Kennedy: The Classic Biography by Ted Sorensen Page A

important vote on Title III—which was later largely incorporated in the Kennedy Civil Rights Bill of 1963. In more than one speech he would quote, with understanding as well as amusement, a legendary verse said to have been found among the papers of a deceased legislator:
Among life’s dying embers
These are my regrets:
When I’m “right” no one remembers,
When I’m “wrong” no one forgets.
    LABOR RACKETEERING AND REFORM
    But Negroes and Southerners were not the only members of the traditional Democratic coalition whose disfavor he would risk in the Senate. Organized labor had long been a powerful Kennedy ally. Throughout his House and Senate tenures, he had served on the Labor Committees of each body. Labor leaders admired his opposition in the House to the Taft-Hartley Bill and his leadership in the Senate for higher minimum wages, improved Social Security with medical care, aid to depressed areas and nationwide unemployment compensation standards. His labor record was, in the inflated parlance of politics, “a thousand percent.” The Massachusetts Teamsters (who were never linked with the corrupt practices of their national leaders) had been consistent Kennedy supporters. But between 1957 and 1959 the relationship between Kennedy and his labor friends underwent a severe strain.
    To pursue information on corrupt labor practices initially uncovered by the Permanent Investigations Subcommittee (then chaired by Senator John McClellan, with Robert Kennedy as Chief Counsel), the Senate in 1957 established a special investigating committee on labor rackets, with members from both the McClellan Subcommittee and the Senate Labor Committee. McClellan and Bob Kennedy carried over their roles; John Kennedy was asked to join.
    He knew it meant risking his good relations with organized labor—and that at least two other Senators with national ambitions, Henry Jackson and Stuart Symington, had declined to serve. There had also been hints of National Teamster support for his Presidential candidacy if only Bob Kennedy would “play smart.” 3
    But whatever the political pitfalls, Kennedy was interested. Internal union safeguards had intrigued him since his Taft-Hartley studies in the House. As chairman of the Senate Labor Committee’s Subcommittee on Labor Legislation, he knew he could hardly avoid involvement in any legislative proposals growing out of the hearings (although he also declined an opportunity to leave the Labor Committee for a position on another committee). The well-known antilabor views of many of the Rackets Committee members already selected, and particularly those of South Carolina’s Strom Thurmond, who would eagerly take his place if he declined, underlined both the difficulty and the necessity of his accepting.
    He decided to join the committee. He sponsored the resulting labor reform legislation. For the first time in his Congressional career, he concentrated intensively and almost exclusively for a period of years on a single piece of legislation. He was, said the Christian Science Monitor , “burning his bridges” to labor support for the Presidency. And the Senator, in one of those subsequent moments of detached self-appraisal which reflected neither boasting nor complaining, noted that it was “certainly the toughest political job any Presidential candidate could ever take on.”
    Labor leaders were coolly suspicious, then hotly opposed. AFL-CIO President George Meany, at a hearing called by Kennedy on his proposed reform bill, cried out, “God save us from our friends!”—to which Kennedy quietly replied: “I say that, too, Mr. Meany.” Machinists President Al Hayes compared Kennedy to Argentine dictator Perón. Others sought to have him denounced in their national conventions. But then Senate Republican Leader William Knowland unleashed and nearly passed a parcel of antilabor amendments to a welfare and pension fund bill. Gradually and somewhat grudgingly, Meany and most of the top