Kennedy (26 page)

In deserted coal mining camps showing the effects of automation
and the rise of competing fuels, to straggling groups of unemployed at the side of the road, to families eking out an existence on welfare checks and surplus food back in the hills and hollows, Jack Kennedy promised help—and asked for theirs. At first the sight of this wealthy Harvard graduate asking for help in their impoverished state astonished the West Virginians, but gradually his warmth and sincerity began to make an impression.

At the same time West Virginia was making a deep and lasting impression on Jack Kennedy. He was appalled by the pitiful conditions he saw, by the children of poverty, by the families living on surplus lard and corn meal, by the waste of human resources. He more deeply understood, as the distressed areas of Massachusetts had never made him understand, the unemployed worker, the pensioner, the relief recipient and the ghost town, and he more fervently endorsed their plea for more help. He talked of developing West Virginia’s resources, with new highways, clean water and better parks and tourist attractions. He spoke of assisting the coal industry with new research, new by-products and the encouragement of “coal by wire”—shipping coal out of the state as electric energy, instead of by rail, through steam plants at the mouth of the mines (an idea quietly passed on to me by Kennedy’s old Republican friend, Senator John Sherman Cooper of Kentucky). He called for better housing and better schools and better food distribution. And in his most effective use of the Humphrey-can’t-win argument, he reminded his listeners that a Humphrey victory in the primary would only mean that neither of the two candidates familiar with West Virginia’s problems would be the nominee.

He spoke in every town and hamlet, Jacqueline tirelessly at his side. “I am the only Presidential candidate since 1924, when a West Virginian ran for the Presidency,” he would say later, “who knows where Slab Fork is and has been there.” He shook every hand in sight. He campaigned day and night, and lost his voice in the process. For a few days his brother Teddy and I substituted for him, as he stood by on the platform smiling gamely. (Once, when Teddy made a particularly impassioned speech about the qualities needed in the White House, the Senator stepped close to the microphone to croak that Teddy was not old enough to meet the constitutional age minimum for the Presidency.)

Then came the television debate. Kennedy had agreed to debate Humphrey in West Virginia—which he never would in Wisconsin, believing Democrats should debate only Republicans—because he knew he was behind and hoped for a breakthrough. As he had predicted, there was no real clash, except for one acrimonious exchange about the “stop-Kennedy gang-up.” Humphrey seemed less tense and more spirited than Kennedy. But Kennedy, speaking in softer tones and shorter answers,
without notes, scored with local illustrations and specifics aimed chiefly at West Virginia. He held up a skimpy surplus food package and cited real-life cases of distress. He spoke in simple, straightforward terms. Local newspapers the following few days showed votes switching to Kennedy on the strength of this debate.

Making the most of his underdog position, Kennedy continued to deride the stop-Kennedy coalition, now aided by West Virginia mine workers and Teamsters angered by the labor reform movement. On the Saturday before primary day, Lyndon Johnson spoke in Clarksburg. The Symington backers were busy circulating their own slogan: “Symington for President, Kennedy for Vice President, Stevenson for Secretary of State and Nixon for Sports Writer” (the latter a reference to one of the many careers Nixon had asserted he once wanted to enter). One of Humphrey’s West Virginia managers admitted he was actually for Stevenson or Symington. West Virginia’s Senator Robert Byrd, an avowed Johnson supporter, openly endorsed Humphrey for the May 10 primary with the warning: “If you are for Adlai Stevenson, Senator Stuart Symington, Senator Johnson or John Doe, this primary may be your last chance to stop Kennedy.” Other Johnson and Symington backers agreed. The people of West Virginia, Kennedy calmly replied, should be more interested in stopping Nixon.

Humphrey, meanwhile, asserting desperation for funds despite his continued confidence of victory, pushed the poor boy vs. rich boy theme to new heights. He went beyond stressing his own humble origins and Kennedy’s wealthy background and began charging the Kennedys with illegal acts:

Weary, discouraged and angered by Humphrey’s attacks, Kennedy said in an unaccustomed public complaint, “I have never been subject to so much personal abuse.” Kennedy discussed with his campaign team whether to capitalize on his war record. Upon more sober reflection, he decided in the negative. An equally weary Frank Roosevelt, while driving
through the state, was not at his thoughtful best when he told an interviewer that Humphrey was “a good Democrat, but I don’t know where he was in World War II.” It was an unfair comment, promptly headlined by the press and immediately regretted by Kennedy. Both he and Roosevelt later apologized to Humphrey; and though his own wounds in West Virginia were deep, he told a questioner even then that he was certain that he and Humphrey could be good friends again—“but it may take a day or two.”

One issue still plagued him—Catholicism. Repeated newspaper surveys showed well over half of Humphrey’s support was based solely on Kennedy’s religion. It lay heavily on the minds of all Kennedy’s listeners. It cropped up in every poll and press interview. It gave rise to anti-Kennedy sermons in all kinds of pulpits. Even the Humphrey campaign song was sung to the tune of “Give Me That Old Time Religion.” “Protestants have nothing against Kennedy,” said the Democratic leader of Madison, West Virginia. “They think he is intelligent…. But they are going to vote against him. That’s the way they have been reared. It’s like they like women, but won’t vote for them for public office.” “People here aren’t anti-Kennedy,” said the publisher of the
Coal Valley News.
“They are simply concerned about the domination of the Catholic Church.”

In a complete switch in tactics, Kennedy decided that it was time to meet the issue head on. If he was to be downed by religious bigotry, he intended to go down fighting. In a series of telephone calls to me in Washington, he outlined three basic approaches: (1) He switched the subject of his address that month to the nation’s editors in Washington from foreign aid to religion. (2) He wanted nationally prominent Protestant clergymen, in an open letter to their colleagues, to call for an end to religious divisions and prejudice. (3) He would make a direct and positive appeal in West Virginia for fair play and a fair chance.

His address to the American Society of Newspaper Editors was a success. It was his first full exposition of his views on church and state. He reviewed his position on education, birth control and relations to the Vatican and emphasized:

He would not, he made clear, accept the advice of those who wished him to withdraw to avoid the issue:

When he concluded, he called for questions, but there were no questions. The Senator was disappointed. Many of the editors in attendance, he told me, had printed stories—and would continue to print stories—about Vatican claims on all Catholics, about Catholic voting blocs and about their use by Kennedy as a candidate. He had answered all those questions and more. He wanted to answer them directly to the editors.

Meanwhile I was working on the public appeal to and from Protestant clergymen. I made it clear to those ministers whom I approached that the statement would not be released by the Kennedy office and that my role would not be made known to the press. It was to be no more than a nonpartisan appeal for tolerance and for an end to the religious issue.

Nevertheless I encountered difficulty from the outset. The Senator, encouraged by a conversation he had held with the Chaplain of the Senate, the Rev. Frederick Brown Harris, in which the latter expressed his confidence in Kennedy’s ability to put his country first, suggested I start with him. Rev. Harris told me how much he admired Kennedy, how much he deplored bigotry and how unwilling he, was to take part. Evangelist Billy Graham, encountered by chance by Pierre Salinger, gave it prayerful consideration and decided that his signing would help make religion an issue. (Later in the year he coupled negative comments on the Catholic Church with the declaration that religion would definitely be a legitimate, major issue, “whether we like it or not,” and he proceeded that fall to lead a Nixon rally in prayer.) Other prominent pastors approached through friends in Protestant or political circles refused to sign. One said it might impair his efforts to raise funds for a Baptist hospital in Alabama.

But two courageous clergymen helped get the project under way. One was the Very Reverend Francis B. Sayre, Jr., Dean of the Washington Episcopal Cathedral, and grandson of President Woodrow Wilson, who instantly saw that the ugly repercussions of continued religious
divisions could irreparably harm the nation. He agreed to serve as coordinator for the letter and drafted the basic document.

The other was Methodist Bishop Oxnam, whose long years of opposing the Catholic hierarchy as a leader of the POAU gave him impeccable credentials as a signer of this letter. Two years earlier, the Senator had joshed at the Gridiron Dinner, “Should I be elected, I do hope that Bishop Bromley Oxnam of the POAU will be my personal envoy to the Vatican—and he is instructed to open negotiations for that transatlantic tunnel immediately.” But since then the Senator had appeared with Oxnam before the Methodist Council of Bishops and a seminar for Illinois Methodist ministers, corresponded with him about the Cushing article and answered all questions on church and state. The Bishop agreed to meet me in New York and after some improvement in the wording, Bishop Oxnam agreed to sign the letter and to help seek other signers.

Other Protestant leaders began to respond favorably. Finally, on May 3, one week before the West Virginia primary, an “open letter” to their “Fellow Pastors in Christ” was issued from Dean Sayre’s office over the signature of thirteen nationally known Protestant leaders. “Quite apart from what our attitude toward the Roman Church may be,” the letter read, religious lines should not be drawn. Protestant ministers should preach “charitable moderation and reasoned balance of judgment…. We are convinced that each of the candidates has presented himself before the American people with honesty and independence, and we would think it unjust to discount any one of them because of his chosen faith.”

Copies of the letter went to every Protestant minister in West Virginia. Like the ASNE speech earlier, it had a beneficial effect in West Virginia, where plans for a mass of anti-Catholic sermons on the Sunday before the primary had previously reached our ears.

The Senator, meanwhile, was presenting himself with the honesty and independence of which the letter spoke. Shortly after the Episcopal Bishop of West Virginia announced his opposition to a Catholic President, Kennedy pleaded for fairness. “If religion is a valid issue in the Presidential campaign,” he hoarsely told his audience, “I shouldn’t have served in the House, I shouldn’t now be serving in the Senate, and I shouldn’t have been accepted by the United States Navy.” For the oath of office was practically identical in each case, he pointed out—an oath sworn on the Bible to defend the Constitution.

While a Baptist minister in Chelyan, West Virginia, was distributing copies of a bogus Knights of Columbus oath, which showed Catholics seeking a war on Protestants, Senator Kennedy was at Bethany College telling questioning students that he did not approve of clerical political
power in Spain, that he had no desire to impose his personal views on birth control or any other subject, and that, if he received a political directive from his Archbishop, “I simply would not obey it.” He recalled that no one questioned his oath of allegiance “before I spent long months in a Veterans Hospital, or before my brother died on a mission to Germany.” No priest or Pope would influence his decisions, he said, and no pastor or anti-Catholic pamphlet should influence their vote. He thought West Virginia deserved a fair shake, and he hoped West Virginia would give him one.

This was not a constant theme of his speeches—economics was still his chief issue—but it was stressed in his preliminary remarks and in his answers to questions. The Kennedy charm worked, too, even on his religious antagonists. One Kenneth Klinkert from Wisconsin, who had peddled anti-Catholic literature at Kennedy rallies in that state and then followed him around in West Virginia, suddenly returned to Wisconsin. The Senator had spoken kindly to him, he said, and showed no anger: “It takes a big man to…come up smiling and genuinely friendly after his religion is being constantly attacked.” Klinkert was for Kennedy.