Jack Kennedy - Chris Matthews [48]
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Jack, Ethel, and Bobby, November 1952
CHAPTER SIX
BOBBY
All this business about Jack and Bobby being blood brothers has been exaggerated. They didn’t really become close until 1952, and it was politics that brought them together.
—Eunice Kennedy Shriver
By 1951, Jack Kennedy’s ambition was clear. He wanted very much to reach the Senate. Three times voted in, he’d proved himself an independent Democrat, an ardent anti-Communist, and he had been an efficient, if sometimes detached, steward of constituent services. Based upon his performance and popularity in such a heavily Democratic district, the House seat could have been his for life.
His chance at the Senate would arrive the following year when Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr., a Republican, came up for reelection. The only problem was that Governor Paul Dever, having already served two terms himself, was also considering a job change. If Dever chose to take on Lodge and run for senator, Jack’s only option would be to declare for the State House. Whichever happened, he’d definitely decided he wasn’t going to stay put. Thus, in January 1951, he gave Tip O’Neill a heads-up.
“I’ve decided not to run for a fourth term in the House,” he told him. “I don’t yet know whether I’ll run for the Senate or governor, but you can be sure of one thing: my seat will be open. I won’t be making any announcements for at least another year, so don’t tell a soul. But in case you have any interest in running, I wanted to give you a head start.”
Getting ahead in politics generally requires solving a pair of equations, the first being the availability of an office that matches the politician’s ambitions. The other is finding the right person to run the campaign. While waiting for Paul Dever to make his decision, Jack got a lead on meeting the second challenge.
Here’s how it happened: In September, Kennedy set off on a seven-week fact-finding trip to the Far East. America was at war in Korea, Asia presented the premier foreign-policy front, and the issues presented by foreign policy continued to be his primary interest. The trip would have the added merit of establishing in voters’ minds his firsthand experience. However, as the trip was being planned, a family issue arose, casting a slight shadow over it. The problem was pressure from his father to take along his younger brother Bobby. Jack’s reaction was that his sibling, eight years his junior, would be nothing but a hindrance, a “pain in the ass.”
While Jack had been a warm, loving brother to both Joe Jr. and Kathleen, still missing them terribly, he had yet to form close ties with the younger members of the family. At the time, Bobby struck him as a very different sort from himself, a far more churchy guy, a straight arrow who spent most of his time trying to impress their father with his dutifulness. But rather than Bobby’s presence being an annoyance, the opposite turned out to be true. Spending their first ever quality time together, they managed to surprise each other.
As Jack traveled with his brother all the way from Israel to Japan—from the Mediterranean to the South China Sea, stopping in India and Indochina—what they found deepened his own longstanding fascination with foreign policy. But the circumstances they encountered also opened the eyes of both men to the sparks of postwar nationalism beginning to catch fire in each country they visited. While Jack admired the nobility of General Jean de Lattre de Tassigny, the French military commander he met in Hanoi, for instance, he sensed the war he was fighting was “foredoomed.”
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