February 10, 1960
Corvallis, Oregon
John F. Kennedy was shaking hands at lumber mill gates and making stump speeches outside town halls like it was the final day of the presidential race. Since the January launch in Nashua, he’d been going nonstop. In two weeks’ time he’d campaigned in more than a half dozen states, including New Mexico, California, North Dakota, and now Oregon.
Kennedy wanted to meet and greet farmers and city dwellers, college students and blue-collar workers. They may have heard his name or seen his face in newspapers or magazines, but the voters really didn’t know what the Massachusetts senator stood for. Was he liberal? Conservative? Progressive? He was here in person to let them know.
The stop in Corvallis was part of a two-day swing in Oregon that included a luncheon, a reception, and a chamber of commerce dinner. Everywhere he went, Kennedy attacked the Eisenhower administration for policies he said were hurting average Americans.
And then Kennedy and his entourage headed back to the plane for the next stop in the next town. Yes, it was early, but he had to keep pushing, had to keep attacking. That was the Kennedy way.
At every campaign appearance, Kennedy was on top of all the major issues, thanks to his devoted and talented campaign team. They were intellectuals and political insiders, people who understood policy and backroom politics. They knew all the key people in the critical states.
But JFK knew his most valuable asset was his kid brother, Robert Francis Kennedy, “Bobby,” who was a rising politician in his own right.
Bobby had been a crusading attorney, the chief counsel for the Senate Rackets Committee. For more than two years, he had overseen numerous high-profile hearings. The committee found an alarming number of cases where union leaders, corporate managers, organized crime members, and public officials—sometimes in combination, sometimes separately—had cheated rank-and-file union members.
He had focused on the Teamsters union—with some 1.5 million workers and a pension fund of around $200 million (worth over $2.1 billion today)—calling it the most powerful institution in America besides the U.S. government. He called Teamster boss Jimmy Hoffa a crook.
But Bobby’s career was cut short when his father, Joseph P. Kennedy, the family patriarch, asked him to run Jack’s presidential campaign. And when Joe asked his children to do something, they did it. So, Bobby resigned from the Senate committee. After all, his brother needed him.
Bobby was relentless, tough, well organized, and laser focused on his mission: getting his brother to the White House. Nothing else really mattered.
Bobby didn’t wait. He began holding strategy sessions with JFK and their team of advisers. During one in October 1959, Bobby grilled his brother like he was a hostile witness before a congressional committee. “Jack, what has been done about the campaign? What planning has been done? Jack, how do you expect to run a successful campaign if you don’t get started?” Bobby asked.
JFK responded by imitating his brother’s high-pitched voice and staccato-like delivery: “How would you like looking forward to that voice blasting in your ear for the next six months?”
But JFK knew what his brother could do. Bobby’s campaign work was creative, groundbreaking, masterful. It seemed Bobby Kennedy was born to boost his big brother. He knew his business. He’d run JFK’s campaigns since his brother campaigned for a U.S. Senate seat in 1952.
Eight years earlier, JFK had challenged incumbent Republican senator Henry Cabot Lodge, a Massachusetts blue blood with a strong record.
Attorney Mark Dalton had run JFK’s first congressional campaign in 1946. So, Jack reached out to him again. He agreed and knew it was going to be an uphill battle to unseat Lodge.
Joe Kennedy made it even harder. He kept offering advice—but Dalton didn’t seem to listen. Joe wanted him to run a more aggressive campaign.
When Jack said he was going to officially announce Dalton’s appointment, Joe blew a fuse. No way. If Joe was spending the money, he’d have a say in who was his son’s campaign manager.
Dalton could see the handwriting on the wall. When Jack didn’t challenge his father’s decision, Dalton resigned. So, who would run JFK’s Senate race?
Joe had a good idea who he wanted. He knew Bobby had the skills that JFK needed to make a serious run. He was smart, super-focused, and disciplined. Plus, he was a Kennedy. He knew Jack would need someone he could trust.
Working as an attorney at the Justice Department, Bobby didn’t want to take the job. “I’ll just screw it up,” he said to Kenneth O’Donnell, one of JFK’s close advisers. What did he know about running a campaign anyway?
But O’Donnell said Kennedy’s campaign lacked discipline and unless they righted the ship, it was headed for “absolute catastrophic disaster.”
So, he agreed to do it. His organizational skills quickly emerged. He took care of all the day-to-day details, like planning events, and finding creative ways to promote his brother’s candidacy. A team of Kennedy volunteers delivered more than 1 million campaign brochures to nearly all of Massachusetts’ homes. And the Kennedy women—his mother, sisters, and sisters-in-law—held tea parties across the state so female voters could meet JFK.
Bobby worked from dawn to dusk to keep the campaign on track. Yes, he could be caustic at times. And he didn’t always play nice in the sandbox with others. But he got the job done. In a year where a Republican, Dwight Eisenhower, captured the White House in a landslide—and Massachusetts by more than 200,000 votes—JFK was elected Senator. He beat Lodge by 70,000 votes. (It didn’t help that Lodge couldn’t spend as much time campaigning for himself because he was also one of Eisenhower’s campaign managers.)
Now Bobby was resurrecting his role. He knew this would be different. This wasn’t just one state—it was fifty. He’d have to find new, innovative ways to promote his brother’s campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination.
And now, after spending years as a star lawyer in the Senate, Robert was back in the campaign business on John’s presidential run. He left nothing to chance and continued creating innovative campaign techniques that would guide a new generation of candidates seeking office.
They had to prepare for the worst. So, Bobby created an instructional guide on how to respond to attacks on JFK’s character, religion, health problems, and other issues. Bobby’s book didn’t deal with his brother’s extramarital affairs. Journalists usually didn’t touch that subject. If they did now, JFK’s campaign would be over.
Bobby knew that his brother’s Addison’s disease could be problematic. Most people had never heard of it. And Addison’s wasn’t a simple disease to understand, either. Was it fatal? If not, was it debilitating? Could it affect a person’s judgment? What was the treatment? They were all critical questions the public might ask if they knew the person running for America’s highest office had it.
The simple truth was if you had Addison’s disease, it meant your adrenal glands weren’t producing enough of certain hormones—cortisol and aldosterone—that help the body deal with injury or illness. Treatment included boosting the body’s supply of the missing hormones. Weight loss, areas of darkened skin, low blood pressure, abdominal pain, and depression were some of the symptoms of the life-threatening disease.
Doctors said stress—physical or emotional—could make the symptoms worse. And that was one of the problems. The presidency was an inherently stressful position. With the threat of nuclear war and other crises, how could you mitigate that? That’s why Bobby knew it could never get out that JFK had Addison’s. If it did, he’d never get elected. So, if anyone said JFK had the disease, the campaign would just lie. They’d say he had malaria, or a bad back—anything except Addison’s.
Jack was a handsome man and Bobby wanted to take full advantage of his brother’s good looks. To do that, Bobby used image consultants. And he created a rapid response team that could distribute materials to targeted groups about Kennedy’s position on different issues.
With Joe’s money and Jack’s personality, they assembled a first-rate staff. The Kennedy brothers had no trouble attracting the best operatives. Jack Kennedy was himself brilliant, articulate, self-effacing, someone who could crack jokes with both intellectuals and blue-collar workers. And the Kennedys paid top dollar.
Bobby hired Louis Harris, an influential pollster whose political insights would help guide the campaign. He was among the first political consultants to provide polling services directly to a candidate. Using Harris’s polling, Kennedy would often craft messages based on what the surveys told him were voters’ concerns.
Ted Sorensen was a key member of the team. The Nebraska attorney was hired in 1953 to work in Kennedy’s Washington office. Within a year, he became JFK’s speechwriter and one of his closest advisers. Kennedy would call Sorensen his “intellectual blood bank.”
With Sorensen, Kennedy developed a distinct style: “short speeches, short clauses and short words, wherever possible” and memorable phrases. Most important, Sorensen said, “the test of a text was not how it appeared to the eye, but how it sounded to the ear.”
Kennedy’s press secretary was Pierre Salinger, a crusading investigative reporter who’d caught Bobby’s attention when Bobby worked for the U.S. Department of Justice. He hired Salinger to work for him on the Senate committee investigating organized crime, then asked him to join JFK’s campaign. It was Salinger’s job to get close to the reporters covering Kennedy and the campaign.
“What I want to develop is a good, hard-hitting press operation,” Jack Kennedy told him. “You get whoever you need, develop your contacts. You know a lot of newspapermen around this town.”
He made it clear he was hiring Salinger only because of his brother Bobby’s recommendation.
The Kennedys’ youngest brother, Ted, and brother-in-law Steve Smith, who was married to their sister Jean, were also involved. In the beginning, the team discussed the strengths and weaknesses of possible opponents, including Nelson Rockefeller or Richard Nixon. They were forever planning, trying to stay one step ahead.
And they didn’t worry about expenses. Joe Kennedy made sure of that. He was worth up to $400 million (over $4 billion today), and seemed willing to spend it all to put his son in the White House. He even bought a plane—they dubbed it the Caroline, after JFK’s daughter—to help them move quickly from one place to the next. It was a big advantage for the campaign.
But it wasn’t only the advisers and money. It was about personality. Jack Kennedy had a captivating blend of confidence, passion, empathy, and relatability. Men and women wanted to be around him. He was educated, cool, with combat credentials, good looks, prestige, and sparkle. Add to all this Bobby’s strategic mind, and the campaign was a winner with both men and women voters.
Kennedy’s Democratic rivals weren’t impressed with his strategy.
Texas senator Lyndon Johnson hadn’t disclosed publicly whether he’d run. But he still believed in business as usual and was confident that party bosses at the convention would come through for him.
Kennedy was concerned about Johnson’s plans. So, he sent Bobby to Texas to check out LBJ’s intentions. Bobby wasn’t happy. But he agreed with Jack that it was imperative that they find out—and find out as quickly as possible. Kennedy and his team had come to the realization that in all likelihood they’d also need the support of some party bosses to put them over the top. That’s because only sixteen states had primaries and there were only so many delegates to pick up that way. If they fell short, Johnson could swoop in and steal the nomination.
In a meeting at LBJ’s Texas ranch, Bobby was all business. He asked Johnson if he was going to run for president. Johnson said he wasn’t running and wouldn’t endorse a candidate, either. Bobby didn’t believe him. At that point, all he wanted to do was get on a plane and head home. But Johnson wasn’t about to let him leave. Not yet. First, they’d go deer hunting on his ranch. Bobby didn’t want to do it, but he went along. Otherwise who knows how long he’d be stuck there.
Johnson drove Bobby to a tower with a platform on top. High above the hunting grounds, LBJ handed Bobby a rifle. There were deer in the fields below, but this didn’t feel right. Bobby aimed at one and fired a shot. He missed and the recoil from the weapon knocked him down.
“Son, you’ve got to learn to handle your gun like a man,” Johnson said.
Johnson got him good this time. But Bobby promised himself that wouldn’t happen again. This was no longer just politics. It was personal.