Truman was NOT a fan of Kennedy in 1960 when Jack was running for Prez as the Democratic nominee.

[Pirate Smile]

Check out the Youtube clip of Truman resigning as a Democratic delegate at the convention and Kennedy's response.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xn1d2KsolZg&feature=related

Previous Presidents of the same party aren't always happy to see the next generation take over.

Yes, it happens but it doesn't stop it.

SLATER: Let me look.

Oh, I was at his press conference on July 2, 1960, when he announced that he was resigning as a delegate to the national convention because it was controlled, and he thought the Democrats should have an open convention. He said that he had nothing personal against Senator Kennedy. He admired him. He thought he was young, and he thought he ought to be patient. I made some notes

<69>

on this thing. And he said that he's a victim of circumstances. He blamed the kind of campaign, practically delegate buying, on the people around Kennedy. He also at that time at that press conference said he thought that serious consideration should be given to Lyndon B. Johnson.

One story I remember was when he was talking about drinking Scotch whiskey, and he said, "You know everytime you take a drink of Scotch, you're putting a quarter in the pocket of old Joe Kennedy." He didn't think much of the Kennedys on the whole. He said some rather curt things about Joe and then Bobby.

JOHNSON: But then after Jack Kennedy had won the Presidency

SLATER: He supported him all-out, yes.

JOHNSON: And visited him at the White House.

SLATER: At the White House, yes.

JOHNSON: Do you think he really did change his mind

<70>

about John F. Kennedy after he was elected?

SLATER: No.

JOHNSON: Did he gain a little more admiration for him because this policies? Did he feel his policies worked?

SLATER: Never heard him say so. I always thought he kind of felt the Kennedys were exercising too much control over the Democratic party.
http://www.trumanlibrary.org/oralhist/slaterh.htm

Ask Not What J.F.K. Can Do for Obama

By FRANK RICH
Published: February 3, 2008
BEFORE John F. Kennedy was a president, a legend, a myth and a poltergeist stalking America’s 2008 campaign, he was an upstart contender seen as a risky bet for the Democratic nomination in 1960.

Kennedy was judged “an ambitious but superficial playboy” by his liberal peers, according to his biographer Robert Dallek. “He never said a word of importance in the Senate, and he never did a thing,” in the authoritative estimation of the Senate’s master, Lyndon Johnson. Adlai Stevenson didn’t much like Kennedy, and neither did Harry Truman, who instead supported Senator Stuart Symington of Missouri.

J. F. K. had few policy prescriptions beyond Democratic boilerplate (a higher minimum wage, “comprehensive housing legislation”). As his speechwriter Richard Goodwin recalled in his riveting 1988 memoir “Remembering America,” Kennedy’s main task was to prove his political viability. He had to persuade his party that he was not a wealthy dilettante and not “too young, too inexperienced and, above all, too Catholic” to be president.

How did the fairy-tale prince from Camelot vanquish a field of heavyweights led by the longtime liberal warrior Hubert Humphrey? It wasn’t ideas. It certainly wasn’t experience. It wasn’t even the charisma that Kennedy would show off in that fall’s televised duels with Richard Nixon.

Looking back almost 30 years later, Mr. Goodwin summed it up this way: “He had to touch the secret fears and ambivalent longings of the American heart, divine and speak to the desires of a swiftly changing nation — his message grounded on his own intuition of some vague and spreading desire for national renewal.”

In other words, Kennedy needed two things. He needed poetry, and he needed a country with some desire, however vague, for change.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/03/opinion/03rich.html

[bluestateguy]

1. Carter and Clinton had cool relations

And if we really want to go way back, Thomas Jefferson distrusted Andrew Jackson and was rather concerned about the prospect of him becoming president.

[Smarmie Doofus]

2. And the conventions that installed him as veep in '44 and...

>>>> was at his press conference on July 2, 1960, when he announced that he was resigning as a delegate to the national convention because it was controlled, and he thought the Democrats should have an open convention. >>>>

... prez in '48 were NOT controlled?

Harry, baby, come ON now.

[FKA MNChimpH8R]

3. I suspect Harry had a little more time for JFK after he walked the world back

from nuclear holocaust in October, 1962. Truman was a smart enough man to recognize talent when he saw it.

[Hippo_Tron]

4. And I'm sure the 24 hour cable networks played this on an endless loop in 1960

Except for the fact that there were no cable networks and the only people who ever saw this video were probably a few hundred disgruntled delegates at the Democratic National Convention.

The press was an entirely different animal in 1960 than it is today and iron clad message control wasn't nearly as important as it is today because the networks had one hour to report the news and generally chose to focus on the important things during that hour.

McSame has been rhetorically tossing the right wing of his party overboard this week. Yet you don't hear one disgruntled Republican talking about how they hate his new ideas about regulation, etc. They just keep their mouths shut because Republicans understand party loyalty. Democrats don't and that's one of the reasons we don't win elections. And in fairness to Bill Clinton, he probably would've had a more successful presidency if Congressional Democrats during his administration had understood party loyalty.

[Hardrada]

5. True. And think of Ted Kennedy when he wanted to take

the place of Carter who was an incumbent Dem. president. That bothered me at the time. Dems handed Reagan a good part of his victory.

[No Elephants]

6. And your point is?