political situation, was reasonably familiar with conditions here. He was overcoming or just shortly before had his serious illness [Addison’s disease].” And yet, the Minister for External Affairs was struck by Kennedy’s physical appearance, which Cosgrave had assumed would be particularly youthful. “Those who didn’t know [him] were always struck by his boyish appearance. When you were nearer to him he didn’t look quite so young. In fact, his face showed certain signs of the suffering he’d undergone.”30
During their stay at the Shelbourne, Mrs Kennedy called a few journalists to tell them that her Senator husband was in town and that he would be available for interviews if they were so inclined. It was a Sunday morning when the chief reporter of The Irish Independent, Michael Rooney, picked up his phone on the way out to a game of golf. At the other end of the line was Jacqueline Kennedy. She wanted to know if Mr Rooney would care to come to the Shelbourne Hotel to meet her husband, the Junior Senator for Massachusetts. Rooney didn’t care to go, he had other things on his mind. As he would later recall: “Three fellows were waiting for me on the golf course and I was in serious trouble already for being late.” Instead, he scratched down some notes and submitted his copy. The fruits of Mrs Kennedy’s efforts resulted in a tiny, four–paragraph story buried away inside the Irish Independent.31 Clearly, nobody could tell that they were dealing with future greatness.
Winning the White House
Kennedy’s book Profiles in Courage, published in 1956, bagged him the esteemed Pulitzer Prize, and in the same year he made a bid for the Vice–Presidential nomination. While unsuccessful it was well received and saw him in demand at Democratic functions as soon as the Convention was over. It also saved him from being politically redundant as “the other guy” in the 1957 race to the White House, which was always going to be won by the incumbent President Eisenhower. The fates were kind to Kennedy in that respect at least.
A year later, his own dynasty began with the arrival of a baby girl, Caroline, and so the boy became a man and the Presidential whispers began in earnest.
But what about the American people? How would they feel about an Irish–American President? The omens were quite good in that respect. President Andrew Jackson’s parents were born in Ireland, making him the first politician of Irish blood to occupy the White House. The fathers of both Presidents James Buchanan and Chester A. Arthur were Irish–born. Kennedy had never tried to hide his ethnic background. He marched in the St Patrick’s Day parades in Boston and he gave speeches with Irish reference points throughout his career. But there was a problem. Those other Irish Presidents had been Protestant, while he was a Catholic.
Kennedy’s religion was a more difficult nut to crack in the eyes of the national electorate, and there was form. In 1928, New York Democratic Governor Al Smith ran against Herbert Hoover. Throughout the campaign Smith, a Catholic, repeatedly had to deny that his religion would influence his judgement as President. It was no use; he lost heavily to Hoover. Now, just thirty–five years later, was America prepared to hand over the reins of power to a Catholic? Had times changed enough?
On the campaign trail: Senator John Kennedy tries to sway voters as he seeks re-election in October 1958. In the background, Jacqueline watches on.
Kennedy’s speechwriter Ted Sorensen later observed: “American voters didn’t mind an Irish Catholic as a mayor or a legislator or certainly not as a county chairman, but President? Al Smith’s smashing defeat in 1928 had made it clear that an Irish Catholic, or any other kind of Catholic in all likelihood, was not acceptable in the White House because they feared the Catholic hierarchy, led by the Pope, would influence decisions that under the Constitution should be based only on America’s interest and American public policy.”32
This resistance from within and without Catholic Irish America led many local politicians to urge caution on the ambitious Senator. He was too young, too Irish, too Catholic and they thought he should take it slowly, bit by bit. But Kennedy felt his time had come and threw the dice. Knowing that his Catholicism was an issue for voters, he chose a meeting of Protestant ministers in Houston, Texas, to address concerns about his religion. In the speech, which many felt helped Kennedy over the finishing line, the candidate announced: “I am not the Catholic candidate for President. I am the Democratic Party’s candidate for President who happens to be a Catholic.” This speech helped to answer a lot of questions and also to silence many critics.
On 8 November 1960, Kennedy beat Richard Nixon in one of the most closely fought Presidential elections of the twentieth century. He knew the wall was high but he was brought up to take on challenges and duly win – which, by a not uncontroversial whisker, he did, while his Republican opponents muttered about stolen votes skewing the result against them.
Kennedy actually only received 113,000 votes more than Nixon out of the 68 million cast, which translated into a victory by a margin of 303 to 219 in the electoral college. The controversy over this election has largely focused on two states, Illinois and Texas, where Republicans have alleged – and Nixon himself clearly believed – that fraud enabled Kennedy to win. Had Nixon won those two states he would have obtained enough votes in the Electoral College to take the presidency.
In Texas Kennedy had won by a margin of 46,000 votes, but in Illinois it was much closer, with only 9,000 votes in it. Perhaps more suspicious was the fact that despite a heavy Republican vote throughout the State, Kennedy won Cook County, which included the city of Chicago, by a massive 450,000 votes – heavily aided by the impressive vote–winning machine run by the Democratic Mayor Richard J. Daley. Despite repeated legal challenges in both these states, and elsewhere, the Republicans failed to overturn the deficits – though evidence of some voter fraud was discovered – and Kennedy went to the White House.
The significance of a forty–something Irish–American Catholic reaching the White House was extraordinary, an event that historian Robert Dallek says “breached this wall that America would only have White Protestant males as President.”33 It was ground–breaking and exhilarating, and the American people expected great things from this dynamic, young man with the glamorous wife and the heroic war record.
Those early years in the White House were strewn with difficulties, though. The botched Bay of Pigs invasion in April 1961 rattled the entire Administration. This attempt to oust Fidel Castro from power in Cuba had been planned by the previous administration but was supported by Kennedy and the invasion went ahead on 17 April. It was defeated emphatically by the Cuban military providing an embarrassing setback right at the start of Kennedy’s presidency.
Domestically, Kennedy’s handling of the civil rights issue won him detractors from both sides of the argument; he was moving towards the end of state–sanctioned racial discrimination but too slowly for civil rights campaigners, while white Southerners were appalled. The ruling of the Supreme Court in 1954 that segregated schooling was unconstitutional had unleashed a wave of protests against other aspects of segregation, and the issue of civil rights had proved key in the 1960 election, with Kennedy’s support for Dr Martin Luther King Jr winning him some 70 per cent of the Black vote. However, his narrow victory coupled with the Democrats’ shaky control of Congress gave him little room for dramatic gestures.
Kennedy was also a Cold War leader and knew he had to take on the Russians during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Sparked by the discovery
