Hearst and Joe Kennedy: from keeping Machines for FDR to tar pots for Cold War tabloid red-baiters,

[Nathaniel Heidenheimer]

how did they differ or share similarities during the key period in which the remnants of big city machines , and their press drum beaters, could still play a key role in the moving the nation right or left?

I am not here trying to make more of this relationship than it was. Rather I have lately come to see the transition from machine to TV politics as an important one in understanding the Democrats from 1960 and those who might beused to destroy the possibility of an emerging left-liberal coalition.

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"On October 18, after the Roosevelt campaign train had left Albany without him, Kennedy received a letter from Joe Willicombe, William Randolph Hearst's secretary, with a check for $25,000 'for radio campaigning.' Kennedy wrote to thank Hearst for funneling his campaign contribution through him. Well aware that while Hearst thought Roosevelt would make a better president than Herbert Hoover, he feared him as too much of a progressive and an internationalist. Kennedy inserted himself between the two, claiming that whatever happened in the future, he would remain Hearst's ally, defender, and liaison to Roosevelt" --p. 182 The Patriarch: The Remarkable Life and Turbulent Times of Joseph P. Kennedy by David Nasaw.

IMO Nasaw was overly cautious in his biography of Hearst. This is a better book. Given what the Hearst Press, exemplified by Walter Winchell, did in the period immediately after WWII this is an interesting connection to note between JFK's dad and Hearst. Of course Joseph K was an official fundraiser for FDR, still. There are many things Joe Kennedy had in common with Hearst but one should be careful. Joseph K's way was to find the perfect place to stand to serve as a valve. Long term question: the evolution of political machines into 1960 when they are lost into TV lamp... on purpose. http://www.amazon.com/The-Patriarch-Rema...1594203768

[Nathaniel Heidenheimer]

I am guilty of premature thread-title formation. The original title of this thread, I am now convinced, is inaccurate, because it presupposes more similarities between Joseph K. and Hearst than actually existed.

I still maintain that there are some interesting similarities between Hearst and Joe K. Both were sort of loose pages in the New Deal Coalition who needed to be placated and were wooed by the opposition but for different reasons. Hearst for economic reasons after 1935 (but similarities persisted over foreign policy as FDR's interventionism became more overt) and Joseph K because of Isolationism that increasingly conflicted with FDR's interventionism.


Both were to some extent big city machine oriented political players who were wild cards who could generate The Undecided vote.

But those who would describe Joe K's isolationist as inherently ONLY rightist would be very hard pressed to explain the consistency of his isolationism once the Cold War Started. Hearst of course, was a key player in McCarthyism. The new book on Joe K is better than the author's last one on Hearst. I give it four out of five stars and the Hearst book either a two or a three. Joe K. is truly a complex figure, and one who was at very eye of big media generated polemical hurricane. He is on the high cliff of a Sea Change in the history of the Democratic party, so he is easy to overgeneralize about.

There are certain similarities between Joe K's critique of Cold War policies and those of his son. At the same time there were some differences in how they framed these common perspectives.