Kennedy Versus Lodge: The 1952 Massachusetts Senate Race Review

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(More customer reviews)While there have been many books written about presidential campaigns, relatively few books have been written about important congressional campaigns. Thomas Whalen's "Kennedy versus Lodge" attempts to correct this bias by offering the reader a well-written, well-researched account of a truly historic US Senate race in Massachusetts between two of the most important political families in American history. Until 1952 the dominant political family in Massachusetts and New England was the Republican Lodge family, and they were far better-known and more distinguished than the Kennedys. The Lodges were descended from the original English, Puritan colonists who had settled Massachusetts in the 1600's, and they had made their millions in the nineteenth century while the Kennedys and other Irish Catholic immigrants to Boston were fighting just to survive. From the 1880's to the 1920's the family's most famous figure was Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, Sr. A close friend of Theodore Roosevelt and one of the most powerful men in Congress, Lodge led the fight to keep the USA out of the League of Nations and became President Woodrow Wilson's most hated enemy. Lodge also looked down his nose at the "grubby" Irish Catholic immigrants who were beginning to outnumber the older Protestant English families (called "Yankees" or "Brahmins") who had dominated Massachusetts politics since the United States became an independent nation. In 1916 Lodge faced a stiff challenge for his Senate seat by John "Honey Fitz" Fitzgerald, the popular Irish Catholic Mayor of Boston, and who was John F. Kennedy's grandfather. Lodge narrowly defeated Fitzgerald, thus beginning a great rivalry between the two families. Fitzgerald's daughter, Rose, desperately wanted to avenge her father's defeat by the Lodges, and in 1952 she got her chance when her handsome and charming son, Congressman John F. Kennedy, ran against Lodge's grandson and namesake, Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr., for a Senate seat. Lodge was the dominant politician in New England and a national leader of Liberal Republicans (and there used to be lots of Liberal Republicans). Kennedy was originally seen as the underdog in the race, and Lodge had beaten some tough Irish Catholic politicians before. Lodge even advised JFK's tough father, Joe, to "save his money" and avoid the race. Of course, that only made the Kennedys even more determined to "get even" and defeat the Lodges once and for all. They poured a huge amount of money into the race, ran a slick advertising campaign, and John F. Kennedy himself repeatedly visited every town and village in Massachusetts. Lodge, however, was so confident of victory that he ignored his own race and spent most of 1952 helping to lead the fight to get the Republican presidential nomination for Dwight Eisenhower and defeat the conservative Republican candidate, Senator Robert Taft of Ohio. Eisenhower won the nomination, but Taft's angry supporters in Massachusetts vowed revenge against Lodge and defected to Kennedy's campaign. Lodge didn't get his own Senate campaign started until August 1952, and by then the Kennedy's campaign "machine" was running at full steam. In the end John F. Kennedy narrowly defeated Lodge and "evened the score" for the Kennedys. As Whalen points out, this Senate campaign truly made history. If Kennedy hadn't beaten Lodge, he almost certainly would never have become President. And if Lodge had won, then he would have become one of the most powerful Republicans in America, and could have been the Republican presidential nominee in 1960 instead of Richard Nixon. And, of course, Kennedy's victory allowed his family to replace the Lodges as New England's most powerful and famous political dynasty. After their 1952 defeat, the Lodges never again elected a member of their family to political office, and today the family has "retired" from political life. Overall, this is a fine book about an important Senate race between two wealthy and prominent politicians whose careers would change American history, for better and for worse.

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