A New World to Be Won by Thomas G. Scott

Author:Thomas, G. Scott. [Thomas, G. Scott.]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Greenwood Publishing Group
ISBN: 9780313397950
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

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It is axiomatic that a political candidate must transform negatives into positives—turn lemons into lemonade—to maximize his odds of victory. So Jack Kennedy emphasized his youthfulness as he darted on short campaign trips in August, briefl y escaping the somnolent session of Congress. Richard Nixon might chide him for inexperience and immaturity, but Kennedy preferred to spin his tale a happier way.

He promised to bring vigor and vitality to the White House.

“What shall we do in this country?” he asked at a rally in Portland, Maine. “What shall we do around the world to reverse the trend of history, to take those actions here in this country and throughout the globe that shall make people feel that, in the year of 1961, the American giant began to stir again, the great American boiler began to fi re up again, this country began to move ahead again?”

It was an effective line, yet Kennedy was wary of pushing the youth-and-vigor angle too far. He could not afford to alienate the millions of middle-aged and elderly voters who remained fond of Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman. So he began to reach out to old-line Democrats, stressing that he and his advisers were not “a collection of angry young men.”

The living icons of the Democratic Party—Adlai Stevenson, Eleanor Roosevelt, and Truman—had deep reservations about the nominee.

August

191

They brooded about his age, doubted his liberalism, and scorned his father. Kennedy considered it essential to win their favor. He took personal control of what he called his “fence-mending chores.”

Stevenson was the easiest to convince. He was coy in public—

“I would look on any offi ce with great respect”—but privately harbored an ambition to be secretary of state. He traveled to Hyannis Port on July 31. “There followed fi ve hours in the bosom—or the shark’s teeth—of the Kennedy family ashore and afl oat,” Stevenson wrote to a friend. “Even the Black Prince and wife were there.” The latter was a pointed reference to Bobby Kennedy, whose relationship with Stevenson had never been comfortable. But the older man camou-

fl aged his distaste. He volunteered to campaign for Jack Kennedy and to prepare a detailed report about foreign policy.

Eleanor Roosevelt posed a greater challenge. She held no political offi ce—nor desired any—yet remained infl uential, the embodiment of the New Deal and American liberalism. Kennedy dreaded their August 14 meeting at her estate in Hyde Park, New York. “She hated my father,” he insisted privately, “and she can’t stand it that his children turned out so much better than hers.” The fi rst part, at least, was accurate. The former fi rst lady still resented Old Joe’s abandonment of Great Britain in World War II.

Her disdain extended to the son. Kennedy had dodged the most controversial issue to face the Senate during the fi fties, the matter of Joseph McCarthy, the red-baiting senator from Wisconsin. Liberals had demanded that McCarthy be censured, but many of Kennedy’s constituents were opposed. “Hell,” he told a friend, “half my voters in Massachusetts look on McCarthy as a hero.

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