Learn about its rich history. Learn more at cspan. Org citiestour. You are watching American History tv at a weekend every weekend a weekend of the on cspan3. Next former boston globe journalist discuss their book the road to camelot. Inside jfks fiveyear campaign. The john f. Kennedy president ial Library Marks the centennial of the 45th presidency. The 40 grit residents birth. Welcome, we are so thrilled you are all here. This is part of our centennial activities. This is part of the special week of activities. I am the executive director of the john f. Kennedy library foundation. On behalf of all of my colleagues at the library we are thrilled that all of you are here. You are in for a special treat tonight. Before i talk about the book there is a couple of things first. First to thank our sponsors for tonight and for upstairs. The bank of america, and our media sponsors the boston globe. In addition to tonight in your chair is a brochure of different activities. As you know one week from today the actual birthday for jfk we will be having a variety of things happening. That will all be on the schedule. We also want to welcome those who are watching this streaming or those who are on cspan. We appreciate that as well. After the presentation tonight our authors will have a meet and greet. You can also have books for sale and the gift shop that they will be signing. This is a treasure. This book is a treasure. I know a little bit about this. When i read this and i saw how they put together their deep research and told a fascinating story of the road to camelot inside jfks fiveyear campaign. Before i introduce the authors i want to welcome back ellen fitzpatrick. She is both a moderator and a scholar in so many ways. Each of these three i could tell so much about their background. I will just do a few sentences. Ellen is a professor of history at the university of new hampshire. She has written eight books including many bestsellers. Thomas is a Pulitzer Prize journalist. He has been reported for the globe for 40 years. As the author of the book he was named as one of 50 most influential journalist by washington magazine. Curtis was a National Correspondent for the globe who now teaches journalism in mississippi. He covered a president ial campaigns. He also served as a white house correspondent. They have so much knowledge between them, please welcome the three of them. Thank you so much. I feel like a school marmot with my two pupils over here. Good thing classes over because they were actually nervous. Yet out the academic historian being here, this is such a wonderful book. Many suspect we are ready no bid how many of you remember the 1960 campaign . Quite a few of you. I can tie you that you do not know anything about it. You will learn so much. As i did it is absolutely fascinating. I have had the advantage of reading the book and i am sure most of you have not. I thought instead of drilling these two i would really ask some open ended questions to give you a sense of what the story is and that way they have to tell about this remarkable campaign. In some sense i think the punchline is given away in the subtitle. This was a fiveyear undertaking with a very young john f. Kennedy. When we think about the 1960 campaign i think very few people appreciate that it began as early as it did. That kennedy set his sights on the presidency as early as he did, and that it was as methodical as it was. Very instrumental not only and getting him to the white house but it affected his time in the senate. It affected the whole political world that we inhabit today. This was one of these really transformative moments in american political history. That is my plug for you guys. You know what is coming now. I want you to begin by telling all of our wonderful attendees tonight what i learned when i get to the acknowledgments which is how this came about. I guess i can start with my beginning, i was fascinated by the 1956 Democratic Convention which i watched as a teenager in mississippi. There was such drama in that campaign with and lie stephenson , an example of his indecisiveness. Instead of taking his own running mate and doing to the convention. And enormous fight which went on with some very prominent democrats in new york from tennessee. They ultimately won the nomination and there was this unheard of senator from massachusetts senator kennedy. It was a brawl, it was the last time the convention have multiple people. John davis to 100 some ballots. It is fascinating, i did some work and i would to the Kennedy Library in 2002 and i did some research and interviewed some people who are no longer with us. Dollar,ike john siggins and i had a postal. No publisher was interested. I finally got an audience with associatedwho was with simon and schuster, i pitched it to her first. She stared at me and said its not big enough. I packed up all of my notes and then i went home and fastforward about four years about 12 years later. I was visiting curtis in oxford. I started talking about ted sorensen, who is a major figure. I think one of the last people in the game who combined intellectual work on the developments of ideas and formulation of policy on one hand and their expression in terms of rhetoric. I have been on this stage more times than i care to recall over the years. Still he would argue to the both of us that no one had ever taken the time to look at how this improbable event happened. Let the ideas and the thinking was that went into it. And how they were adjusted and unfolding. Out of them there came this idea and Computers Made it possible for us to practically live here and see what the record actually showed. It is interesting because many of you probably read the theater whites book on the making of a president. I think the 1960 book is the best of those. Yet the story that he tells, and i assign that to my students and now i will now assign your book. I teach a seminar on kennedys presidency. In assigning that book they do not even get it. They do not get how this whole process works. The whole political culture of our country in some ways there is continuity and other ways there is a tremendous amount of change. That book changed the way political reporting went. Everyone was influenced by that book. It was if book that came out in 1960. We became friends and we went out of our way to emulate. We start in 19 1955 maybe 1956. We dont get the 19th 60 until halfway into our book. I would like to thank he was a influence and us writing this book. It is a very different approach that you have taken. I think a extremely rich one. Before we get into the granular artifice. I wondered about your view on kennedy going into the book versus your view once you researched and put this piece into play. For me, my sense of him changed after reading your book. I wondered if your state as well. Now that he is 100 [laughter] if only. To put that in perspective 100 years ago now American Kids were being shipped to fight in world war i. A little water has come under him since then. I did not have any appreciation for kennedy is a politician. One of the dangers of Something Like the making of a president is that it is one way of looking at a president ial campaign and it is a narrative. He went to milwaukee and said next and is a nut job or some other epicenter. Then he would go to new york and there were all these people on broadway and his voice boomed in the canyons and that people would vote. It is a narrative. We took the approach heavily influenced in my case that a president ial campaign is a series of benchmarks. A series of decisions about how to face the country and then they play out. The thing to focus on in that school of thought are these benchmarks and they are just a little unusual about how we looked at the five years together. What about you, curtis . I think is a better though i think i was so prized about ways the joe reception of civil rights and that he did that doxsee issue the court at some of the worst southern politicians. There were letters back and forth with George Wallace and helping and the gubernatorial campaign. He walked a tightrope between the south and what you needed for a vote. In doing that he and dangers his standing among africanamerican voters. It is a very interesting approach that he took on this issue. He was a real latecomer on civil rights. Only at the very end did he have a dramatic part of the book. We ran into this ambivalence i guess you would say on several topics. Cuba, many of the domestic issues. You cannot speculate about other peopless motives. We were brought up in journalism believing that is not something you should do. With kennedy what makes him so challenging is that you see him approach a issue like say french colonialism in africa. Or Even Health Care among older people. You are trying to separate out the political from the substantive. With kennedy they are so blended that it becomes a challenge. All you can do is say how he approached the issue and how he did. As well as other people advised him. There is always this mixture. It seemed to me that the Democratic Party there was once a time a solid democratic cell. Democratic south. From that time forward most president s had to deal with this unless they were attentive to the civil rights when it was not on the radar screen for american president s and in National Politics was how to finesse this. Really that became very difficult in the 20th century world. And i was wondering to what extent did you feel that was specific to kennedy, the president was going to get elected that did not try to straddle that fence, it does not make it admirable . I think the Movement Really started in 1955 with rosa parks refusing to go to the back of the bus. And there is that time with we are writing about. It is where the civil rights Movement Really a merged. Eisenhower really did not have to worry about it. Truman worried about segregating the military. It was not at the forefront of the nation at this time. Being a old hack journalist i rely on oversimplification. I think the trick with kennedy and civil rights is that the end would be Martin Luther king jr. With a further airs urgency of now. It takes a little bit more effort to take respect for kennedys approach which i would say is the fears urgency of how. It is a different challenge. Watching him change and he did change. As time wore on in the campaign there are moments in the spring of 19 65 when he realized he would not get much help. On the other hand the movement has been heating up and thinks it been happening. We have found a guy who is working for Walter Reuther in the united auto care workers. All of a sudden one day kennedy stood up and said if i have the quote right, damaged the negroes are right. That was his approach to the issue. He was still straddling, he was very frustrated. On the other hand you can see this. You tell the story of how other democratic politicians are trying to navigate these waters after the brown decision. It becomes unavoidable after 1954. In your narrative you show that kennedy and johnson both struggled with how to respond to this burgeoning Civil Rights Movement and it is like pulling them along. If you go back early enough you are showing little rock and how they are being changed by both the pressure of the Civil Rights Movement and the massive resistance to segregation occurring. Kennedy and that larger story comes out i would say not entirely favorably. Trying to find his way. Ultimately he came out taking a direct path that he did. As president a got even better. Use a you show the courtship of deep powerful southern democrats that would bedevil him through his administration. There is a traditional view of kennedys life and politics that his quest for the presidency was imposed upon by a overbearing father. With his brother dying in the world war, it was only trajectory for him. I think he was blasted out of the water by your study where you tell a much more complicated story. It is a story about a in different congressmen and a not very effective senator. Somehow that changes, it changes early. Then he suddenly decides that the presidency is the thing to go for. He talks a little bit about what were the moments there. The volume opens, there is not a actual moment. The only cardiac doubleheader in the history of american politics. Lyndon johnson followed by the heart attacks. His father comes right into it, he has this notion that eisenhower may not run again. What should happen is despite these heart attacks that he will bankroll it and his son would be the running mate. A preposterous idea, of course. Johnson dismissed it out of hand. That is the moment when you see kennedy reacting to politics. There is this look at the Vice President ial nomination. It starts there. From that moment in the fall of 1955 every time he was faced with some issue that makes it impossible to know if you are going to go forward or backwards always forward. One of my favorites moments from the fall of 1955, one of the things we used to do is in a president ial election year. We would speculate about the running mate. In the spring of 1955 there was a item in newsweek where they had a lot of gossip. There was a list and mention on that list were running mates for stevenson. Kennedys name was on that list. This intrigued in the hell out of him. He called the editor at newsweek a reporter many of us knew and asked who is doing the mentioning. The reporter said me. Which is how we used to do it. You would pull one of these lists out of thin air and then all of a sudden somebody was being mentioned for this list. As we talked before the book listening and a couple of years ago he had this ambition that had nothing to do with ideology, we are certain of that. He did not want to run minimum wage or achieve world peace. He had this off the record conversation on a tape which was found any years later about wanting to be in the arena and be in the center of things and deal with the huge issues of the day. Obviously making a difference in a positive direction that it is being there and being in the most important spot. From the tape recording it is like the harvardyale game. A odd parochial reference for him. I think it sums up what the nature of his ambition was. In other words he ran for president because he could. He was seeking the presidency at a time when it was changing in american political life and becoming a much more Important Institution than it had been certainly in the 19th century. It becomes this cult of the presidency by the 1950s and 60s when it is seen as the master institution into the political life. I wonder to what extent did that 1956 experience of getting really be seen as a credible candidate to be back close to the presidency make him think i could actually do this. How important do you think that was . I think in the 1956 Convention Even though he lost he come out of it is this attractive young guy who people would sit up and notice for the first time. That was clear. In the beginning and surely there after there was a meeting down at the place in palm beach. Im sorry, it was in cape cod. Poppa joe and jack would turn on the tv and decided he would run and announced it to the family. They announce he was going to run formerly. Things were already going on. For all of the years that i worked and people had never heard about this. It was urged by dave powers and he said if you really want to be a player you have got to get control of your own state party. Having a knockdown drag it out for all in which kennedys people seize control of the party. They took control of this onion farmers party, much of the material he found comes from a old boston globe account of this battle. That led to the 1956 convention. By the time all of that was in place and his aides were clearly for it. He had talked with ted a lot about it in the office early. Aat he thought he could be formidable candidate. I dont want a Single Person to leave tonight without knowing burke. Nions this is a great story. He was from western massachusetts. I am i going to tell the story but what of the wonderful things in the book is the way in which all of these figures in politics who were in the shadows of history coming to the forefront. Kennedy emerges as a really hardnosed scrapper in this. He as he attempts to gain control. He manages to show just the right amount of phony reluctance. To get dragged into this thing. At the last minute he says ok, i will break guys legs. Also what made it such a entertaining thing is that there are these two aspects. First off the final moments that occurred on a weekend coincided with the wedding of his sister. You have the next president of the United States going backandforth on this shuttle and the same day. He went to Saint Patrick and solemnly help her get married and that he would get back in the shuttle and go back up to boston to help his henchmen bust some chops. That would go on all day, it is like one of those old comedies. The other thing was there was a National Element where they got kennedys participation. It was the advice from his pals they you cannot go to the National Scene without controlling your own. That got his attention. Although it to this fight he was very careful behind the scenes to keep stevenson informed all the way through. I am sure that stevenson was appalled with what he was hearing. On the other hand he had to sit up and take notice. Father joe was also involved. He said do not get involved with those hacks and you will spoil your hands. It is dreadful. He ignored his fathers advice. They were counting delegates in this point of the game. Even better than that. One person and think and we had donahue who passed away, he was a bona fide member of the party. His job the day of the vote was counting. Which is a very important job in politics. If it is the old hotel and downtown, the meeting was being conducted at a ballroom that was just covered with mirrors all the way around. Technically they were a secret ballot. So he told us that he positioned himself using the mirrors so that every time a member of that state committee marked a ballot for the chairman it was behind recording the vote. One thing about the family is that they were very attentive to detail. It was a hallmark of o