When considering what to do for the 60th anniversary of JFK’s assassination, I originally thought writing about the Warren Commission would be interesting, and while it would be interesting, it would be in truth better to talk about what he stood for and did rather than the aftermath of his demise. The Warren Commission article can wait until the 60th anniversary of the Warren Commission report. Bear in mind, given the biweekly format of my writing, there are limits to how much I can write, and Kennedy himself is such a comprehensive subject that I cannot possibly hope to match the major historical books on him. So, I thought I would write not some big biography of him, but rather a review of what John F. Kennedy stood for as a politician. This is particularly important in my mind as Kennedy is one of those presidents, like Washington, Jefferson, or Lincoln, that people like to tie in their philosophy to, to say in essence that JFK would be on my side on *insert issue here*. Something that must be kept in mind with Kennedy is that he is a man who is forever crystallized in the politics of 60 years ago. As a Catholic, he undoubtedly opposed abortion on a personal level, but the Kennedy family became pro-choice in the 1970s thanks in good part to the influence of ultra-liberal Congressman and Father Robert F. Drinan of Massachusetts. Who is to say that if Kennedy had lived into the 1970s that he would have been the black sheep of the family on the issue?
A Career in Congress
Although Kennedy had political influence from both sides of his family, the man who mentored him most was his maternal grandfather, John F. “Honey” Fitzgerald. Fitzgerald had served both as mayor of Boston and one of its representatives. Initially it was Joseph Kennedy Jr. who was supposed to be the great politician and running for Congress in 1946, but he was killed in World War II, while JFK was a bona fide war hero for his rescuing ten sailors. Thanks to some political maneuvering by Fitzgerald to get the seat’s current occupant, Jim Curley, to bow out and run for mayor of Boston once again, Kennedy was able to run in a safely Democratic district and thanks to his charisma, background, and Fitzgerald’s support, he was able to win the election. However, he did not enter Congress at the easiest time for the Democrats.
The 80th Congress
Although we know the Bay State today as an iconic place of American liberalism, indeed it sends an entirely Democratic delegation to Congress, this isn’t how it was at the start of Kennedy’s political career. Although the last time Republicans had won Massachusetts was with Calvin Coolidge (who had previously served as the state’s governor), they held 9 of 14 of its Congressional districts and both of its Senate seats. Joe Martin of the 14th district was the House speaker, and the agenda of the 80th Congress was, at least on domestic questions, distinctly conservative.
Kennedy, contrary to his contemporary reputation as a tax cutter, opposed GOP-pushed tax reduction legislation in 1947. He was also consistently supportive of organized labor, and voted against the Taft-Hartley Act that same year, its most controversial provision being allowing states to choose whether to be “right to work” or not. Kennedy was a strong supporter of President Truman’s foreign policy, supporting the Greek-Turkish Aid Act in 1947 and the Marshall Plan in 1948. The 1948 election reelected Truman and brought Democrats back to majorities in both the House and Senate.
Kennedy would in his next two terms in Congress support banning the poll tax, the Housing Act of 1949 (a major public housing measure), retaining middle income housing aid in housing legislation, Point Four foreign aid (aid for poor nations as opposed to war-torn ones), price and rent controls, maintaining the Federal Power Commission’s ability to regulate oil prices, limiting the power of the Rules Committee to block legislation from the floor, a Republican substitute for reciprocal trade legislation, federal title over offshore oil deposits, and the McCarran Internal Security Act, which contained a requirement that communists register with the Justice Department. Kennedy was, however, often supported more regulation of the economy, including backing price and rent controls after World War II as well as during the Korean War. His modified (absences are not counted against) Americans for Democratic Action (ADA) scores during his time in the House were as follows:
1947 – 100
1948 – 92
1949 – 90
1950 – 85
1951 – 91
1952 – 100
Overall, out of 65 votes in which he took a position, he sided with what ADA regarded as the liberal position on 60 of them.
In 1952, Kennedy challenged Senator Henry Cabot Lodge Jr. for reelection. This year was a bit of a watershed moment in Massachusetts political history, as Kennedy’s maternal grandfather, “Honey” Fitzgerald, had tried but failed to defeat Henry Cabot Lodge Sr. for reelection in 1916. This time, however, a Lodge was defeated, by 3 points. Lodge had been distracted running Dwight Eisenhower’s election campaign but also had caught the ire of some conservative voters in the state for his role in defeating the nomination of conservative standard-bearer Robert Taft in the Republican primary, thus they declined to vote for him.
As a senator, Kennedy seemed a bit less liberal than as a representative. He supported a few foreign aid cuts, Senator Joseph McCarthy’s (R-Wis.) 1953 proposal to cut foreign aid to nations trading with Communist China and opposed Democratic farm legislation in 1956. Some, like Senator Wayne Morse (D-Ore.), questioned his commitment to liberalism. He would try to run for president in 1960 on this theme, but to little success. This is probably because Kennedy’s record was mostly still favorable to liberalism, although it seemed to grow more so as he increasingly thought about his presidential ambitions. On civil rights, Kennedy was mostly in favor of such proposals. This included his vote against the Anderson-Aiken Amendment, which stripped the Civil Rights Act of 1957 of its 14th Amendment implementation, but he also voted for the weakening jury trial amendment to the bill. Kennedy’s most known work was the Pulitzer Prize winning Profiles in Courage (most of it was ghostwritten by speechwriter Ted Sorensen), and it is here that I must comment that he had a moment that reflected courage and another, not so much, and both occurred in 1954.
The Eisenhower Administration in 1954 was finally pushing through with the St. Lawrence Seaway through its support of the Wiley-Dondero bill, which authorized U.S. participation in the construction of the seaway. This was quite unpopular in the New England area, among Democrats and Republicans alike, as sea traffic would be directed away from the region and to the Midwest. It was the one issue that House Speaker Joe Martin (R-Mass.) told President Eisenhower he couldn’t assist him on. Not even House Minority Whip John W. McCormack (D-Mass.), typically a loyalist to national Democratic and liberal positions, could be swayed for. But Senator Kennedy voted for it. Of Massachusetts elected officials, only Republican John Heselton and Democrat Edward Boland also supported the Seaway. He voted for it as he saw it as helping the nation overall, even if at the cost of New England. He stated publicly on the matter on January 14, 1954, “1) I am frank to admit that few issues during my service in the House of Representatives or the Senate have troubled me as much as the pending bill authorizing participation by the United States in the construction and operation of the St. Lawrence Seaway. As you may know, on 6 different occasions over a period of 20 years, no Massachusetts Senator or Representative has ever voted in favor of the Seaway; and such opposition on the part of many of our citizens and officials continues to this day. I shall discuss the bases of that opposition subsequently; but in initiating a comprehensive study on this issue, I limited myself primarily to two questions which have not previously been before those Massachusetts Senators and Representatives opposing the Seaway, two questions which are indeed facing all Members of the Congress on this issue:
First, is the St. Lawrence Seaway going to be built, regardless of the action taken in the United States Senate on this bill?
and
Secondly, If so, is it in the national interest that the United States participate in the construction, operation and administration of the Seaway?
A careful, and I believe thorough and objective, study of this issue has fully satisfied me that both of these questions must be answered in the affirmative” (JFK Library). Such a stance is, in this writer’s opinion, what is meant when the term “statesman” is used. One subject, however, that Kennedy could not take a stand on for years was on the influence of Senator Joseph McCarthy (R-Wis.). Although Kennedy no doubt privately opposed McCarthy’s methods, he was a friend of the Kennedy family, had dated two of the Kennedy daughters, and had pointedly not campaigned for Lodge’s reelection in 1952. Kennedy himself scheduled his back surgery to occur on the day his censure vote (Goodman, 18). He was the only Democrat to not vote or cast a pair on the censure. Kennedy would not denounce McCarthy until after his death on May 2, 1957, and he had a presidential run on the mind. In 1956, Kennedy made a strong bid for the Democratic nomination for vice president and although he lost to Estes Kefauver of Tennessee, he came in second, making him a favorite for a presidential run in 1960 after the ticket’s defeat. In 1958, Kennedy won reelection with 73% of the vote, as not only was it a great year for Democrats, Republicans also were unable to recruit a formidable candidate to run against him.
Kennedy ran on for president on a platform of liberalism, including support for anti-poverty programs for rural America, increased minimum wage, the creation of the Peace Corps, federal aid to education, and other domestic priorities that would become the New Frontier. This largely reflected his Senate record, which was by ADA modified scores:
1953 – 77
1954 – 85
1955 – 67
1956 – 86
1957 – 83
1958 – 100
1959 – 100
1960 – 100
Out of 93 votes in the Senate that Kennedy registered a position, he voted with ADA 82 times.
Kennedy’s overall modified ADA score averaged a 90. Americans for Constitutional Action, ADA’s conservative counterpart, thought similarly, giving Kennedy an 11% for his record from 1955 to 1959. His DW-Nominate score for his Congressional career overall stands at a -0.311. If it isn’t clear by this point, I want to demolish the myth of “Kennedy the conservative” for all time. It is not consistent with how his supporters and opponents viewed him at the time. His chief challenger in the Democratic primary was Hubert Humphrey of Minnesota, who was to Kennedy’s left. His victory over Humphrey in the strongly Protestant state of West Virginia provided proof that the Democratic Party was ready to accept a Catholic nominee for president. His victory over Republican Richard Nixon represented a victory for New Deal liberalism but also a triumph for Catholics as being fully accepted as part of mainstream America, as the last Catholic nominee, Al Smith in 1928, was defeated in part because of his religion.
The New Frontier
John F. Kennedy’s New Frontier program was a distinctly liberal one, but in order for it to have a chance, it needed to overcome a key obstacle: the House Rules Committee. This committee was chaired by Howard W. “Judge” Smith (D-Va.), a man who opposed most of the national Democratic Party’s platform, collaborated with House Minority Leader Charles Halleck (R-Ind.), and had no qualms about bottling up legislation in his committee that he disagreed with. On January 31, 1961, Speaker Sam Rayburn’s (D-Tex.) proposal, openly backed by Kennedy, to expand the committee by two Democrats and one Republican passed by five votes, giving the new president’s agenda a chance to pass. And some measures did pass; a raise and expansion in minimum wage coverage, the Housing Act of 1961, the creation of the Peace Corps, an accelerated public works program, and anti-poverty aid to rural areas. His administration also negotiated and succeeded in getting the Senate to ratify the Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty in 1963, which banned for the US and USSR above-ground nuclear testing. Kennedy also got through a now widely misunderstood in context tax reduction in 1963, which was in fact opposed by many conservatives as they saw the Administration’s failure to reduce spending as well as inflationary. Not all efforts of the Kennedy Administration, however, were successful. For instance, federal aid to education went down to defeat in the House in 1961 as did the proposed Department of Urban Affairs and the Administration’s wheat-grain bill in 1962.
On November 22, 1963, America in multiple generations lost a sense of national innocence with JFK’s assassination. I phrase it this way because the United States has had many traumatic events, including the War of the Rebellion (yes, I’m sticking to calling the Civil War this in writing) as well as three presidential assassinations before. I suppose Kennedy’s assassination was the first to happen in a time of modern media and of course, still within the living memories of millions of Americans. May he be the last president to be assassinated.
References
ADA Voting Records.
Retrieved from
Goodman, J. (2006). The Kennedy mystique: creating Camelot. Washington, D.C.: National Geographic.
Retrieved from
Remarks of Senator John F. Kennedy on the Saint Lawrence Seaway Before the Senate, Washington D.C., January 14, 1954. JFK Library.
Retrieved from
Mad Politics: The Bizarre, Fascinating, and Unknown of American Political History 