The Kennedy Men_ 1901-1963 - Laurence Leamer [436]
This debate was the first great moment of Teddy’s public career, and as much as he was provoked, he did not respond. He had learned well from Honey Fitz, who saw politics as a theatrical enterprise in which each day the sets were struck, the politicians wiped off their greasepaint, and the next day they strutted onto a new stage speaking new lines. On this stage Teddy showed a quality both generous and calculating, an immensely valuable attribute that he would employ for the rest of his years in public life.
McCormack seemed not to understand that this evening he was facing a shrewd Gandhi of an enemy who would not strike back no matter how hard the blows. McCormack flailed away even harder. Before the debate he had talked to Trohan, and the Chicago Tribune reporter told him of the sexual swath that Teddy had cut across South America. McCormack ridiculed Teddy as a diplomatic “Mr. McGoo,” stumbling around the world’s trouble spots with his pants half down, leaving only disaster in his wake.
“In Israel he almost caused—he caused an international incident by straggling across the border,” McCormack said, mocking his opponent. “In East Germany, he caused embarrassment by giving recognition to the East German government. In London, he caused a taxi strike. In Panama, the ambassador said to one of the reporters, or reportedly to him, ‘It will take me six months to undo what you have done in six hours.’ “
Teddy’s advisers feared that his credibility had been shredded in the merciless attacks, though they were not so bold as to tell the candidate directly. After the debate Teddy and his closest aides drove over to his house on Charles River Square. Teddy called the president and talked to him while the others sat listening. Then the phone was handed to Gwirtzman to give his professional assessment of how Teddy had done. Gwirtzman had never briefed the president before, and he employed every iota of his lawyerly judiciousness. “Now, Mr. President, if they listened to the points McCormack was making, I think we might have been hurt some. But, of course, if they were sitting there …”
“Stop!” Kennedy interjected. “He’s the candidate. He’s the one who has to go out tomorrow and campaign. You tell him he did fantastic.” It was precisely how the president’s father had bolstered him during his own campaigns.
As the group sat around discussing the nuances of the debate, they turned on the radio to a talk show. “Now that McCormack,” an indignant woman said in an Irish accent, “what he did to that nice young man….” Teddy and the others stopped talking and listened to caller after caller berate McCormack for his nasty attack.
McCormack had gone too far, for in insulting Teddy he had insulted the electorate as well. These callers bristled at the idea of McCormack daring to suggest that Teddy was a man of such pathetic ineptitude that he should never dare stand for high office. They felt sympathy toward the handsome Kennedy scion who did not merit such rebuke. Teddy won the primary in a landslide of more than two to one. Then, in the general election, he defeated his Republican opponent, George Cabot Lodge, also in a near landslide.
Teddy had won, but his victory had not arrived duty-free. Even Joe McCarthy, as close to an official biographer as the family had, wrote in Look that “his candidacy has already done irreparable damage to the president’s prestige…. His presence in the Senate could be an embarrassment to the president.” James Reston of the New York Times, a temperate voice of the Washington establishment, said that the candidacy was “widely regarded here as an affront and a presumption,” a perception that Teddy would not easily or quickly overcome.
The Senate that Teddy entered was