The Press: Kennedy & the Press

As he moves into the second half of his campaign, Jack Kennedy starts off with what is undoubtedly the best press of any presidential candidate in modern history. Thus an old Democratic lament is finally laid to rest. Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry S. Truman and Adlai Stevenson all raised repeated charges, imagined or not, against “distortions” suffered at the hands of the so-called “one-party” press. For “one party,” everyone was supposed to read “Republican.”‘ But since announcing his candidacy last January, Kennedy has not done much complaining about his press treatment. He has had no reason.

Never in recent times has a presidential contender of either party earned, wheedled, extorted—and perhaps deserved—such handsome press notices as were flung like roses in Kennedy’s triumphal path at Los Angeles last week. The cartoonists were still having trouble capturing their man, though they were trying hard (see cuts). But the big journalistic guns of the convention—the political columnists—all thought they knew Kennedy, and they liked what they saw. Joseph Alsop, who wears gloom like a toga, was very nearly radiant. “The Senator,” he wrote, “has a peculiarly effective public personality, with a strong, immediate appeal to almost every class and group of voters. The Democrats have not merely chosen a formidable contestant; they have chosen a truly remarkable man, full of promise, with a strength and stature no one can doubt.”

Praising His Looks. Alsop’s colleagues were not far behind. Scripps-Howard Columnist Andrew Tully wrote glowingly of the candidate’s heroic character: “This was the Jack Kennedy who saved a PT-boat crew in the Pacific’s wartime waters.” Smiled the Herald Tribune’s Roscoe Drummond: “He is pleasant to know.” Walter Lippmann paid tribute to “his youth, his sharp and trained intelligence, and his undoubted popular magnetism.” Even the New York Post’s sour-tempered Murray Kempton broke down and confessed that the young man from Boston was “an engaging fellow”—thereby leaving Westbrook Pegler almost alone to carry the dissent: “A hard, selfish politician with no warm emotional ties.”

When they were not praising Kennedy’s good looks, charm and character, the press was busy equipping him with symbols befitting the new look in politicians. To a man, the pundits saluted what New York Times Washington Bureau Chief James Reston called “the changing of the guard.” Like everyone else, Reston arrived at the convention predicting a Kennedy landslide. “Kennedy did not come to Los Angeles to negotiate the nomination, but merely to pick up the loving cup he had won.” Said Syndicated Columnist Marquis Childs: “A new kind of party is coming into being.” Or as the St. Louis Post-Dispatch’s Raymond P. Brandt put it, “the Massachusetts Senator has virtually assured himself [of victory] over the old-line professional politicians.” All in all, concluded Lippmann, the Democrats “feel, perhaps rightly, that they are riding the wave of the future.”

Pushing It Along. Last week’s tributes were little more than Kennedy had been getting all along the campaign trail. As his bandwagon gathered headway, the press sometimes even appeared to help push it along.* One reason that Kennedy looked so good in the crucial Wisconsin and West Virginia primaries was that the Kennedy camp’s shrewdly calculated pre-primary misgivings had been widely heralded in the press, adding immeasurable luster to the ultimate victories.

The press itself recognized its considerable contributions to the Kennedy campaign. Said Columnist William S. White, who is also Washington man for Harper’s Magazine: “The press was partly responsible for the [Kennedy] landslide. It made Kennedy’s nomination inevitable days before it actually was.” Earl Mazo, author (Richard Nixon: A Political and Personal Portrait) and national political correspondent for the New York Herald Tribune, agreed: “Probably he’d have made it anyway, but the press gave him a big psychological boost by presenting his claims so affirmatively.”

No More Complaints. Much of Kennedy’s good press was appropriate and fitting. As the front-running, hardest-driving and by far the most engaging contender, Kennedy made more news than anyone else, and deserved the extensive pla’y he received. His well-lubricated public-relations machine was also stunningly effective in wooing newsmen. Long before Los Angeles, reporters discovered that Kennedy’s able and imaginative aides were ever ready to accommodate a soliciting newsman with inside stories, exclusives and audiences with the leader. Said Kennedy Press Secretary Pierre Salinger: “Most of the press covered the convention by camping on my doorstep.”

The road toNovember is difficult, and no one—least of all Jack Kennedy—could predict with any confidence what lay in store on the front pages of the nation. But no one—most of all Jack Kennedy—could with justice lodge any more complaints about the so-called one-party press.

*Sample: the New York Times front-paged a story from California by William H. Lawrence describing a tactic with which Johnson forces hoped to stop the Kennedy bandwagon psychology at the convention by pushing through a new rule that would prevent delegations from changing their vote after the initial roll call of states. The story was obviously made up out of whole cloth, as the Times found out next day when they had Lyndon Johnson to lunch. Said Johnson, as later reported in the Times: “Although I spent a good deal of the day with New York Times reporters, the first I knew about it was when I read it in the papers. How false it was could have been revealed by a simple check of the Johnson manager, Speaker Rayburn, or myself. This was not done.”