JFK in Ireland: Four Days that Changed a President. Ryan Tubridy
and he gave speeches with Irish reference points throughout his career. But there was a problem. Those other Irish Presidents had been Protestant, while he was a Catholic.
Kennedy’s religion was a more difficult nut to crack in the eyes of the national electorate, and there was form. In 1928, New York Democratic Governor Al Smith ran against Herbert Hoover. Throughout the campaign Smith, a Catholic, repeatedly had to deny that his religion would influence his judgement as President. It was no use; he lost heavily to Hoover. Now, just thirty–five years later, was America prepared to hand over the reins of power to a Catholic? Had times changed enough?
On the campaign trail: Senator John Kennedy tries to sway voters as he seeks re-election in October 1958. In the background, Jacqueline watches on.
Kennedy’s speechwriter Ted Sorensen later observed: “American voters didn’t mind an Irish Catholic as a mayor or a legislator or certainly not as a county chairman, but President? Al Smith’s smashing defeat in 1928 had made it clear that an Irish Catholic, or any other kind of Catholic in all likelihood, was not acceptable in the White House because they feared the Catholic hierarchy, led by the Pope, would influence decisions that under the Constitution should be based only on America’s interest and American public policy.”32
This resistance from within and without Catholic Irish America led many local politicians to urge caution on the ambitious Senator. He was too young, too Irish, too Catholic and they thought he should take it slowly, bit by bit. But Kennedy felt his time had come and threw the dice. Knowing that his Catholicism was an issue for voters, he chose a meeting of Protestant ministers in Houston, Texas, to address concerns about his religion. In the speech, which many felt helped Kennedy over the finishing line, the candidate announced: “I am not the Catholic candidate for President. I am the Democratic Party’s candidate for President who happens to be a Catholic.” This speech helped to answer a lot of questions and also to silence many critics.
On 8 November 1960, Kennedy beat Richard Nixon in one of the most closely fought Presidential elections of the twentieth century. He knew the wall was high but he was brought up to take on challenges and duly win – which, by a not uncontroversial whisker, he did, while his Republican opponents muttered about stolen votes skewing the result against them.
Kennedy actually only received 113,000 votes more than Nixon out of the 68 million cast, which translated into a victory by a margin of 303 to 219 in the electoral college. The controversy over this election has largely focused on two states, Illinois and Texas, where Republicans have alleged – and Nixon himself clearly believed – that fraud enabled Kennedy to win. Had Nixon won those two states he would have obtained enough votes in the Electoral College to take the presidency.
In Texas Kennedy had won by a margin of 46,000 votes, but in Illinois it was much closer, with only 9,000 votes in it. Perhaps more suspicious was the fact that despite a heavy Republican vote throughout the State, Kennedy won Cook County, which included the city of Chicago, by a massive 450,000 votes – heavily aided by the impressive vote–winning machine run by the Democratic Mayor Richard J. Daley. Despite repeated legal challenges in both these states, and elsewhere, the Republicans failed to overturn the deficits – though evidence of some voter fraud was discovered – and Kennedy went to the White House.
The significance of a forty–something Irish–American Catholic reaching the White House was extraordinary, an event that historian Robert Dallek says “breached this wall that America would only have White Protestant males as President.”33 It was ground–breaking and exhilarating, and the American people expected great things from this dynamic, young man with the glamorous wife and the heroic war record.
Those early years in the White House were strewn with difficulties, though. The botched Bay of Pigs invasion in April 1961 rattled the entire Administration. This attempt to oust Fidel Castro from power in Cuba had been planned by the previous administration but was supported by Kennedy and the invasion went ahead on 17 April. It was defeated emphatically by the Cuban military providing an embarrassing setback right at the start of Kennedy’s presidency.
Domestically, Kennedy’s handling of the civil rights issue won him detractors from both sides of the argument; he was moving towards the end of state–sanctioned racial discrimination but too slowly for civil rights campaigners, while white Southerners were appalled. The ruling of the Supreme Court in 1954 that segregated schooling was unconstitutional had unleashed a wave of protests against other aspects of segregation, and the issue of civil rights had proved key in the 1960 election, with Kennedy’s support for Dr Martin Luther King Jr winning him some 70 per cent of the Black vote. However, his narrow victory coupled with the Democrats’ shaky control of Congress gave him little room for dramatic gestures.
Kennedy was also a Cold War leader and knew he had to take on the Russians during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Sparked by the discovery of Soviet nuclear missiles in Cuba on 18 October 1962, just 100 miles from American soil, this crisis lasted 13 days and brought the world to the brink of nuclear war before its eventual resolution.
Now, attention shifted to the battleground of Europe. Could the former Allies hold the fort against Russia? Would the Iron Curtain extend its coverage from the East into the West? Europe was weak and in need of leadership. Kennedy was the unofficial Leader of the Free World. His presence was required in Europe, where there were important matters to confront. He was also exhausted, drained by the demands of life in the White House. Shouldn’t he be entitled to a little diversion? Shouldn’t he be allowed a quick visit to the old country? These were the questions that played on the President’s mind in the early months of 1963. In the diplomatic offices of Irish officials from Dublin to Paris and on to Washington, a plan was being hatched that would swing the argument.
OPPOSITE Crossing the threshold: the Kennedys take up residence at the White House, 4 February 1961.
CHAPTER THREE Wooing the President
For many years, Ireland had been effectively ruled by co–regents: the sorcerer, President Éamon de Valera, and the apprentice, Taoiseach Seán Lemass. Both men were products of Ireland’s Civil War but by the early 1960s it was apparent that the two were looking in different directions. De Valera was looking over his shoulder, obsessed with freeing Ireland from the last vestiges of British influence, while Lemass was looking at the road ahead, wondering about the possibilities beyond the stone walls and green fields of Ireland. The world was changing at an unprecedented pace and Ireland was faced with stark choices. It could sit back and let the opportunities pass by, or it could sit up and keep up.
Lemass had always had the more modern attitude of the two men. Less than two decades previously, as Minister for Industry and Commerce, he’d been behind a high–profile campaign to supply electricity to those living in the Irish countryside for the first time by building electrical poles across the country. He expressed his sense of hope and optimism through the prism of domestic bliss: “I hope to see the day that when a girl gets a proposal from a farmer she will enquire, not so much about the number of cows, but rather concerning the electrical appliances she will require before she gives her consent, including not merely electric light but a water heater, an electric clothes boiler, a vacuum cleaner and even a refrigerator.” Within ten years, a million electrical poles had sprung up and villagers and townspeople across the land held switching–on celebrations. Ireland was literally emerging from the Dark Ages.
Lemass was also concerned to try and halt the mass exodus of young people from the island. Economically, it was important for the country to start exporting products rather than people. In the