Listening In (13 page)

JOHN F. KENNEDY CAMPAIGNS FOR CONGRESS IN THE NORTH END OF BOSTON BY THE OLD NORTH CHURCH AND PAUL REVERE STATUE, 1948

Suddenly, the time, the occasion, and I all met. I moved into the Bellevue Hotel with my grandfather and I began to run. I’ve been running ever since. Fascination began to grip me and I realized how satisfactory a profession the political career could be. I saw how ideally politics filled the Greek definition of happiness: “Full use of your powers along lines of excellence in a life affording scope.”
¹⁹

I might have gone to law school, which so many were doing after the dislocations of war, and become a member of a big firm and [unclear] or a divorce case, or been involved in an accident suit. But how can anyone compare that in interest with being a member of Congress, with trying to write legislation on foreign policy or on the relationship between labor and management. Or I could have worked, or I could have taken part in an antitrust case against a great corporation, a case which might have taken two or three years. How can you compare in interest that job with a life in Congress where you are able to participate to some degree in determining which direction this nation will go?

Even reporting has its disadvantages, and that was the first profession I tried. A reporter is
reporting
what happens; he’s not
making
it happen. Even the good reporters, the ones who are really fascinated by what happens and who find real stimulus in putting their noses into the center of action. Even they, in a sense, are in a secondary profession. It’s reporting what happened, but it isn’t participating.

I had in politics, to begin with, the great advantage of having a well-known name, and that served me in good stead. Beyond that, however, I was a stranger in Boston to begin with, and I still have a notebook, which is filled page after page with the names of all the new people I met back there in that first campaign.

I had several disadvantages as a candidate. I was an outsider, really. I was living in a hotel. I had never lived very much in the district. My family roots were there, but I had lived in New York for ten years, and on top of that I had gone to Harvard, not a particularly popular institution at that time in the eleventh congressional district. But I started early, in my opinion the most important key to political success. In December, for the primary election next June.

My chief opponents, the mayor of Cambridge and Mayor Curley’s secretary, followed the old practice of not starting until about two months before the election. By then I was ahead of them. In 1952 I worked a year and a half ahead of the November election, a year and a half before Senator Lodge did. I am following the same practice now. I believe most aspirants for public office start much too late. When you think of the money that Coca-Cola and Lucky Strike put into advertising day after day, even though they have well-known brand names, you can realize how difficult it is to become an identifiable political figure. The idea that people can get to know you well enough to support you in two months or three months is wholly wrong. Most of us do not follow politics and politicians. We become interested only around election time. For the politician to make a dent in the consciousness of the great majority of the people is a long and laborious job, particularly in a primary where you don’t have the party label to help you.

Once I did start, I worked really hard, trying to get the support of the nonprofessionals, who are much more ready to commit themselves early than the traditional politicians. In my opinion, the principle for winning a ward fight or congressional fight, really, is the same as winning a presidential fight, and the most important ingredient is a willingness to submit yourself to long, long, long labor.

Halfway through that campaign the mayor of Cambridge offered me the job of his secretary if I withdrew and he won. I refused. Finally, after a tough fight, I won with a generous margin.

And almost immediately, politics lived up to the great expectations I had for it as a profession. The first thing I did in Congress was to become the junior Democrat on the labor committee. At the time we were considering the Taft-Hartley Bill.
²⁰
I was against it, and one day in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, I debated the bill with a junior Republican on that committee who was for it … his name was Richard Nixon. And now, here we are debating again, fourteen years later.

Why does a politician continually raise his sights and leave a job that represented complete satisfaction at one time for a higher position? Part of the reason lies in the normal desire to move ahead, the motivation that helps move the world; perhaps a more important part lies in the recognition that a greater opportunity to determine the direction in which the nation/world will go lies in higher office. The scope and power are bigger.

When I was in the House, I was especially interested in my district, in Boston, in the future, in the navigation, for example, of Boston Harbor. I still am. But in the House you are one of 435 members. You have to be there many, many years before you get to the hub of influence, or have an opportunity to play any role on substantive matters. After I’d been in the House for six years, I made up my mind that there was a greater opportunity to function in the United States Senate. I prepared to move on.

In the same way, during my years in the Senate I have come to understand that the presidency is the ultimate source of action. The Senate is not. It may have been in 1840, but it isn’t today. Take the Labor Bill, for instance. In 1958 I had worked for two years on that bill. President Eisenhower made one fifteen-minute speech, which had a decisive effect on the House. Two years versus one fifteen-minute speech. I worked for a year on a proposal to send an economic mission to India. The State Department opposed it. It was defeated in the conference. I worked for a year on a bill to change the Battle Act
²¹
to allow a greater economic trading with countries behind the Iron Curtain, such as Poland. The president withdrew his support on the day of the vote. We were defeated by one vote. All of the things that you become interested in doing, the president can do and the Senate cannot, particularly in the area of foreign policy.

There is, in fact, much less than meets the eye in the Senate, frequently. The administration controls, in my opinion, today, and in the administration it’s the President who controls and who can affect results, while we play in the vital issues of national security, defense, and foreign policy a secondary role in the United States Senate.

The President, all public officials, today face serious and sophisticated problems unheard of in the nineteenth century, where political leaders dealt for several generations with the problems of the development of the West, slavery, tariff, and the currency. Today, politics has become infinitely complicated. One day we deal with labor law, the next with significant matters of foreign policy, the following day with fiscal and monetary policy, the next day with the problems of which new weapons should we put our emphasis on.

With the new complexity and intensity of political problems, I think the politics and politicians have changed. The hail-fellow-well-met extrovert is passing from [the] political scene. A good many of the politicians I know in the Senate are quiet and thoughtful men, certainly not extroverts.

A successful politician today must have and communicate a sense of intelligence and integrity, and he must be willing to work. Money helps, of course. It is desirable for anyone to have financial security in whatever they do, but it is certainly not an essential for success. The fact is that people with private resources who have succeeded in politics are comparatively rare. Most of them do not go into politics, and for some who have, money has been a hazard. In any case, this is not the decisive question and I think our history has demonstrated this very clearly. Franklin Roosevelt had some personal resources. Lincoln did not. They were both successful political leaders and great presidents.

In looking back, I would say that I have never regretted my choice of profession, even though I cannot know what the future will bring. I hope all Americans, men and women, regardless of what may be their chosen profession, will consider giving some of their life to the field of politics. Winston Churchill once said: “Democracy is the worst form of government except for all of the other systems that have been tried.” It is certainly the most demanding, it requires more from us all than any other system. Particularly in these days when the watch fires of the enemy camp burn bright, I think all of us must be willing to give some of ourselves to the most exacting discipline of self-government. The magic of politics is not the panoply of office. The magic of politics is participating on all levels of national life in an affirmative way, of playing a small role in determining whether, in Mr. Faulkner’s words, “freedom will not only endure, but also prevail.”
²²

MEETING WITH GENERAL DOUGLAS MACARTHUR, AUGUST 16, 1962

On August 16, 1962, not long after the tapes were installed, General Douglas MacArthur, eighty-two years old, came to Washington to be feted at a lunch ceremony on Capitol Hill. He took advantage of his visit to pay a social call at the White House, where he found a receptive President Kennedy eager to join him in conversation. Kennedy had admired MacArthur for years, for his personal courage as a soldier in the First World War and his strategic vision in the wars that followed. They’d met in New York in April 1961, in the immediate aftermath of the Bay of Pigs disaster, when MacArthur offered valuable public support. A year later, they enjoyed an easy, discursive conversation, ranging over politics, Southeast Asia (where MacArthur advocated caution), and their shared interest in history. At one point, the conversation was interrupted by a phone call from the President’s father, who, though eight years younger than General MacArthur, was incapacitated by a stroke. World War I was on JFK’s mind, and he described Barbara Tuchman’s recent book,
The Guns of August
, to MacArthur; MacArthur recounted some of his adventures in that war, including his memory of a young French tank commander, Charles de Gaulle. In the selection that follows, MacArthur vents his criticism of the media, and the difficulty of living in the public eye.

MEETING WITH GENERAL DOUGLAS MACARTHUR, AUGUST 16, 1962

MACARTHUR:
You have inherited difficulties that you probably will just about settle [and] you’ll get through and then some other fellow will come in and get all the credit.

JFK:
[laughs] That’ll be all right.

MACARTHUR:
That’s the old story of the pioneer.

JFK:
[laughs]

MACARTHUR:
There isn’t a single trouble that you have that isn’t a relic of either the—most of them from the Eisenhower administration and some of them from the preceding administration that he drove under the rug and left for you to clean up. But the general situation is undoubtedly on the up curve. You probably place more emphasis on these columnists, who are the damnedest bunch of petty liars the world has ever seen.