Sublime

JFK.

On Tuesday afternoon, Johnson challenged Jack to a debate before the Massachusetts and Texas delegations. When Kennedy accepted, Johnson assailed his voting record on farm legislation and civil rights, and his absenteeism. Jack deftly turned aside the criticism by saying he saw no need for a debate with Johnson “because I don’t think that Senator

Kennedy was campaigning all over the country, but he not only was young—forty-one—but looked much younger, far too young to be a President. Furthermore, he was a Catholic. The veteran big-city bosses were Catholics, all of them: Daley, Lawrence, DiSalle, De Sapio, Prendergast, Bailey. They would never put a Catholic at the head of their party’s

In his November 1963 appearance before the Congress, Johnson said: “John Kennedy’s death commands what his life conveyed—that America must move forward. Let us turn away from the fanatics of the far left and the far right, from the apostles of bitterness and bigotry, from those defiant of law, and those who pour venom into our Nation’s

Thirty-one thousand and 21,000—in an election that was decided by 46,000 votes, the weight of those votes could hardly have been a minor factor. Whatever the explanation for the results from the “ethnic bloc” in Texas, John Kennedy had selected Lyndon Johnson in part to take back Texas for the Democratic presidential ticket, and Johnson had done