Jack Kennedy - Chris Matthews [124]
Not only did Kennedy speak eloquently; he presented himself with careful dignity, at the same time displaying an elegant pugnacity when roused. This was especially true in the long question-and-answer period that followed his speech. One focus of attention was Kennedy’s rejection of a 1947 invitation to address a dinner in Philadelphia to raise funds for a Chapel of the Chaplains. It had been intended as an interfaith house of worship honoring the four chaplains who went down with the Dorchester in World War II. Kennedy had, at first, accepted the invitation, only to later turn it down. He’d done so at the request of the local archbishop, Dennis Cardinal Dougherty.
Kennedy’s answer was that he had lacked the credentials to attend the dinner “as a spokesman for the Catholic church.” When pushed further on the question again, he’d finally had enough. “Is this the best that can be done after fourteen years? Is this the only incident that can be charged?” But in the end, he’d been respectful, made all his points, stood his ground, and came away looking like a winner.
There are many ways of preparing for a life on the political stage. To the usual list—remembering the names of people you meet once, smiling at proven enemies—Jack Kennedy now added making noises like a seal. Given to bouts of self-improvement—his famous speed-reading is an example—he had been concerned about the timbre of his voice, how he sounded to listeners when he spoke in public. His performance at the Los Angeles convention had not been that strong and he knew it. The loud daily barking, then, was an exercise assigned to him by the vocal coach David McClosky, one that Jack chose to practice in the bathtub. Unexpectedly hearing him emit these very peculiar sounds caused even the most loyal of his aides to wonder if there wasn’t, perhaps, a new health problem.
Jack’s ongoing transformation had other aspects, with one significant physical change being inadvertent, a side effect of the medication he was taking for his Addison’s. More than saving his life, the cortisone he’d been taking had transformed his face, fleshing out his features. Billy Sutton, who’d lived with him during those early years in Washington, would remark that he’d never looked better than he did in those months of running for president against Richard Nixon.
But cosmetic advantages didn’t guarantee elections. True enough, Dick Nixon had looked old even when he was young—he was, in fact, just four years the senior of his Democratic rival—but he’d also spent two terms as vice president in the shadow of the prize they both were after. He was no one Jack could take for granted.
Throughout that fall, Dave Powers, Kennedy’s campaign “body man,” used the specter of Nixon to motivate his boss each morning. He once told me that he’d walk into Jack’s room, in whatever town they happened to be in, pull open the curtains, and begin, tunelessly, to serenade the candidate: “I wonder where Dick Nixon is this time of day. I wonder how many factories he’s been to, how many events he’s had already.”
The coming debates were, of course, of far greater importance than a typical day on the campaign trail, and Jack Kennedy knew it. Hadn’t Nixon won his original seat in Congress by stomping on a first-rate New Dealer, Jerry Voorhis? It had been a no-holds-barred assault when he’d run against Congresswoman Helen Gahagan Douglas, defeating her in the even nastier 1950 Senate race, in which her lone success was in hanging on him a lasting nickname, “Tricky Dick.”
But as much as Jack had to be wary of Nixon, there was also the fact that they’d be facing each other in front of a huge audience, bigger than any in history. That year, 1960, wasn’t the first one in which television coverage had to be taken into account by presidential campaigns. It was, however, the first one in which nearly every voter had a television.
There were to be four debates,