The Kennedy Men_ 1901-1963 - Laurence Leamer [198]
Dever had lost not only the election and possibly his health but the political organization that was much of his life’s work. During the campaign, Anthony Gallucio and others had traversed the state, bringing a myriad of new people into politics, the natural constituents for a Kennedy Democratic machine, similar to the Dever Democratic machine. Gallucio pleaded with Jack to keep the organization intact that they had so laboriously put together to further the Democratic Party. Jack replied curtly: “I’m going to run my own boat.” Jack did not see the Democratic Party as a sea that raised all boats or none. To him, politics was more like a series of locks that his ship would work its way through while other boats waited far behind. It was of little concern to him whether or not the other boats continued up the canal.
For Bobby, the election was a victory in many ways. His sister Jean observed that in those months, he had proved himself to his father “very quickly and definitely.” He was only twenty-six years old, but he had no problem leading people twice his age, often bossing them with dismissive arrogance. He moved people around as if they were furniture, shoving them into this space or that. For the first time in his life he was a man of authority, and he used it willfully. He was his brother’s man. That was Bobby’s proud identity, a moniker he would carry the rest of Jack’s life.
Bobby went down to the Cape a few weeks after the election for a weekend of football and sailing and good times with old friends. It was time to savor the victory, like football players reliving each play of a close victory. Joe would have none of that. Life always lay ahead. “What are you going to do now?” Bobby’s father asked. “Are you going to sit on your tail end and do nothing now for the rest of your life? You’d better go out and get a job.”
In December, Bobby told a reporter from the Cape Cod Times that he was “aiming for the post of Massachusetts attorney general” in a few years, but that he would first work in Washington to gain some experience. He could have gained that expertise working for any of a number of Democratic senators or congressmen. Instead, his father decided that he would call upon his Republican friend, Senator Joe McCarthy, to place Bobby in what boded to be the most publicized, most controversial staff position in the Eighty-third Congress: chief counsel to the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations chaired by the Wisconsin senator.
Joe showed up in his limousine at McCarthy’s townhouse on Capitol Hill one winter evening. McCarthy was out in back grilling steaks, but he hurried inside, wearing his apron and holding a cooking fork. “How do you like your steak, Mr. Ambassador?” asked George Mason, one of the senator’s friends. “I have no time,” Joe said peremptorily and turned toward McCarthy. “Bobby will give me no peace,” Joe said. “He wants a job. He wants to come to Washington. You’ve got to give him a job. You’ve got to do something about Bobby.”
Joe asked for few favors, and when he did, they were usually wrapped in velvet, but there was an urgent, imploring quality to this request. Joe was McCarthy’s supporter, fellow Catholic, and friend. Moreover, McCarthy was enough of a politician to realize when he could not say no. “I’ll talk to [Senator John] McClellan [the ranking Democrat] in the morning, and see what we can arrange.” With that, Joe turned and walked out the door, never having even taken off his homburg.
McCarthy told Joe that he had already hired twenty-five-year-old Roy Cohn, another ambitious young lawyer, as chief counsel. Instead, the senator offered Bobby a slot as assistant counsel.
Jack found McCarthy’s rhetoric vulgar and overweening but he was not about to attack him for such faults. Nevertheless, he was upset that Bobby was going to work for McCarthy, even if he thought it was for “political, not ideological,” reasons.
Bobby had scarcely arrived in his new position before he