As another Lame Cherry exclusive in matter anti matter.
In this 2020 election, America will revisit the 1864 election of Abraham Lincoln in the same divisions and biting hatred against a sitting President. It will require a Lincoln cunning which Donald Trump expressed in the 2016 AD election in the year of our Lord. In that, the prototype of the modern election genius was encapsulated in one of the last people you would ever think was a political genius, in John Kennedy.
The fact is for all of Kennedy's charm, good looks and sexual deviance, if Bobby and Teddy, had less of the deviance and more of what made John Kennedy, who was completely Lincoln in understanding the electorate from top to bottom, they would have been Presidents too.
The fact is for all the James Carvells and Karl Roves bragged upon in their savvy and political understanding, John Kennedy did not need staffs nor computers to compile the data, for it was all in his brain. He was a political savant when it came to politics, in where it mattered in getting elected.
Form Speaker Tip O'Neill, one of the most accomplished politicians and speakers in American history was dazzled in 1958, as he observed Kennedy going over the data. Yes politics always has data, but for Kennedy he was analyzing and projecting minorities and religious groups. He literally was transforming Americans politics in that year. He literally knew where the Jews and Irish lived in his state in order to target them.
HARDBALL: Kennedy Politics
In early November 1958, Kennedy won reelection to the U.S. Senate for his second term by a margin of three to one. Later that month Jack stopped by Tip O’Neill’s office, wanting to talk to Tip’s top guy, Tommy Mullen, about how the vote had gone in their district, the one Jack himself had once represented. Tip remembered, “Together, the two of them, Mullen and Kennedy, went over the district precinct by precinct—where the Irish lived, where the Jews lived, and so on, with every ethnic group. Jack wanted to know how each one had voted because he intended to use that information on the national scene for the 1960 presidential election. I’d never seen anybody study the voting patterns of ethnic and religious groups in a systematic way before, and I don’t think that most people realized then, or appreciate now, that Jack Kennedy was a very sophisticated student of politics.”
John Kennedy was already moving before 1960 to be President. The common wisdom was for the young man to wait another 8 years. To build his experience and grow in name recognition, but Kennedy had studied both the Republicans and Democrats who were running, and he pronounced that there was nothing there whom he could not defeat.
He had political instinct. He knew that 1960 was the time to make his move to the national stage.
Looking around, Kennedy wasn’t impressed by the field he would face. “There’s nothing there in 1960,” he told a doubting Charlie Bartlett, who argued he should wait at least eight years. “This is really the time,” Jack insisted. The Rackets Committee had made him a celebrated figure. Bobby, too. “For the couple of years there, all you heard was the name Kennedy,”
John Kennedy ran the tightest of political ships. He literally was a political enforcer. He ran the Kennedy mafia of politics and in those politics he had loyalists and there were of course others who did not support him. Whenever at a cocktail party or in private conversations, a Democrat would voice a dislike for John Kennedy, Kennedy made absolutely certain that one of his loyalists would appear in force and make that person very aware that John Kennedy knew what was being said, and that this person was on the Kennedy List of people who John Kennedy would deal with.
Sorensen knew, by now, his boss’s special way of dealing with “rumors.” “Whenever word reached him of a politician who was being privately and persistently antagonistic, the senator would often ask a third party to see the offender—not because he hoped for the latter’s support, but because ‘I want him to know that I know what he’s saying.’ “
In 1960, at the Kennedy Compound, it was not Joe Kennedy nor Bobby, who orchestrated where John Kennedy was going. This may surprise most as John Kennedy was always projected as the good natured and agreeable Kennedy, but JFK already had himself researched every Democatic primary. He knew the strengths and weaknesses for him, and it was John Kennedy who was doing the lecturing as the Democratic operatives and Kennedy's assembled.
He literally had built by personal touch a complete organization, from the Compound to every hinterland and slum in the United States. His network reported back what every key figure Kennedy would have to deal with, was saying and thinking. John Kennedy was not going to be surprised by anyone or anything, because wherever he was, he was also in 500 places at the same time.
He’d done a great deal of research on each primary and the pros/cons for and against, so he talked and we listened. Then Senator Kennedy and his father would respond accordingly. Bobby, Larry, and I had little to contribute. We listened carefully.
“At Palm Beach, the senator was in full command,” Ted Sorensen recounted. “He was still his chief campaign manager and strategy advisor. He knew each stage, the problems it presented, the names of those to contact—not only governors and senators but their administrative assistants as well, not only politicians but publishers and private citizens. He kept in touch with the Kennedy men in every state, acquired field workers for the primary states, made all the crucial decisions, and was the final depository of all reports and rumors concerning the attitudes of key figures.”
The Smiling Jack had fooled an entire political establishment. When one was brought into the political inner sanctum, the propaganda disappared. As spokesman Pierre Salinger recalled on meeting John Kennedy, "Bobby always had the reputation for being ruthless, but when it came to the real Kennedy without pity, it was Jack Kennedy. Cross Jack Kennedy, and he would not wound an opponent, he would kill them. Jack always said, a wounded tiger was more dangerous than a living or a dead one".
In that would be the epitaph for John Kennedy of November 1963 in Dallas Texas.
Pierre Salinger recalls that Jack preferred killing a politician to wounding one. “ ‘A wounded tiger,’ he always said, ‘was more dangerous than either a living or a dead one.’ “
It was Salinger’s first exposure to Jack Kennedy’s ruthlessness. Up until then, Jack had appeared, on the surface, the one with the easygoing nature. Salinger was fascinated. He was learning what Ken O’Donnell and others had before him. Bobby was the one who’d gained the reputation for ruthlessness, but Jack could be pitiless.
John Kennedy ran the first political computer system in politics. It was vast and it was all recorded on cards in his filing system. Every bit of information on every Democrat he would have to deal with was in that system. If someone showed support, it was recorded on those cards, and just as pitiless Jack Kennedy would lower the boom on anyone contending with him, he made absolutely certain that his supporters received thank you cards for their support. Every Democrat who was a protagonists or antagonist, heard from John Kennedy personally.
Sorensen had been the record-keeper on where the candidate stood with regional party leaders. As Steve took over and became more and more familiar, he increasingly took over that role from Sorensen. He oversaw the filing system that recorded how Jack stood with the delegates and politicians across the country.
“If the senator met a delegate and the delegate said that he’d support Kennedy if he ran for president . . . then either Dave Powers or Ted would make such a notation on the card and give it a number. The numbering system began with a ten. If a delegate was a ten, that meant he was a totally committed Kennedy man.” The card was then “returned to the main file in the Washington campaign office and then the senator would write the person a thank-you letter.”
1960 with all of Kennedy's knowledge and system though was not going to fall to him. He had the perpetual loser Adlai Stevenson standing in the way, and the Texas powerhouse of Lyndon Johnson. Both men, held large pieces of the Democratic power structure. LBJ controlled Washington power and Stevenson controlled the whither FDR wing of the party. John Kennedy was the new candidate and his work had to supplant the power structures in the states, where the contest would be fought.
In that, John Kennedy was a true Jefferson and Jackson Republican, his drive for the White House would come from the states, and not from the centers of power.
To win, Kennedy would have to do it the hard way, dominating enough primaries that as the convention approached, those governors would go to him. Only that way could he gain the momentum he needed. Jack, after all, wasn’t a party favorite with either the liberal or Washington establishments. If the old Roosevelt crowd prevailed, it could well be Adlai Stevenson again. If Lyndon Johnson proved able to leverage his sizable Capitol Hill clout, the nomination might be his.
This is where 1960 began for John Kennedy, much like 1860 for Abraham Lincoln, 1980 for Ronald Reagan and 2016 AD in the year of our Lord for Donald Trump. Their movements were driven by the people. The nomination was not political appointees, but delegates elected who supported the candidate from the people's votes. JFK had built is campaign on the states. He knew that the most important states of Pennsylvania, California and Ohio, in the Democratic balance, would come down to the Governors who were Democrats. In that Kennedy, knew no matter how unsure the Governors were of him, that in the end the people would push their political leaders to support John Kennedy as they had voted for him.
“By taking the case directly to the people, as he intended, he felt he’d be able to pick up a great many delegates,” O’Donnell said.
The governors most on his mind were a trio composed of David Lawrence of Pennsylvania, Pat Brown of California, and Mike DiSalle of Ohio. These men, so the idea went, “would begin to get nervous and, though their inclination might—or not—be for John Kennedy, in the end they would follow their delegates.”
The entire operation of of John Kennedy, would hinge on his lieutenants operating in key political theaters. Larry O'Brien being one of the most astute operatives of the era. It would all assemble though on John Kennedy's field marshal and that would be Bobby Kennedy. The most ruthless Kennedy who would cement his reputation among operatives.
When Ohio's Governor would not commit, Jack dispatched Bobby. The mission had started with Jack making a point for Bobby to lean on the Governor hard. In what ensued, the Governor was leaned on and Bobby did the job of being the son of a bitch, because that is what Jack said Bobby need to be to get the job done.
For example, Larry O’Brien would handle California, Maryland, and Indiana, and Hy Raskin, a Chicago lawyer and onetime Stevenson loyalist, took Oregon. There were no salaries; just their expenses were paid by the campaign. And now, with his book finished, Bobby was free to assume the reins of the entire effort. They needed him “to take control and get it all organized in order to be effective,” said O’Donnell.
Democrats who feared Jack Kennedy would be the democrats who loathed Richard Nixon. The reality is John Kennedy, actually was on the best terms with Richard Nixon and literally defended him. Kennedy was a political savant. He knew for all the charming press that he received, Nixon had a press which had been engaged in destroying him for decades. John Kennedy liked Richard Nixon and more to the point, John Kennedy would defend Richard Nixon against other Democrats.
despite Kennedy’s shots at him on the stump, friends of Jack knew he was anything but a Nixon hater. Whatever he might say out on the campaign trail, when at home he refused to join in when Nixon was being ridiculed. Ben Bradlee recalled how this annoyed Jack’s “card-carrying anti-Nixon friends.”
For example, one evening Jacqueline Kennedy had invited their old neighbors Joan and Arthur Gardner to dinner. There’d be just the two couples and Rose Kennedy, who was stopping by on her way to Palm Beach. Mrs. Gardner made a crack about the “dreadful” Richard Nixon, fully expecting her host to chime in with his agreement. He didn’t. “You have no idea what he’s been through,” Kennedy defended him. “Dick Nixon is the victim of the worst press that ever hit a politician in this country. What they did to him in the Helen Gahagan Douglas race was disgusting.”
For those who hated Richard Nixon. it will stun Democrats to know that John Kennedy had informed Democrats, that they would either nominate him, or he was going to vote for Richard Nixon. John Kennedy would not be voting for Stevenson or Johnson.
Charlie Bartlett had a memory of an especially telling moment. He and his wife, Martha, spent New Year’s Eve 1959 with the Kennedys. Something his old friend said that night caused him to write a note to himself the following morning. “Had dinner with Jack and Jackie—talked about presidential campaign a lot—Jack says if the Democrats don’t nominate him he’s going to vote for Nixon.”
The Democratic race for the President in 1960, would come down to the computer who wore a back brace and the bourbon swigging giant of Texas who would become John Kennedy's wounded tiger.
Lyndon Johnson was as astute as John Kennedy in politics. LBJ understood that Kennedy had the genius of the new polling data, and the connections of the Kennedy mafia, but LBJ had read the party correctly, and that was John Kennedy would win going into the convention, but the convention would get cold feet, as Kennedy would win the first ballot, but not be given the nomination.
LBJ was correct, but he made the mistake of referring to Jack Kennedy as"that boy", in not taking JFK seriously in the tiger killer he was. Kennedy was prepared for that obstacle and was already moving to overcome it, as Johnson was waiting to exploit it, and in this Johnson would lose, as John Kennedy removed the only avenue LBJ had to gain the nomination. LBJ could not win the nomination if Kennedy already had it.
John Kennedy was absolutely correct before all of this started. He said he could not let this go to Washington DC in the power brokers, as LBJ would win it. Kennedy had the people, the delegates and then the Govenrors. That trumped LBJ.
But Kennedy enjoyed a state-of-the-art edge. Using Lou Harris’s polling data on local attitudes and concerns, Jack knew what people had on their minds, which arguments would win their interest. It was a breakthrough technique, and one that would change modern campaigning in the years to come.
Around this time, Lyndon Johnson called on Tip O’Neill in his office. The Senate leader said he understood O’Neill’s first loyalty was to his Massachusetts colleague, but that “the boy” was obviously going to falter after not getting the nomination on the first ballot. He lobbied O’Neill for his commitment on the second.
The Republicans received a first taste of the "Kennedy Machine" as Lyndon Johnson and others were becoming acquainted with losing to John Kennedy. The Republicans reported that the Kennedy's moved through West Virginia, a poor rural coal state like storm, and the deluge they brought was money and more money. The Kennedy's were buying the state, down to sheriff's races. It was scorched earth politics and one which the Kennedy's would repeat to the general election when they stole the state of Illinois from Richard Nixon who was elected President
There was nothing which was going to stop the Kennedy's from the democratic nomination and the vigor they reflected was Bobby's ruthlessness and it scared Republicans in knowing what was coming.
The Nixon backer Charles McWhorter, a native of the state, saw it as a daunting preview of the general election. “They went through West Virginia like a tornado, putting money—big bucks!—into sheriffs’ races. You were either for Kennedy or you weren’t. The Kennedy people just wanted the gold ring. They were ruthless in that objective. That scared the shit out of me.”
In political races as 1960, when ruthless is wed to pitiless, the casualties appear on the landscape, and were noticed by Kennedy supporters, especially in CIA propagandist Ben Bradlee of the Washington Post.
On the night of Kennedy's great usurpation of the Democrat Party's political powers, Bradlee noted that the young pretty Jackie, purchased for the image, after sexual training from actor William Holden and others, stood alone on the stairs, completely ignored by her husband. She was not missed as John Kennedy soaked in his victory, as she went out to the car to sit alone, as the crowds cheered.
She would wait on her husband, until he was ready to fly back to Washington as the conquering victor. The night was Jacks' but she would eclipse him politically on the national stage.
Ben Bradlee, though, was stunned to see how little attention the exhilarated victor showed his wife that night. “Kennedy ignored Jackie, and she seemed miserable at being left out of things. She was then far from the national figure she later became in her own right. She . . . stood on a stairway, totally ignored, as JFK made his victory statement on television. Later, when Kennedy was enjoying his greatest moment of triumph to date, with everyone in the hall shouting and yelling, Jackie quietly disappeared and went out to the car and sat by herself, until he was ready to fly back to Washington.”
The candidate was alone in his triumph.
John Kennedy, played the likeable character, to catch everyone off guard as he duped a nation. Lincoln had his stories, Reagan had his jokes and Trump has his Tweets, but they were all designed to mask the astute political mind which was orchestrating their gravitational gathering of power.
JFK was fascinating in the roll he fell into. His older brother Joseph was the chosen one to be President, so Jack traded on his good looks and played the comedian to get by, as Bobby groomed for the place of the little brother who did the dirty work. But with the death of Joseph, Jack Kennedy, who no one suspected had learned his father's ruthlessness well and became sociopathic in not even family in being a faithful husband, would stand in the way of their objectives.
John Kennedy was the computer who wore a back brace and unfeeling as a machine. He was the savant of 1960 AD in the year of our Lord.
Once again another Lame Cherry exclusive in matter anti matter.
Nuff Said
agtG
