Jack Kennedy - Chris Matthews [89]
In the short run, of course, all he counted was the loss itself. Just an hour ago, his vote total was rising, seeming to clinch the deal. Now he was absorbing the defeat. As Jackie and his aides gathered around him in their hotel suite, he refused to be cheered by those who said the close defeat was the best possible outcome, that he’d made a name for himself without having to endure the thrashing in November everyone expected for the Stevenson ticket.
“He hated to lose anything, and glared at us when we tried to console him by telling him he was the luckiest man in the world,” says Ken O’Donnell. The defeat brought Kennedy to a sober reckoning. He now believed that whatever lip service they paid to tolerance, the main party leaders, such as Rayburn, would simply not let him—young, independent, and Catholic—become their nominee. The 1956 experience also marked Kennedy’s metamorphosis from dilettante to professional. “I’ve learned that you don’t get far in politics until you become a total politician,” he told his crew. “That means you’ve got to deal with the party leaders as well as with the voters.”
Until that week in Chicago, the Kennedy people had been parochial in their experience and their outlook. But what had just happened to Jack—this incredible almost getting the vice-presidential nomination—was no real guide to what they’d have to do now. He, Jack Kennedy, needed to get out in the country, among the future delegates on their home ground, doing what Kefauver had done, but better.
“It was too damned close not to be disappointed,” Kennedy would say years later. “Kefauver deserved it. I always thought that, with his victories in the primaries. Because I had done much better than I thought I would, I was not desolate. I was awfully tired. We had worked awfully hard, and we had come damn close.”
Jackie Kennedy would recall how hard her husband had driven himself in his chase for votes: “Five days in Chicago, never went to bed.”
What mattered was that John F. Kennedy now owned an edge on which he’d had no claim before. Change was stirring out in that vast territory beyond Capitol Hill. Those who’d watched on television had seen a dazzling sight. In a sea of gray faces, the camera had lingered on the handsome countenance of Jack Kennedy. It had spotted, too, his radiant spouse: anyone with Jacqueline Kennedy by his side could hardly be counted among life’s losers. Moreover, by making himself so visible, even in defeat, Jack Kennedy had gained the advantage that would carry him to victory four years later—those millions of Catholics who’d seen him felt pride, then were disappointed, and now were on his side, ready for the next chance.
Yet Jack Kennedy was not, we now know, the perfect vessel for the hopes of America’s Roman Catholics. Though he and his gorgeous wife seemed in public a stunning portrait of the adoring, supportive couple, the reality behind the picture was far from perfection. As planned, once the convention ended, Jack left Chicago for a sailing trip in the Mediterranean with Torby, Smathers, and his brother Teddy tagging along. Just as he’d hung out with a buddy during his honeymoon, he was defecting again at another less than ideal moment. Left behind was his wife, eight months pregnant with their first child.
During his absence, Jackie found herself faced with dangerous complications of the pregnancy, necessitating a Caesarean. But it was too late. On August 23, less than a week after the convention ended, Jackie delivered a stillborn daughter she had wanted to name Arabella. She suffered this tragedy without the presence of her vacationing husband. He wasn’t even close by.
Jack had hurt his wife deeply. While he had always refused to accept his father’s politics, or his selfish view of the world, when it came to his marriage he was Joe Kennedy’s true son. Jackie was able to see the effect her husband had