SATURDAY RUBRICS: 9/7/24

JFK, JACKIE, JFK, JR., & CAROLINE

BEFORE GOOGLE: JFK

The debate between VP Harris and Trump coming up on Tuesday coincides with my having recently read Doris Kearns Goodwin’s captivating book An Unfinished Love Story: A Personal History of the 1960s in which she chronicles her own and her late husband Dick Goodwin’s parallel lives aligned and entwined with JFK’s New Frontier and LBJ’s Great Society. Dick was more of a Kennedy partisan; Doris’s loyalties lie still with LBJ to whom she was close and about whom she’s written extensively. One of the most telling - and touching - sections of the book is when she and Dick settle in one night to watch the first Kennedy/Nixon debate on YouTube, Dick having prepped JFK for it. From the book, which so expertly weaves together memoir and history and politics and, most of all, their love story, here is an excerpt about the morning of that first debate when Goodwin and Ted Sorensen and Mike Feldman visited JFK in his room at the Ambassador East Hotel, as well as the day after. Kearns Goodwin writes:

“How did Kennedy strike you that morning?” I asked Dick.

“Calm, eerily so,” Dick said, recalling him propped up in bed in a T-shirt and khakis, barefoot, his breakfast tray still beside him. To conserve his voice, Kennedy spoke as little as possible, writing out questions on a yellow pad, things he wanted checked or confirmed. Sorensen showed him the draft of the opening statement he had prepared, but it was not to Kennedy’s liking; he felt it was too ornate for television, and wanted the sentences short, crisp, and straightforward.

Then Kennedy began to review the stack of index cards, stopping every now and then to suggest a shorter answer or ask for clarification. One after another, he would flip through the cards as if playing a game of solitaire. Once each card had been committed to memory, he would flip it away, until the carpet beside the bed was strewn with index cards.

In the early afternoon, when the team had taken a break to gather more supporting data, Dick realized that he’d left his yellow pad pull of scrawled questions on the table in the room adjoining Kennedy’s bedroom. When he returned to retrieve it - to his amazement - that on this day of all pressurized days, the candidate had retired for a nap! Unlike the candidate’s aides, who had reached the point of near total exhaustion, Kennedy understood the importance of pacing himself, of relaxing and replenishing his energy.

Dick very quietly gathered up the pages and swiftly took his leave to get ready for one final session, after which Kennedy would have a light meal, put on his dark suit, and head to the CBS studio.

Reportedly, Richard Nixon spent most of the day in seclusion at the Pick-Congress Hotel, accompanied only by his wife, Pat. A seeming contrast might be drawn between the two candidates in the degree of preparation, organization, and forethought they invested in an event that would forever alter the course of modern presidential politics. Seventy million people would be watching the debate, two thirds of all the adults in the United States.

…

Dick loved to tell the story of his ebullience following that first debate. As they settled on the “Caroline” [the campaign plane] that night, bound for a day of campaigning in northern Ohio, Kennedy relaxed with his favorite meal: a bowl of tomato soup and a beer. He then proceeded to evaluate the entire debate, reviewing where he might improve and what he might amend. To Dick, it all seemed too muted. Unable to restrain his enthusiasms, he exclaimed, “We’ve got it won now! Not just the debate but the whole election!” Kennedy smiled, finished his beer, and said, “Next week, Cold War and foreign policy. Better get some sleep and get ready.” Dick told me he learned something important that night. Kennedy was a veteran sailor, a professional. Regardless of circumstances, he kept steady and stable, on an even keel.

Yet without question, something decisive and positive had happened for Kennedy during the debate, something that could be seen, felt, and heard in Ohio the next morning. The crowds hadn’t merely doubled, they had quadrupled, as had the intensity, excitement, energy, and high-pitched screams. Those millions of television sets that had been tuned in to the debate the night before had given birth to a political celebrity of the first order.

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