Jack Kennedy - Chris Matthews [109]
Hubert Humphrey was, within his own realm, a uniquely well-respected Democratic figure, having stood up to anti-Semitism when he was Minneapolis mayor in the late 1940s. He’d also called upon his fellow party members to commit themselves to taking on the issue of civil rights at the 1948 convention. It was the speech he gave supporting this conviction that led to the Dixiecrat walkout there and to the third-party nomination of the segregationist candidate Strom Thurmond of South Carolina.
Because Wisconsin’s economy mirrored that of Minnesota, and because its Catholic population was low, the primary could be seen as Humphrey’s to lose. Facing these facts, the Kennedy people started early and hit hard. At the beginning of January, Bobby dispatched Kenny O’Donnell there to live full-time in the lead-up to the primary. “He knew we had to run the same type of campaign we’d run in Massachusetts—therefore we needed to have someone full-time from the Kennedy organization giving actual day-to-day direction,” O’Donnell said. Soon Bobby and Teddy Kennedy—whose first child, Kara, was born in February—followed O’Donnell, living with their wives and families at the Hotel Wisconsin in Milwaukee for seven weeks. Bobby, by this time, was the father of seven.
Pat Lucey, a former Wisconsin assemblyman who’d go on to the governorship, was an early supporter of Kennedy in the state. Watching the candidate, Lucey was impressed with his well-disciplined retail politics. As Lucey describes it, Senator Kennedy’s day began early and kept to a “grueling” pattern. “He was campaigning at six o’clock in the morning and probably at a shopping center at ten o’clock that night. Finally, he started running out of steam and thought he’d made enough of the right impression to let up a little bit.” The purpose had been achieved. The image of Jack Kennedy standing in freezing dawn weather at the factory gates was now fixed in the mind of the voter. For Pat Lucey, the result could be summed up as the “effective presentation of a celebrity.”
Humphrey, for his part, tried to portray the smart Kennedy operation as a negative. “Beware of these orderly campaigns,” he declared. “They are ordered, bought, and paid for. We are not selling corn flakes or some Hollywood production.” To imply further shallowness, Humphrey took aim at what he saw as his opponent’s superficial appeal. “You have to learn to have the emotions of a human being when you are charged with the responsibilities of leadership.” And then, if that wasn’t enough: Jack Kennedy had “little emotional commitment to liberals,” he took pains to remind his listeners. There was truth to this, of course. Kennedy’s newfound liberalism had been neatly packaged since the 1956 Democratic Convention.
But Kennedy enjoyed a state-of-the-art edge. Using Lou Harris’s polling data on local attitudes and concerns, Jack knew what people had on their minds, which arguments would win their interest. It was a breakthrough technique, and one that would change modern campaigning in the years to come.
By this point Jack was becoming keenly attuned to the image he projected. Having encouraged Charlie Bartlett to fly to Wisconsin to watch the reaction he drew from the crowds, he quickly revealed this self-awareness, even if he wasn’t about to make any adjustment to fit in with the local scene. When they’d finished dinner after his arrival, Bartlett was startled to hear the candidate ask: “Shall I wear this blue overcoat?” He was indicating his usual coat. “Or shall I wear this?” Now he was holding up a sporty brown herringbone. “Why not wear that one?” Bartlett suggested, pointing to the second. “It looks like Wisconsin.