Jack Kennedy - Chris Matthews [0]
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ALSO BY CHRIS MATTHEWS
Kennedy & Nixon
Hardball
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Life’s a Campaign
Simon & Schuster
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Copyright © 2011 by Christopher J. Matthews
Photo Editor: Vincent Virga
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First Simon & Schuster hardcover edition October 2011
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Designed by Nancy Singer
Manufactured in the United States of America
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.
ISBN 978–1–4516–3508–9
ISBN 978–1–4516–3510–2 (ebook)
Photo credits can be found on p. 479.
To Kathleen
CONTENTS
PREFACE
CHAPTER ONE: SECOND SON
CHAPTER TWO: THE TWO JACKS
CHAPTER THREE: SKIPPER
CHAPTER FOUR: WAR HERO
CHAPTER FIVE: COLD WARRIOR
CHAPTER SIX: BOBBY
CHAPTER SEVEN: MAGIC
CHAPTER EIGHT: SURVIVAL
CHAPTER NINE: DEBUT
CHAPTER TEN: CHARM
CHAPTER ELEVEN: HARDBALL
CHAPTER TWELVE: CHARISMA
CHAPTER THIRTEEN: LANDING
CHAPTER FOURTEEN: ZENITH
CHAPTER FIFTEEN: GOALS
CHAPTER SIXTEEN: LEGACY
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
NOTES
INDEX
JACK KENNEDY
At the peak of the Cold War, an American president saved his country and the world from a nuclear war. How did Jack Kennedy gain the cold detachment to navigate this perilous moment in history? What prepared him to be the hero we needed?
This is my attempt to explain the leader Jacqueline Kennedy called “that unforgettable, elusive man.”
1
PREFACE
I grew up in a Republican family. My own political awakening began in 1952, when I was six. I remember riding the school bus to Maternity of the Blessed Virgin Mary. One of my classmates was a boy whose father was a Democratic committeeman in Somerton, our remote Philadelphia hamlet bordering Bucks County. I felt sorry for him because he was the only kid for Stevenson. It seemed everybody I knew was for Ike.
Back then, even though we kids were small, our souls were large. We had a sense of things we weren’t supposed to understand. I knew that Adlai Stevenson was an “egghead.” My father said he “talked over the heads of people.” There was distance between us and those like Stevenson. We were regular people.
My older brother, Bert, and I spent our days fighting World War II and the Korean War in our backyard. I knew General Eisenhower had fought in what Mom and Dad always called “the war.” It made him a hero. Once I was sitting with Dad at a movie theater when a newsreel came on showing Eisenhower making his return from NATO in Europe, boarding an airplane and waving. I wondered whether he was president and turned to my right to ask my father this. “No,” came the answer, “but he will be.”
One outcome of World War II was to offer Catholics their opening to join the American mainstream. My mother once told us how the big milk company in Philadelphia used to ask for religion on its job application. The correct answer, she explained, was any one of the Protestant denominations. “Catholic” meant you didn’t get the job. What I know for sure is that in the early 1950s we were still making an effort to fit in.
Looking back, I can’t count how many times we first and second graders found ourselves marching up and down Bustleton Avenue in front of