Life on the New Frontier

In the eye of the storm, Jackie Kennedy's forlorn hopes for a week or two of secluded vacationing at Hyannisport with her husband were quickly washed overboard. For exactly two days the Democratic presidential nominee devoted him self entirely to the leisurely life -- cruising in his father's 52-ft. yacht The Marlin (built in 1930 for Edsel Ford), browsing through Anthony Trollope's novel The American Senator, swimming, napping, and playing in the backyard with Daughter Caroline, 2 1/2. Then the special switch board began to flash like a swarm of fire flies, his appointment book began to fill up ominously, and Jack Kennedy found himself in the midst of a presidential campaign and more.

For Bobby Kennedy, his relentless, restless campaign manager, there was almost no time at all for relaxation. An anxious friend admonished him: "You haven't rested a single minute. Is this the way it will be? Will there be this much work all the time?" Bobby, nose peeling from the sun, looked at Nantucket Sound for a wistful moment before giving his answer: "Yes." Then he turned to his worried wife Ethel: "We can rest after November."

Strategists on the Grass. When Bobby blew the bugle, Connecticut's Democratic State Chairman John Bailey and Washington Lawyer Jim Rowe, representing Vice-Presidential Nominee Lyndon Johnson, hurried to Hyannisport for a series of alfresco strategy lessons. Each morning eight thickly padded green chaise longues were wheeled out onto Bobby's lawn and assembled in a circle, along with a long-leashed telephone, maps, charts and other paraphernalia. There Bobby, Jack and their top strategists -- Kenny O'Donnell, Larry O'Brien, Brother-in-Law Steve Smith, Bailey and Rowe -- began to map out the looming campaign. Bobby and Steve stripped to the waist to absorb the sun along with the strategy, and Old Pro Bailey unbent enough to take off his necktie. From time to time one of Bobby's seven children wandered into the circle, but for all their informality, the conferees produced a series of decisions:

P:The Kennedy campaign would begin earlier than most (around Sept. 1), in Hawaii and Alaska. He had chosen the two newest states for his kickoff, explained Jack Kennedy with unabashed corniness, because "they are, in a sense, symbols of the New Frontier." On Labor Day, Jack would make the traditional stem-winding speech before the big annual A.F.L.-C.LO. rally in Detroit's Cadillac Square, and after that he would take to the road in earnest, in tours of seven or eight days each, with no more than a day or two off between trips.

P:A major effort will be made to persuade the nation's some 25 million unregistered voters (including 2,000,000 who will reach their 21st birthdays before Election Day) to sign up with the Democrats. To handle this key job, Kennedy picked an old friend, New Jersey Congressman Frank Thompson Jr., 42, as the head of a nationwide organization of door-to-door volunteers. Said Thompson, after a fast trip to Hyannisport: "We're going to canvass every precinct." P:The usual "independent volunteers" or ganization was set up, charged with luring not only independents and Republicans into the Kennedy camp, but also "dissident Democrats" -- that is, Northern and Eastern Democrats who cannot stand Johnson, and Southern Democrats who quail at Jack. National Chairman: Denver Lawyer (and onetime University of Colorado All-America football hero) Byron ("Whizzer") White, 43. White was studying as a Rhodes scholar and Jack Kennedy was prowling around as the U.S. ambassador's son when they met at Oxford in 1939; they met again as naval officers in the South Pacific during World War II, and became close friends in Washington in the null when Jack was a freshman Congressman from Massachusetts and White a law clerk for Chief Justice Fred Vinson. P:In an effort to bring Virginia back into the Democratic fold (in 1952 and 1956 the state went to Eisenhower), Kennedy appointed Charlottesville Lawyer William Battle, 39, son of former Governor John Battle, to direct his Virginia campaign. Bill Battle is another old Navy friend; in 1943 he commanded the PT-boat group that rescued Kennedy and his crew from an island after their PT boat had been sliced apart by a Japanese destroyer in the South Pacific.

Boomerang in the Air. Still unsolved when the strategists broke off their meetings was the problem of what to do about the August session of Congress, which will find Richard Nixon presiding over the Senate, Lyndon Johnson back in the slot as majority leader, Kennedy the junior Senator from Massachusetts, and both Kentucky's Thruston Morton, G.O.P. national chairman, and Washington's Henry ("Scoop") Jackson, Democratic national chairman, in the chamber. New York Republican Senator Kenneth Keating gave a hint of problems to come when he tauntingly offered to assist Jack Kennedy in writing the platform's wide-open civil rights promises into law. Huffed Kennedy's press secretary, Pierre Salinger: "If Senator Keating will read the Democratic platform, he will find the bulk of it relates to executive action." With party mischief a certainty, the special session may become a bruising boomerang for Kennedy and Johnson.

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