The Kennedy Men_ 1901-1963 - Laurence Leamer [379]
While his brothers were running the country, Teddy returned to Boston to begin work as an assistant district attorney and give speeches all over the state, setting up his race. Teddy would forever after assert that he was the one who decided that he wanted to enter politics and run for the Senate. “Nobody forced me to run,” he told his biographer Burton Hersh. “I wanted to.” It was essential to his own sense of manhood that he think of the decision as his own.
Teddy had one small problem. This was a lack of credentials other than his name. This difficulty would only be exacerbated if the first important magazine profile of Teddy, a Redbook article, was published as it had been written. William Peters, the author of the article, had submitted his draft to Teddy for comments and vetting, and the putative candidate could not decide how strongly to attack the proposed piece.
Teddy wrote Bobby, enclosing a copy of the draft and telling his brother that the article portrayed him as a “wealthy personable lightweight.” Teddy was indeed wealthy and personable, and many in Massachusetts thought that he was such a lightweight that if he were not tethered down he might float away. Teddy, in fact, not only was aware of his own failings but harbored an un-Kennedy-like insecurity that he displayed at times like a badge of honor.
Most politicians enjoy a moment or two of self-deprecating humor to establish themselves as modest fellows before they start trumpeting their supposed accomplishments in language that in any other field would be considered bragging. At a Temple Israel breakfast, Teddy jumped up to speak when he thought he heard the speaker say “the brother of the president.” He sat down sooner than he intended, to laughter and applause, when he realized it was the “president of the brotherhood” who had been introduced. Teddy not only laughed that morning but added the story to his repertoire of tales. He was so likable on the public platform that if likability were the king of attributes he would have been carried to Washington on the shoulders of the adoring masses.
Teddy would never be particularly adept at the political skill of giving journalists the illusion of candor while subtly feeding them precisely the information he wanted them to have. In this instance, he had been honest with Peters, and as one of his advisers told him, “the article should be fair warning to us to handle similar interviews differently in the future.” What was remarkable was how sensitive Teddy was to anything that tasted even mildly sour. Peters’s article was a box of valentine chocolates, however, compared to the rotten fruit that would one day be heaved his way. As he got into politics, he picked up a shield of suspiciousness that would become second nature, and in difficult situations a studied inarticulateness.
Teddy was not secure in his own judgments, and he would begin his career in politics as he would one day probably end it, listening too much and too readily to those around him. In this instance, he was listening to two advisers who appeared to have more expertise about journalism than he did. One was his old college friend and Harvard teammate, John Culver. The Iowan had played fullback, but off the field he was not one for plowing through the line but for finessing his way around end. He was all for shrugging it off, asking for only a couple of changes. Culver realized, as Teddy wrote Bobby, that there was “little reason for a 30-year-old Senate aspirant legitimately laying claim to the honeymoon glow that his brother as president currently enjoys.”
Hal Clancy,