The Kennedy Men_ 1901-1963 - Laurence Leamer [261]
well; he was decidedly a Kennedy pollster, for he always seemed to have results more favorable to Jack than his colleagues. The other person present was Robert Wallace, Jack’s legislative aide.
Although the campaign was not yet organized, Sorensen noted later that the meeting had a tone of “quiet confidence.” As he saw it, these men had “a job to be done,” and they were the people to do it. That confidence colored the whole gathering and emanated from the candidate himself.
Jack’s potential competitors for the Democratic presidential nomination all had more distinguished legislative or political careers than he did, but he had taken each man’s measure and found that the nearer he got to them the taller he stood. As Jack saw it, the distinguished-looking Senator Stuart Symington of Missouri had the gravity of a helium balloon. Senator Lyndon Johnson was made of weightier stuff, but he was a southerner, and that was an albatross that even the adroit Lyndon could not wrest from around his neck. Senator Hubert Humphrey was simply too liberal; his political medicine kit was full of purgatives and medicines too strong for most Americans. As for Adlai Stevenson, twice his party’s nominee, the man was a proven loser.
To win, Jack knew that he could not step gingerly through the primaries but would have to run boldly forward among the people, many of whom now barely knew his name. Jack was a brilliant geographer of America’s political landscape. He grasped the nuances of political America the way his grandfather Honey Fitz had understood the world of Boston’s North End. Non-Catholic staff members would have to be the ones to go out to certain states. Bobby, for his part, would do a series of speeches in the South, where he was being lauded for his attack on corrupt unions. Jack’s staff had already amassed a file of fifty thousand five-by-seven cards listing the names of crucial people in all fifty states. Jack had met most of these people. The cards listed the name by which he called them, where he had met them, and why they were important. In the age before widespread use of computers, this card collection was a treasure unique to Jack’s candidacy.
Jack went on ticking off each state, naming its Democratic leaders and setting out a unique approach to take there. He was conceding nothing, not even Texas to its native son, Lyndon Johnson. As Jack talked on, his father interjected, “I want you to read Judge Landis’s column.” Joe’s comment was an intrusion that no one else at the meeting would have made. Jack took the paper, tucked it under his arm, and went on with his state-by-state litany. Landis, his father’s friend, had helped Jack on many occasions with ideas and articles, but there was plenty of time to read the material. “Give that back to me!” Joe exclaimed. “You’ll just lose it!”
Joe was not the presence at this meeting that he had been during earlier campaigns, and it rankled him that Jack was not listening closely enough to his counsel. Joe was, if anything, even more determined that he would have a major role in Jack’s victory. Later, in the study, Joe affirmed the one role that was truly his. “I’m going to tell you, we’re going to win this thing,” he said authoritatively. “And I don’t care if it takes every dime we’ve got. We’re going to win this thing!”
Bobby turned to his father. “Now wait a minute, Dad,” Bobby laughed. “There are others in the family.”
The one new face in the Monday and Friday strategy meetings in Jack’s Senate offices was Joe Miller, a political operative from the Northwest. Miller had worked on a string of Senate Democratic victories from Oregon to Wisconsin. He had a cocky, joshing air that did not always sit well with Bobby. These meetings had the levity of a scene in the counting room at a Las Vegas casino. Bobby was obsessed with the campaign, and those like Joe Miller who kidded around were squandering time and attention and deserved to be shunted aside.
Jack, however,