Jack Kennedy - Chris Matthews [94]
Because he had neither the party liberals nor the congressional leaders behind him, Jack was creating his own national political organization. Charlie Bartlett was amazed at his old friend’s commitment. “I don’t think anybody realizes, really, how much of a job that was. I mean, those weeks that he put in . . . and going into these towns where he really didn’t know many people and there was no great Kennedy organization. He was traveling most of the time alone or with Ted Sorensen. It wasn’t very lavish. But he traveled a long road. This was, of course, part of his strength.”
Kennedy’s feeling that his fate lay with a presidential run strengthened his resolve not to take a veep nomination. “He was urged to accept the vice presidential nomination to avoid a dangerous controversy,” Sorensen recalled, “to which he replied, ‘Oh I see, Catholics to the back of the bus.’ “ Kennedy still felt the sting of whatever anti-Catholic attitudes he’d come across over the years, even if they’d never been directed at him personally.
The four-year marathon taxed Kennedy to his limits. “As hard as it is on the speechwriter, a presidential campaign is even tougher on the candidate,” Sorensen said. “It is impossible for him to remember the names of all the people whose hands he shakes, to remember the time of day, the day of the week, and the town in which he is speaking; to remember his own previously stated positions on issues, much less those of his opponent. All day, the press is outside his door and window, the rooms are full of sweat and smoke, his hand is bruised, scratched, full of calluses. In JFK’s case, one callus burst with blood. Everyone you meet wants something from you, your time, your endorsement, your support for some local project or measure; and then you move on to three more stops in three more states before you fall into bed.”
Kennedy’s physical condition had improved somewhat since the surgeries of 1954 and early ’55, but his suffering continued. The pain in his back, attributed to loss of bone mass, was being alleviated with numbing injections. In September of ’57, an abscess was removed from his back at New York Hospital, where he remained a patient for three weeks. Not long after that, a bout of flu sent him back into a hospital bed.
For everything that ailed him he was taking a daily smorgasbord of prescription medications, hardly the usual diet for a man of forty. Yet they all proved nothing more than stopgaps when it came to putting an end to his ongoing health troubles. The cortisone he took for the Addison’s, however, had the positive side effect of filling out his face, and he didn’t mind that at all. As perilous as his health remained, he looked better than he ever had.
Ted Sorensen could do little to alleviate the strains of the road on Kennedy. “In the late 1950’s when we traveled the country together, I would ask each hotel to provide him with a hard mattress or bed board. When that failed, sometimes we moved his mattress onto the floor of his hotel room.” It was a replay of what had taken place in 1943 as young Lieutenant Kennedy was seen placing a piece of plywood under his mattress when he was training for PT-boat duty. “In retrospect, it is amazing that, in all those years, he never complained about his ailments,” Sorensen recalled. “Occasionally, he winced when his back was stiff or pained as he eased himself into or out of the bathtub.
“On the political circuit I assumed that his practice of eating in the hotel room before a Democratic party luncheon was intended to avoid the bad food and constant interruptions that characterized his time at the head table. But now I realize after reading an analysis of his medical file, that his many stomach, intestinal, and digestive problems required a more selective diet.” Jack, it turns out, was a man typical of his World War II generation. He didn’t complain.
As Sorensen noted, he’d committed himself to a year-upon-year commitment