Jack Kennedy - Chris Matthews [51]
Larry O’Brien was impressed. The son of Irish immigrants whose dad was a local Democratic leader, he saw Jack Kennedy as a new kind of Irish politician, virtually the antithesis of the typical Democratic pol from Boston. “Republicans were respectable. Republicans didn’t get thrown in jail like Jim Curley,” O’Brien would write, describing the divide between the two parties as it had long been. The thing was, Jack Kennedy was “respectable” in a whole new style. And what O’Brien, a seasoned strategist, saw was how Jack Kennedy could win votes, especially in the Boston suburbs, that the Democrats had been losing because of the dishonesty of scoundrels like Curley.
“But Jack Kennedy was different. If the Yankee politicians had their snob appeal, so did the Kennedys. Those suburban sons and daughters of immigrants might not say ‘I’m a Democrat,’ but I hoped they could be brought to say, ‘I’m for Jack Kennedy.’ “
To O’Brien, his new ally, Jack made the extent of his ambition clear. Pointing at the Massachusetts State House from the window of his Bowdoin Street apartment, he put it this way: “Larry, I don’t look forward to sitting over there in the governor’s office and dealing out sewer contracts.”
In aiming high and refusing to be satisfied with even the governor’s job—when what he wanted was to be a senator—Jack was showing how much his ambitions paralleled his father’s. Joe Kennedy refused to settle for what his fellow Boston Irish regarded as good enough achievement, an upper-middle-class level of success. Joe wanted more—and allowed nothing to stand in his way. In his own words: “For the Kennedys, it’s either the castle or the outhouse.”
Besides O’Brien, the other key recruit joined the team as a result of Bobby Kennedy’s intervention. In February 1952, Bobby got in touch with his college roommate Ken O’Donnell, suggesting he join the campaign effort. “He called me and said Jack was going to run, had not decided for what, but he was going to run.”
Ken O’Donnell was a hybrid—a middle-class Irish guy who’d gone to Harvard, but whose dad had been the legendary football coach at Holy Cross. Raised in Worcester, he was both town and gown. In World War II, he’d served in the Army Air Corps based in Britain and flown more than thirty missions over Germany as a bombardier, often in the lead plane. During the Battle of the Bulge he was forced to crash-land between German and Allied lines. But his most harrowing exploit came when he’d had to climb down and kick loose a bomb stuck in the doors. He’d ended up hanging on to the plane for dear life—certainly a strong memory to carry into one’s postwar career, and also a character-building one. His football career at Harvard only added to his appeal. On all counts, Ken O’Donnell was the kind of guy Jack Kennedy could admire and, eventually, trust.
At their first meeting to discuss the job, just five days after the call had come from Bobby, Jack was put off by O’Donnell’s questioning of him. The problem was that Ken had asked him which office he actually wanted to run for, a reasonable enough question for a prospective campaign worker. Jack didn’t like it. One reason was that he didn’t know the answer. But Ken O’Donnell was just the kind of guy Jack needed to win, no matter his place on the ballot.
At home in Harvard Yard and on Soldiers Field, O’Donnell was equally at ease with those “lace-curtain” Irish who’d gained wealth and social self-esteem. Yet he knew, too, the working class with all its awe of pedigreed Yankees like Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr., and its entrenched resentment of the lace-curtain types. He knew the be-grudgers, those Irish who made a specialty of hating those who either had a leg up on them or acted as if they did. Winning Ken O’Donnell’s steadfast loyalty, which he soon did, was one of