Inside the Kennedy White House

JFK's election brought Irish-American Catholics to the center of U.S. power

Finally, there's Lawrence O'Brien, whose parents came from Cork. They were a deeply political family. Young Lawrence proudly recalled shaking the hand of Al Smith, when, in 1928, Smith was the first Catholic to run for president as a major party candidate. In 1952, O'Brien served as director for JFK's Senate run, and was seen as so integral to Kennedy's victory, that he was a natural to join JFK when he set his eyes on The White House.

The Election

The big question during the 1960 presidential race was whether Americans would elect a Catholic for president. If Kennedy's Irish inner circle didn't know this initially, they learned it quickly at a meeting in West Virginia. O'Brien, O'Donnell and Bobby Kennedy asked local voters to discuss any problems the Kennedys might face. A man stood up and said: "There's only one problem. He's a Catholic. That's our goddamned problem."

O'Donnell later recalled: "(RFK) seemed to be in a state of shock. His face was pale as ashes." Of course, the campaign overcame this issue and won - in no small part thanks to the campaign's Irish advisers. O'Brien was even put on the cover of Time magazine in September of 1961. "To the Kennedy team, O'Brien was and is more than a skillful political organizer. He has the experience and understanding to serve as a bridge between the Democratic Old Guard and the New Frontier," the magazine noted. "The bright, eager young men around Jack Kennedy have always baffled and often offended the (old machine) Skeffingtons of Massachusetts; but Larry O'Brien can talk to politicians in their own language and win them over," Time said.

Bobby Kennedy added: "He was the essential transition man for us with the Old Guard." O'Donnell, meanwhile, more or less controlled access to Kennedy, whose press secretary Pierre Salinger once dubbed O'Donnell the most powerful man on Kennedy's staff. Another observer said O'Donnell - nicknamed "the Cobra" for the tight grip he had on access to the president - was Kennedy's "political right hand, troubleshooter, expediter and devil's advocate."

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