Report of the County Chairman Read online

  My wife put up to Bailey, who had an impressive record of holding his party together in the face of natural strife, the problem that divided Bucks County. As a fighting liberal she was all for the southern end and outspokenly against the old-line conservatives headed by Johnny Welsh and John Mulligan. Mr. Bailey listened patiently, then laughed. “Mrs. Michener,” he said with that icy quality he can bring to bear upon political questions, “when you really work in politics you do just what your husband has done. You never deal with individuals, you deal with the office. That is, you deal with whatever individual is able to hold the office at the moment. If you try to adjudicate on the grounds of natural sympathy each separate fight that comes up, you’ll quickly go mad and you’ll ruin your party, too.

  “Let me tell you what happens to a state chairman every week. A protest committee comes to see you and laments, ‘Mr. Bailey, the Democratic party in East Cupcake is being ruined by Francis Finnegan. He’s no good. He has no support at all. He’s petty. And we don’t even think he’s a good Democrat. Now why do you keep on doing business with Francis Finnegan?’ To such complaints I always say, ‘I do business with Francis Finnegan because he’s the local chairman. If he’s as bad as you say, vote him out of office and I’ll do business with you.’ And then they invariably say, ‘Nobody could vote Francis out of office. He’s always elected by a big majority.’ And all I can say to that is, If he’s always elected by such a big majority, how can you say he has no support? Seems to me Francis Finnegan has a hell of a lot of support and is going to keep it. Gentlemen, I do business with Francis because he controls the office.’ They go away mad, but if later on they unseat Finnegan in a fair vote, they know that I’ll support them now just as I used to support Finnegan. Mrs. Michener, in a party fight always support the office, and if your Mr. Welsh owns the office, he owns your support until such time as somebody else wins the office.”

  At this point the phone rang and Mr. Bailey, who was already being discussed in Democratic circles as either permanent chairman of the party or postmaster general, or both, spoke quietly and listened to the news from New York. We knew it had to do with the election and we suspected that it was good, because a huge smile began to wreathe his rugged Irish face. He betrayed to us no hint of what the call was about, but when he put down the receiver, at about two o’clock in the morning, he said, “This afternoon the New York Daily News is going to report as its latest poll figures, Kennedy better than 55 percent, Nixon less than 45 percent.” We cheered and Mr. Bailey said calmly, “On that bit of news I think we can go to bed.”

  On the way upstairs I asked, “Is Kennedy going to carry Connecticut?”

  Mr. Bailey said, “If he doesn’t, he has no chance anywhere.”

  “That strong?” I continued.

  The state leader said cautiously, “We think by 30,000. We hope by 60,000. But if you hear on Election Night that he won Connecticut by more than 80,000 you can be sure hell win the nation.”

  It is difficult for me even now to explain the joy I experienced as I went to bed that night. John Bailey was the first important politician I had met who felt that his state was secure and that it would serve as bellwether to the nation. He was certainly not overconfident, and he saw many pitfalls ahead, but he was in command of forces that could be relied upon, he felt, to get out every available vote. And now from neighboring New York the news was also good—so good that no Democrat really believed it—and on that hopeful note the Bailey household went to sleep.

  The third event which reassured me concerning John Kennedy’s chances was of an intellectual nature and of tremendous significance to me and, as events turned out, to many others as well. I was scheduled to speak at a joint Republican-Democratic meeting at the lower end of the county and had just appeared in the hall when an elderly lady, whose name I never knew but who attended many of my speeches and often spoke to me, called me aside and warned, “They’re going to murder you tonight, Michener. I thought you might be able to use this.”

  “What is it?” I asked, as she rummaged through a voluminous handbag.

  “A newspaper article,” she replied. “To me it seems significant. May turn out to be just the ammunition you need.” She passed the crumpled paper to me, then winked and said, “My God, it’s exciting to be a Democrat.”

  On my way to the wings I stopped backstage, in a darkened corner, to study what my partisan had given me, and I must confess that I expected to read about some trivial exposé of Republican corruption in western Kansas. Instead it was the single most important piece of writing that was published during the campaign, and as the old lady had feared, I had missed it. It was Walter Lippmann’s column in which he carefully analyzed Vice President Nixon’s proposals for dealing with foreign affairs, principally the Nixon plan for endless regional committee meetings. In sharp comment Mr. Lippmann quite demolished the emptiness and the pretentiousness of this redundant plan, and when he was through doing so he had an excellent column. But then he added three gratuitous paragraphs which were the most damning comments made against the Republicans during the election, and as I read them in astonished silence I foresaw the impact they would have in the large eastern states:

  This revealing speech confirms the impression that has grown stronger since the TV debates began. It is that Mr. Nixon is an indecisive man who lacks that inner conviction and self-confidence which are the mark of the natural leader and governor of men.

  This has appeared most clearly in the Quemoy-Matsu affair. Mr. Nixon has exhibited a lack of knowledge of the facts of a great question of war and peace, about which he is supposed to have had first-hand knowledge. In the second debate he did not know what the Eisenhower policy was, and he had to be reeducated for the third debate. This is most significant because it reveals such a weak, infirm, inaccurate grasp of a great issue.

  The contrast with Mr. Kennedy has become very sharp. It has been truly impressive to see the precision of Mr. Kennedy’s mind, his immense command of the facts, his instinct for the crucial point, his singular lack of demagoguery and sloganeering, his intense concern and interest in the subject itself, the stability and steadfastness of his nerves and his coolness and his courage. And through it all have transpired the recognizable marks of the man who, besides being highly trained, is a natural leader, organizer, and ruler of men.*

  I probably read these last three paragraphs aloud not less than fifty times during the remainder of the campaign, for they summarized so perfectly the Democratic position, and each time I did so I was careful to explain that they had been written by a man who had supported General Eisenhower twice, was mainly a Republican, and was published in Republican newspapers. These Lippmann paragraphs had a profound effect in my county, for they made intellectually respectable the claims that many of us had been making with only personal judgment to support them. With the appearance of this Lippmann article I was now in the curious position of constructing my speeches with only Republican citations. On all economic matters I relied upon Nelson Rockefeller and on all questions relating to the basic capacity of the Republican candidate I referred only to the New York Herald Tribune.

  Frequently, when I quoted Lippmann I was asked, “But does he carry any weight across the nation?” And I quickly replied, “Walter Lippmann will probably not influence ten votes in Oklahoma, where they have possibly never heard of him. But in New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania he will influence hundreds of thousands of votes, and they’re the states we have to win.” In the intellectual struggle for the votes of big-city and suburban residents who read newspapers, Walter Lippmann’s column was the single most powerful comment of the campaign. Without it to support me, for example, I would have gained a very dubious hearing in many parts of Pennsylvania. With it, I had a club of flashing light and one that required almost no exegetical comment from me.

  At the same time I was impressed by the fact that Lippmann and others like James Reston and C. L. Sulzberger had arrived at their good opinion of Senator Kennedy
mainly because of his willingness to talk sense about such problems as Matsu, Cuba and our position overseas, whereas the Vice President almost invariably took refuge in broad generalities and emotional clichés, and it occurred to me that those slips of Kennedy which at the time had caused me so much anguish were not the first steps to political suicide that I had originally held them to be; they were bold exemplifications of the fact that John Kennedy, if he made what appeared to be a mistake, was willing to stand fast, to bear the brunt of all attacks, and to slug it out with his opponents without retreating to clichés or ambiguities. As is so common with strong men, he was able, by an exhibition of resolute courage, to turn disaster into victory. I do not believe that his force of character would have been evident to men like Lippmann, Reston and Sulzberger unless they had seen his reactions to heavy fire.

  The emotional high point of the campaign came for me on an early morning which had little to do with votes or voters. I found myself involved in an impossible schedule, for I had spoken on Tuesday night at a labor rally in the northern end of the county; on Wednesday I had three speeches in Pittsburgh at the opposite end of the state; on Thursday there were three more speeches in Bucks County; and on Friday three more in Connecticut. I decided to drive to all points, and when my wife heard this she called quits, for her days had been filled with political teas and coffee hours and she had twice gained hilarious attention by sitting on the stage while I addressed large crowds and falling asleep while facing the audience. Under the circumstances I was quite content to have her stay home and get some sleep in bed.

  After the labor meeting in Bucks County I started the midnight drive to Pittsburgh, but I had barely entered the turnpike when snow began to fall, the most unseasonal that I could remember, for it was only mid-October and snow was not expected for two months. Nevertheless, down it came while I swore at each flake that hit my windshield. Before long I had to leave the turnpike and seek a place to sleep, intending to rise early and push on in daylight hours to the meetings in Pittsburgh, and as I went to bed the motel keeper assured me, “Half an hour of the big tracks’ going by in tomorrow’s sunlight will take care of the snow.”

  In the morning I saw that he had been right, and freshened by a good night’s sleep I lit out for Pittsburgh. But as I traveled westward, with the brilliant sun at my back, I saw something that few have seen. Snow lay heavily upon the rolling fields of central Pennsylvania, and this was not uncommon, for the area is visited each winter by many storms. And the trees of autumn were swept with gold and blazing red, and of itself this was not uncommon, for we have some of the East’s finest falls. But the two taken in conjunction, the snow and the gold, were beyond compare. My eyes jumped constantly back and forth between the softly folding meadows where the snow lay impeccably white and the rolling hills where the trees stood in painted splendor. Regardless of what one looked at first, his eyes were lured away by the greater beauty elsewhere. Only Brueghel, with his love for snow, could have painted that remarkable scene; the alternating patches of snow and fire would surely have caught his imagination.

  I remember thinking at the time, “What a truly glorious country this is. How richly it deserves the best government it can get.” At one tunnel there was a delay because of road building and the guard called to me, “You ever see a day like this?”

  “Nope,” I called back. “They come frequent?”

  “Never saw one like this before,” he replied.

  Then, as the sun grew brighter, the snow began to fade and by the time I approached Pittsburgh it had altogether vanished. For a few hours only it had lain there in perfect beauty, and now it was gone. I had worked in many nations that had once known their hours of dignity and grandeur, and those hours had fled. The citizens who followed in the years of gloom were often able to joke about the change, but in their hearts they knew that the snows had melted and would not return except under far less auspicious conditions. One day, I knew, the snows of history would depart from our American fields, too. They had to. No nation had learned the trick of holding onto them forever, but while they lasted how glorious they were and how imperative it was that they be both recognized and cherished.

  On the way back from Pittsburgh I passed through the same tunnel, but now the workmen were absent and there was no guard, yet I could remember his call of the morning before: “You ever see a day like this?” Now it was dusk and there was no day. But I consoled myself with the thought that once in central Pennsylvania I had seen right through to the heart of America. Once I had seen it, for a few hours only, but since many never even dimly perceive it, I was lucky.

  I returned home from the Connecticut trip to find Sam Thompson busily engaged in preparation for the impending visit of Senator Kennedy to Levittown. It was scheduled for Saturday, October 29, and Sam was worried. When I inquired why, he explained, “We’ve just got to get out more people than Nixon had at the same spot yesterday. The national committee says we get ’em out or else. We’re working on schools, stores, factories, everything we can think of, but I’m afraid we’re headed for disaster.”

  “Why so?” I asked.

  “Nixon had not less than 15,000, honest count,” Sam insisted.

  “We can beat 15,000!” I said airily. “There’s that many’ll come from Levittown alone.”

  “Not so easy,” Sam said mournfully. “You forget one thing.”

  “What?”

  “Saturday, October 29, is the first day of hunting season.

  This was frightening. A city man wouldn’t understand this, but on the first day of hunting season in rural Pennsylvania all normal life stops. Men rise two hours before dawn, pile into their cars, and patrol the back roads till dusk. At night they stumble home and throw a couple of rabbits on the table with the age-old cry of, “There’s the meat, Mom!” A self-respecting Bucks County man would allow nothing, not even the future President of the United States, to keep him away from the first day of hunting. On one recent year it fell during a near hurricane and the kill, both of deer and of men, was just about the same as always. I didn’t know anyone who stayed home.

  “The hell of it is,” Sam explained, “not only will the men refuse to show up but they’ll have the cars so the women won’t be able to show up either. Jim, well be lucky if we have 8,000 people there. Something has got to be done.”

  “Wait a minute,” I argued. “Let’s not panic. Do you mean to tell me that … Look, Sam, this man Kennedy is the most popular Presidential candidate America has seen in years. People throng to see him. If we can’t beat the 15,000 that Nixon got …”

  “They won’t throng to see him on the opening day of hunting season. Not in Bucks County. And you know how the papers are going to play this up. Kennedy draws less than half the crowd that Nixon got. Jim, it’ll kill us.”

  “Then we have got to get the crowd down to Levittown. We’ll hire buses.”

  “You know how many buses it’d take to get 15,000 people anywhere?”

  “I’m satisfied that we’ll get the crowd.”

  “And I’m satisfied that we won’t. If Jesus Christ comes back to earth and expects a big crowd to greet him, he better not come back to Bucks County on the opening day of hunting season.”

  Sam Thompson left me in gathering gloom, but a few days later he was once more his genial political self. “Thank God,” he gasped. “We got the national committee to keep Kennedy out of here on Saturday. He’s coming on Sunday!”

  “Is Sunday good?” I asked.

  “Good?” Sam shouted. “There’s a lot of pheasant and rabbit around this year. I see them in all the fields. So the hunters’ll have a good day on Saturday. They’ll have monopolized the family car, so on Sunday they’ll be inclined to pamper the missus and the kids. Jim, we’re going to have the damnedest crowd to meet Jack Kennedy that he’s ever seen!”

  Sunday, October 30, started out as a heavenly day, with untimely soft winds, a bright sun, and a gentleness in the air that simply invited people to drive throu
gh the countryside. Sam said, “I told you God’s a Democrat.”

  The senator’s appearance was scheduled for one-thirty sharp, and at noon my wife and I pulled into the Levittown shopping area, where an immense plaza had been roped off for the crowd. To our surprise, no fewer than 15,000 people were already in place. I thought, “Sam was right. We’re going to have a record turnout.”

  Johnny Welsh’s county committee had arranged for bugle corps, dancing girls, orators and popcorn salesmen. We were also plagued by an influx of intruders from Philadelphia who set up large stands from which they peddled Kennedy buttons at outrageous prices, the profits going not to the campaign committee but into their own pockets. Sam Thompson growled, “The hell of it is that these same jokers were up here last week selling Nixon buttons and making a pile off the Republicans.”

  Apparently Sam voiced his grievance to the members of one of my committees from Levittown, for shortly thereafter one of my committeemen strode into our office and threw down on the table some forty dollars. “Now we can pay for the buttons and the posters we need,” he said proudly.

  “Where’d you get the dough?” I asked.

  “Selling official peddlers’ permits to the hucksters from Philly,” he said.

  “Who issued the permits?” I asked.

  “A guy and I typed them up,” he confessed.

  “What guy?” I pressed.

  “Just a guy I happen to know.”

  “That’s extortion,” I warned.

  “Those creeps are taking money out of the community,” he insisted, but apparently they weren’t going to take all of it out. Some time later I saw Sam Thompson and a helpful policeman inspecting all the peddlers to be sure they had licenses. They did.