The Kennedy Men_ 1901-1963 - Laurence Leamer [228]
The themes in Profiles in Courage resonated with the American psyche, and the book became a major best-seller. Jack used the royalties to buy more advertising, getting a double whammy for his money, a higher spot on the best-seller list, and his name linked time and again with the word “courage.”
This was not enough for Joe, who wanted his son to win the Pulitzer Prize, the most prestigious literary award in America. Anyone else would have considered the game up when the modest inspiring book of portraits was not even nominated for the prize. For Joe, that was not the end but the beginning.
“One of his slogans which Joe often quoted was ‘Things don’t happen, they are made to happen,’” Rose reflected. “As for instance when Jack got the Pulitzer Prize for his book or when he or Bob were chosen as outstanding young man of the year. All of this was a result of their own ability plus careful spadework on their father’s part as to who was on the committee and how to reach such and such a person through such and such a friend. However, Joe was lucky because his sons were good material to work with. They behaved well, they were intelligent, and best of all they always had confidence in their father’s judgment, because it had been vindicated so many times.”
Joe asked his friend Krock to be of service in getting the award for Jack. The New York Times columnist had for years been on the Pulitzer board. He considered himself “sort of the Mark Hanna of the board, a very ruthless politician.” Krock was delighted to see whether he could help make the book of profiles the winner of the biography prize. If Jack’s book did not deserve the prize for its literary quality, it surely might deserve it for the best politicking. After all, in past years the award had not always gone to the most deserving book but to the best job of what Krock called “logrolling.” He called the board members who would be voting, members who for the most part sat there because of Krock’s efforts.
In a world in which honor was more highly valued than power, the board members would have told Krock that they had not nominated the book for good reasons, and that his “logrolling” was not only inappropriate but futile.
That did not happen, though the members may well have been moved by the inspirational tone of the modest book more than by any lobbying.
A book that was not even on the screening committee’s list of nominees received the 1957 Pulitzer Prize for biography. In a world in which truth was valued more than appearance, Jack would have gracefully shared the award with his collaborators. But that did not happen either.
17
The Pursuit of Power
On the first evening of the 1956 Democratic Convention in Chicago, Jack narrated a film on the history of the Democratic Party titled The Pursuit of Happiness. His great audience lay not in the eleven thousand delegates in the sweltering confines of the arena but in the more than one hundred million Americans who watched at least part of the convention on the new medium of television.
“I am Senator John F. Kennedy of Massachusetts,” Jack said as he appeared live introducing the film. Most Americans were seeing and hearing the thirty-nine-year-old politician for the first time. He was cool but conveyed a hint of passion. His Boston accent sounded slightly exotic and aristocratic. He was a youthful politician standing shoulder to shoulder with Jefferson and Roosevelt and the other great men of the Democratic past whose names he evoked. The film ended with a close-up of Roosevelt and Jack’s resonant tones. “For the proud past of the Democratic Party is but a prelude to its future,” he said, as if he were willing to step forward into these giant shoes “to the leadership it offers the nation, to the faith by which we all abide.”
When the applause died down, Governor Frank Clement of Tennessee came to the podium to give the keynote address. The thirty-six-year-old politician had a fleshy, handsome countenance and a reputation as a spellbinding orator. This evening Clement