The Kennedy Men_ 1901-1963 - Laurence Leamer [253]
who could not keep up fall back, like Ted Reardon, the candidate’s longtime aide and friend.
For all his ambition and brutally realistic assessment of his associates, Jack found it almost impossible to fire anyone. Francis X. “Frank” Morrissey would have been a superb candidate. He ran the Boston office with a slap-on-the-back, what-can-I-do-for-you congeniality. He seemed like a modestly romantic Irish-American character, until one realized that blarney is just another word for lies. He was a spy for Jack’s father and considered by one insider little more than “a professional tattletale.”
Jack had received two devastating letters about Morrissey. One accused Morrissey of referring constituent problems “to a law firm, and in other cases shakes them down.” A second anonymous letter stated that Morrissey and his associate “have been running in and out with women, and intoxicated, and having the life of a Riley … it is in my opinion that they both are a couple of pimps.”
The allegations in the letters may not have been true, but Jack considered the matter important enough to keep them among his confidential office papers.
Jack’s newest aide, Myer “Mike” Feldman, was a tall, lean attorney with a self-effacing manner that only partially hid his high ambition. Feldman had grown up in an orphanage in Philadelphia. He had graduated at the top of his class at the University of Pennsylvania Law School and had that quickness of mind and tongue that Jack liked. If Feldman had a weakness, it was that he fit too comfortably into his defined role as Sorensen’s subordinate, a quality that was probably one of the reasons Sorensen recommended him in the first place.
Feldman sent out a press release under Jack’s name saying that he was calling for a higher minimum wage. Jack’s two aides were used to issuing all manner of words in Jack’s name, from speeches to magazine articles, that sometimes he had not even read. That was how closely Sorensen had learned to mimic Jack’s idea and style. This press release was like scores of others, but when Joe saw it, he became livid. He was working with the business community raising money and seeking their support. He was conservative himself and fed up with such liberal kowtowing to the working class as guaranteeing them a basic, ever-rising minimum hourly wage when it was sheer gumption that pulled a man out of poverty. He considered the press release a debacle, tying Jack to labor and its limited constituency. He railed against the release and called for the firing of Feldman, the architect of the disaster. Joe probably felt that he had a special say in this matter. Out of his own pocket, Joe was paying Feldman $15,000 a year, doubling his government salary.
Joe marched Feldman in to see Jack and told his son that his new aide had betrayed him. Then Feldman, in his studious, low-key manner, told his side of the story, asserting that what he had done was right and good. “I think it’s the right position,” Feldman said as Jack listened intently. “We need the labor vote, and this is how we get them excited. Without them, we’re not going to win big the way we have to win.”
After hearing his aide out, Jack told his father that Feldman would not be leaving the staff. It was a rare instance when Jack refused to go along with his father’s advice. Even after this experience, Feldman’s assessment of Joe was generous. “The father had a lot of clout,” he said. “The father was active in the campaign. Only behind the scenes, he wasn’t out in front, even though he was enlisting the aid of all the businessmen. But everybody knew that he was there; everybody knew this was his function. And he performed it very well. He raised a lot of money. And he deserves a lot of credit.”
While the others worked fervently in Massachusetts, Jack flew across the country giving speeches for other Democrats. He was running for the