Jack Kennedy - Chris Matthews [136]
Yet even with these losses, Kennedy was managing to stay in front. “If the present trend continues,” Richard Nixon told a loyal crowd waiting in the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, “Senator Kennedy will be the next president of the United States.” As supporters shouted out for him not to concede, Nixon doggedly kept on. “Certainly, if the trend continues and he does become our next president, he will have my wholehearted support.”
“Does this mean you’re president, Bunny?” Jackie Kennedy asked her husband. “Why don’t you give up?” someone else in the room exhorted the face on the television screen. “Why should he?” Kennedy jumped in. “I wouldn’t in his place.”
Jack was done for the evening. “What am I going to tell the press?” Pierre Salinger asked. “Tell them I went to bed,” came the answer. “Wake me up if anything happens.” With that, he walked out into the Cape Cod night, headed for his own house. When he awoke, he was the next president.
Ted Sorensen beat Salinger to him with the news. That morning they watched intently as Herb Klein, Nixon’s press secretary, read the telegram Nixon had sent from California, before flying at dawn back to Washington. “I want to repeat through this wire the congratulations and best wishes I extended to you on television last night. I know that you will have the united support of all Americans as you lead the nation in the cause of peace and freedom during the next four years.”
Nixon wasn’t playing by the rules and Jack resented it. It had been a close election, yet here was his opponent denying him the courtesy of a televised concession. It was part of the ritual, and yet he’d ducked out at the climax, leaving his press secretary to do the job. He, Jack Kennedy, would never have behaved in such an unsportsmanlike manner. Once he’d known he’d lost the vice-presidential race in 1956, he’d raced to the podium.
As he greeted and thanked his top political aides O’Donnell and O’Brien, he now struck them both as a different man. The battle had been hard fought and won.
When the Secret Service detail arrived at Hyannis Port at 5:45 a.m., the agents knew the names, faces, and roles of each of Kennedy’s people. Seeing Ken O’Donnell at the Kennedy compound that Wednesday afternoon, the chief of the Secret Service unit approached him as he got out of his car. “Mr. O’Donnell, the president has informed the Secret Service that we will now be reporting to you and that you are now our boss, in charge of the Secret Service for the length of the president’s term of office. What would you like us to do right now?” It was the first indication that Kennedy intended him to come to Washington.
President-elect Kennedy’s plans did not include appointing a chief of staff. He, Jack Kennedy, was going to be at the center. Everyone else, including O’Donnell, now a special assistant, and Sorensen, special counsel, would be arrayed around him, each spoke of the wheel competing for his attention. Jack would design a White House operation to match his compartmentalized personality. No one would control him. He would, in that fashion he loved, have things under control.
Still, before he could relax in his triumph and enjoy his cresting euphoria, Kennedy needed to secure the victory against any doubters. The problem was that the historically close tally had left questions about certain state results. Those in dispute were in Illinois—especially Cook County, where Chicago is located—and in Lyndon Johnson’s Texas. It remained unclear in the first days after the election whether Richard Nixon intended to demand recounts or otherwise challenge the results. In order for John Kennedy