Man Out Front

DEMOCRATS Man Out Front (See Cover)

At Daytona Beach, when a National Airlines attendant last week yelled angrily for Massachusetts' Democratic Senator John Fitzgerald Kennedy to hustle aboard or get left in Florida, Mayor J. Hart Long said pointedly: "He doesn't have much respect for the future President of the U.S., does he?" To a Young Democrats' convention in Reno a fortnight before, University of Minnesota Coed Geri Storm brought word from her 58 sorority sisters: "Every girl told me to give Senator Kennedy all her love and to tell him they would all vote for him." At the University of Kansas, Kennedy aged perceptibly while barely escaping with his skin from autograph-hunting students who mobbed him backstage after a speech. In Oklahoma City, a grey-haired lady gushed: "I've come to see him because I think he's wonderful." At a Washington dinner party, a tipsy woman flung herself onto Kennedy's lap, locked her arms around his neck, vowed eternal adoration. Kennedy unceremoniously broke the strangle hold, plunked his admirer onto the floor, strode away muttering: "For God's sake, what's she trying to do?"

In his unannounced but unabashed run for the Democratic Party's nomination for President in 1960, Jack Kennedy has left panting politicians and swooning women across a large spread of the U.S. Taking off from the 1956 Democratic Convention, where he lost the nomination for Vice President to Tennessee's Estes Kefauver by a cliff hanging 38 1/2 votes, Kennedy campaigned for the national ticket in 24 states--more than any Democrat except Adlai Stevenson and Kefauver. This year he has had more than 2,500 speaking invitations (they stream into his office, the mailboxes of his family, and even to Boston's Catholic hierarchy at the rate of 10 to 15 a day). He has accepted 144. He appeared before the American GastroEnterological Association in Colorado Springs and the Arkansas Bar Association at Hot Springs. He spoke to the Friendly Sons of St. Patrick in Philadelphia, the American Jewish Congress in New York, and he campaigned for successful Democratic Senate Candidate William Proxmire in the Polish districts of Milwaukee.

Ahs over Aws. He keened into the heart of the Deep South, spoke at Jackson, Miss, in support of the Supreme Court's school-desegregation decision,* nonetheless won a standing ovation and the presidential blessings of Mississippi's Governor James Plemon Coleman. Kennedy rolled through the Midwest, where his Senate vote against rigid, 90%-of-parity farm supports had cost him the vice-presidential nomination, and came out with the support of Kansas' up-and-coming Democratic Governor George Docking. Says a top Oklahoma party strategist: "I have been moving around the state for the last couple of months, just looking and picking my teeth. Right now, Kennedy's making all the touchdowns." Says a Democratic National Committee official: "Well, if we held a convention next month, it would be Kennedy, period."

So far, Jack Kennedy has gone on some of the most highly visible assets in U.S. politics. At 40, he is trim (6 ft., 160 lbs.) and boyishly handsome, with a trademark in the shock of unruly brown hair (now showing a few grey strands) that Wildroot only seems to make wilder. He belongs to a legendary family that surpasses its legend: the Kennedys of Massachusetts. He is an authentic war hero and a Pulitzer-prizewinning author (for his bestselling Profiles in Courage). He is an athlete (during World War II his swimming skill saved his life and those of his PT-boat mates); yet his intellectual qualifications are such that his photographer wife Jacqueline remarks, in a symbolic manner of speaking: "If I were drawing him, I'd draw a tiny body and an enormous head." Kennedy is recognized as the Senate library's best customer, reads six to eight books a week, mostly on American history. No stem-winding orator ("Those guys who can make the rafters ring with hokum--well, I guess that's O.K., but it keeps me from being an effective political speaker"), Kennedy instead imparts a remarkable quality of shy, sensemaking sincerity. He is certainly the only member of the U.S. Congress who could--as he did--make a speech with his shirttail hanging out and get gallery ahs instead of aws.

Down to Taws. Such virtues have made Jack Kennedy the Democratic whiz of 1957, but by no means guarantee that he will still be the whiz of 1960. When the convention delegates really get down to taws, they will pay much attention to Kennedy's political liabilities. He is a Roman Catholic in a party that has never forgotten the debacle of Catholic Al Smith in 1928 (to prove himself a winner outside heavily Catholic Massachusetts, Kennedy has little choice but to enter perilous presidential primaries in 1960). His youth, now so appealing, may be turned against him when the Democrats start seeking "mature" leadership (Kennedy figures it would help if Dick Nixon, just four years older, were the Republican candidate). He is, in many aspects, a conservative, and 1960 could conceivably bring the rejuvenation of the liberals ("In a militantly liberal convention I wouldn't have a ghost of a chance").

Moreover. Jack Kennedy is a member of the U.S. Senate--and there is good reason for the fact that in all U.S. history only one man, Warren G. Harding, has gone directly from the Senate to the White House. Explains Kennedy: "The Senate is just not the place to run from. No matter how you vote, somebody is made happy and somebody unhappy. If you vote against enough people, you are dead politically. If you vote for everybody--in favor of every appropriation but against every tax to pay for it--you might as well be dead politically, because you are useless."

Long, Hard Road. With 1960 still three hard years away, with Dwight Eisenhower prohibited by the Constitution from succeeding himself, and with elections since 1956 showing a strong trend against Republicans, the Democratic nomination seems increasingly precious. In the Democratic wings, just waiting for the right cue to go onstage, is a whole troupe of possible candidates: New Jersey's Governor Robert Meyner, with a big win under his belt; Texas' Senator Lyndon Johnson, who has yet to extend his vast Senate prestige to the outside world; Missouri's Senator Stuart Symington, ready, in Sputnik's day, to cash in on five years of criticizing Republican defense policy; Adlai Stevenson, believed by many to be eager to try against some Republican besides Ike; Estes Kefauver, still, according to the Gallup poll, the peepul's choice (he leads second-place Jack Kennedy by 26% to 19%, but professional Democratic politicians are more unwilling than ever--if possible--to accept him); and Minnesota's Senator Hubert Humphrey, Michigan's Governor "Soapy" Williams, and even Oregon's odd Senator Wayne Morse, all liberal darlings.

Looking down the bumpy road toward 1960, Jack Kennedy has moments of discouragement. He takes from his wallet a cartoon showing a harassed office worker, standing on his chair, thumbing his nose at his desk, and crying "I quit!' Says Kennedy: "That's the way I feel sometimes." But in a more characteristic mood, even while maintaining his official if-I-decide-to-try line, he looks eagerly to the brawls ahead. Says he: "Nobody is going to hand me the nomination. If I were governor of a large state, Protestant and 55, I could sit back and let it come to me. But if I am going to get it, I'll have to work for it--and damn hard."

And that is just what should be expected of a son of Joseph Patrick Kennedy and Rose Fitzgerald (whose father boasted that she had turned down the marriage offer of that tea-making sail-boatin' Britisher Sir Thomas Lipton) and a grandson of Patrick Joseph Kennedy and John Francis ("Honey Fitz") Fitzgerald.

Long-Handle Drawers. Grandfather Pat Kennedy, a saloonkeeper, was the Democratic leader of Ward One in East Boston, a state representative and state senator, an associate of such lights as "Diamond Jim" Timilty, the Roxbury boss, and Smiling Jim Donovan of the South End. Grandfather Fitzgerald was a U.S. Congressman and twice mayor of Boston. Honey Fitz's theme song was Sweet Adeline, his political creed was based on the sound premise that the strength of textile-making New England depended on everybody's wearing long woolen underwear, and he thought of himself as "the last honest mayor Boston ever had."

Honey Fitz and Pat Kennedy often opposed each other politically, but they formed a family coalition with the marriage of red-haired young Joe Kennedy and brunette Rose Fitzgerald, who spoke French and German and "understood Harvard." Harvardman Joe, who had just taken over as president of East Boston's Columbia Trust Co. (Pat Kennedy held substantial stock in the bank, which did not hurt Joe's getting the job), promptly announced that he would make a million dollars with the arrival of each new child.

Dry Run for the World. For once, Joe Kennedy underestimated himself: he and Rose had a mere nine children--but Joe's fortune is reckoned at more than $200 million. He became general manager of the huge Fore River shipbuilding yard at Quincy during World War I, joined the investment banking house of Hayden, Stone & Co., sold short and made $15 million in a few hours during the market crash of 1929, served as chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission (1934-35) and the U.S. Maritime Commission (1937)--and was U.S. Ambassador to Great Britain during the ominous years of 1937-40.

Remarkable as a businessman, Joe Kennedy was even more remarkable as a father. He set up individual million-dollar trusts for each of his children so that they could choose careers without having to worry about finances. In fact, Joe banned all discussion of money among members of his family. He charged his children with his own competitive energy, once ordered a couple of the boys from the table when he learned they had hacked around and lost a sailing race. Says Jack Kennedy: "Dad persuaded us to work hard at whatever we did. We soon learned that competition in the family was a kind of dry run for the world outside. At the same time, everything channeled into public service. There just wasn't any point in going into business."

The Kennedys competed among themselves and against the world. It was sometimes a little tough on the world. One of the most realistic accounts of life with the Kennedys was written by David Hackett, a weary weekend visitor. Excerpts from Rules for Visiting the Kennedys:

Anticipate that each Kennedy will ask you what you think of another Kennedy's a) dress, b) hairdo, c) backhand, d) latest public achievement. Be sure to answer "terrific" This should get you through dinner. Now for the football field. It's "touch," but it's murder. If you don't want to play, don't come. If you do come, play, or you'll be fed in the kitchen and nobody will speak to you. Don't let the girls fool you. Even pregnant, they can make you look silly. Above all, don't suggest any plays, even if you played quarterback at school. The Kennedys have the signal-calling department sewed up, and all of them have A-pluses in leadership. Run madly on every play, and make a lot of noise. Don't appear to be having too much fun, though. They'll accuse you of not taking the game seriously enough. Don't criticize the other team, either. It's bound to be full of Kennedys too, and the Kennedys don't like that sort of thing.

Message to Father. Jack Kennedy prepped at Choate, went to London School of Economics for a few months under famed Socialist Harold Laski ("My father wanted me to see both sides of the street''), majored in international relations at Harvard. During his junior year Jack went to Europe under the auspices of Ambassador Joe Kennedy, and in Berlin one night in 1939, U.S. Charge d'Affaires Alex Kirk gave him a message to take to his father: world war would erupt within a week. It did.

Shocked at Britain's prewar policies, Kennedy went back to Harvard, wrote a thesis that, at the suggestion of New York Timesman Arthur Krock, was expanded into a highly praised book called Why England Slept. Three years later, on the night of Aug. 2, 1943, Lieut. John Kennedy, U.S.N.R., found himself at the wheel of PT109, patrolling Blackett Strait in the Solomon Islands. Came the cry "Ship at 2 o'clock"--and in the next instant a Japanese destroyer knifed through the PT boat, hurling Skipper Kennedy to the deck and injuring his back. Expert Swimmer Kennedy saved one of his wounded crewmen by holding a strap of the man's Mae West in his teeth and towing him three miles to a small island. During the next six days, according to his Navy and Marine Corps Medal citation, Kennedy "succeeded in getting his crew ashore and, after swimming many hours attempting to secure food and water, finally effected the rescue of his men."

Kennedy was still in the hospital when he learned that his older brother, Joe Kennedy Jr., had been killed on a bomber raid against German V-2 installations in Normandy (a sister, Kathleen--"Kick"--Kennedy, the Marchioness of Hartington, was killed in an air crash in France in 1948). Invalided out of the Navy, Jack Kennedy hooked up with International News Service, covered the San Francisco founding session of the United Nations and the Potsdam conference--and decided to run for the Massachusetts Eleventh District congressional seat being vacated by indestructible James Michael Curley, who had just been elected mayor of Boston again.

Inept at the Switch. Jack Kennedy, politician, was--and is--a long way from the likes of Pat Kennedy and Honey Fitz, a fact still resented by some of Boston's old Irish types. Says one: "Tell me, who'd he ever get a job for? When did he ever attend a wake? When did he ever get out and rustle food for a poor starving family? Or raise the money for an undertaker?" In fact, Kennedy is even inept at the "Irish Switch," a maneuver that consists of vigorously shaking one person's hand while talking enthusiastically to someone else (Honey Fitz, a true artist, could pump one hand, speak to a second person, and gaze fondly at still another).

Kennedy made up for such handicaps by traipsing tirelessly through the slums of the Eleventh District shaving in back alleys before speaking appearances ("The Kennedy campaign trail," says a friend, "was littered with used razor blades"). And on the night of June 18, 1946, old Honey Fitz climbed onto a table to sing Sweet Adeline in celebration of his grandson's primary victory over eight other Democrats. The general election was a mere formality: Republicans do not get elected in the Eleventh District.

Re-elected over token opposition in 1948 and 1950, Kennedy was already zeroing in on the 1952 race against Republican Senator Henry Cabot Lodge Jr., ordered his secretary to accept speaking engagements only outside his own district. There was not really much difference between the politics of the two: Kennedy, in many ways, was a conservative sort of Democrat, and Lodge was a liberal Republican. Kennedy accused Lodge of Senate absenteeism and Lodge accused Kennedy of House absenteeism (both were right). Kennedy's slogan was "Kennedy Will Do More for Massachusetts," and Lodge's was "Lodge Has Done--and Will Do--the Most for Massachusetts."

Henry Cabot Lodge, who that year was giving his all as Ike's preconvention campaign manager, never quite knew what hit him. Kennedys seemed to sprout up all over Massachusetts, making speeches, holding lavish tea parties, starting chain-telephone campaigns, appearing on television ("Coffee with the Kennedys"). Toward the end, State Senator John Powers, then and now a top Kennedy lieutenant, urged that Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy be brought into the campaign. "But she's a grandmother," objected Joe Kennedy. "That's all right," said Powers. "She's a Gold Star mother, the mother of a war hero and a Congressman, the wife of an ambassador, the daughter of a mayor and Congressman, the daughter-in-law of a state senator and representative. She's beautiful and she's a Kennedy. Let me have her." Powers got her, and in the last weeks Rose Kennedy traveled Massachusetts, carrying with her a complete change of wardrobe, from simple blouses and skirts for union halls to evening gowns and jewels for swankier places. While Ike was carrying Massachusetts by 208,000 votes, the Democratic Kennedys were whipping Lodge by 70,000.

Across the Asparagus. Kennedy's Senate campaign had interrupted his courtship of dark-haired Jacqueline Bouvier, daughter of Manhattan Financier John V. Bouvier III. He had met her a year before at a friend's home ("I leaned across the asparagus," says Kennedy, "and asked her for a date"). In September 1953, Senator Jack and Socialite Jackie were married in Newport, with some 2,000 people arriving in chartered buses to stand outside while Boston's Archbishop Richard J. Gushing performed the nuptial Mass in St. Mary's Roman Catholic Church. Jackie soon found out what it meant to be a Kennedy: she broke an ankle playing touch football. But she has become part of the solid front the Kennedys present to the world, even to the point of indulging in masterful oversimplification in defending father Joe against charges that he runs his children's careers. "You'd think he was a mastermind playing chess," says Jackie, "when actually he's a nice old gentleman we see at Thanksgiving and Christmas."

Jackie Kennedy almost lost a husband in the first years after the marriage. Jack's wartime injury had required a spinal operation, but the bones were not set properly. In 1954 his back began giving trouble, and by fall he was hobbling about on crutches. In October he entered Manhattan's Hospital for Special Surgery, where a metal plate was set into his spine. Twice in three months, his condition was so grave that his family was called to his bedside. Just before Christmas, he had recovered to the extent of flying, supine on a stretcher, to his father's Palm Beach home--where, to cure black moods of depression, he began writing Profiles in Courage. But in February his back began paining him fiercely again: the wound around his metal plate was not healing. He went back to the hospital for another operation, and missed most of the 1955 session. Kennedy's health has been raised as another liability to his presidential candidacy--but if he holds out at his recent pace until 1960, he should answer all such questions.

"I'll Go for It." By the 1956 convention in Chicago. Jack Kennedy was back in business. He narrated the party film, The Pursuit of Happiness, which was premiered at the convention, and he made a nominating speech for Adlai Stevenson. But Adlai, after winning, threw the vice-presidential nomination wide open (some say as an invitation to Jack Kennedy), and the great Stop Kefauver movement began. Kennedys gathered in a suite at the Hotel Conrad Hilton, trying to decide whether Jack should go after the nomination. Then word came that the Georgia delegation had caucused in favor of Kennedy. Jack jumped up. "By God," cried he, "if Georgia will vote for me, I must have a chance. I'll go for it." Kennedys scurried all over Chicago, but it was of necessity a disorganized effort; e.g., at about 1:30 a.m., someone said a man, name unknown, had been cooling his heels for ten minutes waiting to see Kennedy. It turned out to be New York's Tammany Boss Carmine De Sapio, with more than 90 big delegate votes in his hip pocket.

Despite the jumbled effort, Jack Kennedy came breathtakingly close to the nomination--and lost only because of that Senate vote, earlier in 1956, against 90% farm parity. That fact, more than any other, dramatizes Kennedy's major 1960 problem: he is still in the Senate and he must still vote on highly controversial issues. And if it has been a strength in building him as a public figure, it is also a weakness in his presidential candidacy that Jack Kennedy, ever since he first went to Capitol Hill, has carved himself out perhaps the most independent record of any member of Congress. Items: P: In 1947, Massachusetts' Senior Democratic Representative John McCormack handed Kennedy a petition for presidential clemency for Boston's Mayor Curley, who was just then being packed off to jail for mail fraud. Said McCormack: "Sign it." Kennedy refused--the only Democrat in the Massachusetts delegation to do so. McCormack neither forgave nor forgot, especially after Kennedy beat him for control of the state Democratic Committee in a preconvention 1956 fight. At the national convention, it was McCormack who signaled to Sam Rayburn to recognize the Missouri delegation--which cast the decisive votes against Kennedy.

P: Arguing against a grab-bag veterans' pension bill in the House, Kennedy committed the political sin of insulting the American Legion ("The leadership of the American Legion has not had a constructive thought since 1918").

P: In 1954, Kennedy became the first Massachusetts Senator or Representative to vote for the St. Lawrence Seaway, for decades considered a deadly threat to the state's ports. His reasoning: if necessary, Canada was going ahead alone on the seaway and, that being the case, the U.S. might as well share in the general benefits. Some New England papers promptly dubbed Kennedy "the Suicide Senator."

P: In 1954, Kennedy was the only Senator from tariff-conscious New England to vote for the President's liberalized international trade program.

P: During the 1956 Senate session, Kennedy was warned three separate times by Democratic leaders that his vote against high, rigid farm supports would cost him a place on the national ticket. But Kennedy, convinced that Democratic farm policy had been a failure, was willing to try flexible supports. Now he takes the position that they too have flopped.

P: In his votes last summer on the civil rights bill, Kennedy managed to please hardly anyone.* Studying each section of the bill on its own merits, Kennedy encouraged the North (and annoyed the South) by voting, unsuccessfully, to retain Part III, which would have given the Attorney General extraordinary powers to enforce civil rights--a position stronger than the President's own. Then, having consulted three Harvard professors, he pleased the South (and infuriated diehard Northern liberals) by voting for the amendment requiring jury trials in criminal (but not civil) contempt cases.

P: Last summer Kennedy made a Senate speech calling for the U.S. to take an active stand for Algerian freedom from France, and he got an editorial roasting (TIME, July 15) for his pains. Deeply concerned. Kennedy called his father, then in France, and wondered aloud if he had not been mistaken. Replied Joe Kennedy: "You lucky mush. You don't know it and neither does anyone else, but within a few months everyone is going to know just how right you were on Algeria."

Neck Out. Outside the Senate, in his speeches around the nation, Jack Kennedy has held steadfastly to his independence. He appeared before the Florida Bar Association, criticized the legal profession for its "apparent indifference" to lawyers who, by the evidence before the McClellan committee, had engaged in "legal racketeering." Last spring he confronted the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, criticized it for its stand against foreign aid..

Still to come in the Senate are more problems for Kennedy. The natural-gas bill is coming up again, and it is considered a must in the Southwest; Kennedy voted against it once, is prepared to do so again. Restrictive labor legislation is in the works; Kennedy, a member of the labor-investigating McClellan committee, of which brother Bob is chief counsel, is against any such harsh measure as a federal right-to-work law, but probably would support corrective legislation, e.g., a tightening up, with punitive clauses, on the accounting of union pension and welfare funds. Extension of reciprocal trade will be an issue; Kennedy is all for it. So will foreign aid; Kennedy is an effective advocate, has stuck his political neck out by suggesting that it be expanded to include wavering Soviet satellites.

Second Mayflower. Beyond all these worries Jack Kennedy must stand for Senate re-election next year. The fact in itself is simple--but the problem is peculiar. To be sure, Kennedy has Democratic enemies, covert and overt, in Massachusetts. Congressman John McCormack is one example, although the foxy old House majority leader has recently been talking pro-Kennedy for all he is worth. The mutual esteem between Kennedy and Governor Foster Furcolo is at best on-again-off-again; some waspish Bostonians attribute it to the theory that "Gaelic and garlic don't mix." But Jack Kennedy is beyond any question his state's best vote-getter. His Democratic renomination is assured. The real difficulty is in finding a reputable Republican to run against him.

Massachusetts Democrats desperately want the Republicans to run against Kennedy. Explains Adviser John Powers: "If he has an opponent he'll fight hard and the chances are he'll eat the whole Republican slate. We'll redistrict both the state and congressional districts. It will be the real second coming of the Mayflower."

Kennedy himself has an additional motive. He realizes that he has gone too far too fast in the run for 1960, that his liabilities are catching up with his assets--and yet he cannot slow down. A huge, headline-catching win over respectable Republican opposition in Massachusetts would give him a second wind. Then he could be off again on what, by the nature of the position he has staked out for himself, is bound sometimes to be a lonely way. Says Jack Kennedy: "An independent position is the only place for me. I'm a Northern Democrat who has some sense of restraint. I do pretty well in Massachusetts, and if that turns out to be typical of the nation --well, that will be fine."

*And eruditely reminded his audience that Republican National Chairman Meade Alcorn bears the same name as one of Mississippi's Reconstruction governors.

*Another time when Kennedy won no friends and influenced many enemies: in 1954 he did not vote at all on Joe McCarthy's censure, which was widely interpreted as ducking the issue in Catholic Massachusetts. Actually, Kennedy was on his back in the hospital and forbidden to do much reading; hence, he explains, he was not familiar enough with the facts to make a judgment.

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