THE CONVENTION: To the New Frontier

All the while his erstwhile rivals were telling the 70,000 people in the Los Angeles Coliseum what a great guy he was, Jack Kennedy fidgeted in his chair, nervously fingered his lips and ears, chatted with his neighbor, or worked at scraping a wad of gum off his right shoe. When the time came to accept the Democratic presidential nomination, he graciously saluted the vanquished one by one—Running Mate Lyndon Johnson, Adlai Stevenson, Stuart Symington, Hubert Humphrey, also scrappy Paul Butler, retiring chairman of the Democratic National Committee, and the absent Harry Truman. Then Jack Kennedy plunged into his speech, proved with considerable eloquence that he had three things uppermost in his mind: his religion, his opponent, and a call for American greatness through sacrifice.

Pressure v. Performance. Nobody had said much about his Roman Catholicism since the West Virginia primary, but Kennedy wanted to thank the Democratic Party for taking, along with him, “what many regard as a new and hazardous risk . . . The Democratic Party has once again placed its confidence in the American people, and in their ability to render a free and fair judgment,” said he. “And you have, at the same time, placed your confidence in me, and in my ability to render a free, fair judgment, to uphold the Constitution and my oath of office, to reject any kind of religious pressure or obligation that might directly or indirectly interfere with my conduct of the presidency in the national interest.”

As for how he would perform in office: “My record of 14 years in supporting public education, supporting complete separation of church and state and resisting pressure from sources of any kind should be clear by now to everyone. I hope that no American, considering the really critical issues facing this country, will waste his franchise and throw away his vote by voting either for me or against me solely on account of my religious affiliation.* It is not relevant.”

Sacrifice & Security. His reference to Dwight Eisenhower as a “President who began his career by going to Korea and ends it by staying away from Japan” and his labored attack on Vice President Richard Nixon (see following story) seemed out of keeping with his general tone. They also muffled the message that apparently would sei”e as his major theme through the campaign: the U.S. must recognize and conquer the “New Frontier.” He called it “the frontier of the 1960s, the frontier of unknown opportunities and perils, the frontier of unfulfilled hopes and unfilled threats.” The New Frontier “is not a set of promises; it is a set of challenges. It sums up not what I intend to offer to the American people, but what I intend to ask of them. It holds out the promise of more sacrifice instead of more security.” What challenges did Kennedy offer? What sacrifices would he ask? How, if elected, would he stir the nation to explore and overcome the “uncharted areas of science and space, unsolved problems of peace and war, unconquered pockets of ignorance and prejudice?” He did not specify—beyond saying that “my promises are in the platform that you have adopted”—and presumably the specification would be the stuff of three months’ campaigning.* But his generalized peroration had a fine brink-of-doom ring. The choice, said he, “lies not merely between two men or two parties, but between the public interest and private comfort, between national greatness and national decline, between the fresh air of progress and the stale, dank atmosphere of ‘normalcy,’ between dedication or mediocrity. All mankind waits upon our decision.”

* Said Al Smith in Oklahoma City in 1928: “I here emphatically declare that I do not wish, any member of my faith … to vote for me on any religious grounds … By the same token, I cannot refrain from saying that any person who votes against me simply because of my religion is not, to my way of thinking, a good citizen.” *At a press conference next day, Kennedy rebuffed newsmen’s attempts to have him list the “sacrifices” or to detail his farm or foreign policies, though he did say that he opposes the admission of “extremely belligerent, extremely bellicose” Red China to the United Nations, or its recognition by the U.S.