Report of the County Chairman (22 page)

“Why so?” I asked.

“Nixon had not less than 15,000, honest count,” Sam insisted.

“We can beat 15,000!” I said airily. “There’s that many’ll come from Levittown alone.”

“Not so easy,” Sam said mournfully. “You forget one thing.”

“What?”

“Saturday, October 29, is the first day of hunting season.

This was frightening. A city man wouldn’t understand this, but on the first day of hunting season in rural Pennsylvania all normal life stops. Men rise two hours before dawn, pile into their cars, and patrol the back roads till dusk. At night they stumble home and throw a couple of rabbits on the table with the age-old cry of, “There’s the meat, Mom!” A self-respecting Bucks County man would allow nothing, not even the future President of the United States, to keep him away from the first day of hunting. On one recent year it fell during a near hurricane and the kill, both of deer and of men, was just about the same as always. I didn’t know anyone who stayed home.

“The hell of it is,” Sam explained, “not only will the men refuse to show up but they’ll have the cars so the women won’t be able to show up either. Jim, well be lucky if we have 8,000 people there. Something has got to be done.”

“Wait a minute,” I argued. “Let’s not panic. Do you mean to tell me that … Look, Sam, this man Kennedy is the most popular Presidential candidate America has
seen in years. People throng to see him. If we can’t beat the 15,000 that Nixon got …”

“They won’t throng to see him on the opening day of hunting season. Not in Bucks County. And you know how the papers are going to play this up. Kennedy draws less than half the crowd that Nixon got. Jim, it’ll kill us.”

“Then we have got to get the crowd down to Levittown. We’ll hire buses.”

“You know how many buses it’d take to get 15,000 people anywhere?”

“I’m satisfied that we’ll get the crowd.”

“And I’m satisfied that we won’t. If Jesus Christ comes back to earth and expects a big crowd to greet him, he better not come back to Bucks County on the opening day of hunting season.”

Sam Thompson left me in gathering gloom, but a few days later he was once more his genial political self. “Thank God,” he gasped. “We got the national committee to keep Kennedy out of here on Saturday. He’s coming on Sunday!”

“Is Sunday good?” I asked.

“Good?” Sam shouted. “There’s a lot of pheasant and rabbit around this year. I see them in all the fields. So the hunters’ll have a good day on Saturday. They’ll have monopolized the family car, so on Sunday they’ll be inclined to pamper the missus and the kids. Jim, we’re going to have the damnedest crowd to meet Jack Kennedy that he’s ever seen!”

Sunday, October 30, started out as a heavenly day, with untimely soft winds, a bright sun, and a gentleness
in the air that simply invited people to drive through the countryside. Sam said, “I told you God’s a Democrat.”

The senator’s appearance was scheduled for one-thirty sharp, and at noon my wife and I pulled into the Levittown shopping area, where an immense plaza had been roped off for the crowd. To our surprise, no fewer than 15,000 people were already in place. I thought, “Sam was right. We’re going to have a record turnout.”

Johnny Welsh’s county committee had arranged for bugle corps, dancing girls, orators and popcorn salesmen. We were also plagued by an influx of intruders from Philadelphia who set up large stands from which they peddled Kennedy buttons at outrageous prices, the profits going not to the campaign committee but into their own pockets. Sam Thompson growled, “The hell of it is that these same jokers were up here last week selling Nixon buttons and making a pile off the Republicans.”

Apparently Sam voiced his grievance to the members of one of my committees from Levittown, for shortly thereafter one of my committeemen strode into our office and threw down on the table some forty dollars. “Now we can pay for the buttons and the posters we need,” he said proudly.

“Where’d you get the dough?” I asked.

“Selling official peddlers’ permits to the hucksters from Philly,” he said.

“Who issued the permits?” I asked.

“A guy and I typed them up,” he confessed.

“What guy?” I pressed.

“Just a guy I happen to know.”

“That’s extortion,” I warned.

“Those creeps are taking money out of the community,” he insisted, but apparently they weren’t going to take all of it out. Some time later I saw Sam Thompson and a helpful policeman inspecting all the peddlers to be sure they had licenses. They did.

At one-thirty that Sunday afternoon, 25,000 people were jammed into the plaza to hear Senator Kennedy, but he was late. Senator Clark and I were offered to the crowd without conspicuous success. The sound system didn’t work, and we raised the devil. During the campaign I must have used upwards of a hundred and fifty sound systems, and fully half of them didn’t work. I often used to wonder, as urgent men in dark suits ran back and forth fixing wires, how we were doing in the space race if we couldn’t get a simple sound system to work. Now the typical worried man in a black suit hurried up to assure us that by the time the senator appeared, the system would be working, but Sam Thompson followed with the discouraging news that “this system is owned by a Republican, and he’s given orders to sabotage it.”

At two-thirty the crowd was at least 30,000, twice what Nixon had been able to draw in the same spot. Senator Kennedy was now an hour overdue and we began to wonder if we could hold the crowd. Senator Clark and I were again offered to the audience with even less success than before, partly because the sound system still didn’t work.

At three-thirty the crowd was 35,000 and most of them had been standing for at least two hours. Senator Kennedy was still late, and other speakers were proposed, but the sound system didn’t work, so we asked the
exhausted bands if they would march again. I don’t know what Johnny Welsh paid those musicians, but no instrumentalists ever earned their money more arduously than these. One band with three beautiful drum majorettes must have marched ten miles, and always to the same amount of applause.

At this point Sam Thompson and I counted the crowd. We walked slowly along the front line and counted every person individually. I forget what our figure was, but it must have been about 400. We then walked back through the crowd and counted individually the rows that pushed in behind those in front, and they numbered about 70. In the central plaza there were therefore 28,000 people. On the roads leading into the shopping center there were many others, and on the distant highway, for at least two miles, every spot along the shoulders was jammed. When I say that in Republican Bucks County at least 35,000 came out to see the Democratic candidate I am cautious in my estimate.

At quarter of four that afternoon a helicopter flew over announcing like a voice from heaven, “Senator Kennedy is coming!” Excitement grew and I thought to test the public address system. It still wasn’t working but the men assured me that soon it would be. Then, from a distance down the main highway, moved three huge buses carrying the press corps. They were about a mile away and struggling through massed crowds, but they were by far the most impressive aspect of the afternoon, three huge beetles crawling through a maze of ants.

Once we caught sight of the distant touring car in the back of which stood a man waving to enormous crowds.
Overhead the helicopter assured us in its ghostly voice, “Senator Kennedy is now leaving the highway. He will soon be with us.”

On the plaza the crowd surged forward, but the police kept firm control and Sam Thompson assured me, “Wonderful! They have twenty more motorcycles than they needed for Nixon.”

The three big buses turned off the highway and moved purposefully toward the plaza. A way mysteriously opened up and a touring car burst into view. There was the candidate, surrounded by a fantastic mob of squealing, screaming, pushing admirers. He waved mechanically, smiled mechanically, waved again. When policemen tried to control the mob, he warned, “Don’t push them.” On his own initiative he got out of the car, left the protection of the police, and shook hands with members of the crowd.

A path was made for him to the speakers’ stand and he climbed the steps. He recognized no one. Men who had served in the Senate with him he was unable to see. A kind of dumb glaze was over his eyes, his face and possibly his brain. Then he looked at the crowd and quickly whipped off his overcoat, standing forth as a handsome, dedicated man. The crowd screamed. He took the microphone and asked impatiently, without seeing me, “Does this work?”

“I don’t think so,” I said.

“They never do,” he said and put back into his pocket an important typed statement he had planned to make.

“Does this work?” he asked the crowd.

“We can hear,” somebody shouted.

He spoke about six sentences, during which I dropped down among the press. Nobody was listening, for nobody could hear. I met Maggie Higgins, tired and worn like Kennedy. “Will Kennedy carry Bucks County?” she asked.

“We’re going to cut the margin way down, Maggie,” I assured her.

“That’s not news,” she snapped, and soon all the reporters were piling back into the press buses.

With his speech, such as it had to be, delivered, the senator suddenly came to life. Now he recognized Senator Clark and stopped to chat with the senator’s pretty daughter, who was attending Bryn Mawr. He recognized other politicians and shook their hands, but soon the police had formed about him and he was hustled back to his touring car. The cavalcade re-formed and the three huge buses began inching once more through the crowd. Overhead the helicopter announced to the jammed highway, “Senator Kennedy is about to appear.” For his next engagement he would be three hours late.

Sam Thompson, watching him go, said, “He’ll make a great President. At least he was smart enough not to come to Bucks County on the first day of hunting.”

The mind is tantalized by several speculations. In Senator Kennedy’s tortuous procession from the center of Philadelphia to Levittown and back he was seen by not less than half a million people. He carried Pennsylvania by only 116,326 votes, and if he had not carried the state, he could have been in trouble. Some overt thing, some specific event in this intense campaign meant the difference between defeat and victory. Could it be that Sam Thompson had been right, and that if Jack Kennedy had
made his last great pitch for Pennsylvania’s votes on the first day of hunting season only half as many people, or less, would have seen him? Don’t forget that both candidates together failed to make an impression during the World Series, and both were edged off the front pages by Nikita Khrushchev’s taking off his shoe in the United Nations. Some trivial event possibly made the ultimate difference when the vote was close as it was, and I am at least willing to consider the fact that it might have been Jack Kennedy’s sense of timing in coming to Philadelphia and Bucks County. Or, you could say, “Sam Thompson did it.”

It should be obvious from what I have so far said that in the natural course of the campaign I developed no antagonism whatever for the Republican candidate, Richard Nixon. In fact, my wife kept heckling me on the long rides home with the persistent question: “Why do you continue to speak well of the enemy?” And each time I replied that I wasn’t trying to convince Democrats; I was arguing with Republicans. “Besides,” I snapped one night, “I happen to think that Richard Nixon is a pretty good candidate, and if he wins on November 8 I’m not going to cut my throat. The nation will be in fairly good hands.”

This bland attitude terminated on the night of October 13, when during the third debate one of the interrogators, Mr. Charles Von Fremd of C.B.S., asked what seemed to me a perfunctory question: “The chairman of the Republican National Committee, Senator Thruston Morton, declared earlier this week that you owed Vice President Nixon and the Republican party a public apology for
some rather strong charges made by former President Harry Truman, who bluntly suggested where the Vice President and the Republican party could go. Do you feel that you owe the Vice President an apology?”

Mr. Kennedy’s answer was by no stretch of standards brilliant, but it was noteworthy for providing the only flash of humor during the campaign, and even it had modest candlepower. He said: “Well, I must say that Mr. Truman has his method of expressing things. He’s been in politics for fifty years. He’s been President of the United States. They are not in my style. But I really don’t think there’s anything I could say to Mr. Truman that’s going to cause him, at the age of seventy-six, to change his particular speaking manner. Perhaps Mrs. Truman can but I don’t think I can. I’ll just have to tell Mr. Morton, if you’d pass that message on to him.”

The cameras then turned routinely to Vice President Nixon for what I expected to be a routine additional comment. To my astonishment I heard the Republican candidate for the Presidency actually state: “We all have tempers. I have one. I’m sure Senator Kennedy has one. But when a man’s President of the United States he has an obligation not to lose his temper in public.

“One thing I’ve noted as I’ve traveled about the country are the tremendous number of children who come out to see the Presidential candidates. I see mothers holding their babies up so they can see a man who might be President of the United States. It makes you realize that whoever is President is going to be a man that all the children of America will either look up to or will look down to.

“And I can only say that I’m very proud that President Eisenhower has restored dignity and decency and, frankly, good language to the conduct of the President of the United States.

“And I can only hope that, should I win this election, that I could approach President Eisenhower in maintaining the dignity of the office, in seeing to it that whenever any mother or father talks to his child, he can look at the man in the White House and, whatever he may think of his policies, he will say, ‘There’s a man who maintains the kind of standards personally that I would want my child to follow.’ ”

When this little sermon ended I jumped from my chair and was mad for the second time in the campaign, the first having been when my party was accused of being pro-communist. It seemed to me then, as it does now, incredible that a grown man running for the Presidency in the crucial year of 1960 should seriously put forth as one of his major qualifications the fact that he wanted to be an image toward which children could look with reverence while their mothers beamed. Suddenly the whole shabby performance of the last eight years hit me in the face: the postures in place of the performance; the father image in place of a political leader; the bland reassurances instead of the hard dichotomies; the proliferating clichés in place of the truth. From that moment on I was totally dedicated to the defeat of Richard Nixon as well as to the election of John Kennedy.