Jack Kennedy - Chris Matthews [137]
It fell to Joseph P. Kennedy, a master at the deal and knowing whom to call, to figure out the way. A longtime friend of Herbert Hoover, he was able to pick up the phone and quickly reach the eighty-six-year-old former president. The message he delivered to Hoover was a straightforward one: it was in the country’s interest for the newly elected president and the defeated Nixon to get together. Hoover listened and understood. He’d once lost a presidential election himself, and survived. Plus, over the years Nixon had come to regard him as a political father figure. For both these reasons, Nixon would listen to him and respect his counsel.
The Saturday after the election, the excitement and fatigue of the campaign had faded from the fallen candidate. Defeat, both dull and cruel, had taken hold. The loyal Herb Klein could see it plainly. “Nixon was, in my opinion, more unresponsive than at any time I had known him. He was completely depressed and had finally realized, four days later, that he’d lost the election.”
Nixon and his retreating corps of advisors were assembled that night in Key Biscayne, Florida. It was there he took the call from Hoover and heard the big-picture case for getting together with Kennedy. “I think we are in enough trouble in the world today that some indications of national unity are not only desirable but essential.”
But, as always in such moments, there were dimensions that existed beyond the easy explanations. After talking to Hoover, Nixon’s glum mood suddenly lifted. “It was the difference between night and day,” Klein said. While Nixon was on another phone calling President Eisenhower for guidance, Klein took a call from Kennedy, who hadn’t wanted to wait for Nixon to ring him. The upshot was the two men agreed to meet the following Monday in Key Biscayne.
The meeting accomplished just what the Kennedys intended: providing a photo op to showcase the image of loser meeting winner. “Ladies and gentlemen,” Jack Kennedy told the press, “I just wanted to say that the vice president and I had a very cordial meeting. I was delighted to have a chance to see him again. We came to the Congress the same day fourteen years ago, and both served on the Labor Committee of the House of Representatives. So I was anxious to come here today and resume our relationship, which had been somewhat interrupted by the campaign.” Had the two discussed the campaign during their hour-long meeting? “I asked him how he took Ohio, but he did not tell me,” Kennedy joked. “He is saving it for 1964.”
The vote count would turn out to be incredibly tight—Kennedy: 34,226,731; Nixon: 34,108,157. But now the results had been validated by the face-to-face meeting on Nixon’s own turf.
Jack Kennedy’s ultimate trophy had been won by virtue of the truth he’d grasped about his country, one that Richard Nixon had failed to see. “He had done it by driving home the simple message of unease,” Time reported, addressing “the things left undone in the world, where a slip could be disastrous.” The historian Arthur Schlesinger enlarged on the same point in his diary. “He wisely decided to concentrate on a single theme and to hammer that theme home until everyone in America understood it—understood his sense of the decline of our national power and influence and his determination to arrest and reverse this course. He did this with such brilliant success that, even in a time of prosperity and apparent peace, and even as a Catholic, he was able to command a majority of the votes.”
Victory confirmed, Jack could focus anew on those ideals of peace and heroic leadership that had inspired him since youth. The new president had a favorite quote from Lincoln that he liked to carry with him on a scrap of paper. He’d used it in speeches, but now it spoke to him personally. “I know there is a God, and I know He hates injustice.