Transcripts For CSPAN3 John F. Kennedys White House Campaign 20170825

This is part of our sin tennuce activities. Im executive director of the john f. Kennedy library foundation. On behalf of all of my colleagues at the library, we are thrilled all of you are here. You are in for a special, special treat tonight. Before i talk about the book, a few other quick things first. First, to thank our sponsors for tonight and for the forum series, the bank of america, the lowell institute, media sponsors, the boston globe, xfinity and ber. In addition to tonight, on your chair is a brochure of different activities. As you know, a week from today is the actual centennial birthday for john f. Kennedy. We have a variety of things. We hope you come back to some or all of these as your schedule permits. We also want to welcome those that are watching this streaming or those on cspan. We appreciate their participation as well. After the presentation tonight, our authors have kindly agreed to sign books. If you dont have them, theyre also available in our gift shop for sale and they will be signing them out to my left, your right afterwards. This is a treasure. This book is really a treasure. I know a little bit about this topic, and when i read this i learned so much and how these two skilled writers put together their deep research and told a fascinating story of the road to camelot inside jfks fiveyear campaign. Before i introduce the two authors i want to welcome back ellen fitzpatrick. Many of you have heard ellen before. She has been here many times, both as a moderator and author and as a scholar in so many ways. For each of these three, again, i could tell so much about their background. I will just give a few sentences on each one so we can get to the meat of this. Ellen is a professor of history at the university of New Hampshire. She has written eight books, including many best sellers, letter to jackie, condolences from a grieving nation, and the highest class, ceiling womens quest for american presidency and so much more. Thomas is Pulitzer Prize journalist. A political reporter for the globe for 40 years. He start when he was four years old he told me. The author of four book goes. He was named one of washingtons 50 most influential journalists by washington magazine. Curtis was a national and Foreign Correspondent for the globe. He now teaches journalism at the university of mississippi. He covered eight president ial campaigns, seven for the globe shall wrrks a globe, and served as a white house correspondent. They have so much experience among them. Please welcome them. Thank you so much. [ applause ]. I feel like a school marm with my two pupils over here. It is a good thing classes are over. They were actually nervous in advance about, you know, the academic historian going for blood here, but really this is such a wonderful book that fills in a story that many of us i suspect think we already know. How many of you remember the 1960 campaign . Quite a few hands going up. Well, i can tell you that you dont know anything about it and you will learn so much from reading this book, as i did. It is an absolutely fascinating study. I have had the advantage of reading the book, and most of you i assume have not. I thought i would instead of grilling these two, i would really ask some openended questions to allow you to get a sense of what the story is that they have to tell about this remarkable campaign. In some sense i think the punch line is given away in the sub title, which is that this was a fiveyear undertaking on the part of the very young john f. Kennedy. So when we think about the 1960 campaign, i think very few people appreciate that it began as early as it did, that kennedy set his sights on the presidency as early as he did, and that it was as methodical as it was, and very instrumental not only in getting him to the white house but it affected his time in the senate and it affected the whole political world that we inhabit today. This was one much those really transformative moments in american political history. Thats my plug for you guys. Not bad, hun . Uhoh, you know whats coming now. No. I want you to begin by telling me something telling all of our wonderful attendees tonight, what i learned when i got to the acknowledgements which is how this came about, your collaboration and how you decided to do the book. Well, i guess i can start with my beginning. I was fascinated by the 1956 Democratic Convention which i watched as a teenager on a very snowy black and White Television set in mississippi. There was such drama in that fight for the Vice President ial nomination. Stevenson, another example of his indecisiveness, instead of picking his own running mate through it to the convention. So there was an enormous fight that went on between some very prominent democrats including hubert humphrey, mayor bob wagner from new york, old senator albert gore from tennessee, and then estet estetez cafarbor who won the nomination and this young unheard of senator from massachusetts, john kennedy. Kennedy nearly won the thing. It was kind of a pier six brawl. It was the last time that a convention had multiple ballots. It is hard to believe, particularly when john davis took 100 and something ballots. So i was fascinated. I wanted to write a book about it. I did some work, i actually came to the Kennedy Library in, id say, 2002 and did some research, interviewed some people who are no longer with us, people like ted sorenson, arthur slassinger, john siegenthal, and i had a proposal. No publisher was interested. I finally got an audience through a mutual friend with a very prominent publisher with simon and schuster named alice mayhugh. I pitched it to her in new york and she looked at me and said, not big enough. I packed up my notes and went home. Fast forward about 12 years later, tom. I was visiting curtis in oxford and started talking also about ted sorenson, who is a major figure yes. In what we did, ellen. I think one of the last people in the game who combined intellectual work on the development of ideas, the formulation of policy on the one hand and their expression in terms of rhetoric on the other. I had been on this stage, oh, more times than he care to recall with ted over the years. Miss him still. He would argue to the both of us that no one had ever taken the time to understand how this improbable event happened and what the ideas, the thinking was that went into it, and how they were adjusted as the event actually unfolded. Out of that came this idea, and Computers Made it possible for one of us to sit in mississippi, one of us to sit in washington, both of us to practically live here and see what the record actually showed. It is interesting because many of you probably read theodore whites the making of a president , at least some book in that series. I think the 1960 book is the best of those, and yet the story that he tells i assign that book now to my students. Now im going to assign your book. I teach a seminar on kennedys presidency, and in that in assigning that book, they dont the students today dont even get it. They dont get how this all this whole process worked, the whole political culture of our country. In some ways theres continuity, but theres an enormous amount of change. Tell em about teddy white and what we learned. Well, teddy white, that book changed the way political reporting went. Tom and i were both influenced by it all of our generation were influenced by the book. But it is a book about essentially 1960. Right. And we became friends with teddy white, admirers of teddy white. I think it is a great book. We went out of our way not to try to emulate in any way. Our book starts essentially in 1955 and really picks up in 1956, and we dont even get to 1960 until halfway through the book. So no question, white was an influence for all of us, but i would like to think he was not an influence to us in writing this book. It is a very different approach that youve taken, and i think an extremely rich one. Before we get into the granular part of this, i wondered about your views of kennedy going into the book versus your views once you researched and put this piece into place. For me, my sense of him changed after reading your book and i wondered if yours did as well . Now that hes 100 if only. To put that in perspective, 100 years ago right now American Kids were being shipped to fight and die in france in world war i. So a little water has come under the dam since then. I didnt have any appreciation for kennedy as a working politician. One of the dangers of Something Like tthe making of a president , it is one way of looking at a president ial campaign, it is a narrative. He went to milwaukee and he said, nixons a nut job or some other epithet that was current then, and then he went to new york and there were all of these people on broadway and the voice boomed in the canyons of the big buildings and everybody applauded and went home and then they voted. The narrative. We took the approach, heavily influenced in my case by sorenson, that a president ial campaign is a series of benchmarks, important decisions about how to face the country, and then they play out. The thing to focus on in that school of thought are these benchmarks. I think thats whats a little unusual about the approach we took and why we viewed the whole five years together. And what about you, curtis . Well, i think one thing as a southerner, that i was surprised i think theres general perception that kennedy was out front on civil rights and, in fact, he was not. He dodged the issue. He courted some of the worst southern politicians imaginable. We found in the files here in this building letters back and forth between jfk and george wallace, and kennedys offering wallace help in his gubernatorial campaigns. He walked a tight rope between the south which he needed, he needed their electoral votes, but by doing that he endangered his standing among africanamerican voters in the Northern Industrial states. So it is a very interesting road that he took on this issue. But he was a real latecomer on civil rights and only at the very end did he throw in, and we thought it was a very dramatic part of the book and the whole story, was the call to coretta king. You know, we ran into this ambivalence, i guess you would say, on several topics, cuba, many of the domestic issues. You cant speculate about other peoples motives. Woe were brought up in journalism, believing thats not something you should do. But with kennedy, what makes him so challenging is that you see him approach an issue, like say french colonialism in Northern Africa or health care among older people in america, and youre trying to separate out the political from the substantive. With kennedy they are so blended that it becomes a challenge. About all you can do is say how he approached the issue, what he did, how he thought, how people advised him. But theres always this mixture in him. Well, from the time, it would seem to me, that the democratic that once upon a time there was a solid democratic south. Remember that . Still is, it is republican now. And from that time forward most president s had to deal with this, if they were at all atentative to the issue of civil rights. When the issue of civil rights was not on the radar screen for american president s and in national politics, one could try to finesse this more easily. But really that became very difficult as the 20th century wore on. So as i was reading that, i was wondering to what extent you felt that was specific to kennedy, that what president was going to get elected that didnt try to straddle that fence . I think it doesnt make it admirable by any means. Yeah, i think the difference is the timing. Because the Movement Really started in 55. Right. With the murder of emmet till and rosa parks refusal to go to the back of the bus, and it gained momentum. And in the very period that were writing about is the period where the civil rights Movement Really emerged on the scene. Right. You know, eisenhower didnt really have to grapple with it. Never. Truman, other than desegregating the military, it wasnt an issue until this time. You know, being an old hack journalist myself, i rely a little bit on oversimplification. I think the trick with kennedy and civil rights, the end would be Martin Luther king jr. , riverside church, the fierce urgency of now. It takes a little more effort to have respect for president kennedys approach, which i would say is the fierce urgency of how. Right. And it is a different challenge. Watching him change and he did change, right . Yes. As time wore on in the campaign, theres a moment in the spring of 1959, politically he realizes hes not going to get much help in the south. Thats going to be all Lyndon Johnson. On the other hand, the movement has been heating up, things have been happening, there have been outrages, and we found a guy who was working for water ruther and the united autoworkers who was reporting about one particular meeting where all of a sudden one day kennedy stood up and said, if ive got the quote right, the negroes are right. From that moment you begin to see a different kennedy approach to the issue. He was still straddling, he was still very frustrating, but on the other hand you can see the evolution. And you see it, you tell the story of how other democratic politicians are trying to and republicans for that matter, too, are trying to navigate these waters after the brown decision, when it really becomes unavoidable after 1954. Eisenhower wasnt a big fan of the brown decision. No. And, you know, in your narrative you show that kennedy and johnson both struggled with how to respond to this burgeoning Civil Rights Movement that was really pulling them along, and you go back early enough so that youre showing that fobbus, littlerock and wallace himself are being changed by both the pressure of the Civil Rights Movement and the massive resistance to desegregation thats occurring. So kennedy in that larger story comes out, i thought, not entirely favorably but trying to find his way. I think ultimately he came out taking the right path, no question that he did, and then as the president it got even better. But you show the courtship very clearly of these powerful southern democrats, which would bedelve him through his own administration. Theres a traditional view of kennedys life in politics that majz that his quest for the presidency was imposed upon him by an overbearing father and that this once his older brother died in the second world war, he was next. It was all a trajectory forward. I think thats pretty much blasted out of the water by your study in which you tell a much more complicated story. But its a story about an indifferent congressman and a not very effective senator. But somehow that changes, and it changes early when he suddenly or so it appears, decides that the presidency is the thing to go for. Can you talk a little bit about what you think were whats the moment there . Well, there isnt an actual moment. The volume opens with what we call the only cardiac doubleheader in the history of american politics. Right. Lyndon johnson followed by the ike heart attacks. And his father comes right into it here because he had the cockamamie notion that eisenhower might not run aagain and that what should happen is despite the heart attack, Lyndon Johnson should run. Hed bank roll it and his son would be the running mate. Well, a propoch rouse idea, of course. Johnson dismissed it out of hand of the but thats the moment when you can see kennedy reacting to all of this and seeing the possibility in the form of the Vice President el nomination and it sort of starts right there. And from that moment in the fall of 1955 every time he was faced with some issue of whether he was going to go forward or backward, it was always forward. One of my favorite moments in the fall of 1955, you know, one thing we used to do all the time ahead of a president ial Election Year is speculate on who the running mate might be. And late in the summer of 1955 there was an item remember the old per scope section of news week where they had a little hard news and a lot of gossip . And there was a list and mentioned on that list as a possible running mate for at lee stephen son was John Kennedys name. And this intrigued the hell out of him and so he called the editor of the section at news week in report, a reporter many of us knew named debs meyer and said who is doing the mentioning . And meyer said well, me. Which is how we used to do it, right . You pull one of these lists out of thin air, and then all of a sudden somebody was being mentioned for Vice President. But as we talked when we did the forum on the book listening in a couple of years ago, ellen, he had this ambition that had nothing to do with ideology, was certain of that. He didnt want to run to double the minimum wage or achieve world peace or whatever. He talked in this off the record conversation, a tape of which was found many years later, about wanting to its the Teddy Roosevelt answer. Wanting to be in the arena, wanting to be in the center of things, dealing with the huge issues of the day. Obviously making a difference in a positive direction, but its being there and being in the highest rung. He said, i think, in the tape recording, its like the harvardyale game every weekend. An oddly parochial reference for him. But i think it sums up what the nature of his ambition was. Nernd, he ran for president because he could. Well, and he was seeking the presidency at a time when it was changing in american political life and becoming a much more Important Institution than it had been certainly in the 19th century. It becomes theres a kind of cult of the presidency by the 1950s and 60s in which its seen as the master institution to american political life. But i wonder to what extent the 1956 experience of getting really being seen as a credible candidate to be that close to the presidency made him think i could actually do this. How important, curtis, do you think that was . No doubt at all particularly the 56 convention, because even though he lost, he came out of it as this attractive young guy that people sat up and noticed for the first time. And that was clearly the beginning because shortly thereafter there was a meeting down at the old mans place in palm beach. No. Im sorry. It was at cape kod. It was thanksgiving. And pap pa joe and jack got together oneonone and decided he would run. And announced to the family that he was going to run thing formally. But there were a number of things that were already going on. Theres one funny incident that for all the reasons ive worked for boston globe ive never heard about this great koo it was urged upon him, look, jack, if you really want to be a player, youve got to get control of your own state party, which was controlled by john mccorporalic. Right. So they had a knock down, drag them out, near brawl at the old hotel brad ford in which kennedys people seized control of the party and over threw mccorporalics guy, who was an onion farmer from western mass named onions bushing. Its highly comic. And so much of the material we found for that was in old boston globe accounts of this battle. And then that then led to the 56 convention. And by the time all of that was in place and his aides were clearly for it. He had talked with sorn sen a lot about it in the office early. I think that i can be a formidable candidate. I dont want a Single Person to leave tonight without knowing about onions spurk. This is a great story. And he was from western mass and im not going to tell the story, but one of the wonderful things in the book is the way in which all of these figures in massachusetts politics who were for most of us in the shadows of history, come to the forefront. And kennedy emerges as like a really hardnoesd skrarp in this attempt to gain control. He managed to show just the right amount of phoney reluctance to get dragged into this thing, as if at the last minute he said oh, okay, ill break the guys legs sort of thing. Also, what made it such an entertaining two other aspects of it. First of all, the final moments in the fight occurred on a weekend that coincided with the wedding of his sister jean to steve smith. Yes. And so you have the next president of the United States going back and forth to new york on the shuttle on the same day, you know, hed go to st. Patricks and solemnly help his sister get married and then hed get back on the shuttle and go up to boston to help his hench men bust onion bushings chops. And it went on all day. It was like one of those old comedies. The other thing was that there was a National Element curtis mentioned that what got kennedys participation in this was the advice from his pals that you cant go to the nation scene without controlling your own state. And that got his attention. And all the way through this fight he was very careful behind the scenes to keep add Lee Stevenson informed all the way through. And im sure stevenson was appalled at what he was hearing. But on the other hand, he had to sit up and take notice. Yeah. Father joe was appalled too. Yeah. Father joe says dont get involved with those hacks in boston. Youll soil your hands. Its a dreadful thing. Kennedy ignored his fathers advice. They were counting delegates, lining up delegates at this point in the game. It was even better than that. One person, who thank god we had a wonderful couple of days with before drink donna hoe of lowell passed away. He was a bona fide member of the mafia. And particulars job the day of the vote on onions was counting, which is a very important job in politics. And its the only hotel brad ford downtown. And the meeting was being conducted at a ballroom that was just covered with mirrors all the way around. Technically the state Committee Votes were a secret ballot. So dick told us he positioned himself using the mirrors so that every time a member of that state committee marked a ballot for chairman, dick was behind him recording the allegedly secret vote. And its a reminder, you know, one thing about that family and those they were very attentive to detail. The advance work, the preparation, its a hallmark of one of their operations. And even in 1956 they knew how every member of the state committee voted. Well, this point about the Kennedy Organization was one that i wanted to raise, because, you know, much has been written about it and the attempt to bring in the family and also how Bobby Kennedy was so capable and strategic and the creation and even at the precinct level of tracking all of these voters and creating these captains. Its an oldstyle politics. But its interesting that the tale that you tell is one in which they needed to create this infrastructure of their own outside the party. And in that sense they anticipate to some degree, i think, the insurgent candidate daesz of our own time. So i wonder if you could say a bit about that. Sure. It goes all the way back to his first Congressional Campaign race here in 1946. And they formed kennedy clubs. I think there were 11 people running for that seat. And they went out and basically did they started early for one thing. And they formed these clubs independent, ellen, as you say of the party structure, such as it was. And they had loyalists in all the precincts and wards in and around the boston area. In 46 he did the same thing when he went statewide in his first senate race in 52 kennedy clubs, the leaders were called secretaries rather than executive director or chairman or whatever to make them kind of sound egalitarian. Put they were totally independent. He did it again when he ran for reelection in 58. And he did the same thing when he went national. They made an end run around the party structure, and the party bosses. Another way that he differed from the old man, the old man thought that 20 party bosses could deliver the nomination. Right. Jack, all youve got to do is cozy up to tam mane hall and these people. And they ignored him and created really the first Grassroots Campaign that was men i am late by bare gold water in 64, gene mccarthy, 68. Tom and i both gofrd mcgovern 72. Jimmy carter was successful, 76. It goes all the way to unfortunately, donald trump. It was necessary for kennedy, particularly so, right, tom, to go this route, because of the its so hard liabilities . Because he won, ellen, its so hard to remember that he wasnt favored to. Right. That to call him an underdog was probably an exaggeration in 1959. The number of people who saw this coming is thats a very, very short list. And the reason was that it broke the rules. Its outside the party. And just because everybody since then has tried to be outside the party, just remember, kennedy was the first one to actually run that way. He was viewed inside the party often assen indifferent democrat. From time to time he could be a little bit republican in his fiscal conservativeism. He sided with president eisenhower on more than a couple ago kurlt ral issues that created problems with him in the midwest all the way through the president ial campaign. He was no piece nick at all. One of my favorite quotes, right, is a summary of his Foreign Policy approaches. We did an entire chapter about it, but the late joe alsop made that work unnecessary with one phrase. He said kennedy was add Lee Stevenson with balls, which may be a little crude, but it does have the advantage of being basically accurate. So he was also a catholic. He was 42 years old. He had by your description hadnt really done much to distinguish himself as a senator. And so the this is a moment when the democratic elite, the primaries are nowhere near as important in 1960 as they have become in our time, and yet he was forced into the primary system to prove himself. And the primaries are only part of the story in our view after what we did, ellen. I mean, there were 16 of them in 1960. And kennedy accepted the challenge not of entering them but of having to win every single one of them or his case was ruined. But in addition to the primaries, he did Something Else that no one had ever done before. He had a fulltime pollster on his staff. And young lou harris was hired in december of 1957, believe it or not. And through his research in the states, including those that werent holding primaries, kennedy got clubs that he could use on democrats in states that werent having primaries to attract support. So that while, yes, he swept all the primaries in 19 he also got states simply because he was able to take harris numbers into somebodys office and say, look, you really ought to support me, because if you dont, im going to come into your jurisdiction and kick your ass. Right. And it worked. And it worked. Again and again. We have i think our favorite example is the state of arizona, which under normal circumstances you would never have expected kennedy to win in a nomination fight. Lyndon johnson thought he had the place asd because he had the senior senator, the most reverdict person in the entire state at the time, senator carl hayden. We discussed that by 1960 carl hayden would have had trouble fixing a parking ticket in phoenix and that there were these two brothers in tucson, stewart and month udall, and he built a Campaign Around these mavericks. Arizona had the unit rule conventions and he got every single one of their votes and he never should have. Yeah. That was an amazing story. Another example of these people that are brought into the center of american political history who really make these things happen who rarely figure in accounts of this kind. Lets go to Lyndon Johnson and his choice of johnson as Vice President. This is one of the historians have written about this. There is many versions of this, as there are people writing it. Some say that kennedy had no intention of picking lbj, that this was sort of a gesture that was made to offer him the Vice President i and then much to his regret, johnson accepted. He was certain that he would turn them down. And others say thats not so. I think bob carol, in fact, suggests that kennedy and his brother may have been at odds on this point. Robert kennedy was no fan, of course, of lbjs. But that jfk saw the merit of picking lbj. You guys, i think, come down somewhere in the middle of that, but you do show what a chaotic event it was. We hope we did. And i wouldnt attest, you know, on my life that our version is a 100 accurate either, because youre dealing with separate narratives from different sides, particularly carol and lbj. Carol rights pages and pages about the selection of lbj. And then on the other side the kennedy people, theres a lot of information, again, just building about it. Were convinced, one, that kennedy went to the convention clearly ready to pick stewart signing ton, the senator from missouri. And we were able to talk to both of senator siemg tons sons who survive, and they talked about how the father once had been told essentially. Kennedy both ken did i see had leaked the choice of siemg ton to reporters that they liked the night before. Then suddenly, and youre right, i think, ellen, that kennedy didnt think lbj would accept it. Thats one of the reasons, because he was a natural. He delivers texas and he helps deliver the south. But they didnt think lbj would do it and therefore they didnt want to offer it to him. So kennedy gets the no, maam thags. He goes back to his hide away house in la. Hes having, i guess, a late breakfast or whatever with dave powers and a message comes in from lbj saying from now on lbj stands for lets back jack. And jack begins to think, okay, this guy has got control of, what, 20 something electoral votes and can, you know, certainly help in the south. And he begins to think it becomes very chaotic. He goes back to the hotel and he mentions to pierre sal inning engineer, how many electoral votes are there if we add well have if we add texas. Sal inning engineer says youre not going to do this. Kenny odonnell goes crazy. They wind up in a furious battle in a private bathroom arguing. Odonnell says you cant do this. Bobby kennedy, of course, zpiesed lbj and lbj zpiegsd Bobby Kennedy. And so the scene at the hotel becomes incredibly dramatic. And tom, you finish the tale. Our contention that kennedy bungled this because he should have known that johnsons attitude toward the Vice President i was not so dog matic. There were plenty of signs along the way, and we detailed several of them that somebody who was paying better attention of a situation would have realized there was a chance here. But kennedy dog matically refused to. We tell a story of he went, he knew to los angeles the convention commercially. One of the people who sat with him for part of the trip was antonio tony bradley, ben bradleys then wife. And kennedy was under orders not to talk at that point because of his voice. Right. And so they were scribbling messages back and forth. And tony went about johnson for vp . And the scribble comes back from kennedy, youll never take it. Well, that was wrong and he should have known that. Right. So when he came back up from the private oneonone with johnson that thursday morning and says, mike, youre not going to believe this, he not only wants it, he really wants it. And so at that point our narrative is picked up by bob kennedy. Right. Thats a wonderful section of this. Now, again. Story. Youre the genius historian. And were up there and were looking at, god, isnt it 16, 1,700 pages. Hundreds of pages of three or four of them over the years after the president was murdered. And all of them given only on the condition that the material is not to be used until he, bob kennedy, is dead. Of course, not realizing what was going to happen. And this is in narrative fashion. And you know, one of the things that kennedy knows how to do is give you the old dips i doodle and forget to put veshz in your sentences and get all elliptical. And then every once in a while theyll speak in absolutely Crystal Clear sentences. And bob kennedy was speaking very clearly. And the narrative he said was it was the most indesightsive period of the entire campaign. We went, we shut the door. We made a promise to each other we would never talk about this to anybody ever. All right . And we kicked johnson back and forth, and we decided we didnt want him. We decided we didnt want him. Right. But jfk had a condition. Johnson has to be happy. He has to willingly be part of the National Effort in the fall because its awful if he isnt. And bob kennedys narrative ends saying, we made the decision we would try to get rid of him, and it just didnt work. Thats about as direct a quotas you can have. And theres no evidence to the contrary. Well, he tells that story of going back in to see johnson and trying to sort of talk him out of it and he says he has this hang dog look that no one ever looked assad as lbj when he was sad. And his filled up with tears and Bobby Kennedy saying well, this is kind of beneath you. No, i really want to do it, you know. That description is just dripping with contempt from Bobby Kennedy about lbj. If i dare use one bit of fourletter word, but during this time that theyre trying to convince johnson to take Something Else, Bobby Kennedy goes and says senator johnson, you can be chairman of the Democratic Committee. Oh, yeah. And in the room is sam rayburn, speaker of the house and great fund and confederate dant of lbj. He didnt like Bobby Kennedy either. And he looked at Bobby Kennedy and he said simply, shit. It got very nasty. At the end, the choice, which with hindsight looks rational, even though it obviously wasnt at the time, you think of the consequences. Profound. Of those two hours in places called vietnam, dallas, and ultimately in los angeles. And they didnt want to do it, but they did it because they felt they had to. And thats a window on kennedy too. He felt he had to. And the last question bob kennedy dealt with in this 1,600 page thing, could you have won without it . No. Yeah. Well, i think thats probably right. So ive got a couple more questions before we turn to the audience. And one is your interesting take on the kennedynixon debate, which are often seen as really, you know, this is the moment the tide turns, everything begins breaking kennedys way. And you have a different story about that. You argue that it was not as decisive a win for kennedy. Certainly in having people see more of kennedy as a potential, plausible president , yes. But beyond that, i think most of the work on the debates in the last 60 years has been overstated. We did find some things that had not been looked at before. The most important, after each of the four debates, lou harris, again, for the first time no one had ever there hadnt been debates before, but after each of the debates, harris sent scores of people out around the country top build a National Sample of about 750 cases after each debate. And he spent the first day collecting the material and then the next night analyzing it. And what he found, no one else looked, was that, yeah, the public thought kennedy looked great, you know, under the lights in those days a blue shirt really is better than a white shirt. It helps if you speak in complete sentences and look at the cameras. No question. People reacted to that. And, yes, nixon looked like he had been sleeping under a highway for a week. But the numbers said so what . Right. Because the trial heats, the horse race didnt budge a millimeter. And between the first and the second one and between the first and the fourth, the needle hardly moved at all. And we also looked into as an example of something that gets repeated for 60 years and people think its repeated because its true, namely that nixon was fantastic on the radio and kennedy was fantastic on television and thats really what happened. There is absolutely no evidence to support that contention at all. There was a survey, an Audience Survey done by send lingers people but it wasnt published until after the election. And some indication you have to discount it because the radio listeners tended to be more rural by 1960 and thus conservative. Nixon was good in the debates. Country divided, change, continuity, take some riks for peace. Cold war strength. Right down the middle. We made an analogy in the general election to a couple of guys on a teetertotter, and in the course of those three or four months, the thing would move an inch or two one way and thats about it. And the debates need to be reexamined in that context, i think, because they are not the key to the election. Well, it helps to explain how close the election was. You know, if kennedy won by, what, one tenth of 1 of the popular vote, that, you know, had it been this just amazing turn about, one would assume that it would not have been as close as it had been. Yeah. It was an incredibly close election. I think maybe some of us forget how close it was. The impact of television, of advertising, this is the election where we begin to see much of the modern face of president ial politics, it seems. And in fact, the story you tell is a remarkable hybrid of this oldfashioned democratic precinct level organizing and this new moment that kennedy walks into as our First Television president and his whole political career will be affected by that. His whole presidency. One thing we bumped into in the research, ellen, hadnt been noticed for decades, obviously, was a very per september active essay about television and politics as of 1960. The writer thought that it could show you what somebody really was like even though there was the danger of huks terrism, et cetera. The essay was written by john dendy in 19 i read it. I read it a couple of months ago. Sorn sen placed stuff all over the place and this is one of the things they did. And its astonishing presh yent. It is because what he says in this is is this a force for good or not. The role that television will undoubtedly play from now on in americans picking their president , and he says ultimately that will depend on the people themselves. And he said theres no question that it gives its going to kbif people a better sense of what the individual is, but whether they then make the right decision, you know, this really is going to be a test of our democracy. And this is jfk saying this before he had ever become president. So its really kind of a remarkable thing. The other question i wanted to ask before we open it up to the audience is the Democratic Party struggling a bit now to find its way forward in the era of president trump. And what are there any lessons to be learned from this . We always say that, you know, we like to tell our students that youve got to study history, youre going to take away important lessons from it. If those who are making the Big Decisions in the Democratic Party sit down with your book, is there anything they can take away from this story thats relevant to our current moment . Or is it a tale about the past, a by gone moment . To be critical of the Democratic Party when senator kirk is in the room. Its intimidating to be sitting here in front of governor we will on the one hand and senator kirk on the other. Or the Republican Party for that matter. Any either of the parties. I think your observation is actually bipartisan. But one thing i took away, and it has to do with how kennedy operated. And its not chic, but its the elements of ideology, ellen. Kennedy wanted to be like in the room. And between the 40yard lines he thought it was possible to move the country forward. So maybe the minimum wage goes to 1. 20 instead of 1. 25 in the first increment or you have to tell some jim crow politician in the south, all right, i wont send any troops to the south for the first year. But how do you move the needle forward . And when you see a political practitioner as good as kennedy was, it makes you wonder whether you have to be pure all the time ideologicalel in order to move the country forward. Interesting. I dont know how you ever factor in looking, evaluating all of these different variables that you touch on in your story, how you factor kennedy himself out, because he was such a remarkable political figure and had this capacity to connect in the way that he did. There was something that people really responded to. And i wonder, you know, if you take the relative weight, the fathers m. O. A. Fathers money, the media operation, the primaries, the handing out money in West Virginia, all of it. Without that candidate, would there have been a victory . Yeah. I was a junior in college in 1960 and it was the first time i ever heard the word ka ris ma and it was because he had ka ris ma. Richard nixon didnt have ka ris ma. Lbj didnt have ka ris ma. But jack kennedy had ka ris ma. And i think that could have possibly tipped the balance in some peoples minds. And smart as hell, too. Here is one to close on. Because its an ethical question in part. We looked forever, trying to figure out how much it cost to buy a vote inform West Virginia. We really worked on this. And we finally got a little help from god regs his soul particular donna hoe, who was the point man on the organization before the primary. And as near as he could tell from dealing with these county sheriffs, if you wanted a vote in the West Virginia primary, and god, johnson money, everybody, its a tradition down there. It cost two bucks and a half a pint of branded whiskey. If you used moonshine, it was a full pint. And at the end if thats what you want out of the West Virginia primary, thats what it took. And kennedy did it. And pap pa joe sent literally money in suitcases, cash in suitcases into wf. They kept it under hotel beds dispensing it. Lbj was sending money to support hugh better humphrey to try to head off jack kennedy. So theres texas money pouring into West Virginia too. It was probably the most dramatic of all the primaries was West Virginia. And one of the par doksz that is normal in american politics, kennedy became an early supporter of Campaign Finance reform. Thats one of his early legislative maneuvers was to advance this idea. Was it saint august stin who was on the verge of converting and he kept saying im ready, lord, just not yet. There was a wonderful katy lock hiem who was this Democratic Committee woman had a wonderful passage where she was sizing up the candidates in 1960 for the democratic primary, and she compared them to various barn yard animals, and she said that Lyndon Johnson was a rooster and hugh better humphrey was a duckling and i forget, i think she might have said siemg ton was an owl. And then she said john f. Kennedy is a cardinal, and it was i thought a wonderful touch to that flash of red that really, you know, cat apultd him into the center of american politics and American History. So we have some microphones. Wed like to invite all of you to whoever would like to come up and ask a question of our two authors, please come forward. And i would ask that you do ask a question. Youve seen how at the present timing it is for us to go on and on and on. And wed love to talk longer with all of you, but to dpif people a chance to ask questions, if you could keep it brief, that would be great. And well take the first. Go ahead. Hi. Go ahead. You mentioned in your talk that kennedy deviated from the mainstream Democratic Party. And in the 19 of 0 it was clear that the new Deal Coalition was going out the door. I just wanted to ask what role did the 1960 campaign, kennedy and stooech son in 1956 play in transforming the Democratic Party and what did that say about the trajectory of the party at the time . Good question. Well, they didnt there was one breakthrough thats worth thinking about. Actually, it occurred on the republican side as well. Both parties took a deep breath and embraced the Civil Rights Movement at their conventions. It seems like, you know, thats ancient history, but at that moment when the movement was starting to reach fever pitch, each party endorsed, to get technical for a section the section of the 1957 civil rights law that did not get enacted in 1957, which would have authorized the kind of intervention that was authorized in 1964 and 1965. And in addition, each party spoke favorably of the sitin demonstrations that had begun only that winter in north carolina. And its an interesting moment to reflect that youve got two institutions here, the National Democratic and the National Republican parties, that looked this monster in the eye in the summer of 1960, and they each stuck their chins out. If only it had led to more Decisive Action sooner, ahas. Governor weld. And keep it short. Well, hes going to the mike. Didnt you star in right up your alley, the hastey pudding show. True fact. So i remember an article in the saturday evening post from the spring of 1960 which i read not without interest. I was 14 years ollie. It was called ten little i understand yangs and there were ten democrats running for the nomination and the article concluded that stewart siemg ton was going to win the nomination because he had no flies on him. Nothing wrong with stewart. And jack kennedy got to the semi finals or so. But he had two flies on him. One, was ae catholic and the other was pap pa joe. And the these was that everybody knew that pap pa joe was a crook and had done all the pools and stuff that were outlawed and thats why fdr sent him to be head of the securities and Exchange Commission because he knew all the dirty rules. My question is about joe kennedy, senior and you gave a couple of examples in your remarks about important occasions where jack and bobby simply ignored pap pa joes advice. I know that jack wouldnt have won the wisconsin and West Virginia primaries without joes money, and those two primaries were decisive in heading off hugh better or so it seems at the time. So that was one outcome dernt active thing that joe did. But what else did he do . Was he just ignored throughout the campaign . Was he a dead letter . His recommendations were largely ignored, governor. For example, in 1956 the Democratic Convention again, which really established his son as a national figure, he called him an idiot. He says youre going to destroy your career if you try to get on this doomed ticket with add Lee Stevenson. West virginia, they had a swar a down at palm beach, and the old man got up and rant, says dont dare go into West Virginia. Theyre nothing but prot tants there. Theyre destroy you. And this one is very funny. As soon as he had finished, jack kennedy stood up, and there were other advisors. He said well, weve heard from the ambassador, and this is what were going to do, which is exactly the opposite of what the ambassador had just been ranting about. So tom, i cant remember really any time id even urge caution with regard to wisconsin. Kennedys first trip, governor, into wisconsin, which cost a few hundred dollar dollars, probably, was in the winter of 57, 58. By the time hugh better humphrey had his very first meeting to discuss a possible president ial candidate, kennedy had already made more than three dozen stops in wisconsin. Hadnt spent a nickel on advertising yet. One of the things that those of us who try to study it keep finding out is that effort on the ground, at least in those days paid off more quickly and handsomely than the more lavish things, now, the airplane was a big deal from the father, no question about that, but the airplane wasnt really a part of life until well into 1959. So its easy, i think, a Million Dollars is what we kept finding was a rough approximation of what was spent to win the nomination, a good bit of it for the airplane. If kennedy were siemg ton, it wouldnt have mattered. Thank you. Yes. Was kennedys courting of the press a deliberate thing or was it just a part of his personality . And when did that start . And is that possible today with the ten or of the press and the way these campaigns are run today . Could someone personally Court Reporters up in the chariton hotel in New Hampshire and those kinds of things . Well, kennedy at one point early considered being a journalist. He was one. You know, he wrote. He certainly had a lot of genuine friends in the press corps. And clearly, you know, and we know some of the people who covered that campaign, and they were they felt like they were his buddies. It wasnt more than your tra dimmer arms length relationship, i think, in many cases. And it wasnt so much that kennedy cultivated. Its just he was an interesting guy. He was fun to sit around and talk to. And tom and i covered i covered eight. You covered more than that. And theyre not many of these political figures that are a hell of a lot of fun spending time talking to oneonone. Present company except. They dont read books. Theyre selfcentered. I always i would always ask candidates just for starters, you know, whats the last good book youve read . And oh, they would disassemble and clearly lie about the bible. See dick run or Something Like that. And kennedy was something of a peer to these people. It wasnt exclusive. Not everybody loved him. He had his enemies in the press corps. But as we found, there were situations where it was clearly unethical some of the things that reporters did on his behalf, turning over information they knew intelligence that they would pass on to him that would be, you know, unheard of today. Youd be drumd out of the press corps if you did Something Like that. We found several examples of people, usually column nisz, who actually sent him memos with combinations of political intelligence and advice in them involving a couple of people we really revered as young people. The second point there was something that went on in those days and continued a little beyond 1960 and curtis and i were part of the lasts generation that really did we used to have little groups of political writers. My favorite was called political writers for a democratic society. There were seven or eight of us. And ahead of national kpanls we would have dinner with somebody who was figuring in the news and either likely to run or already running. Our dinners would be off entirely off the record, no direct quotation or attribution of any kind allowed. And the purpose of these meetings was to help us size each other up. We would intentionally ask really rude questions. I remember one colleague of mine, no longer with us, sadly, jack german used to say the idea is just to stick your thumb in the guys eye just to sort of see how he reacts. Its not personal. It was just a curiosity. And we all benefited greatly. We felt we understood more about the people we were writing about. And in todays atmosphere, all of that would be impossible. Everything is on the record, but nothing is candid. Can i just make a personal bill welsh story. When i was covering the 1990 election here and matter nolan and i had lunch with bill at lock oh , and as though i had, you know, a dark secret i said mr. Welsh, one thing i need to ask you about early in this campaign, theres been reports that you were seen running around cambridge in a red dress. And i got this from my friends. They were both members of the hastey pudding club at harvard. And bill welsh immediately confessed and i surely was. True. It is different even from 1990, governor. But i dont know if he even knows the full story of one of the key events in his election was his endorsement by the boston globe. And it was over the dissent of the editor of the he had editorial page at the time, as you know, the reverdict and magnificent martin f. Nolan. And a publication was doing a story about this contra toe inside our newspaper that may have contributed to the governors election. And somebody asked marty when the decision at the globe publisher level was made to endorse bill wells. And marty grum bells, oh, about 300 years ago. Well, thats precisely what kennedy didnt have going for him. Thats right. And thats why all this was necessary. Thats right. Though you know one liberal thing, i think it was arthur sles inning engineer referred to him as the irish bram man. Ive heard him say. Im not sympathetic to it given my last name. Yes. Here. Far from a red dress question and its not just for our authors, but i think for our moderator as well with her academic background. I dont know the these and dissertation level, research and writing on kennedy anymore, but i noticed that the orl history interviews that you rely heavily on have been open for a long time and most of the documents that you use have been open for a long time. So my question really is why do you think it took so long for this book to be written and to find a publisher for it if someone before you had proposed it . It surprised me that it took so long for this ground to be covered. Thats a wonderful question. Tom is more articulate on this than i am. No, im not. I should yield, but because he makes the case that there is so much here in this building again thats available that people have just touched the surface. And we were looking at basically a fairly limited period ourselves. Its there. Were not historians. Were old reporters who just happened to like to write about a good story. And weve always had a kind of a Historical Perspective in our writing, but were certainly not historians. Tom might be a scholar. Im not. But its lying there ready to be studied. And we would encourage more people to take a deeper look at whats available, not just at jfk library but the other president ial libraries. Theyre gold miens there. Maybe its just because im personally interested. I did a lot of those oral history interviews that you relied upon and ive been waiting for years for somebody who use those obscure character. Yeah. Is that larry . Yes, it is. The audience should know, this is one of the first guys, larry, to do oral history interviews. We consider him worthy of the he had i fiction, okay . I think we should give him a hand. Let me tell you why. Studying these oral histories here and in many respects the Kennedy Library is the pioneer of oral history and what this great man did at the age, i think, of 22 23. You were an old guy, then. He would ask really ridiculous questions like what did you do on that date . What did you do the next date . What did you do a week later . He really didnt seem to be all that interested in whether any of his subjects liked jfk or didnt like jfk. He was extracting information for history. The phrase ive used in answer to your question, is that all this stuff is hiding in plain sight. And that until now too much of the Kennedy Field have been dominated for commercial reasons by people that do gossip and make stuff up. The standards have been very low. You could never pass muster with ellen by writing about will hard fill more the way some people write about john kennedy. And were just hoping in the next couple hundred dollar kwleers maybe the standards go up some but if they do, theres a ton of stuff to learn. What is it, steve . There are 25 million pieces of paper in this building. You know, a few of them have tidbits like there will be coffee and punch in the Conference Room at 3 00 p. M. , and thats not really important. But its amazing to us how little of this record has been comprehensively studied. I think part of the answer to your really very per september active question is that the historyography, the kennedy historyography suffers somewhat from the same phenomenon that the lincoln historyography suffered from, which is that somebody does a fair amount of research, they write a book, they have an interpretation. Then the next person comes along, maybe not quite as energetic. They use that biography or that source as their source, and then they tell the same story, perhaps not in as much detail. They hoe moj niez it a little bit. And then the next person comes along and tells the similar version, but there are three errors in that one. And then on it goes from there. And so what happens is that the same stories are repeated over and over and over again. And no one and people will say, well, what is there new to say about president kennedy . There have been thousands of books written about him. He was only president for a little more than a thousand days. What can possibly be new here . The exhibit thats about to open in the library is itself a revelation that will educate and show people through objects that theres much still to learn. People who even feel they know his biography very well. But these narratives are full of mistakes. I think theyre full of interpretive errors. I think many of them dont capture really the essence of either the man or the moment. Theres some wonderful work that has been done, but when you go back to the well, as these two wonderful journalists did, theres a kind of richness to the sources because of the sorts of work that you did and others that really pays very, very heavy dividends for a scholar or a journalist who is willing to dig in and really look all over again at what we thought we knew. And the beauty of history is that were constantly rewriting the past because our questions are changing because of the moment that were living in right now politically. We need to go back again and revisit these questions as you have done in your book. So thats a great question, and i hope the library does everything it can, i think, to encourage this. And its just a tremendous resource for that reason. Yes. I havent read your book, so im just curious. In it do you make any judgment or assessment of regarding the possibility that, you know, the election might have been stolen, you know, regarding the illinois, texas, hawaii, south carolina, missouri, the votes were so close in those states and there was very strong suggestion that there was some vote tampering . Tom . Of course we address it. And i think the two most famous allegations involve illinois and texas. And there is certainly anecdotal evidence that, you know, there were problems in both states, but in the great scheme of things, they were relatively small. They didnt really make a difference. Illinois, both parties were corrupt as hell there. Dalli was holding back the vote in cook county to see what republicans were doing down state. And to determine how many votes he was going to need to overcome the ones that republicans were manufacturing down state. So illinois, it is basically a wash. Texas, some of the instances they cite, they cite again and again these tiny little counties where, okay, there are 112 people registered to vote and 140 votes cast for jack kennedy. Big deal in regard to the scheme of things. It didnt change the ultimate outcome of the election in either of those two states. There is no question there was corruption that went on, corruption in the West Virginia primary. Both sides bought votes. There is hanky panky in state. Still goes on. But i think our bottom line is end to end, it didnt make any difference. Okay. Yes. You made a reference to his evolution on civil war and there was a particularin dent that caused that could you do that again. You made reference to his changing position on civil wars as the evolution he went through, was there a particular incident that caused that or was it basically a political evolution . Well i think youre talking about the call of coretta king in the october of 1960. I think that is what were referring to earlier. That this had gone along and there was a kennedys position was evolving and he was becoming more supportive. He had distinct differences with roy wilkins who was the head of the naacp. They battled over the civil rights bill in 1957. They felt that he had been lacking. And he become more supportive. But it is very Dramatic Development at the very end of the campaign when Martin Luther king had been arrested in georgia, sentenced to four months in hard labor by this basically red neck judge from Dekalb County outside of atlanta, they spirited him under the cover of night to this dreadful prison in south georgia. And dr. Kings wife was terribly upset and was afraid for her husband would meet a bad end there. She reached out to the two campaigns, both nixon and kennedy. Nixon did nothing. Kennedy did nothing for a while. Because he had irish mafia was a guard and in those days, they made a determination we dont get involved in this, we dont rock the boat or jeopardize our support in the southern states. So miss king was desperate to find some help, she appealed to Harris Wofford working in the Civil Rights Office of the kennedy headquarters. Harris wofford wanted jack kennedy to do something. He wondered who can i turn to. He turn to sarge shriver. Kennedy was in chicago at the time and he waited until Kenny Odonnell and salinger and sorenson had left the room and he went in and said, look, jack, coretta king is in terrible discomfort, you could help if you just called her. And kennedy, without ever trying to calculate beyond that, said, sure, ill call her. Give me her number and he dialed her number in the hotel room. And it was a breakthrough. Dr. Kings father, daddy king, was really a more prominent political player than dr. Martin luther king jr. At the time. He immediately was ready to go public with it. He was prepared to vote for nixon. And announce that he was going to vote for kennedy. Jack kennedy went off from chicago on to the plane and mentioned casually to salinger, oh, i need to tell you, i called coretta king just now and they said, you did what . And salinger calls Bobby Kennedy at the headquarters in washington and Bobby Kennedy is furious. Well, my god, weve lost the election. He calls in Harris Wofford and the whole Civil Rights Office and yells at them, youre not going to do anything further in this campaign, you may have lost it for us with this one call. Jack kennedy didnt have a problem with it. But they did. But then curiously, within a day john seggen thaller that is close to Bobby Kennedy and he has wonderful oral history that spells all of this out. And he was a friend of both of ours and we both interviewed john before his death. He got a call from Bobby Kennedy the next day and he Bobby Kennedy is checking in and john said, well, bobby, i need to tell you, we have a crazy wire report from georgia that says you talked to this crazy judge down there. And dont worry, weve already put out a retraction. And Bobby Kennedy said, well, i think you better withdraw that retraction because i did call him. So what had happened, it gets very convoluted, but the governor vanderver wanted to just get rid of he was a pontius pilot thing, get rid of this guy. He called and said, well do anything to get martin king out of the jail. Bobby kennedy, if you call the judge, hell spring him. So Bobby Kennedy actually called the judge, jack kennedy called coretta, Bobby Kennedy called the judge. Martin luther king is freed. It is a breakthrough moment in the campaign. Africanamericans seize on this, there are millions of leaflets printed out by the kennedy operation that are that flood all of the black churches the sunday before the election, nixon did nothing, kennedy did. And they were all over at harlem. There was a guy who worked out on powell there fox jones. Certainly he wasnt at church on sunday. He called up and said, these things are all over harlem and you had this enormous outpouring of africanamerican votes for jack kennedy in these states where blacks were able to vote. Of course it doesnt make my difference himself because he couldnt vote yet. So it was tom it was even Dwight Eisenhower said after the fact that this made the difference in the we tracked the spike in africanamerican turnout and in new york, new jersey, michigan, illinois, missouri, minnesota, noticeable, 5 to 10 above 1956 numbers and ike said it swung the election. So did the Republican National chairman that year. A good guy from kennedy names thurston morton. We have time for a one minute question and a two minute answer. In 1960 is probably the richest legislative history in the country in the last half century. And that is due to kennedy and lbj. Could you comment a little bit more on what actually happened out of that relationship at that time. It is very productive period in our history. We dont have the time. In 1960, Lyndon Johnson did not have much of a substantive relationship with his running mate. That only came later. As johnsons, i this inherit liberalism had a chance to come to the forefront. At the time Lyndon Johnson did not even like to use the term civil rights. There was a euphemism preferred by people we called white moderates at the time, constitutional rights. To say civil rights was almost to argue the question. Johnson was very much a leader of the southern block in congress. Early in 1960, he had helped beat back efforts to change the filibuster rules. Lyndon johnson, as we think of him, both the vietnam Lyndon Johnson and the domestic Lyndon Johnson is somebody who came along later. Not in 1960. Perfect. Thank you very much for coming tonight. It is wonderful to have you. Thank you. [ applause ] announcer coming up this weekend on American History tv on cspan 3, saturday at 10 00 p. M. Eastern on real america, the 1947 u. S. War Department Film dont be a sucker about hate filled speech. Im just an average american. And im an american american. And some of the things that i see in this country of ours make my blood boil. I see people with foreign accents, making all of the money. I see negroes holding jobs that belong to me and you. I ask you, if we allow this to go on, what will become of us real americans. On sunday at 6 00 p. M. Eastern on american artifacts, well tour the president ial vehicles collection at the Henry Ford Museum in dearborn, michigan. Then at 8 00 p. M. Eastern on the presidency, Herbert Hoover scholar george nash talks about the relationship between the 31st president and calvin coolidge. Just four days before the election, coolidge, every the party regular, finally gave hoover an extraordinary effusive public endorsement in a rearranged telegram that invoked headlines. Hoover had declared his fitness to be president. Hoover said coolidge was able, experienced, trustworthy and safe. American history tv, all weekend, every weekend, only on cspan 3. Announcer working with our cable partners, the cspan cities tour takes