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So far, Jack Kennedy has gone on some of the most highly visible assets in U.S. politics. At 40, he is trim (6 ft., 160 lbs.) and boyishly handsome, with a trademark in the shock of unruly brown hair (now showing a few grey strands) that Wildroot only seems to make wilder. He belongs to a legendary family that surpasses its legend: the Kennedys of Massachusetts. He is an authentic war hero and a Pulitzer-prizewinning author (for his bestselling Profiles in Courage). He is an athlete (during World War II his swimming skill saved his life and those of his PT-boat mates); yet his intellectual qualifications are such that his photographer wife Jacqueline remarks, in a symbolic manner of speaking: "If I were drawing him, I'd draw a tiny body and an enormous head." Kennedy is recognized as the Senate library's best customer, reads six to eight books a week, mostly on American history. No stem-winding orator ("Those guys who can make the rafters ring with hokum—well, I guess that's O.K., but it keeps me from being an effective political speaker"), Kennedy instead imparts a remarkable quality of shy, sensemaking sincerity. He is certainly the only member of the U.S. Congress who could—as he did—make a speech with his shirttail hanging out and get gallery ahs instead of aws.
Down to Taws. Such virtues have made Jack Kennedy the Democratic whiz of 1957, but by no means guarantee that he will still be the whiz of 1960. When the convention delegates really get down to taws, they will pay much attention to Kennedy's political liabilities. He is a Roman Catholic in a party that has never forgotten the debacle of Catholic Al Smith in 1928 (to prove himself a winner outside heavily Catholic Massachusetts, Kennedy has little choice but to enter perilous presidential primaries in 1960). His youth, now so appealing, may be turned against him when the Democrats start seeking "mature" leadership (Kennedy figures it would help if Dick Nixon, just four years older, were the Republican candidate). He is, in many aspects, a conservative, and 1960 could conceivably bring the rejuvenation of the liberals ("In a militantly liberal convention I wouldn't have a ghost of a chance").
Moreover. Jack Kennedy is a member of the U.S. Senate—and there is good reason for the fact that in all U.S. history only one man, Warren G. Harding, has gone directly from the Senate to the White House. Explains Kennedy: "The Senate is just not the place to run from. No matter how you vote, somebody is made happy and somebody unhappy. If you vote against enough people, you are dead politically. If you vote for everybody—in favor of every appropriation but against every tax to pay for it—you might as well be dead politically, because you are useless."