Jack Kennedy - Chris Matthews [123]
“A few days later . . . I told him the crowd had felt let down and suggested that the next time he should at least wave his arms the way other politicians did and give people a chance to get the cheers out of their throats. Kennedy shook his head and borrowed my notebook and pencil—he was saving his voice for the day’s speeches—and wrote, ‘I always swore one thing I’d never do is’ and he drew a picture of a man with his arms in the air.” There were limits to what he would do to win votes.
But someone else was impressed—and extremely so—that night at the El Paso airport. According to Ken O’Donnell, Sam Rayburn, the legendary “Mr. Democrat,” told him “ten times after we got to the hotel he had never seen such a crowd in El Paso and certainly not at that hour of the night. He didn’t quite understand it, saying ‘This young fellow has something special. I just didn’t realize until now.’ “
While the Kennedy advisors all agreed that a speech on his religion was necessary, they were equally against their candidate’s accepting the Houston invitation. Jack Kennedy himself was the sole voice in favor. “In the end, he alone made the decision to go,” O’Donnell recalled. “It came about casually; he was in shaving . . . and came out of the bathroom and said, ‘Notify them we’re going to do it. I’ll give the speech. This is as good a time as any. We might as well get it on the record early; they’re going to be asking this throughout the rest of the campaign. So, I’m going to do it.’ “
In the hours leading up to the speech, Kennedy continued to wonder aloud if he’d made the right decision. Then, just before leaving his hotel room in his black pinstriped suit, a nonpolitical issue arose. “Look!” he told the ever-present Ken O’Donnell, pointing at his shoes. “They’re brown!”
Finally, Dave Powers, the staff guy in charge of wardrobe, was located. His response brought common sense to bear: “I think, Senator, you’ll be behind a podium and nobody will notice it on television. . . . I think this once you’ll be okay.”
“Really, Dave,” Kennedy replied, “so you don’t think anyone will notice that I have brown shoes with a crisp black suit?”
“Nah, nobody will notice. I mean, come on, Senator, most people in America only have one set of shoes—and, Senator, those shoes! Those shoes are brown! You know what you did tonight, Senator! You know what you did! You sewed up the brown shoe vote.” At this, even Jack began to see the humor.
Kennedy walked into the meeting room alone. To make sure the audience viewing clips at home got the message, the advance man, Robert S. Strauss, had picked the “meanest, nastiest-looking” ministers to put in the front row. Assuming the role of defendant in the argument, Jack offered respect to these serious citizens with doubts about his loyalties. The invited ministers had a perfect right to question him, he said. But once having satisfied themselves as to his sincerity, they also had a responsibility to move on to other issues.
Kennedy’s opening presentation in Houston was, perhaps, the finest of the campaign. “So, it is apparently necessary for me to state once again not what kind of church I believe in, for that should be important only to me, but what kind of America I believe in. I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute, where no Catholic prelate would tell the president—should he be a Catholic—how to act, and no Protestant minister would tell his parishioners for whom to vote.”
O’Donnell described Senator Kennedy’s performance there as “dancing on a needle.” On the one hand, he had “to satisfy this audience with regard to a Catholic in the presidency; and yet at the same time he had to be careful not to jeopardize his position with the Catholics across the country, the Catholic Church,