By CRISTINA JANNEY
Hays Post
John F. Kennedy changed the way politicians campaign in his historic run up to the the presidency, said Pulitzer Prize-winning author Thomas Oliphant.
Kennedy’s presidential campaign made a sweep through Kansas in 1959, which included a stop in Hays.
Thomas Oliphant, co-author of “Road to Camelot,” will be the keynote speaker at a banquet at 7 p.m. Nov. 20 at the former Kennedy Middle School, commemorating the 60th anniversary of JFK’s campaign trip to Kansas.
“What we discovered in our research that the collection of almost exclusively young people around him starting basically in 1956, they invented modern politics on the fly,” Oliphant said in an interview via phone with Hays Post.
“So many of the things we see today — for better and for worse — polling, how you organize in non-primary states, how you organize in primary states, the use of television advertising on a scale that had never been attempted before and on and on — the modern game that we watch today essentially begins in 1960.”
Oliphant said northwest Kansas at that time had a pocket of Democratic support despite Kansas over time being generally a conservative state.
“In the 1950s and in 1960, northwest Kansas for the Democrats was a sort of isthmus of strength or an island of strength. Getting out to where the Democrats were made all the sense in the world,” Oliphant said.
JFK also made stops during his trip in Wichita, Kansas City, Dodge City and Salina, but almost never made it to Hays, Oliphant said. Hays didn’t have an airport big enough at the time to accept his DC-3 airplane. A Hays resident flew to Salina in a small plane and picked up Kennedy and flew him back to Hays to land on what was then a grass landing strip.
JFK was greeted upon his arrival to Hays by the marching band from the local Catholic school, which would eventually became Thomas More Prep-Marian. Oliphant noted Kansas was not particularly Catholic at the time, either, but Hays and the surrounding rural communities were strongly Catholic, based on the settlement of Catholic Volga Germans immigrants in the area.
Kennedy was only in Hays five or six hours, but was here long enough for a fundraising dinner.
All 645 people in attendance in 1959 that Friday evening ate chicken fried steak except for one person who requested fish — JFK. Norbert Dreiling, the Hays attorney and Sixth Congressional District Chairman who was instrumental in bringing JFK to Hays, had the bishop grant a dispensation allowing Catholics in attendance to eat meat on a Friday. That provision was noted in the banquet program.
Oliphant said Kennedy had been running for president for three years by the time he made his trip to Hays. He was making about 15 stops a year, Oliphant said.
“You have a very practiced candidate by the end of 1959 just almost on the eve of all the amazing things that happened the following year,” Oliphant said. “By then, his travel routine was really settled. He generally would have eaten a quick meal that included meat although he wouldn’t have on this Friday. He would eat in his hotel room so he wouldn’t have to worry about eating at the event.”
Kennedy did not stay the night in Hays, but when he did stay overnight, his staff would ask his host for a long board to place under his bed to help with his back problems. Kennedy stayed earlier in the 1950s with Gov. Docking, and his family saved the board they used to support Kennedy’s bed.
Oliphant said politicians are still using Kennedy’s campaign model today.
“All the most important aspects of national politics were really invented during those four or five years when JFK put his operation together,” Oliphant said. “Essentially everything they did had never been done before, but the success of it created a whole new generation of copycats.
“In fact, four years later, the successful Republican campaign by Barry Goldwater was organized along the same lines that Kennedy had used. The guy who put together the Goldwater operation, partisan differences aside, was an avid student of the way JFK did politics, and if you look at the Goldwater campaign, you kind of see the ultimate compliment, which is imitation.”
In researching the book on Kennedy, Oliphant said he became even more interested in the former president.
“I had not understood how political he was,” he said. “This guy did a lot more everyday than just make speeches that were written eloquently. He loved the game. He understood politics as the process that supplies the grease in our society to get things done.
“I was struck over and over again in the research how minutely he followed this kind of approach and how down to the tiniest detail. He loved the tactical infighting, actually.”
Kennedy used the theme of a new frontier in his campaign.
JFK delivered at stump speech in Hays, Oliphant said. One of the big lines in that speech was his vow to get this country moving again. He based that theme on a detailed analysis of the country’s condition that came to the conclusion that at the end of the 1950s American life was a little stuck in the mud and there needed to be a new burst of energy, Oliphant said.
Oliphant said the more he researched Kennedy, the more fascinated he became.
“All his accounts of him in Hays were that he was very vigorous and engaged in the hours that he was there, but the feeling was mutual. This would have been the fifth stop on a two-day swing through Kansas and apparently he was alive and vigorous at the end of it as he was at the beginning of it and that is typical of him.”
Oliphant said JFK had a knack for connecting with the average voter. He said the ability to connect likely started in the Navy during the war.
“You know he ran for Congress before he ran for president,” Oliphant said. “His first campaign was in 1946 and it was for a seat in the House of Representatives. You don’t win one of those fights with eloquence. Yo win it with hard work — sometimes door-to-door. The process forced Kennedy to either learn to relate to people or to be a failure. ”
Oliphant and his co-author were stuck when they looked at Kennedy’s early Congressional campaigns about how he used retail campaigning, including meeting with small groups, going door-to-door and doing walking tours.
“The more he did it,” Oliphant said, “the more it became apparent to us, the more he liked it. … It really helps if you like people, if you like meeting people you’ve never known before. Kennedy turned into one of those. He didn’t come by it naturally, but the time he arrived in Hays, he had been a practicing national politician for 14 years — by then, behaving in ways that ordinary Americans could relate to was second nature to him.”
The Nov. 20 event is being organized by the Ellis County Democratic Party.
General admission tickets to the banquet are now on sale at $50 each. Tickets for the banquet may be purchased at 1500 Vine or online by clicking here.
Other activities commemorating JFK’s visit
At 7 p.m. Tuesday, Nov. 19, in the Fort Hays Ballroom, there will be a panel discussion about JFK’s trip to Hays, its impact, and the role of Norbert Dreiling, the Hays attorney and Sixth Congressional District Chairman who was instrumental in bringing JFK to Hays. Panelists will be longtime leader of local, state and national Democratic politics, Hays attorney John Bird; Larry Gould, chairman of Political Science Department at FHSU; and Randy Gonzales, who graduated in May from FHSU with master’s degree in history and who wrote his thesis on Kennedy’s trip to Hays. The event is free and open to the public.
At 3:30 p.m. Wednesday, Nov. 20, in the Memorial Union, Oliphant will answer questions at a historical commemoration of Kennedy’s news conference 60 years ago. The location will be adjacent to where JFK held his press gathering. The event is free and open to the public.
Forsyth Library on the FHSU campus opened an exhibit on Nov. 7 on JFK’s trip to Hays and on Dreiling’s role. It can be viewed in the south study area.