The Kennedy Men_ 1901-1963 - Laurence Leamer [183]
Jack had another medical problem as he traversed the state weekend after weekend for close to two years, traveling with Frank Morrissey, his father’s friend. He had once again begun to suffer from “intermittent slight burning on urination” from “a mild, chronic, non-specific prostatitis.” He slept in the back of the car wrapped in a blanket while the chauffeur sped five or six hundred miles a weekend, getting him up for events where Jack shook half a million hands in the two years of his extended candidacy. Morrissey’s task was not only to estimate handshakes but also to report back to Joe on everything his son did and did not do.
If Jack was going to run for the Senate against Lodge, he needed an imprimatur as an expert on foreign affairs. In January 1951, he set out on a five-week trip to Europe. He kept a daily diary of a journey that took him to England, France, Italy, West Germany, Yugoslavia, and Spain. Jack proceeded much like a diplomatic correspondent, interviewing American and foreign diplomats, world leaders, and American foreign correspondents. He was interested in Europeans in the aggregate, not in the star-crossed lives of individuals. He did not talk to workers, housewives, bureaucrats, businessmen, or students, noting their comments. On only one occasion in the 158-page diary did he write down a physical description of what he was seeing. That one instance suggests that he could indeed look on the world with a journalist’s vivid descriptive eye:
Yugoslavia—Belgrade—Stones cold and damp—no heating—windows bleach clothes of poor quality—the streets full of crowds—partly due to the fact that there are such few stores. The crowds seem young and energetic many soldiers among them. Tito guard with … machine guns over their shoulders—all with red stars in their vests. Though they look strong—they are not healthy—The disease rate particularly tuberculosis is the highest rate of any country in Europe.
Jack had come to Europe to learn, not to preach, and his diary is almost totally devoid of his own opinions. As he journeyed across this continent whose history had so defined him, he saw a world resonating with many of the themes he had observed in London before World War II. The great threat now was not Hitler but Stalin, and the European democracies faced Communist Russia with some of the same lassitude and uncertainty with which they had once faced Nazi Germany.
Jack’s anticommunism was tempered by the terrible realities of war in a nuclear age, as well as his own subtle, ever-growing awareness of the complexities of the modern world. The Italians should have been doing their part, but he learned that “the Italian economy is so precarious—so poor—with the necessity of paying for food 6% of which they must export, that they hate to give up economic recovery for rearmament.” He was told that “many Germans do not want their country to become Korea [and] are sick of war—feel that strength cannot be built up to stop R. [Russia] on the land.” As for the French, he learned that “because of over powering strength of R. [Russia]—many French feel everything is hopeless … lack confidence in themselves—doubt if French who are expected to provide the mass of land troops for the defense of Europe can do so.”
Joe made sure that Jack received major publicity during his trip. Upon his return he testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and gave a talk over the Mutual Broadcasting Network on “Issues in the Defense of the West.” Most politicians fly off on junkets to stamp authority on their firmly held opinions. Jack had gone to learn. Nothing mattered more to him intellectually than these crucial issues.
For the moment Jack threw away the little drum of anticommunism that he and his colleagues had beaten on so loudly that they had drowned out most other sounds. He picked up