JFK at 100: Secrets of Camelot, hiding in plain sight
The 29th of this month marks the 100th anniversary of the birth of our 35th president, John F. Kennedy. That's the subject of our commentary this morning, from Tom Oliphant, co-author of the new book, "The Road to Camelot," published by CBS' Simon & Schuster:
Until a couple of years ago, I had no idea that John Kennedy rejected Lyndon Johnson barely two hours before he picked him as his running mate.
He and his brother, Robert, had falsely assumed for months that Johnson didn't want the Veep spot. But when JFK suddenly realized Johnson was in fact lusting for the job, he and his brother batted it around, but decided they really didn't want Johnson. The issue was trust.
Still, they needed a way to placate the powerful Texan if they didn't pick him, but failed to find it. As Bob Kennedy ruefully put it, "We came up with the idea of trying to get rid of him … and it didn't work."
These bits of history are hardly deep, dark secrets. They have been hiding in plain sight for decades, mostly at the Kennedy Presidential Library in Boston, an amazing collection of some 25 million pieces of paper and more than 1,600 detailed oral histories.
What astonished my writing partner, Curtis Wilkie, and me was that this gigantic record is largely untouched -- and more stuff is becoming available all the time.
Burrowing in those 60-year-old files, we discovered that Kennedy's beloved father was welcomed for his money much more than for his advice.
We even found evidence that Candidate Kennedy knew all about the looming Bay of Pigs invasion from his friends, not the CIA.
And his own polls showed that, while Richard Nixon certainly looked terrible during those famous debates, they barely affected the horse race.
This is the tip of an immense iceberg. Our small book is just the start. There is still a ton of work to do.
For more info:
- "The Road to Camelot: Inside JFK's Five-Year Campaign" by Thomas Oliphant and Curtis Wilkie (Simon & Schuster); Also available in eBook format
- John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, Boston