Jack Kennedy - Chris Matthews [78]
The antagonism between them was at once tribal and personal. Ever since Larry O’Brien, once a Furcolo staffer, had joined up with Jack in 1950, there’d been bad blood. Six years apart in age, the two legislators were both Harvard grads, both focused on getting ahead politically. Beyond that, they were simply rivals for the same turf: one Italian, the other Irish. As far as Jack was concerned, the Commonwealth wasn’t big enough for both of them.
In the summer of 1954, their simmering feud came to a boil. Furcolo was the Democratic candidate for Senate, the same job Jack already had—if Furcolo won, it would make him the junior senator—and he looked to Jack for his backing. But there was no way Jack wanted Furcolo to become his political equal either in Washington or in Massachusetts. Complicating matters even more, Jack felt affection for the incumbent Furcolo wanted to run against, the Republican Leverett Saltonstall, a Brahmin of the same stripe as the man Jack had vanquished, Henry Cabot Lodge. As the Commonwealth’s pair of senators, Jack and “Salty” had built a good working relationship.
“This was the circumstance for Kennedy’s oft-quoted remark that ‘sometimes party asks too much,’ “ Ted Sorensen recalled. In fact, Jack engaged him in a secret plan to undercut Furcolo’s chances. “When I had been with him barely eighteen months,” the aide recalled, “JFK took me to Boston, where he decided to oppose quietly the Democratic Party’s nominee for the Senate against Leverett Saltonstall, JFK’s Republican Senate colleague, in the 1954 election.” It was another caper, like sneaking into the Massachusetts State House after hours to file his ’46 nominating petitions. It was willful deception. Kennedy needed to make it look like he was being the loyal party man all while his bright young brain truster would be using his skills as a researcher-writer to provide ammo for the enemy.
Lending Sorensen to Saltonstall was only part of the plan. Late that summer, Kennedy met with Ken O’Donnell and Larry O’Brien at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel and instructed them to get on board to assist the Democratic candidate Robert Murphy, who was running for governor. The scheme called for Jack to endorse Murphy for governor and Furcolo for the Senate on the same live TV program. This being the era before videotape, Furcolo would have Jack’s backing but would be unable to keep showing it in TV ads.
Kennedy’s mistake was his failure to keep his dislike for Furcolo as secret as he kept his plotting. When the night of the live appearance arrived, Furcolo got a prebroadcast copy of Kennedy’s intended remarks and blew up.
“Furcolo told him he wouldn’t go on the show unless he received a more forthright and direct endorsement,” O’Donnell recalled. “The senator then gave him that famous line, ‘You’ve got a hell of a nerve, Foster. You’re lucky you’re here.’ The senator next, quite coldly, went on to remind Furcolo of the time he had refused to endorse him. The exchange was quite heated.” The actual telecast, however, went off smoothly enough. As they were leaving, Furcolo even wished Jack well with his coming surgery—“The main thing is, take care of your back”—a gesture of goodwill that Jack saw as entirely insincere.
Then hell broke loose. Even if the papers failed to notice that Senator Kennedy neglected to offer a personal endorsement of Furcolo, one radio station—albeit with a bit of help—got it cold. “I was riding into town that next morning,” said O’Donnell, “and I heard on the radio that Senator Kennedy’s not naming Foster Furcolo had been a direct affront. That he’d done it on purpose and, in fact, was not endorsing Foster Furcolo. The report quoted Frank Morrissey.”
Morrissey was Joe Kennedy’s man, the one he’d assigned to hang around his son’s political operation and report back anything his