A Thousand Days Read online

  And so we had our ticket. I dropped by Stevenson’s suite on Friday morning and found the Stevenson faithfuls—Finletter, Monroney, Doyle, Wirtz, Ball, Blair, Minow and some others. These, along with absent Stevensonians like Mrs. Roosevelt, Lehman, Wilson Wyatt, had kept the liberal spirit of the party alive in the dark years. Stevenson himself, unruffled and witty, acted as if a great burden had been taken from his shoulders. Watching him, one sensed the difference between the old group and the new. Kennedy was in the school of Roosevelt. The thought of power obviously neither rattled nor dismayed him. He did not wish cups to pass from his lips. He displayed absolute assurance about his capacity to do the job; and he had a hard and sure instinct about how to get what he wanted. In Kennedy the will to command and the will to victory were visible and unbeatable. One watched the changing of the guard with a mixture of nostalgia and hope.

  Late Friday afternoon, in the shadows of the setting sun, John F. Kennedy appeared before a crowd of eighty thousand people in the Los Angeles Coliseum to record his formal acceptance of the nomination. The speech began conventionally enough with tributes to his defeated rivals, who sat behind him in a circle on the platform. Next came the litany of historical allusions: “Richard I . . . bold Henry II . . . Richard Cromwell . . . Pierce . . . Fillmore . . . Buchanan.” Then, in a moment, the speech moved on to a new pitch of gravity and emphasis.

  The American people expect more from us than cries of indignation and attack. . . . For the world is changing. The old era is ending. The old ways will not do.

  Abroad, the balance of power is shifting. There are new and more terrible weapons, new and uncertain nations, new pressures of population and deprivation. . . . More energy is released by the awakening of these new nations than by the fission of the atom itself. . . .

  The world has been close to war before—but now man, who has survived all previous threats to his existence, has taken into his mortal hands the power to exterminate the entire species some seven times over.

  Here at home, the changing face of the future is equally revolutionary. The New Deal and the Fair Deal were bold measures for their generations—but this is a new generation. . . . A technological revolution on the farm . . . an urban-population revolution . . . a peaceful revolution for human rights—demanding an end to racial discrimination in all parts of our community life . . . a medical revolution . . . a revolution of automation. . . .

  There has also been a change—a slippage—in our intellectual and moral strength. Seven lean years of drought and famine have withered the field of ideas. Blight has descended on our regulatory agencies. . . . Too many Americans have lost their way, their will and their sense of historic purpose. . . .

  It is time, in short, for a new generation of leadership—new men to cope with new problems and new opportunities. All over the world, particularly in the newer nations, young men are coming to power, men who are not bound by the traditions of the past, men who are not blinded by the old fears and hates and rivalries, young men who can cast off the old slogans and delusions and suspicions. . . .

  He was very tired; his delivery was uncertain and at times almost strident; but his conviction carried him along, and the crowd stirred in response to the words, as the sun continued to sink into the sea.

  For I stand tonight facing west on what was once the last frontier. From the lands that stretch 3000 miles behind me, the pioneers of old gave up their safety, their comfort and sometimes their lives to build a new world here in the West. . . . Their motto was not “Every man for himself,” but “All for the common cause.” . . .

  Today some would say that those struggles are all over, that all the horizons have been explored, that all the battles have been won, that there is no longer an American frontier. But . . . the problems are not all solved and the battles are not all won, and we stand today on the edge of a new frontier—the frontier of the 1960s, a frontier of unknown opportunities and paths, a frontier of unfulfilled hopes and threats. . . .

  The new frontier of which I speak is not a set of promises—it is a set of challenges. It sums up not what I intend to offer the American people, but what I intend to ask of them. . . . It holds out the promise of more sacrifice instead of more security. . . . Beyond that frontier are uncharted areas of science and space, unsolved problems of peace and war, unconquered pockets of ignorance and prejudice, unanswered questions of poverty and surplus.

  It would be easier to shrink back from that frontier, to look to the safe mediocrity of the past. . . . But I believe the times demand invention, innovation, imagination, decision. I am asking each of you to be new pioneers on that new frontier. . . .

  For the harsh facts of the matter are that we stand on this frontier at a turning point in history. . . .

  It has been a long road from that first snowy day in New Hampshire to this crowded convention city. Now begins another long journey. . . .

  The crowds cheered; they promised their help, their hand, their voice, their vote; then, in a few moments, they began to melt away into the hushed dusk. John Fitzgerald Kennedy’s long journey had begun.

  III

  Campaign for the Presidency

  EARLY IN AUGUST my wife and I were asked to luncheon at Hyannis Port. It was a shining summer Saturday, sunny, clear and still. But the once placid Cape Cod village had lost its wistful tranquillity. It looked more like a town under military occupation, or a place where dangerous criminals or wild beasts were at large. Everywhere were roadblocks, cordons of policemen, photographers with cameras slung over their shoulders, children selling souvenirs, tourists in flashy shirts and shorts waiting expectantly as if for a revelation. The atmosphere of a carnival or a hanging prevailed. The summer residents, proceeding frostily down the streets, were identifiable by their expressions of disapproval.

  A stockade now half surrounded the Kennedy compound, and the approach was like crossing a frontier, with documents demanded every ten feet. Eventually we made our way past the tourists and the children and the roadblocks and approached the house. The first courtyard contained newspapermen, lounging in the sun and waiting for a press briefing. We passed on from the court to the terrace of the Senator’s house. Here we encountered a delegation from the Foreign Nationalities Branch of the Democratic National Committee, with Mennen Williams in exuberant command. The delegates carried dolls dressed in vivid native dresses as gifts for Caroline Kennedy. Kennedy, smiling and tan, was shaking their hands; he waved us on into the house. In the first room we ran into Frank Morrissey, a devoted Kennedy retainer from his earliest days in Massachusetts politics, waiting with a potential contributor for a word with the nominee. On we went into the living room, dark behind long curtains. My eyes were still dazzled from the sun on the terrace, so I did not at first make out the figure sitting patiently in the shadows. It was Norman Mailer.

  1. OPENING MOVEMENTS

  The total astonishment of going through this sequence and finding Norman Mailer at the end summed up, it seemed to me, the gaiety and the unpredictability of the household. Jacqueline Kennedy joined us, and we all chatted over drinks. Soon Kennedy came in from the terrace. It was then that he told Mailer that he had enjoyed his books, saying “I’ve read The Deer Park and . . . the others,” a remark which startled an author who had heard people in similar situations say a hundred times, “I’ve read The Naked and the Dead . . . and the others.” (It was a faithful expression of an idiosyncratic taste. When Kennedy first met James Michener, he said, “I’ve always liked your Fires of Spring,” foregoing the inevitable Tales of the South Pacific. When he met Eugene Burdick, he mentioned The Ninth Wave, not The Ugly American.)

  About one o’clock six of us—the Kennedys, Jacqueline’s sister Lee Radziwill and her husband and ourselves—took off on the Marlin. The waters of the sound glittered in the sun; in the distance we could soon see the shadowy outline of Martha’s Vineyard. We swam off the stem of the boat. Afterward Bloody Marys were served, followed by luncheon. We cruised serenely for several h
ours, returning to the Kennedy pier at the end of the day.

  Conversation filled in the interstices of the afternoon. I had never seen Kennedy in better form—more relaxed, funny and free. He had lunched in New York the day before with Henry R. Luce and the editors of Time and Life. “I like Luce,” he said. “He is like a cricket, always chirping away. After all, he made a lot of money through his own individual enterprise so he naturally thinks that individual enterprise can do everything. I don’t mind people like that. They have earned the right to talk that way. After all, that’s the atmosphere in which I grew up. My father is the same way. But what I can’t stand are all the people around Luce who automatically agree with everything he has to say.” The Luce people were agitated about Galbraith, he continued, and seemed to regard him as a dangerous radical. “Actually,” Kennedy said, “Galbraith is a conservative.”

  He chatted a bit about healing the wounds of Los Angeles. He had had a successful visit from Lyndon Johnson, and he was full of enthusiasm for Orville Freeman and Mennen Williams. Humphrey’s behavior still puzzled him: “Hubert was supposed to come out for me on that Tuesday. I have never understood what happened to him.” Stevenson’s visit, he thought, had gone all right. Adlai’s political counsel, Kennedy said with some surprise, was shrewd and realistic, and his thinking on foreign policy generally congenial. Stevenson had pointed out that Kennedy, after his months of absorption in the campaign, would need to be brought promptly up to date on the main problems of foreign policy if elected; perhaps he should make provision now for a report to be delivered right after the election. Though Kennedy’s mind was primarily on politics, he saw the point and immediately asked Stevenson to prepare the report himself. Stevenson had said nothing about his own future, so Kennedy had said nothing either; “however, I would not ask him to help me now if I did not think of him as playing a role in the future.” Kennedy went on to remark a little sadly that he wished he had more rapport with Stevenson. He had rapport with Bill Blair, he noted, and Stevenson obviously had it with Jacqueline; but he always was conscious of strain when he and Stevenson were in direct contact. At one point, he asked, “If you were me, would you appoint Stevenson Secretary of State?” I said yes and explained why. He listened with apparent interest but without disclosing his own feelings.

  He talked a good deal about Nixon, who had just been making imprudent statements in Honolulu. This pleased Kennedy; he said he was sure he could count on Nixon’s capacity to make mistakes. But he was irritated over a rather striking column by Eric Sevareid in that morning’s Boston Globe. Sevareid had argued that there were no real differences between the two candidates: “The ‘managerial revolution’ has come to politics and Nixon and Kennedy are its first completely packaged products.” Both men, Sevareid said, were sharp, ambitious, opportunistic, devoid of strong convictions and deep passions, with no commitment except to personal advancement. The genius of these “tidy, buttoned-down men” was not that of the heroic leader but of the junior executive on the make. They represented the apotheosis of the Organization Man. Sevareid recalled the thirties and the young men who “sickened at the Republic Steel massacre of strikers . . . got drunk and wept when the Spanish Republic went down . . . dreamt beautiful and foolish dreams about the perfectibility of man, cheered Roosevelt and adored the poor.”

  I can’t find in the record that Kennedy or Nixon ever did, thought or felt these things. They must have been across the campus on Fraternity Row, with the law and business school boys, wearing the proper clothes, thinking the proper thoughts, cultivating the proper people.

  I always sensed that they would end up running the big companies in town but I’m damned if I ever thought one of them would end up running the country.

  Part of this was true, of course. Kennedy had not been a firebrand of the Student Union at Harvard, though one might question the relevance of the point; it is not in the record either that Franklin Roosevelt or Woodrow Wilson spent much time marching on picket lines in his youth. But the contention that he and Nixon were two peas from the same pod exasperated him. He said that this was the fashionable cliché of the campaign, and he obviously feared that it might have some impact. I think, moreover, that he felt personally insulted by it, for he considered that there was no one he resembled less than Nixon. He scorned the way Nixon opened his speeches with the “Pat and I” greeting and employed what one reporter called the “humble bit.” “He has no taste,” Kennedy said with contempt. On issues, he added with disarming candor, “Nixon is about as far advanced as I was ten years ago.” When I said that a publisher had asked me to do a small book setting forth the differences between Nixon and himself, he encouraged me to go ahead.

  These were last interludes before the grinding labor of the election began. I had little to do with the inner workings of the campaign and can supplement Theodore H. White’s account only by adding some notes on the relations between Kennedy and the liberals. There had been growing enthusiasm for Kennedy in the liberal community in the weeks from West Virginia to Los Angeles. Then the convention, the Stevenson uprising and the Johnson nomination stopped this movement in its tracks. The acceptance speech and the promulgation of the New Frontier revived it for the moment. But it ebbed again in the doldrums of the special session of Congress.

  At the end of August the National Board of Americans for Democratic Action held a meeting to decide its position on the election. The leadership—Rauh, Nathan, Samuel H. Beer, Senators Joseph Clark and Herbert Lehman—called for an all-out endorsement of the Kennedy-Johnson ticket; but the representatives of the local chapters, rising one after another to report the sentiments of their members, expressed quite different views. As summarized in the minutes: Essex County, New Jersey: “No feeling for Kennedy. Strong feeling against Nixon. General feeling wait and see.” Dallas: “Think ADA has higher duty than endorsing lesser of two evils. Should endorse Democratic platform but no candidate.” East Westchester, New York: “Informal poll showed slight majority in favor of no endorsement by ADA at this point. Thought National Board should hold off.” West Side, New York City: “Majority for position we don’t trust Kennedy and don’t like Johnson but Nixon so bad we have to do something.” About half the chapters recommended no endorsement for the time being; the other half recommended endorsement but with marked tepidity (except for Massachusetts and one or two others) and only because of their fear of Nixon. In the end, the leadership prevailed on the Board to endorse Kennedy and “the national Democratic ticket,” but it was a struggle. The ADA statement studiously omitted the fact that there was also a candidate for Vice-President. I wrote Kennedy after the meeting, “I was prepared for apathy on the part of grass-roots liberals. I was not prepared for the depth of hostility which evidently exists.”

  A significant section of the traditional Democratic activists—the liberals, the reformers, the intellectuals: in general, the people who were in politics, not because it was their livelihood, but because they cared about issues—seemed immobilized. Adlai Stevenson had enlisted them in active Democratic affairs, and they were not prepared to forgive the man who had usurped his place. The influence of these issue-minded people far exceeded their numbers because they were crusaders of the party; they were the men and women who by Labor Day should have been arguing with their friends, writing letters to their papers, manning their local organizations, canvassing their neighborhoods, plastering their station wagons with Kennedy stickers and, in general, charging the campaign with emotion and zeal. Instead, many of them were sulking; and, worse, some who would have liked to help felt that the Kennedy people in the regular party organizations did not want them in the campaign. When I reported all this to Kennedy, he replied, “I don’t mind criticism at this point. I would rather have you tell me now than to wait until November.”

  Early in September, as part of his effort to meet this problem, Robert Kennedy asked me to go with James Doyle on a trip through areas of Stevenson popularity in California. Doyle and I did our best to expla
in to Stevenson supporters in Los Angeles, San Diego and Palo Alto why we thought Kennedy would make a great President. One sensed an awakening of interest in Kennedy, a new readiness to give him a chance; this appeared among the film people in Beverly Hills as well as among the academics at Stanford. Our trip had little effect, however, compared to what Stevenson himself did later.

  Kennedy, who had not forgotten those lines of people surrounding the Sports Arena, asked Stevenson to spend as much time as he could in California. This Stevenson did in the next weeks, speaking with his customary grace and magnanimity. Murray Kempton preserved a glimpse of him during a Kennedy trip to Los Angeles. Introducing the young man who had beaten him to the crowds who loved him, Stevenson said, “Do you remember that in classical times when Cicero had finished speaking, the people said, ‘How well he spoke’—but when Demosthenes had finished speaking, the people said, ‘Let us march.’” So with characteristic style he accepted the succession. “Let us never forget,” Kempton wrote, “that if a light still rises above this dreary land, it is because for so long and so lonely a time this man held it up.”*

  2. THE TIDE TURNS

  While the Stevenson Democrats were coming to terms with the new order, Kennedy himself was beginning to hit his stride. On September 12, before the Greater Houston Ministerial Association, he knocked religion out of the campaign as an intellectually respectable issue; it would persist, of course, as a stream of rancor underground. And his own political purpose was gradually coming into focus. He was developing with emphasis, and more and more often with eloquence, his distinctive theme—the appeal to get the country moving again. On a hundred platforms, at airports and in armories, at state fairs and in war memorials and municipal auditoriums, before crowds baked in the sun or shivering in the autumn’s early frost, from the interior valleys of California to the familiar town squares of New England, he was defining the issue, his voice twanging and rapid, his sentences punctuated by the staccato movement of the outthrust arm and the pointed finger, his argument so intent that his flow of discourse often smothered the bursts of applause.