In the desperate hours of Jack Kennedy's battle with Estes Kefauver for the Democratic vice-presidential nomination in 1956, Kennedy's good friend and fellow Roman Catholic, John Bailey, Connecticut Democratic state chairman, circulated a memorandum among top Democrats at the Chicago convention. Wrote Bailey: "There is, or can be, a Catholic vote," and the way to make the most of it, he insisted, was to put Massachusetts' Jack Kennedy on the ticket.* Kennedy narrowly lost the vice-presidential nomination, but set to work within weeks to build toward the 1960 Democratic presidential nomination.
Last week Jack Kennedy proved beyond doubt in the Wisconsin primary (see following story) that an attractive, hard-campaigning Catholic candidate can count on a powerful Catholic vote that cuts across labor-union loyalties, the farm problem, and even—to a lesser extent—party lines. By proving it, Kennedy lifted the Catholic issue out of the murk of religious innuendo into the arena of discussion, where it can be debated as a political fact of life. He cleared the air of the polite nonsense that talk of his Catholicism is bigotry—or that for a Protestant to vote against a Catholic is bigotry. And he served himself best by providing a part-answer to the legend that has been around since Al Smith's defeat in 1928 (see box, next page): that a Catholic cannot be elected President.
The political reality of 1960 is that Jack Kennedy's starting point in his race for the Democratic nomination is his ability to deliver the heavy Catholic big-city vote much the way that John Bailey laid it down in 1956. A corollary is Kennedy's argument that he has thereby placed Democratic bosses and kingmakers (most of them Catholics, some decidedly cool to Kennedy) in a dilemma: if they do not nominate him, the Democrats stand to alienate the Catholic vote—a situation that Vice President Nixon might be tempted to exploit by turning to a Catholic vice-presidential running mate, such as Labor Secretary James Mitchell.
Indiana's Frank McKinney, onetime chairman of the Democratic National Committee, a great friend of Harry Truman, a Catholic and a strong Symington man, expressed the reaction of some of the bosses. He believes that Kennedy's Catholicism will make him too controversial. Said he last week in Phoenix: "The Democratic Party cannot afford to create hardships or disadvantages for itself." Will Catholics desert the Democrats if Kennedy is rejected? "They might, but that is the chance we'll have to take." Other Democratic leaders believe that Kennedy can be elected with no more difficulty than besets any candidate.
Says Kennedy's wealthy father, Joseph P. Kennedy: "Let's not con ourselves. The only issue is whether a Catholic can be elected President." It is not, by a long shot, the only issue. The Wall Street Journal was closer when it editorialized last week: "The country would do better, we think, to face the fact honestly that religion is, and always has been, a political issue and that it is not improper for it to be so . . .So let us by all means not bar religion from politics. Let us even in this campaign ask ourselves anew the ancient questions about Church and State. But let us make sure we are asking them in the right way for our time."