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¶ Arguing against a grab-bag veterans' pension bill in the House, Kennedy committed the political sin of insulting the American Legion ("The leadership of the American Legion has not had a constructive thought since 1918").
¶ In 1954, Kennedy became the first Massachusetts Senator or Representative to vote for the St. Lawrence Seaway, for decades considered a deadly threat to the state's ports. His reasoning: if necessary, Canada was going ahead alone on the seaway and, that being the case, the U.S. might as well share in the general benefits. Some New England papers promptly dubbed Kennedy "the Suicide Senator."
¶ In 1954, Kennedy was the only Senator from tariff-conscious New England to vote for the President's liberalized international trade program.
¶ During the 1956 Senate session, Kennedy was warned three separate times by Democratic leaders that his vote against high, rigid farm supports would cost him a place on the national ticket. But Kennedy, convinced that Democratic farm policy had been a failure, was willing to try flexible supports. Now he takes the position that they too have flopped.
¶ In his votes last summer on the civil rights bill, Kennedy managed to please hardly anyone.* Studying each section of the bill on its own merits, Kennedy encouraged the North (and annoyed the South) by voting, unsuccessfully, to retain Part III, which would have given the Attorney General extraordinary powers to enforce civil rights—a position stronger than the President's own. Then, having consulted three Harvard professors, he pleased the South (and infuriated diehard Northern liberals) by voting for the amendment requiring jury trials in criminal (but not civil) contempt cases.
¶ Last summer Kennedy made a Senate speech calling for the U.S. to take an active stand for Algerian freedom from France, and he got an editorial roasting (TIME, July 15) for his pains. Deeply concerned. Kennedy called his father, then in France, and wondered aloud if he had not been mistaken. Replied Joe Kennedy: "You lucky mush. You don't know it and neither does anyone else, but within a few months everyone is going to know just how right you were on Algeria."
Neck Out. Outside the Senate, in his speeches around the nation, Jack Kennedy has held steadfastly to his independence. He appeared before the Florida Bar Association, criticized the legal profession for its "apparent indifference" to lawyers who, by the evidence before the McClellan committee, had engaged in "legal racketeering." Last spring he confronted the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, criticized it for its stand against foreign aid..