Kennedy and Nixon

[John Corbett]

The above was the title of a book Chris Matthews wrote 30 years ago about the complex relationship between two of the most important political figures of the post-WWII period. I was interested in this book when it came out but never got around to acquiring it until recently when I found it on Amazon through a second hand book seller.

I had already known the two had been friends and allies early in their careers even though they were from different parties. I knew that JFK had personally delivered a $1000 check from his father to Nixon's Senate campaign in 1950. So far I have just read the introduction and Chapter One but have already picked up a few interesting tidbits that I don't know. When JFK first ran for Congress in 1946, he described himself as a "fighting conservative", which seems like an accurate description of his political POV at the time. In the same election, Nixon voiced a commitment to "practical liberalism". When they both ran for the presidency in 1960, JFK was seen as the most conservative of the Democrats in the race while Nixon was seen as the liberal alternative to Goldwater. What surprised me is that in early 1960, JFK had confided to friends that if he didn't win the Democrat nomination, he would probably vote for Nixon in the general election.

Recently the Democrats have made news by running a candidate in the Alaska Republican primary with the same name, Dan Sullivan, as the incumbent Republican Senator. Both advanced to the general election. 80 years ago, old man Joe Kennedy had pulled the same trick in the Democrat primary for Congress in 1946 when he found a local school custodian with the same name as one of Jack's principal rivals and got him put on the ballot, paving the way for Jack to win the nomination. At the time, the Kennedys had not been living in Massachusetts in recent years and Jack claimed a hotel room in the district as his principal residence when he filed for his place on the ballot. Jack had also forgot to file the petitions to get his name on the ballot by the deadline and they had to make a clandestine entry into the board of election office after hours to get the petitions on the appropriate des

Naturally, the friendship between JFK and Nixon became strained as they both sought the top prize in American politics, but they always retained a healthy respect for one another. I'm looking forward to reading the remainder of this book and hope it proves to be as interesting as what I've read so far.

[Steve M. Galbraith]

Matthews on the assassination:  "I think we know what happened. No one’s come up with any evidence that really supports an alternative theory. They have questions, of course; they always will. I think part of it is in Shakespeare, the grand protagonist must be felled or challenged by a great protagonist, it can’t be petty, it can’t be a John Hinckley. All of the assassins throughout history have basically been pretty pathetic people. So the reality is so much different than the dramatic notion we all carry with us that it must be an Iago figure. It can’t just be some guy disillusioned from the Soviet Union who carries a torch for Castro.

I’ve written about this in a number of books. Oswald had a very consistent left-wing fanaticism about him. It’s not hard to figure. I always say to people who have some big conspiracy theory: Just tell me this: How come he had that job at the book depository way before they had the parade route that day? I’ve been working around government a long time, so I don’t have this spooky notion of the government or the CIA. I don’t think some dark forces are at work."

People think great events need a great cause or force behind it. It couldn't be this pathetic Oswald changing history so dramatically. But history can turn on small things, it doesn't have to be major forces. The problem with the conspiracy crowd is they can't accept this, that history changed so much because some nobody with a $20 rifle was behind it.

Link/source: https://www.latimes.com/entertainment/tv/xxxx-st-chris-matthews-jfk-50-years-assassination-20131122-story.html

[John Corbett]

Matthews on the assassination:  "I think we know what happened. No one’s come up with any evidence that really supports an alternative theory. They have questions, of course; they always will. I think part of it is in Shakespeare, the grand protagonist must be felled or challenged by a great protagonist, it can’t be petty, it can’t be a John Hinckley. All of the assassins throughout history have basically been pretty pathetic people. So the reality is so much different than the dramatic notion we all carry with us that it must be an Iago figure. It can’t just be some guy disillusioned from the Soviet Union who carries a torch for Castro.

I’ve written about this in a number of books. Oswald had a very consistent left-wing fanaticism about him. It’s not hard to figure. I always say to people who have some big conspiracy theory: Just tell me this: How come he had that job at the book depository way before they had the parade route that day? I’ve been working around government a long time, so I don’t have this spooky notion of the government or the CIA. I don’t think some dark forces are at work."

People think great events need a great cause or force behind it. It couldn't be this pathetic Oswald changing history so dramatically. But history can turn on small things, it doesn't have to be major forces. The problem with the conspiracy crowd is they can't accept this, that history changed so much because some nobody with a $20 rifle was behind it.

Link/source: https://www.latimes.com/entertainment/tv/xxxx-st-chris-matthews-jfk-50-years-assassination-20131122-story.html

I first became acquainted with Matthews when he was a semi regular on the PBS Friday night program, the McLaughlin Report. This was around the time the JFK movie came out and the topic of the assassination came up. Most of the panelists when asked sided with the WC. Matthews expressed the opinion it was the Cubans. He didn't say whether it was anti-Castro or pro-Castro Cubans and John McLaughlin didn't ask. It was just a few years later that I saw he had come over to the LN side and the reason he gave was the one you quoted. That was the same question that had brought me back to the LN side a few years earlier after spending a few years in the CT wilderness. Whether one postulates Oswald was part of the plot or an unwitting patsy, how would the conspirators have known to place him in the TSBD 6 weeks prior to the assassination. The JFKA was a crime of opportunity. Had the motorcade not been routed past the TSBD, I doubt Oswald would have even thought about taking out JFK but when fate handed him a golden opportunity to become somebody important, he couldn't pass it up. It was not the first time a significant historical event turned on chance circumstances and won't be the last. Life can be that random.

[Steve M. Galbraith]

Interesting story from Robert Dallek's book on JFK (it's an example, one of many, of why the liberal wing of the Democratic Party opposed JFK's candidacy):

"At a Harvard Spee Club dinner in February 1952, when a speaker praised the university for never having produced an Alger Hiss [Hiss did go to Harvard Law], a former State Department official under suspicion of spying for Moscow, or a Joe McCarthy, Jack uncharacteristically made a public scene, angrily saying, “How dare you couple the name of a great American patriot [McCarthy] with that of a traitor [Hiss]!” Jack was just as sympathetic to Richard Nixon, with whom he had established a measure of personal rapport during their service in the House. He openly declared himself pleased that Nixon, a tough anticommunist, had beaten liberal Democrat Helen Gahagan Douglas in a 1950 California Senate race, and he had no complaints about Nixon’s depiction of Douglas as a “fellow traveler” or the “Pink Lady."

I think we all knew about his support for Nixon against Douglas but the dinner story is a new one. For him McCarthy is a patriot and Hiss is a traitor. I'm sure that went over just swell with the liberals.

JFK was an anti-communist. Sure his anti-communism in 1963 was of a different kind than it was in 1952 (he wouldn't have defended McCarthy in '63). But it fundamentally was the same. And it was certainly closer to Nixon's views on the Cold War than those of Ted Kennedys. This portrayal of JFK by the conspiracists as some sort of dove, as someone opposed to containment is just nonsense. It's all made up. But they have to create a fantasy JFK in order for their conspiracy to work. If the "national security state" killed JFK they had to have a reason for doing so. An important one. And that reason for conspiracists is that he was threatening their power and position, he was going to end the Cold War and expose their lies and deceit. Well, that's just completely made up.