The Kennedy Men_ 1901-1963 - Laurence Leamer [45]
Some of the Republicans insisted on anonymity, thinking it best to keep their beneficence quiet until after the election. Joe happily obliged, sending the checks in with his own name proudly displayed. Joe flew out to meet with the press magnate William Randolph Hearst and to attempt to woo him away from his candidate, Speaker of the House John Nance Garner.
At the Democratic convention in Chicago Stadium in June 1932, FDR fell short of the two-thirds majority then necessary for nomination. Although he was the convention’s clear choice, FDR’s supporters knew that if they did not win soon, some delegates might start looking elsewhere for a candidate. At this point Joe made one of the crucial phone calls to Hearst, pushing him to ask his first choice, Garner, to release his delegates. Hearst did so, and on the fourth ballot FDR finally won the nomination.
Afterward Roosevelt left for a leisurely cruise, fishing from a yawl along the coast of New England. Behind sailed a yacht full of advisers, would-be advisers, and putative advisers, meeting the candidate in port each evening for strategy sessions. Proximity is the first law of politics, and Joe made sure that he was there each evening, whispering his wisdom into the candidate’s ear. He had to whisper with special intensity, for many of FDR’s advisers despised Joe. They thought that in any true tribunal he would have been in the first ranks of the greedy speculators and manipulators blamed for helping to bring on the Great Depression.
On one of those days when Joe’s competitors for Roosevelt’s ear were isolated out on the yacht, Joe flew into New York City for a meeting with Roy Howard, the Scripps-Howard publisher and a prominent backer of one of the defeated candidates, Newton Baker of Ohio. Here was an opportunity for Joe to promote FDR’s candidacy with one of the most powerful publishers in America, but if he did so, he chose a curious means.
“He, himself, is quite frank in his lack of confidence in Roosevelt, as evidenced by his statement to me yesterday that he intends to keep constant contact with Roosevelt during the cruise on which the latter embarked yesterday,” Howard wrote Baker afterward. “Kennedy expects to fly to whatever port Roosevelt is in for the night, to be present at the evening conferences, because he knew if he were not present the other men—notably Louis Howe and Jim Farley—would ‘unmake’ Roosevelt’s mind on some of the points which Kennedy had made it up for Roosevelt.”
The Scripps-Howard chain was a rival of the Hearst newspapers, and Howard worried that Hearst might have an unseemly influence on a new Democratic administration. Joe assured the publisher that “Roosevelt was under no obligation whatsoever to Hearst and had not communicated with him personally either by telephone, or letter…. He protested … that Roosevelt is under no obligation to Hearst because Hearst is motivated not by any desire to nominate Roosevelt.”
Despite his passionate avowals, Joe afterward solicited Hearst for a $25,000 campaign contribution. He wrote the press magnate a thank-you note that could scarcely be misunderstood: “You may rest assured, and this I want to say in order to go on record, that whenever your interests in this administration are not served well, my interest has ceased.”
Joe could not seem to understand that what he thought of as candor others took as duplicity. In the minds of important men like Baker and Howard, Joe was a man not to be trusted. To them, he appeared a mercenary of conscience, with his mind and ideas for sale to the highest bidder.
Joe had a bigger game in mind than men like Baker and Howard could even imagine. This election and presidency was only a prologue. As Roosevelt’s cruise continued, Joe stayed onboard the yacht for a while, sharing a cabin with Eddie Dowling, an actor and producer. On Cape Cod, Joe left the boat for good, leaving his bed to Eddie Moore, his lifelong associate. Moore was in an especially expansive mood, in such proximity to the man who would probably be the