By the late 1950s, the extent of Kennedy’s presidential ambitions had become obvious to all concerned. Indeed, the writing had been on the wall as early as 1956, when the Massachusetts Senator put himself forward for consideration as the Democratic Party’s vice-presidential candidate, to run alongside presidential hopeful, Adlai Stevenson.
On that occasion, Kennedy narrowly lost out to Senator Estes Kefauver of Tennessee. In the end, the Stevenson–Kefauver ticket was defeated by a large margin when the incumbent, President Eisenhower, secured a second term. Avoiding association with such a defeat may have even benefitted Kennedy.
With his White House hopes pushed onto the back-burner for the next four years, Kennedy refocused his attentions on his role in the Senate. His achievements in the United States Senate had been limited, due to the enforced absences caused by his back surgeries. He had also suffered serious reputational damage in 1954 as a result of his abstention from a Senate vote to condemn Senator Joseph McCarthy’s excessive anti-Communist investigations, despite his stated opposition to them.
Senator Joseph McCarthy, 1954
Many have questioned why Kennedy refused to display the courage of his convictions in the McCarthy affair. Why did he take such an uncharacteristic political risk by failing to take a stand on this much-publicized issue? The answer lay, once again, in his suffocating family ties. His father had been a vocal McCarthy supporter and, more importantly, his brother Bobby was working for McCarthy at the time. He later recalled:
I was caught in a bad situation. My brother was working for Joe. […] And how the hell could I get up there and denounce Joe McCarthy when my own brother was working for him?
Despite his weak showing in the McCarthy affair, Kennedy was successful in his re-election bid in 1958. Indeed, he confounded his detractors by beating his rival by the widest margin ever recorded in a Massachusetts Senate race. Fears that his back problems, which had been impossible to hide during his first term, would count against him proved unfounded. Nevertheless, he still refused to admit the full extent of his health problems, continuing to believe that such a disclosure would damage his presidential prospects.
During his brief second term in the Senate, Kennedy did try to make amends for his McCarthy debacle by backing anti-Communist foreign policies, as well as supporting changes to labour legislation. But the progress made on these issues was soon overshadowed in January 1960 when he officially declared candidacy for President.