situation that imperils Jack Kennedy's chances there). Bobby sat himself down in a small green-carpeted office in Washington's Connecticut Avenue command post and went to work on the National Committee itself. In Paul Butler's six years as chairman, a lot of moss had gathered. Bobby was appalled: "When we first took over here, there were at least 100 workers, and only one girl who could take dictation." At first there was talk of heads rolling, but Bobby strategically retreated: there was not time to build a new headquarters staff, and a lot of influential Democrats would have been offended by a wholesale slaughter. Instead, Bob increased its forces. Today the National Committee has overflowed into dozens of offices in five Washington buildings, and the scene at headquarters is one of organized confusion, with mimeograph machines and tables choking the corridors and the offices jammed to their transoms with employees. "Everybody's working like hell," says a press aide. "Some of them don't know what they're doing, but they're working like hell." Not Enough Kennedys. Around him Bobby assembled the elite corps of veterans from Operation Kennedy--Top Organizer Larry O'Brien, Scheduling Coordinator Kenny O'Donnell, Press Attache Pierre Salinger, Fund Raiser (and brother-in-law) Steve Smith. Brother Ted Kennedy was ordered to San Francisco to supervise campaign operations from the Rockies to the Pacific Coast. Denver Lawyer Byron ("Whizzer") White assumed command of the volunteer Citizens for Kennedy-Johnson groups, and 30 regional coordinators went forth to arbitrate squabbles and mastermind campaigns in 30 states. As the campaign rolled off, Bobby found that his problems were far more exasperating than any of the tight little situations he had handled so deftly in the primaries. The Operation Kennedy cadre was spread too thin--there were not enough members of the Kennedy family, enough brisk young Harvardmen, enough seasoned toilers from the primaries to blanket the entire U.S. In some states, Bobby settled for second-rate, amateurish local leaders; in others, imported Kennedymen were hampered by local feuds and politicians jealous of outside intruders. Some states, such as Indiana, lent themselves to a formula of the local organization and the volunteers working together in happy harmony under the direction of a coordinator from headquarters. In a few places, such as Montana, the tough young Kennedy corps took over completely. In other states, such as Pennsylvania, Bobby soon discovered that the most prudent solution seemed to be to leave everything in the hands of the local organizations. The result, Bobby discovered, is spotty: it is working fine in Ohio, not so well in Texas, dismally in Washington. In some metropolitan areas, e.g., New York and Los Angeles, the existing machinery was dismayingly run-down. There were complaints of communication failure with GHQ. Supplies of campaign literature, buttons, bumper stickers were short. In Los Angeles Democrats complained that they had not received enough of the official campaign manuals to distribute to even the top officials--and in Madison, Wis. playgrounds Kennedy buttons were rare enough to net ten Nixon buttons in return. The ironic truth: Multimillionaire Kennedy and his family could legally contribute no more campaign funds. Fearless & Merciless. Bobby has had far better luck in his crash program to register new voters. "The Democrats are there," he says, "and if we are going to win this election, we just have to reach them." As director of the program, Jack Kennedy selected his friend, Representative Frank ("Fearless") Thompson Jr., a handsome, hard-driving New Jersey Congressman who matches Bobby's own energy and relentless single- mindedness. Working around the clock and country, Frank Thompson has spent $100,000 on the program, recruiting 200,000 door-to-door canvassers to goad laggard voters into the registration centers. He stalks his workers mercilessly, personally spot-checking their screenings of the election districts and frequently uncovering by-passed Democrats. In the big cities Thompson has encountered stiff, if subtle, resistance from the organization bosses, who fear that they may lose control of their districts if thousands of rediscovered Democrats suddenly outnumber faithful machine supporters. In New York, the reformers complain that Tammany workers will not walk up more than one flight of stairs to seek out new voters. Thompson's raiders have done a good job. Some 140,000 new Spanish-speaking Democrats have been registered in California through the Viva Kennedy Clubs. In Baltimore, Thompson's pilot city, 7,000 "unsuspected Democrats" have been uncovered. In Pennsylvania, registered Democrats exceed Republicans, 2,851,000 to 2,812,000, for the first time in recent years. Tabulating the national returns last week, Bobby Kennedy gleefully noted that 8,500,000 new voters (65% Democratic) had registered already, and the hoped-for-goal of 10 million may be reached by mid-October, when the last of the state registrations will be completed. Pablum Politics. For all his boyish enthusiasm, Bob Kennedy at 34 has had a lifetime of political experience. He managed his first political campaign--Jack's first run for the Senate in 1952--before his 27th birthday. And, like all the rest of Clan Kennedy, Bobby learned about politics under the influence of his grandfather, John ("Honey Fitz") Fitzgerald, as soon as he learned to spoon up his Pablum by himself. The seventh of Joe and Rose Kennedy's nine children, he was born in his mother's bedroom in Brookline, Mass., was still in diapers when the family migrated to New York and Joe Kennedy set out to conquer Wall Street. In the long shadows cast by his glamorous, extraverted older brothers and sisters, Bobby was all but overwhelmed. He was naturally shy, physically slight and never much of a student, but he compensated with grim determination to succeed. Recalls a Milton Academy classmate: "It was much tougher in school for him than the others--socially, in football, with studies." In the closing months of the war, Second Class Seaman Kennedy served aboard the newly commissioned destroyer Joseph P. Kennedy Jr. (named for his brother, who died in an airplane explosion over the English Channel). But though Joe died for his country in Europe, and Jack's heroism in the Solomons became a great wartime tale of the South Pacific, Bobby's naval service consisted of six dismal months in the Caribbean, spent mostly scraping paint, with no sign of the enemy. At Harvard after the war, admits Bobby, "I led a rather relaxed life." His driving energies were focused almost entirely on football, and he made the varsity team despite his wiry physique (5 ft. 10., 165 lbs.). Days of Glory. After college Bobby drifted. As a correspondent for the Boston Post, he covered the Arab-Israeli war and the Berlin airlift. He won his law degree at the University of Virginia, entered Government service as a junior attorney for the Justice Department, where one of his first cases was the Owen Lattimore investigation. In 1950 he married Ethel Skakel, a Greenwich, Conn. girl he had met on a college ski trip (who has turned into a first-rate political campaigner). In 1952 Bobby joined the legal staff of Joe McCarthy's Senate Investigations Subcommittee. A diligent worker, he uncovered a headline-getting scandal involving British merchant ships carrying supplies to Red China during the Korean war. The "slipshod" investigations of the committee's chief counsel, Roy Cohn, seemed just as scandalous to Bobby, and he resigned from the committee staff. But he was soon back on the subcommittee as the Democrats' minority counsel. After the Democrats won the Senate in 1954, Bob Kennedy took over as the subcommittee's chief counsel. Bobby's days of glory began in 1958, when he was appointed counsel for the Senate labor rackets committee. In his investigations of corruption in organized labor, he was indefatigable, drove himself (and his staff) mercilessly through high-pressure, 16-hour days that stretched out over two years. On television screens, his persistent grilling of the labor hoods absorbed the nation, and for a time Bobby overshadowed his big brother as a national figure. "Everyone likes to feel he's done something," says Jack. "Bobby felt submerged, and then he came along with this labor investigation." As the tales of the labor hoods unfolded under Bobby's stern questioning, he made loyal friends and mortal enemies. Many of the inner circle of the Kennedy team--O'Donnell, Salinger, Advance Man Walter Sheridan--are veteran staffers of the labor rackets committee and the most loyal supporters of Bobby Kennedy. But the reaction of his adversaries is foaming. Jimmy Hoffa turns people at the mere mention of the Kennedy name, "Bobby Kennedy," he says, in a compassionate moment, "is a young, dim-witted, curly-headed smart aleck." Says an attorney who opposed him: "I might as well leave town if Jack Kennedy is elected President." Says Bobby: "It was like playing Notre Dame every day." Like Notre Dame. Bobby got his taste of the political big league in Jack's unsuccessful 1956 bid for the Democratic vice- presidential nomination. Rehashing the hectic scene in Chicago when Jack came within 38 1/2 votes of beating Estes Kefauver, Bobby recalls: "I said right there, we should forget the issues and send Christmas cards next time." Next time was close at hand: two months after the convention, Jack Kennedy began the long build-up for his 1960 campaign. Bobby was ready and willing to try his political stagecraft on a nationwide scale. As the campaign has developed, the brothers and their trusted aides have worked out a flexible strategy. Their views on specific issues: THE CHARGE THAT JACK KENNEDY IS IMMATURE. Hours after the TV debate had the Lou Harris pollsters out measuring the result. The debate, he says, "destroyed the Republicans' major argument. I think that Jack can win this election with or without TV. But this was a step forward in front of more than 70 million people." FOREIGN POLICY. Bobby believes that the final TV foreign policy debate will be a trap for Nixon--and that G.O.P. Campaign Manager Len Hall has underestimated Jack Kennedy's grasp of foreign policy. "Jack was writing books on it before Nixon ever knew anything about it." But the Kennedys know that Khrushchev's presence in the U.S. is helping Nixon and hurting Kennedy--"a slow hurt." EISENHOWER AND ROCKEFELLER. The Democrats have only Harry Truman and Adlai Stevenson to match against Dick Nixon's high- caliber supporting cast, but, says Bobby, "you can't transfer popularity." Nevertheless, Bobby and his Harris pollsters are tracking Ike's campaign path anxiously. They are also concerned about the popularity of Nixon's running mate Henry Cabot Lodge and the Southern incursions of the G.O.P.'s conservative leader, Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater. FARM POLICY. "It comes down now to a choice between Ezra Benson and the Pope." RELIGION. The problem has passed its peak, but, says Bobby, "it could peak again." Hard-boiled Kennedyites run a continual poll on the Catholic vote, know that Jack's confrontation by the Houston Protestant ministers (TIME, Sept. 26) helped them with Nixon-minded Northern Catholics--and know that a fall-off of interest in religion will weaken them in the same area. Bobby plans to show a film of Jack Kennedy's session with the Houston clergy in every state. THE SOUTH. The fact that Lyndon Johnson has not been able to deliver the South as a bloc is a big disappointment, and the situation in Texas, where the LBJ machine is caught between rebellious liberals and suspicious conservatives, is worrisome. Operation Kennedy still expects to carry a nucleus of 50 electoral votes in the Deep South, hopefully upped that ante last week with a request to the Southern Governors' Conference for a minimum of 75. ECONOMICS. Jack makes the most of spot unemployment and local hard times, but so far has carefully not shouted "recession." Though a stock market drop may inspire Republican jitters, the Kennedys do not expect that anything can happen before November to give them a hot economic issue. Third Phase. Between them, Jack and Bobby have worked out an elaborate, three-phase program for the campaign, unwritten but completely understood, and last weekend Bobby called his high command together in Hyannisport to bring it up to date. The first phase, the time of preparation and organization, ended on Labor Day. The second, the period between Labor Day and the World Series, is coming to a close. In the second phase, the Kennedys believe, the public has been preoccupied with football and baseball, the new school year, and other seasonal interests (including the U.N.), and the campaign has been kept at a high level--outlining the issues, establishing the Kennedy stance, getting ready for the final drive. The countdown phase, beginning next week, will continue down to Election Day, with Jack waging a tough, no-quarter fight (as he expects Nixon to do). In the last, crucial 18 days of the campaign, Kennedy will concentrate on the pivotal states. In preparation, Ted Sorenson, Jack's chief lieutenant, has been poring over a large, black-covered book called the "Nixonpedia," which contains every detail of Dick Nixon's public life, hundreds of past Nixon quotes. Prime television time (as much as $2,000,000 worth) has been ordered, the last- minute programming has been settled, and the Kennedy brothers are prepared to make it an all-out political Donnybrook. This week, as his drive for the presidency picked up momentum in the aftermath of the television debate and the mob scenes of Cleveland and Buffalo, Jack Kennedy was ready for the final act. Public interest in the campaign was aroused, despite the distractions of the U.N. and the ballparks. Much would depend on the public's impression of Candidate Kennedy in his last-act campaign appearances and his final TV clashes with Dick Nixon. For Bobby Kennedy the party was nearly over. Nearly every voter would be registered in two weeks. All that remained was the get-out-the-vote drive on Election Day. </body> </article> </text>