Whistle While You Work

Aboard the Southern Pacific's New Frontier Special, the mood varied from convivial nostalgia in the bar and press cars, as oldtimers recalled the whistle-stop campaigns of the past, to steadily rising spirits in the blue-carpeted observation car, where Jack Kennedy and his aides mulled over the speeches and counted noses at every stop. "This train is headed not only south," Kennedy shouted from the rear platform to a crowd in Marysville, Calif., "but it's headed toward Washington!"

As the three big diesels hauled the 15-car campaign train through the Cascade Mountains into California at the beginning of the two-day trip, Kennedy--and the trackside crowds--warmed to the oldfashioned whistle-stop idea. In tiny Dunsmuir, deep in the shadows of 14,000-ft. Mount Shasta, 500 chilly citizens and a tiny burro greeted the candidate and the new day with a rousing cheer that echoed up the canyon. At Redding the sun was warmer, and 1,500 citizens lined up under a fringe of trees along the siding while Kennedy trotted out the old nostalgia ("I follow here in 1960 the same trail Harry Truman took in 1948 when he came down this valley and carried California in the 1948 election"). At Sacramento, 5,000 massed in the station to hear Kennedy invoke the shade of a famous Republican: "Abraham Lincoln said, T know there is a God and he hates injustice. I see the storm coming and I see his hand in it. If he has a place and part for me, I am ready.' And I say in this campaign as the storm breaks around the great Republic, that there is a place for us and we are ready."

Adlai & Mother. All through the hot day the train clacked through the almond groves and peach orchards of the Central Valley, and Kennedy pulled the stops, one by one. In Richmond, introducing his sister, Pat Lawford, it was American motherhood ("My wife is home, and we are having a baby--a boy--in November"). A reference to Adlai Stevenson drew loud cheers in Richmond, deep in Stevenson heartland. There were the in evitable home-grown beauties bearing gifts: olives and peaches in Red Bluff, a jug of water in Dunsmuir, a camellia plant in Sacramento (earlier in the week there were Shoshoni war bonnets in Pocatello). And in Roseville the surprise package was California's Governor Pat Brown, who had joined the trackside audience, clung to the rear-platform railing when the train started off unexpectedly, was finally hauled aboard by Kennedy.

Pulling into Oakland, the New Frontier Special was as gay as a football train, and Campaign Schedule Manager Kenny O'Donnell was busy revamping Kennedy's schedule to include more and longer whistle stops. In Oakland, the gloomy forecasts of local politicos came to nothing: the civic auditorium brimmed over with 6,000 yelling Democrats, and 500 others shuffled in the street outside.

Easing into Bakersfield for the whistle-stop windup the next day, the Kennedy train looked like a rolling fruit stand, jammed with the offerings of a dozen Central Valley towns.

In Los Angeles the campaign story was the same: 7,000 full-throated Californians filled the Los Angeles Shrine Auditorium while another 2,000 gathered outside. Jack Kennedy was visibly weary, with deep circles under his eyes and an ominous hoarseness creeping into his voice, but he cracked out a cogent speech that was largely off the cuff.

Jumpy Moods. Behind Kennedy lay his first full week of campaigning as a national candidate, along a trail that covered Alaska, Michigan, and the far West. It was a week of ups and downs, exhilarating and disappointing by turn. In Detroit, 35.000 listless labor unionists turned up in Cadillac Square for the traditional Labor Day speech--far fewer than the 100,000 the labor bosses had promised. In Portland, Ore., on the other hand, several hundred latecomers were turned away at the door of the Civic Auditorium, while the youthful capacity crowd of 6,000 whooped it up inside with Happy Days Are Here Again and balloons and swarmed onto the stage after the beaming candidate. The size and mood of the crowds varied puzzlingly from stop to stop, and Kennedy's most consistent admirers seemed to be the teenagers, who swarmed around him like the children of Hamelin around the piper--a good sign, according to John Bailey, Kennedy's Connecticut henchman, who saw a parallel to the youngsters who liked Ike so well in 1952.

Kennedy's own performance was as unpredictable as his audiences. Often, when his political antennae sensed the mood of his listeners, he threw away his carefully prepared texts (to the despair of such highcaliber, hard-working speechwriters as Dick Goodwin, Ted Sorensen and John Bartlow Martin) and launched into impromptu speeches with an eloquence and fervor that reminded middle-aged listeners of the young F.D.R., and touched off wild ovations. Again, he plodded through his speeches as unenthusiastically as his listeners responded to them. Under the direction of Voice Coach Blair McClosky, the Kennedy voice was usually well modulated, right from the diaphragm. But occasionally it launched into uncontrolled stridency.

In his off-the-cuff substitutions for formal speeches, Kennedy sometimes raced too briskly to the point; often he was guilty of oversimplification. But in happier moments (notably in press conferences and informal question-and-answer sessions), he impressed the experts with his detailed knowledge, eloquence and deft uptake. As the campaign surged into high gear, Kennedy left a jet stream of issues behind him (see box), along with the jagged seismograph of his public image. Getting into the swing of it, he proved that he can be as tough, skillful and attractive as any other candidate currently on the stump--and worthy of Dick Nixon's wariest respect.

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