Abstract
When John F. Kennedy was deciding whether or not to seek the presidency in 1960, he had one particularly enthusiastic supporter: his father. Joseph P. Kennedy told his son that being a Roman Catholic would make him a powerful contender:
Just remember, this country is not a private preserve for Protestants. There’s a whole new generation out there and it’s filled with the sons and daughters of immigrants from all over the world and those people are going to be mighty proud that one of their own is running for president. And that pride will be your spur, it will give your campaign an intensity we’ve never seen in public life. Mark my words, it’s true.1
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Notes
Quoted in Michael Barone, Our Country: The Shaping of America from Roosevelt to Reagan (New York: Free Press, 1990), 310.
Richard M. Nixon, Six Crises (New York: Warner Books, 1979 edition), 436.
See Robert A. Divine, Foreign Policy and U.S. Presidential Elections, 1952–1960 (New York: New Viewpoints, 1974), 114.
Quoted in Theodore C. Sorensen, Kennedy (New York: Bantam Books, 1966), 207.
Quoted in Theodore H. White, The Making of the President, 1960 (New York: New American Library, 1961), 125.
The story is told in E. J. Dionne, Jr., “Catholics and the Democrats: Estrangement but not Desertion,” in Party Coalitions in the 1980s, ed. Seymour Martin Lipset (San Francisco, CA: Institute for Contemporary Studies, 1981), 308.
Everett Carll Ladd, Jr., “Foreword,” in John Kenneth White, The Fractured Electorate: Political Parties and Social Change in Southern New England (Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 1983), ix–x.
Peter Steinfels, A People Adrift: The Crisis of the Roman Catholic Church in America (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2003), 104.
See Samuel P. Huntington, Who Are We?: American National Identity and the Challenges It Faces (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2004), 101–102.
See William V. D’Antonio, James D. Davidson, Dean R. Hoge, and Ruth A. Wallace, American Catholic Laity in a Changing Church (Kansas City, MO: Sheed and Ward, 1989), 44.
Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, ed. J. P. Mayer (New York: Harper and Row, 1966), 450.
See Robert Dallek, An Unfinished Life: John F. Kennedy, 1917–1963 (Boston, MA: Little, Brown, 2003), 691.
See John Kenneth White and William V. D’Antonio, “Catholics Return to the Fold: The Catholic Vote in 1996,” Public Perspective, June/July 1997, pp. 45–48.
Daniel J. Wakin, “A Divisive Issue for Catholics: Bishops, Politicians, and Communion,” New York Times, May 31, 2004, A-12.
See Maureen Dowd, “Vote and Be Damned,” New York Times, October 17, 2004, WK-11.
Matt Malone, “Catholics and Candidates,” America, May 17, 2004, 8.
E. E. Schattschneider, The SemiSovereign People: A Realist’s View of Democracy in America (Hindale, IL: the Dryden Press. 1975. 71) (italics is in the original).
See David D. Kirkpatrick, “Bush Campaign Seeks Help from Congregations,” New York Times, June 3, 2004, A-1.
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© 2007 Mark J. Rozell and Gleaves Whitney
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White, J.K., D’Antonio, W. (2007). Catholics and the Politics of Change: The Presidential Campaigns of Two JFKs. In: Rozell, M.J., Whitney, G. (eds) Religion and the Bush Presidency. The Evolving American Presidency Series. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230607354_4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230607354_4
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