(See Cover)
In the midst of the crucial West Virginia primary last spring, Jack Kennedy sent a crisis message to his kid brother, Ted, 28, who was busily running interference in the coal mines of Beckley. In his daily talkathon of 20 or more speeches, Jack's vocal cords had given out, and he badly needed a substitute. Teddy hurried to his brother's side and enthusiastically read Jack's speech to an audience of miners in Ravenswood. As Ted Kennedy recalls it, "I was saying to the audience, 'Do you want a man who will give the country leadership? Do you want a man who has vigor and vision?', when Jack took the microphone and said in a hoarse whisper, I would just like to tell my brother that you cannot be elected President until you are 35 years of age.' So back to the boondocks I went."
Like every other major politician, Candidate Kennedy has a chorus of voices talking for him. He speaks through the 15 or so smooth-talking, dedicated young men who direct Operation Kennedy (TIME, Feb. 15), the tough and efficient political machine that has impressed and astonished the professional politicians of the nation. He speaks through hundreds of grey-flanneled local volunteers from Maine to Hawaii. He speaks words of honey or vitriol that would be impolitic coming from him through a chorus of guest campaigners, ranging from Colorado Football Star Byron ("Whizzer") White to Franklin D. Roosevelt Jr. (who attacked Hubert Humphrey's war record in the bitter West Virginia primary). But Jack Kennedy's presidential campaign, indeed his whole political life, has a quality rare in U.S. political history. He speaks with the voice of the remarkable Kennedy family, and the talkative Clan Kennedy speaks with authority for him from platform to parlor, from banquet to back room.
There is Bobby, 34, his dogged, hardworking (and usually "worried) campaign manager, lining up the local organizations, discussing the shirtsleeved facts of politics with the bosses and the kingmakers. There is Teddy, the legman, working and talking at the lowest level of the campaign, climbing out of West Virginia mine shafts, soaring off Wisconsin ski jumps, buttonholing Idaho delegates, doing whatever is required of him. And, when the campaign script calls for their special talents, there are the glamorous Kennedy sisters: tawny-haired Eunice Kennedy Shriver, 38; leggy Patricia Kennedy Lawford, 36, wife of the movie star; and Jean Kennedy Smith, 32, the slim, tanned baby sister of the family. Together and separately, the sisters knock on doors, preside over kaffeeklatsches, and shed their charm at political banquets, receptions and rallies. And finally, there is Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy, 69, who willingly pitches in (sometimes in French, if the occasion calls for it) whenever her hard-running son needs her.
The one voice that has not been heard aloud since Jack Kennedy went into public life is the managerial Boston baritone of Joseph Patrick Kennedy, 71, father of the clan, who has deliberately chosen the role of public silence to play down the fact that he is the dominant force in making the remarkable Kennedy family what it is today.