Free Camelot's Court: Inside the Kennedy White House by Robert Dallek Page B

way to mend fences with the Kennedys, who resented Stevenson’s failure to take Jack as his running mate. From the start, Bobby thought the whole operation was a disaster. Arthur Schlesinger remembered him in the campaign as “an alien presence, sullen and rather ominous, saying little, looking grim and exuding an atmosphere of bleak disapproval.” For Bobby, it was a chance to learn how to run a national campaign or, more to the point, how not to run a campaign. Bobby thought Stevenson’s style of speaking was terrible, always reading speeches when he should have been speaking extemporaneously. He came across as insincere or too cerebral, too focused on obscure issues instead of people and more devoted to words than actions.
    Meanwhile, Jack had also signed on to the campaign, but less out of an interest in advancing Stevenson’s candidacy than in becoming better known around the country. Instead of confining himself to Massachusetts and a few of the big swing states, as Stevenson’s advisers asked, Jack went into twenty-four states, where he gave more than 150 speeches and charmed everyone with his wit and good looks. He endeared himself to audiences with the observation on his lost fight for the vice presidential nomination: “Socrates once said that it was the duty of a man of real principle to avoid high national office, and evidently the delegates at Chicago recognized my principles even before I did.”
    Both brothers were becoming nationally recognized figures. In 1957, mass-market magazines featured them in articles: Look published a photographic spread about “The Rise of the Brothers Kennedy,” and the Saturday Evening Post led its September issue with “The Amazing Kennedys.” The Post saw “the flowering of another great political family” like “the Adamses, the Lodges and the La Follettes.” Amazingly, the article predicted that Jack would become president, Bobby the U.S. attorney general, and the youngest brother, Ted, a senator from Massachusetts.
    The 1956 ventures were schooling for Jack’s and Bobby’s 1960 reach for the White House. The campaign began as soon as Stevenson lost to Eisenhower in November 1956, leaving the Democratic nomination for 1960 wide open. Jack broached the subject with Joe on Thanksgiving Day, raising questions about the viability of his candidacy. Joe, ever confident that his son could become president, brushed aside Jack’s doubts with assurances that millions of second-generation Americans were waiting for the chance to put one of their own in the White House. Jack didn’t need much persuading; he was eager to run and said, “Well, Dad, I guess there’s only one question left. When do we start?” He began courting all the party’s leaders and all its factions, while denying that he was a candidate, for fear he would stimulate a “stop-Kennedy” counter-campaign.
    With no formal organization operating on Jack’s behalf, Bobby returned to his job as counsel for the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. In September 1959, after more than two and a half years investigating labor corruption, Bobby resigned as counsel to the subcommittee to write a book on the subject, The Enemy Within (1960).
    By October 1959, however, he was caught up in Jack’s campaign. Bobby, Ted Sorensen said, was Jack’s first and only choice for campaign manager. He trusted Bobby to “say ‘no’ more emphatically and speak for the candidate more authoritatively than any professional politician.” Bobby at once made clear that he would be a driving force in the operation. He convened a meeting of seventeen principals who were close to Jack and would be at the center of the nominating and national campaigns. At his Cape Cod home, on a beautiful fall day, he pressed everyone to say what was being done to ensure Jack’s success. When no one could provide decisive answers, Bobby chided Jack: “How do you expect to run a successful campaign if you don’t get