Report of the County Chairman (14 page)

“No,” reasoned a profound Jewish patriot. “You would lose some votes, but remember that the Jews have suffered terribly because of opinions like the ones represented in these documents, and if those opinions were circulated, no self-respecting Jew could vote for anyone even remotely related to them.”

The discussion grew vigorous, and always the public-relations man insisted that the plan was not practical because it simply would not yield the desired results. “It’s sure to backfire,” he argued.

My opinion was asked and I said, “Seems to me I read hints about this in Drew Pearson’s column. Looks as if the Democrats are building a backfire so as to control the blaze if anyone ignites the subject later in the campaign.
But even more important, Joseph Kennedy has denied he ever said what the Germans attributed to him. Doesn’t this destroy the papers completely?”

Insofar as this particular afternoon was concerned, the matter was settled by a sage Jew, who gave new reasons: “When I first read those documents my blood boiled, and I wanted to publish them from the housetops, but prudence as an American citizen warned me that to do so would be folly. If it were generally believed that the Jews were strong enough, even in their minority, to defeat John Kennedy for the Presidency, we would not consequently reap any rewards from the Republicans. We would be hated additionally merely because we were so strong. And those who hated us would be right in doing so, for we would have abused in the political field what ought to be a power merely in the religious field. Therefore we should under no circumstances use these documents during this election, for to do so would be imprudent. But if what Michener says is true, and if the documents are false, then to use them would be corrupt.”

Someone snapped, “That’s a fine speech. But the brutal fact is that where the Catholic Church becomes powerful, liberal Jews have a hard time.”

It fell to me to answer this argument: “As has been pointed out, I’m openly working for Jack Kennedy. At the same time I’m one of the leaders of a population-control movement. And as a novelist I frequently find myself opposed to the more repressive measures of the Church. But I don’t find working for Kennedy and working for population-control mutually incompatible. I know from my textbook experience that the Church makes it difficult
for Jewish liberals and for all other liberals, too. But one opposes this sort of thing step by step in his quarrel with the hierarchy, not in fighting with individual Catholics. I’m much impressed with the sign I saw in the Milan Cathedral which said, ‘Bicycle riding forbidden in this church.’ But the kids rode their bicycles up and down the aisles nevertheless.”

“What’s the point of that story?” someone asked.

“Simply that in America we take Catholicism too seriously. Here it’s a young religion shepherded by a bunch of overly eager Irishmen. In Italy kids ride bicycles up and down the aisles. I believe that in about fifty years we’ll have settled down, and American Catholicism will have settled down, to comfortable European patterns. The best way I know to speed the process is to elect John Kennedy President. He’s probably as anti-clerical as I am.”

A wise observer said, “You don’t elect a President in order to reform a church.”

I replied, “But if he’s the better man, and if you can help adjust a church to American life at the same time, then it’s a logical bargain.”

As good Republicans, they did not agree that Senator Kennedy was the better man, and during the rest of the campaign I sat on needles waiting for the New York Jews to publish their German documents. Had they done so, they might have made it impossible for Kennedy to carry New York City, and of course its loss would have cost him the state and the Presidency.

So all in all, the early weeks of the campaign were not pleasant, but I felt that even though the Republicans were off to the better start, something was bound to happen
that would get us rolling. What it would be I could not guess. I think I relied principally on some eruption in the field of foreign relations which would disclose to the electorate our nation’s precarious position in contrast to the roseate picture being painted by the administration; but even the prospects of such a development gave me little real solace, and in this mood I approached the night of September 26, when the first of the televised debates was to occur. I had already explained to my wife that Nixon would probably trounce Kennedy in formal argument, and it was with no expectancy of triumph that we sat down early that Monday evening to watch the first debate. To me it was just another dangerous hurdle that could not be sidestepped.

When the cameras disclosed the austere concrete walls I gasped and thought, “It’s like a setting for a Franz Kafka play.” And when one of the lenses wandered over to pick up Richard Nixon I gasped again. He seemed like a ghost. I thought, “My God, he lost weight in that hospital.”

The unreality of the night increased when the camera time and again picked up that fantastic row of heads belonging to the nameless and faceless reporters. This indeed was a Kafka movie I was watching, with the ponderous voices of the newsmen intoning their impersonal and generalized questions. The setting, the row of heads, and one of the actors formed the components of a burial, and I felt sure that it was my candidate who was going to be interred.

And then he started to speak. In short, sharp, incisive sentences he hacked away at his major themes. America
must move ahead. We are not doing enough. We need much new legislation. At the end of his opening statement I sighed with at least momentary relief and whispered, “It’s good he went first. Public got a chance to see him before Nixon clobbers him.”

Then came the Vice President, and I was shocked at the emptiness, at the foolish oratory, at the lack of specifics. Where was the fire of the acceptance speech at Chicago? Where was the fighter, the dominator? I simply could not believe that I was looking at Richard Nixon.

Now came the questions to Kennedy, and in the manner that was to become famous he started punching out his answers. His right hand jabbed at the hearts of his listeners. He stood erect, his shoulders and chin leaning just a little forward. He kept referring to things in numbered series. He spoke with rapidity and force, and best of all, what he said made good sense. Along with seventy million other Americans, I sat up.

When the camera flashed back to Mr. Nixon, his face was drawn and streaked. Bubbles of perspiration rested on his chin and twice he tried vainly to wipe them away. His voice was silken where it should have been hard. He said, “I agree,” where he should have waged war. He fumbled, failed and frowned. It was a performance that I shall never forget, for I doubt if any other viewer in the nation was as astonished by the complete collapse of a public figure as I was on that first night.

I went to bed scarcely able to believe what I had seen. Suddenly the prospect of victory was very bright before me, for it seemed as if all America must have discovered what I had discovered, that John Kennedy was not only
a match for Richard Nixon; he was measurably superior in command of facts, in forthrightness, in ability to reason, and in his willingness to talk sense to the American people. But I was in for a surprise.

On Tuesday morning I had to go to New York, and while there I bought every newspaper I could find, even going to the Times Square special newsstand where I was able to purchase about a dozen out-of-town papers to savor the reports of Kennedy’s triumph. To my astonishment all the papers said that the debate had been a draw. Many implied that Nixon had won because of his superior statesmanship. One Associated Press story was particularly infuriating. It said that practically no one’s opinion had been modified by the debate. I got so mad at this that I went into a bar and spread that paper out before me and read every word of the report. What it said in its opening paragraphs was what the headlines proclaimed: that practically no one’s opinion was in any way modified by what the contestants had said, but farther down in the story, when I read the actual city-by-city reports, I found that everyone whose opinion had been changed had changed from Nixon to Kennedy.

“What the hell!” I cried to the bartender. “Look at it for yourself. Practically nobody’s opinion was changed, but everybody who did change went over to Kennedy. That’s one percent of the vote, and one percent will win this election. We’re in!”

It is a matter of record that I carried this newspaper up and down Bucks County, reading the actual news story and not the headline. There it was. A few people had changed to Kennedy. They could not have been so blind
as not to see what I saw on that television screen. Of course Kennedy had won the first debate, and of course all America knew it.

Prior to the fourth debate almost all news stories contained some phrase like this: “As is universally acknowledged, Jack Kennedy won the first debate by a wide margin.…” It was certainly not universally acknowledged until long after the event. But by then everyone had to admit that Nixon had lost, and panic had set in at Republican headquarters. I treasured the comment of the Republican committeeman who met Nixon two days after the first debate. “Has anyone told him?” he asked the aides.

The break that I had prayed for had come, and it had come from a quarter that I least expected. I can only say, as a field worker, that it was both appropriate and deeply moving that Jack Kennedy got his campaign off the ground solely by virtue of his own character, his own force of mind, and his own dedication to common sense. Like a million other volunteers in this election, I worked desperately hard to elect Senator Kennedy, but all that I and all that the million others did would have accomplished nothing if in that first debate Kennedy himself hadn’t taken command and shown the American electorate that a real man was running for the Presidency.

I think I can testify to the climactic importance of this first debate, because in the days before the confrontation it was very difficult for me to get others to work for Senator Kennedy, and we struggled along with one office and one paid secretary. Immediately after the debate we received funds from heaven knows where to open four
additional offices, each with at least one paid secretary and some with three. We got phone calls volunteering services. We got automobiles and posters. We received checks through the mail and a steady stream of visitors. In Bucks County, where it used to take courage to be a Democrat, we had five thriving volunteer offices open seven days a week. In each area we had two or three meetings every day. I kept on a kind of merry-go-round, dashing from one to the next and on to the next. And now wherever I went I could say, with full assurance of recognition, “You saw how our candidate won the debate. That’s the way he’s going to win the election.” Where before I had usually been greeted with amused tolerance, I was now greeted compassionately. People seriously wanted to know why I was for Kennedy, and one night before a large crowd, I told them.

I said, “Some years ago I was working in Djakarta, the capital of Indonesia. It was one of the most difficult cities in the world to work in, because in a few short years its population had exploded from 300,000 to nearly 3,000,000. It was hot, stuffy, crowded, and shot through with ugly bickering between the Indonesians and their former colonial overlords, the Dutch. It was the only place I have been where incoming planeloads of travelers simply couldn’t find any place to stay and so slept sitting up in chairs in the airport.

“One afternoon we got a cablegram advising us that this congressman was dropping in for a visit, and we assumed that he was just another junketing legislator out for a free trip around the world. But we couldn’t find out what committee he was on, or what his business was. We
expected that he would be rather difficult to deal with. Anyway, we went out to the airport and off the battered-up plane stepped a young man who looked as if he’d been on a five-day drunk. He was unshaved, rumpled, had sweat rings under his arms and a shock of uncombed hair. He said briefly, ‘I’m Jack Kennedy, of Massachusetts.’ And before we could ask what he was doing on such a junket, he said that he wanted to meet some labor-union people, some newspaper editors, some policemen and some soldiers. He didn’t demand to see the ambassador or the prime minister or anyone else. He told us that he was merely a congressman, traveling around the world on his own money and his own time in order to see what was going on.

“In the next days Jack Kennedy dug into Indonesia as I have seen few strangers ever dig into a new terrain, so that when he left he was a stranger no longer, and he was prepared to deal with the problem of Indonesia if it ever came up in the Congress. As his plane flew off, a girl from our embassy said wistfully, ‘If he keeps this up, someday he’s going to be a senator from Massachusetts.’ I explained to her that there wasn’t a chance, since that state already had a fine senior senator, Leverett Saltonstall and that it had just elected a fine junior senator, grandson of one of the best men who had ever served in the Senate. I explained that with this new young man secure in his job, Kennedy would have to be content with being a representative, ‘because,’ I pointed out, ‘the new senator’s name is Henry Cabot Lodge, and with a name like that hell never be defeated.’

“You know what Kennedy did to Lodge in that election,
and you know what he’s going to do to him in this one, too. Well, I now knew Kennedy’s name, and I started following his work in the Senate. He stood for things that I stood for. With some courage he voted for bills that were unpopular in his own state, but which were necessary for the nation. I found out that he was an excellent writer and that he had a fine sense of history. And of course I knew that during the war he had performed with unusual gallantry.

“To sum it all up, the more I studied John Kennedy the more convinced I became that he had the makings of a superb political leader with the social conscience of a Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the intellectual capacity of a Woodrow Wilson, and the down-to-earth political know-how of a Harry Truman. I promise you that not once since I made that first decision have I had cause to review or regret my choice. His opponents say he is a young man. Neither he nor I can fight the calendar, but I say he has the makings of a great man, and neither his opponents nor the record can successfully challenge that contention. Without any qualification, without any suppression of my own inner feelings or fears, without any hesitation I recommend John Kennedy to you as your next President. Neither you nor I will be disappointed in his performance.”