Senator John F. Kennedy had two huge political vulnerabilities.
One was that he was Catholic and many protestants had a deep and abiding distrust of what was sometimes called “popery.” If government somehow fell under the sway of Catholics, the entire country would be run from Rome. The Pope would oppress non-Catholic churches. Democracy itself would disappear. Kennedy dealt with that in a series of public appearances, clearly stating his opposition to any religious interference with basic freedom.
The other vulnerability was that he came from a wealthy family. He would be unable to relate to everyday citizens, insulated as he must be from the cares and pressures of ordinary financial life. He disarmed some of that concern by reaching out sympathetically to the working poor in West Virginia and in other states.
And he used humor. In 1958, he spoke to the Gridiron Club in New York. No recording is available of the future President at that moment. But Chris Matthews quotes from the transcript as Kennedy reads from what he told his audience was a telegram from his very rich father:
Jack, don’t buy one more vote than necessary. I’ll be damned if I’m going to pay for a landslide.
The Chris Matthews Show, March 13, 2011
A year and 8 months later, he won the Presidency by a hair. He later told audiences that he felt a little like a fictional mayor elected by a single vote. As Kennedy told it, every time that mayor ventured out, he encountered at least one constituent who would inform him: I’m the vote that put you over the top. You owe your job to me.
Hillary Clinton owes her Presidential loss to many things. If any one of them had not come together, she would be in office today. If the creaky old electoral college, that legacy from the slave-holding south, had been replaced, if she had not swooned from dehydration in the heat that New York summer, if she had devoted one more day to Pennsylvania, if she hadn’t chosen door number one instead of door number two.
But the final blow that did her in, that reduced a decisive 11 point lead into a “mere” 2 points, 3 million votes, was that series of needless public reminders of a gratuitous public scolding by the head of the Federal Bureau of investigation.
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