American Experience

Slate: I’m for Roosevelt

Narrator: In 1932, Joe Kennedy jumped on the political bandwagon and acquired a powerful patron— Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Kennedy did everything he could to get Roosevelt elected. He raised $200,000 for the campaign and began angling for a Cabinet post.

James Roosevelt, eldest son of FDR: Joe Kennedy wanted political power and so, the best way to get it was to make broad use of his contacts with Father, and he proceeded to do just that.

Narrator: Roosevelt seemed just the sort of languid patrician of whom Kennedy had always been contemptuous, but FDR’s affable manner masked cold political judgment. He would use Kennedy, but he would never trust him.

For nearly two years, Kennedy waited for the Cabinet post he thought he deserved. His family had grown to nine children with the birth of Teddy in 1932.

Finally, Roosevelt gave him what seemed the most unlikely job imaginable, riding herd on Wall Street as Chairman of the brand-new Securities and Exchange Commission.

It seemed to many that Roosevelt had put the fox in charge of the chicken coop.

Frank Waldrop, Editor, Washington Times-Herald: He knew all the ways that these jokers were worked, you see. He’d been there and, of course, he had, so he was going to straighten them up and he did.

Narrator: Yet for all the Kennedys’ wealth and celebrity, the old money and older families of Cape Cod still looked down on them.

Larry Newman, journalist and Kennedy neighbor: Nobody in Hyannis Port at that time, when they first moved here, had anything to do with the Kennedys. They weren’t a part of the neighborhood and Joe Kennedy loved it that way. He didn’t like these people down here.

Narrator: Joe Kennedy gave his sons every advantage to compete in the Brahmin world, sending them to exclusive prep schools and on to Harvard to study law and government. None of them would need to go into business. Trust funds would allow them to follow their father into public life. The son who seemed most likely to succeed was Joe, Jr.

John Kenneth Galbraith, Harvard Tutor, Winthrop House: He was everybody’s favorite student. He was hard-working, concerned with public issues, imaginative. Jack Kennedy, by contrast, was known to have a large social agenda, be much more concerned with ensuring that he enjoyed life.

Narrator: Joseph Kennedy worried about his second son. He knew Jack was witty and well read, but at boarding school, he insisted on acting the clown.

“The happy-go-lucky manner,” his father wrote his headmaster, “does not portend well for his future development.”

Nigel Hamilton, JFK Biographer: How would he ever succeed in life — and he obviously wished to succeed, underneath this facade of rebellion — if he had cast himself as the clown of the family, the one who never gets anything done?

Narrator: Illness also plagued Jack. He caught every childhood disease, nearly died from scarlet fever. He had been born with one leg slightly shorter than the other, giving him the bad back that would be a lifelong curse. He struggled constantly to keep up with his older brother, who, he knew, was his parents’ favorite.

By 1938, Joseph Kennedy’s ceaseless self-promotion had begun to pay off. A national poll placed him fifth among likely candidates to succeed Roosevelt. Kennedy lobbied FDR to appoint him ambassador to Great Britain. The President knew that Kennedy’s loyalty to him was dwarfed by his ambitions for himself and sending him to London would pay off political debts, please Irish American voters and get Kennedy out of the way.