John F. Kennedy, Barack Obama, and the Politics of Ethnic Incorporation and Avoidance

Chapter 10: The Politics of Ethnic Avoidance in the Kennedy and Obama Administrations

10 The Politics of Ethnic Avoidance in the Kennedy and Obama Administrations The first ethnic presidents were, by coincidence, also liberal reform presidents. Elected on campaigns promising change, Kennedy and Obama in their first year proposed extensive programs of progressive change. Both also came to power in perilous times, with crises or incipient crises at home and abroad. Both had large majorities in both houses of Congress, but Democratic Party factionalism and antiquated congressional procedures threatened to delay, water down, or defeat their major legislative initiatives. Finally, both men came to office pledging to be transethnic presidents who would avoid issues and interests of particular concern to their ethnic communities. Although neither was wholly successful in the politics of ethnic avoidance, Obama was more successful than Kennedy. Yet, in the end, his presidency was confronted by much more ethnic animus than Kennedy’s. The Kennedy Presidency and Religion The first indication of the politics of ethnic avoidance (or embrace) is selection of the cabinet and senior White House staff. Like all liberal reform presidencies, liberals in the Kennedy administration “had to be satisfied with secondary posts.”1 And like any first of its ethnic group, Kennedy could not appoint too many Catholics in highly visible positions. Speaking to Kenneth O’Donnell, Kennedy said, “If I string along exclusively with Galbraith and Schlesinger and Seymour Hersh and those other Harvard liberals, they’ll fill Washington with wild‑eyed Americans for Democratic Action (ADA) liberals. And if I listen to you and Powers and [John] Bailey . . . we’ll have to organize a White House Knights of Columbus.”2 Kennedy’s “ministry of talent,” to use Sorensen’s phrase, included one Republican among the four senior 165 166 Chapter 10 positions in the cabinet; C. Douglass Dillon, undersecretary of state in the Eisenhower administration and a Nixon supporter, as Treasury secretary; and a corporate executive, Robert McNamara, the president of Ford Motor Company, as Defense secretary. Responding to liberal criticism of his choice of Dillon for the senior financial post, Kennedy said, “. . . we need a Secretary of Treasury who can call a few of those people on Wall Street by their first names.”3 The cabinet was ethnically diverse for the times, including two southerners (secretaries of State and Commerce), two Jews (secretaries of Labor and Health, Education and Welfare), and two Catholics (attorney general and postmaster general). If it had not been for the intervention of his father there may have been only one Catholic in the cabinet. The President was reluctant to appoint his young, inexperienced brother as attorney general but, Joe Kennedy insisted, “Bobby is going to be the attorney general.”4 No women or blacks were appointed to the cabinet. The administration did arrange to have Chicago Congressman William Dawson leak to the press that he had declined the postmaster general post and Robert Weaver, an African American was appointed administrator of the Housing and Home Finance Administration with the promise that it would be elevated to cabinet status, making Weaver the first black member of the cabinet. Andrew Hatcher, a deputy White House press secretary, was the most visible African American in the administration. The President brought many of his longtime Catholic Irish aides onto the White House staff, but mostly as non−policy‑making functionaries (O’Donnell as appointments secretary and Larry O’Brien as liaison to Congress). Arthur Schlesinger, the liberal historian, was appointed assistant to the president, but he too had little involvement in decision making. John Kenneth Galbraith, the celebrated liberal economist, instead of being named chair of the Council of Economic Advisors, was sent away as ambassador to India. Although Kennedy enjoyed Galbraith’s witty, sardonic conversation and memoranda, he thought him too liberal to advise him formally on the economy.5 Instead, he named Walter Heller, a mainstream, centrist University of Minnesota economics professor. The senior foreign policy staff position—national security advisor, went to Republican MacGeorge Bundy, the Brahmin dean of the Harvard faculty. The only liberal of stature on the White House staff was Sorensen, and he was Kennedy’s alter ego. Kennedy had two appointments to the Supreme Court. The liberal, Jewish Arthur Goldberg left the cabinet as Labor secretary to replace Felix Frankfurter, and Byron White, a friend of the president, Protestant and centrist, replaced Charles Evans Whittaker. 167 The Politics of Ethnic Avoidance Kennedy’s main preoccupation in the presidency was foreign policy, especially the...