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Re-elected over token opposition in 1948 and 1950, Kennedy was already zeroing in on the 1952 race against Republican Senator Henry Cabot Lodge Jr., ordered his secretary to accept speaking engagements only outside his own district. There was not really much difference between the politics of the two: Kennedy, in many ways, was a conservative sort of Democrat, and Lodge was a liberal Republican. Kennedy accused Lodge of Senate absenteeism and Lodge accused Kennedy of House absenteeism (both were right). Kennedy's slogan was "Kennedy Will Do More for Massachusetts," and Lodge's was "Lodge Has Done—and Will Do—the Most for Massachusetts."
Henry Cabot Lodge, who that year was giving his all as Ike's preconvention campaign manager, never quite knew what hit him. Kennedys seemed to sprout up all over Massachusetts, making speeches, holding lavish tea parties, starting chain-telephone campaigns, appearing on television ("Coffee with the Kennedys"). Toward the end, State Senator John Powers, then and now a top Kennedy lieutenant, urged that Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy be brought into the campaign. "But she's a grandmother," objected Joe Kennedy. "That's all right," said Powers. "She's a Gold Star mother, the mother of a war hero and a Congressman, the wife of an ambassador, the daughter of a mayor and Congressman, the daughter-in-law of a state senator and representative. She's beautiful and she's a Kennedy. Let me have her." Powers got her, and in the last weeks Rose Kennedy traveled Massachusetts, carrying with her a complete change of wardrobe, from simple blouses and skirts for union halls to evening gowns and jewels for swankier places. While Ike was carrying Massachusetts by 208,000 votes, the Democratic Kennedys were whipping Lodge by 70,000.
Across the Asparagus. Kennedy's Senate campaign had interrupted his courtship of dark-haired Jacqueline Bouvier, daughter of Manhattan Financier John V. Bouvier III. He had met her a year before at a friend's home ("I leaned across the asparagus," says Kennedy, "and asked her for a date"). In September 1953, Senator Jack and Socialite Jackie were married in Newport, with some 2,000 people arriving in chartered buses to stand outside while Boston's Archbishop Richard J. Gushing performed the nuptial Mass in St. Mary's Roman Catholic Church. Jackie soon found out what it meant to be a Kennedy: she broke an ankle playing touch football. But she has become part of the solid front the Kennedys present to the world, even to the point of indulging in masterful oversimplification in defending father Joe against charges that he runs his children's careers. "You'd think he was a mastermind playing chess," says Jackie, "when actually he's a nice old gentleman we see at Thanksgiving and Christmas."