The Kennedy Men_ 1901-1963 - Laurence Leamer [300]
Bobby decided, however, that King would have to be released. That evening from a phone booth in New York, Bobby called Judge Mitchell in Georgia because, as he told his aide John Seigenthaler, the judge was “screwing up my brother’s campaign and making the country look ridiculous before the world.” It was an intrusion into the judicial process that many lawyers would think violated professional ethics. Judge Mitchell recalled Bobby saying that if King stayed in prison, “we would lose the state of Massachusetts.”
Even after King was released from prison, he was still unwilling formally to endorse Jack, but his influential father was not so hesitant, saying that “if Kennedy has the courage to wipe the tears from Coretta’s eyes, he will vote for him whatever his religion.” Kennedy knew how important that statement would be among black voters, though he was not aware of the irony. “Did you see what Martin’s father said?” he asked Wofford. “He was going to vote against me because I was a Catholic, but since I called his daughter-in-law, he will vote for me. That was a hell of a bigoted statement, wasn’t it? Imagine Martin Luther King having a bigot for a father. Well, we all have fathers don’t we?”
While the Kennedy campaign did everything to downplay the role that Jack and Bobby played in King’s release, Wofford and Shriver went ahead and prepared two million copies of a small blue pamphlet to be handed out in black churches on Sunday, two days before the election. As extraordinary as it may seem, Wofford passionately asserts that neither he nor Shriver cleared this effort with Bobby or Jack. The pamphlet talked of Jack’s and Bobby’s calls and quoted King’s statement that he was “deeply indebted to Senator Kennedy, who served as a great force in making my release possible.”
Teddy had been given the West as his territory, and he roamed freely, spreading as much mirth as politics. On a Texas campaign trip, he and his college buddy Claude Hooton Jr. decided to play an inspired prank on Bobby, who was also in the state. They put together a collection of women’s undergarments worthy of Frederick’s of Hollywood, doused the frilly underwear in perfume, and hid them in Bobby’s suitcase, along with an equally perfumed love letter.
Bobby had the most trusting of wives, for when he arrived home and Ethel unpacked his bag, there were no screams heard from Hickory Hill. Bobby vowed, however, that given his chance he would get revenge on his brother and his friend.
On another campaign trip to Hawaii, Teddy attempted a measure of circumspection by having his companion, a foreign beauty queen, sitting back in tourist while he flew first-class. But he was so momentarily enamored of the stunning European woman that he kept roaming back among the plebes, signaling his attentions to all but the sleeping. Later in Honolulu at a dinner party with Sinatra, he walked into Don the Beachcomber with the woman on his arm, a gesture that infuriated the singer, who worried that Teddy’s public indiscretions would hurt his brother’s campaign. That did not happen, but if the other campaign managers had done as poor a job as Teddy, Jack’s chances for the presidency would have been minimal.
All during the fall campaign, Jack had worried about his health becoming an issue. He sought to dispel the rumors by running the most vigorous, demanding campaign imaginable. Jack’s own running mate had tried to kill off his candidacy by leaking the story of his Addison’s disease. His enemies said that he was a deceitful near-invalid whose health alone should have disqualified him from high office. His medical records were inches thick, but he embarked that last week on a seventeen-state