I had just spent a day and a half interviewing former Speaker of the House Jim Wright (D-Texas) for my masters in government thesis for Johns Hopkins. My topic was the leadership styles of Speakers of the House and Wright was one of my cases studies (along with Henry Clay and Sam Rayburn). Wright was immensely generous with his time and very patient with my persistent questioning. At the end of our day and half conversation, I was getting ready to leave Wright’s office in Fort Worth. In a very modest two room non-descript federal office building, Wright had crammed a lifetime of political memorabilia. The walls were covered in photographs of a life in public service.
As I walked towards the door, I noticed a picture of Wright with President Kennedy in Forth Worth (the heart of Wright’s congressional district) taken on the morning of November 22, 1963. Wright had been a big supporter of President Kennedy’s agenda. Seeing Vice President Johnson, who was the former senator from Texas, in the picture I asked Wright about reports that Kennedy was in a bad mood that day because of political infighting in the Texas Democratic party. Wright responded in no uncertain terms to my question: “Martin, that’s a lot of buullll sheeet.”
Wright was one of the last people to have a conversation with Kennedy. I asked him what was on the president’s mind that Friday in November. Knowing that Kennedy had some important meetings on Vietnam scheduled for the Monday he returned to Washington, I was hoping that Wright might be able to shed light on this topic. The Kennedy Administration’s Vietnam policy was in flux in November of 1963, and many have speculated what course the president might have taken had he lived. I was hoping that Wright might have some clue as to the president’s thinking on America’s deepening involvement in Vietnam. Wright paused for a moment and then said “He was absolutely fascinated how Fort Worth and Dallas could be so close to each other and yet so different. His staff had to pull him away. His last words to me were: ‘I want to talk about this some more when we get back to Washington.’”
At first glance, I thought that Kennedy, knowing that Wright was a proud son of Fort Worth, was just making political small talk. Then, I remembered something in Larry O’Brien’s memoir, No Final Victories. O’Brien was a member of President Kennedy’s so-called Irish mafia and one of his closest aides. Like Wright, O’Brien had been with Kennedy in Dallas on November 22, 1963. While Kennedy was from Boston, O’Brien was from Springfield in the western part of Massachusetts. O’Brien had grown up working in his father’s tavern and gone on to study law at night and become an aide to the Democratic congressman from Springfield. Kennedy had a much more privileged upbringing to say the least.
O’Brien first met Kennedy in 1951 when Kennedy was looking to run for the Senate. He needed someone to help manage his campaign and O’Brien came highly recommended. Kennedy hired O’Brien and they went on to have a productive relationship with O’Brien eventually becoming Kennedy’s chief legislative strategist in the White House.
The conversation that O’Brien relates takes place very early in their relationship while they were in his father’s tavern. After they had finished the business part of their conversations, Kennedy began asking O’Brien many questions about how the beer in his father’s tavern made it into the customers’ glasses. No detail was too small for Kennedy’s inquisitive mind. Finally, in exasperation O’Brien tells Kennedy: “For Christ’s sake Jack! It comes from kegs down in the cellar.” To fully understand O’Brien’s comments, you need to realize that the expression “for Christ’s sake” was only used by Irish Catholics in the northeast in moments of extreme frustration.
What do these two small incidents from the beginning and end of President Kennedy’s career tell us about Kennedy the man? These two seemingly trivial incidents shed light on Kennedy’s essential nature. Kennedy was intensely intellectually curious. He was eager to learn from others — especially if they had a different background than his own. Like growing up in Fort Worth, Texas or working in a tavern. This questioning nature made Kennedy both a very successful politician and an exemplary president.
So, next week when you see all media attention on the 60th anniversary of Kennedy’s assassination, try for a moment not to think about what we as a nation lost that day in Dallas. Instead, think about the bold and intellectually curious president we were lucky to have for a thousand days. When you see Kennedy in the footage looking out towards the crowds in Dallas, know that he may well have been thinking about why Fort Worth was so different than Dallas or how the beer in the cellar makes it from the cellar to the bar.
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