Jack Kennedy - Chris Matthews [65]
O’Brien had the situation nailed. He’d worked hard to achieve a balance of mutual respect in his relationship with Jack, and he intended not to let it get out of balance. Even as his loyalty grew, so did his awareness of the senator-elect’s nature. The man so steadfast in his friendships, carrying along pals from prep school, college, the navy, and his social world, looked upon staff as employees. He had his needs; they had their tasks. Each was obliged to understand his place as well as his task, to honor the bounds of his role and its tenure. The Kennedys believed that anyone could be replaced. So it was, even with a onetime boon companion like Billy Sutton.
Cut loose from the role he’d so cherished and filled so well, Billy still, years later, loved revisiting spots where once he’d hung out with Jack: the diner downstairs from 122 Bowdoin, Jack’s apartment, the federal buildings where Jack’s offices had been, and political hangouts such as the Parker House hotel. He was like a toy soldier waiting for its young owner to come back.
There’s a measure of defense to Kennedy’s cutthroat approach to personnel. In Washington, a city packed with people who kiss up and kick down, Jack never kissed up. Although it may not perfectly justify the harshness of his discarding people like Dalton and Davis and Sutton, each of whom had been powerfully loyal to him for a decent number of years, it does put it in the context of the place and its morality. Isn’t the definition of a just man one who treats all the same? Jack Kennedy was equally his own man in both directions, caring no more for the feelings of those of higher authority than he was of those who served—or ceased to serve—at his pleasure.
His cheapness, though imposed by his father, came at some cost. George Smathers caught sight of the chaos left in Mary Davis’s wake: “I’d go down to his office and it would always seem as in so much pandemonium, such a disarray . . . Everyone in his back office was very friendly, but it didn’t seem to me as though there was any organization to it, and I used to tell him so.” Jack couldn’t believe he was hearing this from a colleague whose own operation was hardly a model of professionalism.
Smathers, to his credit, actually saw past the seeming daily disorder to what lay behind. “His mind was on bigger things. I never did feel that he was a well-organized man either in his personal life or in just the mundane matters of running an office. If the work got done, that was all that really concerned him.”
His victory over Henry Cabot Lodge had placed him on a career pedestal sufficient for most men. Yet in Jack’s own mind he was merely at the foot of the mountain he now contemplated climbing. To reach the top he would need to further share his vision and also himself, to let a lot more people know who Jack Kennedy was. Even more important, he’d have to successfully signal the country he was ready to lead it.
It was simply a matter of random placement, but Jack Kennedy’s new Capitol Hill office was directly across the hall from that of the new vice president. Richard Nixon was in Room 362, Kennedy in 361. Already, both their futures, at least on the surface, seemed mapped out.
The inhabitant of 362, many figured already, was tagged to be his party’s nominee for president once the incoming Ike finished his two terms. Opposite him, the senator assigned to 361 was marked to spend—and end—his political career as a New England Democratic moderate, a rich man’s son with a celebrated war record who’d shown himself to be a tough Cold Warrior. Being a Roman Catholic, the limitations to Senator Kennedy’s political future were clear to any observer. Hadn’t the country been electing Protestants to the White House since the first peal of the Liberty Bell?
Even