JFK in Ireland: Four Days that Changed a President. Ryan Tubridy

      One of the photographs taken by JFK when he visited the ancestral homestead in Dunganstown, Co. Wexford, in 1947.

      Further evidence that he was beginning to feel his own Irishness more strongly comes from his support for a 1947 bill in Congress, proposing that post–war aid for the British should be contingent on their government ending Partition in Ireland. Rhode Island Congressman John Fogarty had introduced this resolution on a number of previous occasions, and would do so again later. The bill was never going to become law but it was an easy way for Kennedy to underline his Irishness with his Irish–American base and may well have reflected his own views on Partition at the time. It was defeated in Congress by 206 votes to 139, with 83 abstaining but JFK had laid his cards on the table. As far as the Irish nationalists were concerned, he was on their side.

       The Senator in Dublin, 1955

      Kennedy’s years as a Congressman gave him a good training in how to be a grafting politician, complete with all the requisite wheeling and dealing, and in 1952 he decided to make a run for Senate. His most important decisions at this stage lay in the people with whom he surrounded himself. Top of the list was his brother Bobby, who ran the Senate campaign. Another three key players formed the group commonly known to all as the Irish Mafia. Bobby’s Harvard roommate, Kenny O’Donnell, became a key adviser and organiser while Dave Powers, a first–generation Irish–American, was a political fixer who aided in morale maintenance, acted as court jester²⁸ and kept secrets. Larry O’Brien completed the unholy trinity that formed Kennedy’s inner circle. With parents hailing from Cork, O’Brien was described by Kennedy as “the best election man in the business”, who could read elections and their results like no other. He helped run the two Senate campaigns, the Presidential race and acted as Kennedy’s man on Capitol Hill for the duration of the Kennedy Administration.

      The other two men whom Kennedy kept close were the non–Irish Ted Sorensen, who joined the Senator in 1952 and remained by his side until 1963, and the thirty–three–year–old Pierre Salinger. Kennedy described Sorensen, who wrote most of the President’s key speeches,as his “intellectual blood bank”. Salinger became press officer for the Presidential campaign and, later, White House Press Secretary.

      In order to win the Senate seat in 1952, Kennedy first had to eliminate the biggest beast in the Boston jungle, Henry Cabot–Lodge. Cabot–Lodge was a member of one of the most esteemed Boston Brahmin families, who had run the state for generations. This didn’t daunt the young Congressman who felt that as a war hero and author, and armed with a bottomless financial well, he was ideally placed to take the seat – and he did. By the end of 1952, Senator Kennedy was ready to take his place among the men of power on Capitol Hill.

      During his early years as a Senator, Kennedy focussed on his personal rather than his political affairs. In 1953 he married Jacqueline Bouvier, a highly glamorous union in a business not noted for beauty, and in late September 1955, he and his wife paid a visit to Ireland, at her instigation. It wasn’t a nostalgic meet–the–relatives trip this time, but a piece of calculated meeting and greeting designed to enhance Kennedy’s image with Irish–American voters at home. They would be staying in Dublin’s luxurious Shelbourne Hotel rather than driving down muddy back lanes looking for distant cousins.

      They were en route back from a European tour during which Kennedy had spoken in Poland on the Catholic Church’s successful fight against Communism.²⁹ (This fight would spur on a young Karol Wojtyla to keep writing his religious treatises, despite opposition from the Communist government. He would later become John Paul II, the first non–Italian pope in 450 years, a man who in 1979 commanded the biggest–ever turnout for any visiting dignitary to the island of Ireland.) On a previous visit to Dublin, Jackie Kennedy had befriended a Vincentian priest by the name of Father Joseph Leonard, and he now arranged for Kennedy to address students at All Hallows College, which he duly did, happily answering questions on Catholicism and American issues.

      John F. Kennedy wasn’t yet being talked of as a candidate for the presidency but the thirty–eight–year–old politician’s status and importance had grown between each of his flights over the Atlantic and his wife was keen that he should appear presidential wherever they stopped off. It might have been unusual for a politician to engage in religious questions, but he had never made a secret of his religion, even though it could have proved a liability in electoral terms.

      Irish Minister for External Affairs Liam Cosgrave hosted a lunch for the visiting Kennedys. Protocol dictated that such a lunch should have been held at the Department of External Affairs in Iveagh House but JFK had recently had an operation on his back and “was at that time moving around on crutches, [so] instead of giving him lunch anywhere else, we arranged that it be given in the Shelbourne,” the Minister recalls. Among the guests that afternoon were Father Leonard and Mrs Kennedy. With illness–related problems proving a theme, the Taoiseach John Costello’s wife took over as hostess because Mrs Cosgrave was unwell.

      Liam Cosgrave’s memories of Kennedy in 1955 tally with the man who would return eight years later as US President: “He was very friendly, matter of fact, devoid of pretence of any sort, good sense of humour, clear grasp of the essentials, the current international political situation, was reasonably familiar with conditions here. He was overcoming or just shortly before had his serious illness [Addison’s disease].” And yet, the Minister for External Affairs was struck by Kennedy’s physical appearance, which Cosgrave had assumed would be particularly youthful. “Those who didn’t know [him] were always struck by his boyish appearance. When you were nearer to him he didn’t look quite so young. In fact, his face showed certain signs of the suffering he’d undergone.”³⁰

      During their stay at the Shelbourne, Mrs Kennedy called a few journalists to tell them that her Senator husband was in town and that he would be available for interviews if they were so inclined. It was a Sunday morning when the chief reporter of The Irish Independent, Michael Rooney, picked up his phone on the way out to a game of golf. At the other end of the line was Jacqueline Kennedy. She wanted to know if Mr Rooney would care to come to the Shelbourne Hotel to meet her husband, the Junior Senator for Massachusetts. Rooney didn’t care to go, he had other things on his mind. As he would later recall: “Three fellows were waiting for me on the golf course and I was in serious trouble already for being late.” Instead, he scratched down some notes and submitted his copy. The fruits of Mrs Kennedy’s efforts resulted in a tiny, four–paragraph story buried away inside the Irish Independent.³¹ Clearly, nobody could tell that they were dealing with future greatness.

       Winning the White House

      Kennedy’s book Profiles in Courage, published in 1956, bagged him the esteemed Pulitzer Prize, and in the same year he made a bid for the Vice–Presidential nomination. While unsuccessful it was well received and saw him in demand at Democratic functions as soon as the Convention was over. It also saved him from being politically redundant as “the other guy” in the 1957 race to the White House, which was always going to be won by the incumbent President Eisenhower. The fates were kind to Kennedy in that respect at least.

      A year later, his own dynasty began with the arrival of a baby girl, Caroline, and so the boy became a man and the Presidential whispers began in earnest.

      But what about the American people? How would they feel about an Irish–American President? The omens were quite good in that respect. President Andrew Jackson’s parents were born in Ireland, making him the first politician of Irish blood to occupy the White House. The fathers of both Presidents James Buchanan and Chester A. Arthur were Irish–born. Kennedy had never tried to