JOHN F.

KENNEDY ON POLITICS AND

by Jessica Ferrell and David Coleman

Although he had not yet won the presidency--"the ultimate source of action," as he called
it--when he made this recording, probably in the fall 1960 during the height of the
presidential campaign, Kennedy reflected on his political career up to that point and his
philosophy of politics in national service.

(President Kennedy):. A politician’s power may be great, and with this power goes the
necessity of checking it. But the fact remains that politics has become one of our most
abused and neglected professions. It ranks low on the occupational list of a large share of
the American politician. Yet it is this profession, it is these politicians who make the great
decisions of war and peace, prosperity and recession, the decision whether we look to the
future or the past. In a large sense everything now depends upon what the government
decides.
(President Kennedy): Therefore, if you are interested, if you want to participate, if you
feel strongly about any public question, whether it's labor, what happens in India, the future
of American agriculture, whatever it may be, it seems to me that governmental service is
the way to translate this interest into action, that the natural place for the concerned citizens
is to contribute part of his life to the national interest. Like many decisions in life a
combination of factors pressed on me, which directed me into my present profession.
(President Kennedy): I was at loose ends at the end of the war; I was reluctant to begin
law school again. I was not very interested in following a business career. I was vitally
interested in national and international life and I was the descendant of three generations,
on both sides of my family, of men who had followed the political profession. In my early
life, the conversation was nearly always about politics. My father, who had directed much
of his energy into business, nevertheless, as the son of a Massachusetts state senator, was
himself interested in politics. My mother, also, shared the interest. Her father had been
mayor and a United States congressman, and both my great uncles were state senators and
my father’s first cousin was mayor of Brockton, Massachusetts.
(President Kennedy): For all the Irish immigrants, the way up in Boston was clearly
charted. The doors of business were shut. The way to rise above being a laborer was
through politics. So they all went into it, everybody in the Kennedy or the Fitzgerald
family. But I never thought at school and college that I would ever run for office myself.
One politician was enough in the family and my brother Joe was obviously going to be that
politician. I hadn't considered myself a political type and he filled all the requirements for
political success. When he was 24 he was elected as a delegate to the Democratic
convention in 1940 and I think his political success would have been assured. I recall that I
was a freshman at Harvard when Henry Cabot Lodge Jr. was elected to the United States
Senate. I don’t suppose I ever thought, in those days, that I would some day run against him
and defeat him for the Senate. I suppose there's some freshman in college, today, who isn’t
aware that he’s probably going to end up by defeating me sometime.
(President Kennedy): My brother Joe was killed in Europe as a flyer in August 1944, and
that ended our hopes for him. But I didn’t even start to think about a political profession
until more than a year later. When the war came I didn’t know what I was going to do, and
in those days . . . and for those few months after the . . . and I didn’t find it oppressive that I
didn't know. In '44 and '45 I had been in the hospital for about a year recovering from some
injuries I received in the Pacific. Then I worked as a reporter covering the San
Francisco United Nations conference, the British election, and the Potsdam meeting—all in
1945.
(President Kennedy): So there never was a moment of truth for me when I saw my whole
political career unfold. I came back in the fall of '55 sic - 1945 after Potsdam, at loose ends,
and the head of the Boston Community Fund asked me to help him during the drive. That
was Mike Kelleher, who later became my finance chairman when I ran for the Senate in
1952. Kelleher or his assistant meant making speeches for the first time in my life, and they
seemed to be acceptable. The first speech I ever gave was on “ England, Ireland, and
Germany: Victor, Neutral, and Vanquished.” It took me three weeks to write and was given
at an American Legion Post. Now, the speech went rather well. A politician came up to me
afterwards and said that I should go into politics, that I might be governor of Massachusetts
in ten years. Then I began to think about a political career. I hadn't even considered it
up un'til then. Later in the fall, James M. Curley was elected mayor of Boston and a
congressional seat became vacant. This was the eleventh congressional district, which my
grandfather had once represented in Congress 50 years before.
(President Kennedy): Suddenly, the time, the occasion, and I all met. I moved into the
Bellevue Hotel with my grandfather and I began to run. I have been running ever since.
Fascination began to grip me and I realized how satisfactory a profession a political career
could be. I saw how ideally politics filled the Greek definition of happiness: "A full use of
your powers along lines of excellence in a life affording scope." I might have gone to law
school, which so many were doing after the dislocations of war, and become a member of a
big firm and unclear or a divorce case, or been involved in an accident suit. But how can
anyone compare that in interest with being a member of Congress, with trying to write
legislation on foreign policy or on the relationship between labor and management. Or I
could have taken part in an antitrust case against a great corporation, a case which might
have taken two or three years. How can you compare in interest that job with a life in
Congress where you are able to participate to some degree in determining which direction
this nation will go? Even reporting has its disadvantages, and that was the first profession I
tried.
(President Kennedy): A reporter is reporting what happens; he’s not making it happen.
Even the good reporters, the ones who are really fascinated by what happens and who find
real stimulus in putting their noses into the center of action. Even they, in a sense, are in a
secondary profession. It’s reporting what happened, but it isn’t participating. I had in
politics, to begin with, the great advantage of having well known name and that served me
in good stead. Beyond that, however, I was a stranger in Boston to begin with, and I still
have a notebook, which is filled page after page with the names of all the new people I met
back there in that first campaign.
(President Kennedy): I had several disadvantages as a candidate. I was an outsider, really.
I was living in a hotel. I had never lived very much in the district. My family roots were
there, but I had lived in New York for ten years, and on top of that I had gone to Harvard,
not a particularly popular institution at that time in the Eleventh Congressional District. But
I started early, in my opinion the most important key to political success. In December, for
the primary election next June . . . [end of first tape]
(President Kennedy): My chief opponents, the mayor of Cambridge and Mayor Curley’s
secretary, followed the old practice of not starting until about two months before the
election. By then I was ahead of them. In 1952 I worked a year and a half ahead of the
November election, a year and a half before Senator Lodge did. I am following the same
practice now. I believe most aspirants for public office start much too late. When you think
of the money that Coca-Cola and Lucky Strike put into advertising day after day, even
though they have well known brand names, you can realize how difficult it is to become an
identifiable political figure. The idea that people can get to know you well enough to
support you in two months or three months is wholly wrong. Most of us do not follow
politics and politicians. We become interested only around election time. For the politician
to make a dent in the consciousness of the great majority of the people is a long and
laborious job, particularly in a primary where you don’t have the party label to help you.
(President Kennedy): Once I did start I worked really hard, trying to get the support of the
non-professionals, who are much more ready to commit themselves early than the
traditional politicians. In my opinion, the principle for winning a ward fight or
congressional fight, really, is the same as winning a presidential fight, and the most
important ingredient is a willingness to submit yourself to long, long, long labor. Halfway
through that campaign the Mayor of Cambridge offered me the job of his secretary if I
withdrew and he won. I refused. Finally, after a tough fight, I won with a generous
margin.And almost immediately, politics lived up to the great expectations I had for it as a
profession. The first thing I did in Congress was to become the junior Democrat on the
labor committee. At the time we were considering the Taft-Hartley Bill. I was against it,
and one day in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, I debated the bill with a junior Republican on that
committee who was for it . . . his name was Richard Nixon. And now, here we are debating
again, 14 years later.Why does a politician continually raise his sights and leave a job that
represented complete satisfaction at one time for a higher position? Part of the reason lies in
the normal desire to move ahead, the motivation that helps move the world; perhaps a more
important part lies in the recognition that a greater opportunity to determine the direction in
which the nation/world will go lies in higher office. The scope and power are bigger.
(President Kennedy): When I was in the House of Representatives I was especially
interested in my district, in the future, in the navigation, for example, of Boston Harbor. I
still am. But in the House you are one of 435 members. You have to be there many, many
years before you get to the hub of influence, or have an opportunity to play any role on
substantive matters. After I’d been in the House for six years, I made up my mind that there
was a greater opportunity to function in the United States Senate. I prepared to move on.
(President Kennedy): In the same way, during my years in the Senate I have come to
understand that the presidency is the ultimate source of action. The Senate is not. It may
have been in 1840, but it isn’t today. Take the Labor Bill, for instance. In 1958 I had
worked for two years on that bill. President Eisenhower made one 15 minute speech, which
had a decisive effect on the House. Two years versus one 15 minute speech. I worked for a
year on a proposal to send an economic mission to India. The State Department opposed it.
It was defeated in the conference. I worked for a year on a bill to change the Battle Act to
allow greater economic trading with countries behind the Iron Curtain, such as Poland. The
President withdrew his support on the day of the vote. We were defeated by one vote. All
of the things that you become interested in doing, the President can do and the Senate
cannot, particularly in the area of foreign policy.
(President Kennedy): There is, in fact, much less than meets the eye in the Senate,
frequently. The administration controls, in my opinion, today and in the administration it’s
the President who controls and who can affect results, while we play in the vital issues of
national security, defense, and foreign policy a secondary role in the United States Senate.
The President, all public officials, today face serious and sophisticated problems unheard of
in the nineteenth century, where political leaders dealt for several generations with the
problems of the development of the west, slavery, tariff, and the currency. Today, politics
has become infinitely complicated. One day we deal with labor law, the next with
significant matters of foreign policy, the following day with fiscal and monetary policy, the
next day with the problems of which new weapons should we put our emphasis on. With
the new complexity and intensity of political problems, I think the politics and politicians
have changed. The “hail-fellow, well-met” extrovert is passing from the political scene. A
good many of the politicians I know in the Senate are quiet and thoughtful men, certainly
not extroverts.
(President Kennedy): A successful politician today must have and communicate a sense of
intelligence and integrity and he must be willing to work. Money helps, of course. It is
desirable for anyone to have financial security in whatever they do, but it is certainly not an
essential for success. The fact is that people with private resources who have succeeded in
politics are comparatively rare. Most of them do not go into politics, and for some who
have money has been a hazard. In any case, this is not the decisive question and I think our
history has demonstrated this very clearly. Franklin Roosevelt had some personal resources.
Lincoln did not. They were both successful political leaders and great presidents.
(President Kennedy): In looking back, I would say that I have never regretted my choice
of professions, even though I cannot know what the future will bring. I hope all Americans,
men and women, regardless of what may be their chosen profession, will consider giving
some of their life to the field of politics. Winston Churchill once said: “Democracy is the
worst form of government except for all of the other systems that have been tried.” It is
certainly the most demanding; it requires more from us all than any other system.
Particularly in these days when the watch fires of the enemy camp burn bright, I think all of
us must be willing to give some of ourselves to the most exacting discipline of self-
government. The magic of politics is not the panoply of office. The magic of politics is
participating on all levels of national life in an affirmative way, of playing a small role in
determining whether, in Mr. (William) Faulkner’s words, “freedom will not only endure,
but also prevail.”