He added sociological insight: Hyannis Port was not just the location of the Kennedy family compound but a place “molded in the best and simplest of the old New England manner, its homes less ostentatious and snugger in style than the summer homes of the Long Island Hamptons.” The Kennedys, White noted, had been “the first of the Irish to invade its quiet.” He recorded body language, the weather, the shifting moods of the candidates-and also of their aides, wives and families. He covered the inside-campaign dynamics: the strategy meetings, the internal polling, the publicity and marketing efforts. Instead, White covered campaigns with a novelist’s eye, writing about what candidates ate and drank (“his first drink of the day, a Daiquiri”), the smell in the rooms they occupied (“The hall stank of sweat and stale tobacco”), even the amount of shine on their footwear (“of his two shoes, one was glossily polished as usual-the other scuffed and dirty”). The conventional wisdom of 1960 held that a candidate’s campaign began when he announced he was running and that reporters should follow him from stop to stop, dutifully recording all that was said and how the crowds responded.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |