Loyalty as a Career

...After successfully managing Kennedy's 1960 Presidential campaign, O'Brien was assigned the role of White House Congressional liaison chief...

...He concludes: "I suppose we must have taken the Sequoia out 40 or 50 times in those years...

...We started with the fact that our candidate was young, rich, handsome, and unmarried, a combination that women of all ages seemed to find irresistable-the young ones wanted to marry him and the older ones wanted to mother him...

...Nor, certainly, did they get involved because of ideals or ideology...

...O'Brien remarks that he envisioned the forces favoring and opposing social progress as "two great armies facing one another across a vast field of battle...

...His job was to build majorities for the Administration's programs-which, incidentally, he argues was done more effectively than Kennedy is normally given credit for-and his description of how he went about the task provides a fascinating insight not only into his method of operation but into the workings of our governmental system...

...All in all," O'Brien reports, "Kennedy had about 2,500 separate contacts with members of Congress during his first year of office, exclusive of correspondence...

...This he elicited partly as an Irishman ("I viewed the Kennedy-Lodge race," writes O'Brien, "as a historic confrontation between the flower of the Yankee establishment and the best that we newer Americans could put forward as our champion...

...In a section that should be sobering to those who idealize life in the corridors of power, O'Brien details his courting of Congressmen on the President's yacht Sequoia...

...By the time of his stint as Democratic National Chairman, from 1970-72, O'Brien had become hard-hitting and almost ideological-attacking Nixonomics and assaults on civil liberties as forcefully, or more forcefully, than most Democratic leaders...

...And following the 1952 victory, he held a stag for 500 workers at Boston's Parker House...

...I usually had two or three 'targets' for the evening and, in this informal, relaxed setting, I was sometimes able to win cooperation that I might not have achieved in someone's office on Capitol Hill...

...Once that had been done, I hadn't worried much about what my candidates did when they took office...

...Capitol Hill was more complex and exciting-more fun, to be honest about it-than any political campaign, but increasingly I realized that I was doing more than playing an exciting game...

...Yet aside from a Depression background that made him sympathetic to the problems of poor people, and a natural process of maturation, O'Brien offers no explanation for his change...

...One of the most interesting aspects of the book is his personal transformation...

...But he thanked the occasional Republican who needed thanking by a phone call, which could not be reproduced for campaign purposes...

...a story about how McGovern, attempting to "debate" with his absent opponent by employing Nixon news clips, tried so hard to be fair that the consensus was the Republican had won...

...Thus, Kennedy's contacts with Congressmen in 1961, as enumerated by O'Brien, included: 32 leadership breakfasts, approximately 90 private conversations with Congressional leaders, plus coffee hours and bill-signing sessions that brought 500 Senators and Representatives to the White House...

...Of course, No Final Victories is not simply a picture of loyalty in politics...

...Lodge's record was so resolutely middle-of-the-road that there was some debate within our camps as to whether Kennedy should criticize him for being too conservative or too liberal...

...It also has its share of anecdotes-a recounting of why Nixon's "last press conference" in 1962 was not used in Humphrey's television advertisements in 1968...

...Fortunately, though, this does not diminish the great virtue of No Final Victories-its description of the relationship of loyalty to politics...

...O'Brien describes how everyone who attended a get-together for organizers signed a guest book and received an individual thank-you card...

...My work on Capitol Hill dealt with matters of substance, matters of the utmost national importance-the minimum wage, Medicare, civil rights, education, and all the rest of the Democratic legislative agenda...

...In my remarks as toastmaster," he notes, "I stressed the importance of keeping our group together...

...Gradually, he came to realize that winning was more than a goal in itself: 'Tor a long time, I had viewed politics as an exciting game and my part in the game as helping win elections...

...In America, on the other hand, the fact that parties have often lacked such ideals has limited political participation, and the circles of those whose loyalty can be assured through individual contact is obviously small...

...The cruises, however pleasant, were also work...

...but mainly through fostering a sense of personal ties and friendship...

...partly on the basis of sex appeal ("In 1952, womanpower was basic to the Kennedy campaign...

...How well I did my job could affect the lives of millions of my fellow Americans...

...In a way this should not be surprising, for few people can match his first-hand knowledge of the subject...

...O'Brien recalls that Kennedy once told him, "I was up there [in Congress] for 14 years, and I don't recall that Truman or Eisenhower or anyone on their staffs ever said one word to me about legislation...

...No, the reason for Kennedy's first support was loyalty...

...He has spent an entire political career offering and seeking loyalty-from 1952, when he managed John F. Kennedy's Senatorial race in Massachusetts, through the years he sought to cajole Congress into supporting President Kennedy's legislative proposals, to the Presidential campaigns he organized for Hubert Humphrey in 1968 and George Mc-Govern in 1972, despite an apparent fatigue with the whole business...

...We've got to do better than that...

...Reviewed by Steven Kelman Author, "Behind the Berlin Wall," "Push Comes to Shove" The simple loyalty of one human being to another has always been a major factor in history, and Larry O'Brien's chatty, engaging memoir unpretentiously illuminates how it functions in American politics...

...In 1952, as O'Brien says: "There was little difference between the two candidates [Henry Cabot Lodge and Kennedy] on the issues...

...All this ultimately gives Larry O'Brien's "life in polities" a rather sisyphean quality...

...If O'Brien does not emerge as a great literary stylist, he is nevertheless straightforward and a good raconteur...

...The truth is that, after a while, you wished you were home with a good book...

...Moreover, personal loyalty tends to break down as a national force in a country with geographical distances as large as ours...

...a memo prepared by the party's security service on how to deal with a possible "nude-in" at the 1972 Democratic convention in Miami...

...You can't invite leaders in Boise or Buffalo onto the Presidential yacht as easily as you can the members of Congress...

...O'Brien points out that Kennedy's initial strength in Massachusetts didn't come from the Democratic machine of the early '50s: The people who first worked for him were not motivated by patronage...

...In Western Europe, where political parties possess strong organizations at both the national and local level, allegiance is primarily to the ideals or interests a party represents...

...In addition, "He used to thank Democrats who'd helped on a bill with a personal note-that they could use in their campaigns...