Next month will mark the 50th anniversary of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. The occasion will be recalled in print and on air. We’ll be reminded that JFK was succeeded by Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson, who went on to win re-election in 1964. It might also be noted that Johnson vied with Kennedy for the Democrats’ presidential nomination in 1960 and finished runner-up at the national convention with 409 first-ballot votes to Kennedy’s 806.
But ironically Johnson, the Senate Majority leader and a major national player, had helped seriously kick-start Kennedy’s 1960 ambitions. The account is part of Robert A. Caro’s well-written, superbly-researched best seller: “The Years of Lyndon Johnson: The Passage of Power.”
The year was 1957. Johnson was the unquestioned, upper-cased Leader of the Senate and was already planning strategies for a presidential run. John Kennedy was the undistinguished son of wealthy Joe Kennedy. The latter asked Johnson in 1957 if he would fill a vacant seat on the Foreign Relations Committee with his son. He said he’d “never forget the favor for the rest of his life.” Johnson liked that scenario. Besides, by appointing Kennedy, he could pass over Estes Kefauver, who looked like a serious presidential contender again in 1960. Johnson didn’t consider young Kennedy a threat. In fact he often referred to him as “the boy.” The Foreign Relations seat, however, would give Kennedy the sort of national forum he needed for his own presidential aspirations.
The real irony is that Johnson felt that by elevating Kennedy, the junior senator from Massachusetts might become a “useful asset” to Johnson, a southern presidential candidate who could likely use a running mate from the Northeast. “It wouldn’t be a bad idea to build one up,” writes Caro, “particularly one who had a father as powerful as Jack Kennedy’s.”