Jack Kennedy - Chris Matthews [47]
As General Lucius Clay, commander of the American zone, put it, “the Russians, by their actions, have given us the political soul of Germany on a platter.” The spirit of the West Berliners stayed with Jack for years to come.
Back home, the pursuit of the Communist threat continued to stir emotions. Dick Nixon had just led the successful exposure of Alger Hiss, America’s top diplomat at the U.N. Conference in San Francisco. For denying that he had ever been a Communist, the well-connected Hiss now stood indicted for perjury. Jack, who saw Hiss as a “traitor,” shared Nixon’s indignation at the way Hiss had managed to install himself in critical government positions through the patronage of New Deal figures.
In September 1949 President Truman announced that the Soviets had exploded their first atom bomb, making it clear to the world that the United States no longer held a monopoly on the weapon that had ended World War II. Next came the declaration from China’s Communist rebel leader Mao Tse-tung that he had taken control of the entire Chinese mainland. America’s WWII ally Chiang Kai-shek was trapped on the island of Formosa.
Kennedy was quick with his rebuke. “The responsibility for the failure of our foreign policy in the Far East rests squarely with the White House and the Department of State. So concerned were our diplomats with the imperfection of the democratic system of China after twenty years of war and the tales of corruption in high places that they lost sight of our tremendous stake in non-Communist China.” He accused the Truman administration of “vacillation, uncertainty, and confusion.”
To Kennedy, America’s leaders were repeating the old prewar mistake of failing to confront aggression. Kennedy believed FDR had been as derelict in failing to stop Soviet ambitions in Asia as he had been in Europe. In a Salem, Massachusetts, speech, he described how “a sick Roosevelt with the advice of General Marshall and other chiefs of staff, gave the Kurile Islands as well as control of various strategic Chinese ports, such as Port Arthur and Darien, to the Soviet Union. This is the tragic story of China, whose freedom we once fought to preserve. What our young men have saved, the diplomats and our President have frittered away.”
In January 1950 came another Cold War milestone. Alger Hiss, the accused Soviet spy, was convicted on two counts of lying under oath and sent to federal prison. That same month, desperate for material to use at a Lincoln Day talk to Republican women in Wheeling, West Virginia, Wisconsin’s Senator Joseph McCarthy jumped on the anti-Communist bandwagon. Cribbing from a speech Nixon had just given on the Hiss conviction, McCarthy said there were 205 Communists in the State Department. His specificity hooded the recklessness of the accusation.
That June brought a real Communist menace. North Korea attacked American-backed South Korea. President Truman sent troops as part of a United Nations force. The next month came stunning news at home: Julius Rosenberg was arrested for stealing atomic secrets for the Soviets. Suddenly the country was under assault abroad and at home.
Kennedy strongly allied himself with the anti-Communist activism. While facing no political contest himself in 1950, he played a small role in helping Nixon win a Senate seat: he walked to Nixon’s office and left a thousand-dollar check from his father. When he got the word, Nixon was overwhelmed that his Democratic colleague had crossed the political aisle like that. “Isn’t this something!” he exclaimed to an aide.
Jack wanted what Nixon now had. Since they had come to the House together, he, Nixon, and George Smathers had enjoyed running banter on which of them would graduate first to the Senate. Smathers had gotten the jump early that year, beating a fellow Democrat in a Florida campaign notorious for its Red-baiting. Nixon now used similar tactics to beat the liberal New Dealer Helen Gahagan Douglas. Kennedy had to catch up.
“This rivalry developed