Report of the County Chairman (3 page)

But when I had reached the above reassuring conclusions I saw clearly that everything hinged upon the Democrats’ selection of their candidate, and so in my somewhat chilly, isolated room I tried to decide who the logical choice was. Alone, and without help from anyone or any printed material, I tried to predict in my own mind what ought to happen and what was likely to happen.

I considered these men in order: Adlai Stevenson,
Mennen Williams, Stuart Symington, Hubert Humphrey, Lyndon Johnson and John Kennedy. At no time did I consider Edmund Muskie, Pat Brown or Robert Meyner, for they were all Catholics; and although I was willing to support them, it seemed to me that as such they did not yet have an adequate stature to risk the adversities that overtook Al Smith, at least so far as popular legend reports.

My wife kept reminding me forcefully of the claims of Adlai Stevenson. He had run two honorable campaigns and everything I knew about him suggested that he had grown in the interval since 1956. Having twice sacrificed himself at the altar of the unconquerable legend of General Eisenhower, he merited a third chance against a less popular opponent. My instinctive sense of poetic justice also told me that it was proper that Stevenson should defeat Nixon, since the latter had abused him so badly in the previous campaigns. I recalled particularly how Nixon had ridiculed Stevenson’s 1956 suggestion that nuclear tests be halted, even charging him in terms that questioned Stevenson’s sanity if not his loyalty. Brains, character, insight, aptitude for the job and the capacity to perform brilliantly Stevenson had. I was not even worried about the William Jennings Bryan third-try jinx. Furthermore, I felt certain that if he won the nomination he would do so without splitting his party wide apart, which had to be a major consideration. Most of all, it seemed to me that my wife was right in one important particular: our peculiar age seemed to call specifically for Stevenson. We needed a President with brains, a man who could provide the nation and the world with the
kind of leadership it merited. In fact, there was only one weakness in the candidacy of Adlai Stevenson, but that seemed to me to be absolutely fatal. He could win the respect of the world, the love of his followers, and the nomination. But I was sure he could not win the popular votes that would elect him President. I foresaw that if he was nominated the newspaper editorialists and cartoonists would massacre him. Radio commentators and television pundits would treat him with contempt. And what the big journals of opinion would do to destroy him I could only guess. His campaign would be a debacle, and he would be driven from one extremity to another. His defeat would be predictable by mid-October, and the wolves would never leave his jugular. Furthermore, Richard Nixon, having twice been on a team that had thrashed him soundly, would profit from the aura of victory that would be about his temples from the first day of the campaign until a Republican victory became a reality on November 8.

After reaching this gloomy conclusion, I went back to see if there was any substantial reason why I was wrong in my calculation. Could Adlai Stevenson be elected in 1960? On one side of a sheet of paper on which I should have been writing a novel I listed all the people who my wife argued would vote for him: the intellectuals; businessmen who knew the interest rate was too high; confirmed Democrats; people who sensed that America had been marking time; labor; young people; and all others who might conceivably qualify. In the opposite column I listed those who would probably not vote for him: Catholics, who had shown a marked disinclination to do so in 1952
and 1956; Negroes, who had drifted toward General Eisenhower; women who objected to his divorce; people who were insecure and who instinctively followed what the newspapers and radios told them; all Republicans; and no less than eighty percent of those numerous Democrats who had already voted against him in 1952 and 1956. Furthermore, I concluded that most professional big-city Democratic leaders would be cool to his candidacy, and whereas they might be forced to acquiesce in his nomination, I doubted that they would vigorously support his actual candidacy. In late November of 1959 I decided that Adlai Stevenson could not be elected President, but when I told my wife of my conclusions she refused to believe them and continued to work for her candidate right up to the last minute.

Mennen Williams, the brilliant and likable governor of Michigan, was vulnerable, I thought, because of the administrative troubles he was having in his home state and because he was not well enough known across the country. It seemed to me that any of the other candidates would make a much better showing than he. Furthermore, I had the feeling that Richard Nixon would more or less cut Williams to shreds in public debate, for I knew Nixon’s formidable reputation as a debater and I was sure he would use his skill to good purpose in the rough and tumble of an intense campaign.

Stuart Symington perplexed me. Like many other Americans I knew him principally as a participant in the Army-McCarthy hearings, where his performance was hardly sparkling and where he seemed to be a most timorous lion if, indeed, he had any teeth at all. Certainly,
what I had seen on television gave me no reassurance about his candidacy. On the other hand, I had done a good deal of work with military people, and they spoke most highly of him, even when they disagreed with his position and he with theirs. I also knew that his published remarks on our military posture made a good deal of sense, and that his general conduct as a senator was far above average. Listening to the comments of others, I found that he made a good impression on people who did not otherwise know much about his career. Women liked him. And I was forced to give him real attention when I heard an old couple affirm, “That man Symington looks like a President should.” The last President we had who “looked the way one should” was Warren Gamaliel Harding, and I often reflected painfully, “If the scandals had not overtaken him when they did, he could have been reëlected with ease in 1924 and maybe even in 1928.” I always closed such mournful thoughts with this happy conclusion: “Well, then we’d have escaped Coolidge.” But in the American democracy it is not inconsequential for a man to look like what he is running for, and if this was true before the days of television, think how much more true it is now. Therefore, at no time did I rule out Stuart Symington as a possibility, even though I would never have chosen him of and by myself. And when my favorite old warhorse Harry Truman came out for him, I gave the Missouri senator very careful reconsideration. I concluded early that he would not be a good candidate for the Presidency itself but that he might make a creditable candidate for the Vice Presidency.

Hubert Humphrey was my wife’s second choice for the top position, and during all my reflections I had a fairly constant espousal of his cause at meals. I liked his brilliance. I approved of his voting record. He talked sense and had a certain vitality which I found impressive. My fear was that he would not be able to convince a majority of the general public that he was either qualified or prepared for the job. Early in my considerations I ruled him out for the Presidential nomination and failed to see where he would fit into the Vice Presidential part of the ticket except in the possibility of the Presidential spot’s going to Lyndon Johnson. There would be much to be said for a Johnson-Humphrey ticket, and I never counted it out.

As for Lyndon Johnson, the best Democrats I knew in Hawaii were for him, and with me that carried a good deal of weight. Those who knew him said that he owned a powerful brain and knew how to use it. In the early part of 1959 I had met upwards of twenty leading figures from Congress, about one third from the Senate, and judging from what they had told me, if Presidents were elected by Congress, Lyndon Johnson would pretty surely be the next incumbent. In view of what subsequently happened, it would probably be prudent of me not to list the congressmen by name, but their testimony impressed me, and I was four times invited to join one committee or another that was attempting to further his candidacy. I refrained for several reasons. First, I felt that Johnson alone would not be able to enlist labor’s whole-hearted support and without such support I did not see how any Democrat could win. Second, I felt that any platform on
which Johnson could successfully run would be so watered down in social content that I for one would not care to support it. Third, and this loomed most important to me in late 1959, I suspected that he could not get the nomination without engaging in an intra-mural fight that would paralyze the party for the ensuing Presidential campaign, and this would insure the loss of big cities like Philadelphia and New York, which would inevitably mean the loss of their states and thus the loss of the election. Fourth, I remembered that Johnson had originally won his Senate seat by a mere 87 votes out of a total of nearly one million and I saw little evidence that he would be a good vote-getter across the nation. Opposed to these doubts were rumors that the professional Democratic politicians like Jake Arvey of Illinois and David Lawrence of Pennsylvania were impressed with Johnson and had agreed to back him as a compromise candidate. I suspected therefore that he might be the Presidential nominee, with John Kennedy as his Vice President, and this ticket I would be willing to support with all my energy.

I have left discussion of John Kennedy till last because that’s what I did in November of 1959. On the boat trip home I had decided that I could support a Catholic for the Presidency, but that did not mean that I was willing to throw away my party’s chances if nominating a Catholic meant that he would recapitulate the misery of the Al Smith campaign of 1928. In fact, the first political speech I ever made was to the assembly of Swarthmore College in the fall of 1928 when, as a junior, I blasted hell out of the complacency of a Quaker college which could profit from the religious freedom under which
Quakerism flourished—for few remember that one of the sects which suffered most in colonial days at the hands of bigots was the Quakers, who were beaten and banished and persecuted by devout Protestants—and at the same time vote overwhelmingly against Al Smith because he was a Catholic. As I recall, it was a pretty impassioned speech, dampened somewhat by a senior political-science major who whispered when I sat down, “Stupid, we’re not voting against Al Smith because he’s a Catholic. We’re voting for Herbert Hoover because he’s a Quaker.” I’m afraid I didn’t quite catch his logic, and I remain to this day a little confused. But I did not want John Kennedy to repeat in 1960 the fiasco of 1928. In fact, I didn’t yet know who my candidate was to be.

Perplexed by this impasse, I went to a dinner party given by my publisher Bennett Cerf and his partners, and I sat at a table with three gentlemen famous in American letters. In view of what I am about to say, I think it better if I refrain from disclosing two of their names, although they are free to do so if they wish. However, I must state that neither Bennett Cerf nor his partners were present at this particular table when the conversation opened with a discussion of the propriety of electing a Catholic President. The three distinguished gentlemen who shared the table were, and are, noted as American liberals, and I was surprised to find that two of them had the most serious and deep-rooted fears of a Catholic in the Presidency.

Dignitary One said firmly: “I make my living writing books, and I have found that whenever in the United States repressive action is taken against literary works, it’s
always the Catholic Church that spearheads the censorship. It’s against everything I stand for. It’s dictatorial, savage in its enmities, all-consuming in its desires, and reactionary in its intentions. I speak from first-hand knowledge of a church that is positively brutal in its lust for power, and it seems to me that to put a member of that church into our highest political office is indeed unwise.”

Dignitary Two said more hesitantly: “I’ve traveled in Spain and Ireland. Have you ever been in Spain on Good Friday? For four days everything shuts down tight. No movies, no music, no games, nothing. The Spanish people don’t want this, but the Church does. And on Friday night as dusk falls, the rulers of the city, all the appointed and elected officials, line up, take off their shoes, climb into penitential garb, tie ropes about their necks to which are attached crosses, and parade barefoot through the city dragging these crosses behind them. Why? Because they’re holy men? No, they don’t give a damn for holiness. They drag those crosses to show the citizenry that they’re subservient to the Church. I don’t want any church that rules Spain as this one does, no church that has ruined Ireland the way this one has, to get a foothold in the United States. To prevent such a thing I think I would lay down my life.”

The gentlemen then asked what my experiences had been with the Church and I replied, “I’ve recently decided that I could support a Catholic for President, but I must admit that I have persistent doubts about the political influence of the Church. For example, when I was textbook editor for one of the big publishing firms we
were visited one day by a priest who showed us credentials entitling him to speak for the hierarchy of the Church in New York City, and he warned us bluntly that unless we stopped using the word
jesuitical
as a pejorative adjective in our books, he would personally see to it that no further book from our company would ever be used in any Catholic college or school.”

Dignitary One asked, “Did you use the word
jesuitical
in books that you were trying to sell to Catholic colleges? That doesn’t seem intelligent.”

“You misunderstand me,” I replied. “The word was never used in textbooks because we knew it was pejorative. Another branch of our company had used the word in a book intended for the general public.”

“And the Church was threatening you on such a tenuous relationship?”

“Yes. Their pressure was constant and powerful,” I replied. “The priest insisted that we drop the word in all future editions of the book he was complaining about.”

“Did he specifically say that if you didn’t edit it out he would institute the boycott?” the eminent writer pressed.