Jackie, when do you think the President first began to think and act seriously about the presidency? When did he begin to see himself, do you suppose, as a possible president?
I think he was probably thinking about it for an awfully long time, long before I even knew, and I say this because I remember the first year we were married, I heard him at the Cape. He was in a room with his father, talking, and I came in and they were talking about something—about the vice presidency. Well, that was just the year after he had been elected a senator.
This was 1953?
Yeah. I said, "Were you talking about being vice president?" or something like that, and he sort of rather laughed. But I think it was always—he never stopped at any plateau, he was always going on to something higher. So, obviously after the vice presidential thing, well, then, he was definitely aiming for the presidency.1 But I think it would have been—I don't know—maybe when he first ran for the Senate. It was certainly before I knew him.
JOSEPH P. KENNEDY, JR., JOSEPH P. KENNEDY, SR., AND JOHN F. KENNEDY ARRIVING IN SOUTHAMPTON, ENGLAND, JULY 1938
John F. Kennedy Library and Museum, Boston
I am sure it was always, in some sense, in his mind. Is the story true, as has sometimes been printed, that the ambassador originally thought of—expected Joe to be the great political figure of the family?2
That's the sort of trite story that all these people who used to go interview Mr. Kennedy—you get so tired of people asking for anecdotes, and he'd always produce this thing that Joe would have. You know, how can I say? Because I never knew Joe. And, obviously, I suppose Joe would have run for politics, and then Jack, being so close to him, couldn't have run right on his heels in Massachusetts. Maybe he would have gone into something literary. But it's just not as simple as that story sounds. And then once Joe was dead, you know, Mr. Kennedy didn't do any strange thing of saying, "O.K., now we run you." Everything just evolved—they came back from the war—I don't know.
The story sounded, to me, too pat and mechanical. Joe was a classmate of mine at Harvard, but—
I've got a feeling, from what I think of Joe and everything, that he would have been so unimaginative, compared to Jack. He would never have—I think he probably would have gotten to be a senator, and not much higher. I don't know if that's prejudiced, but I don't think he had any of the sort of imagination that Jack did.
Well, certainly I knew him moderately well, and he did not have the imagination or the intellectual force or intellectual interest. He was a most attractive, charming fellow and would have been, I think, very successful in politics, but I don't think he would ever have carried things to the point the President did. The vice presidency then was on his mind sort of sometime before 1956?
Well, it's funny—they were talking about that in, I guess, around October–November 1953 at the Cape. But yet I know the night that Jack ran for the vice presidency in Chicago, he didn't want to then at all. And you know, it was just a last-minute thing when Stevenson threw the convention open, and, all that taught them so much of how to do things in California in 1960 because no one was prepared. And I remember being in that office and Bobby trying to get someone to paint signs.3 I mean, he wasn't trying for the vice presidency.
ROBERT F. KENNEDY DURING JOHN F. KENNEDY'S SENATE CAMPAIGN, MASSACHUSETTS, 1952
John F. Kennedy Library and Museum, Boston
That was, when he came to Chicago in 1956, he was not coming, really, to—
No. He didn't—he didn't want it. You know, he thought Stevenson would be defeated, and it would be because—and one of the reasons would be because he would have been a Catholic on the ticket with him, so it could only have been a hindrance to him. But then when all that thing got thrown wide open, I don't know who said, "Make a race for it," or what. It just really happened that night.
There must have been some sense in his mind, because I remember Ted Sorensen coming—or perhaps, at least, in Ted's mind—coming to see me on the Cape that summer, before the convention, and discussing this—and I telling Ted that I was for it and that I knew other people in the Stevenson circle were for it. You remember then Ted had a memorandum prepared on the Catholic vote.4
Ah, yes. That's right. I didn't realize it was then. The funny thing with Jack that would make it very hard in these interviews for me to sound as if I make sense, is that he never spoke of his sort of secret objectives, or of plotting things. Life with him was always so fast—of what you were doing that day. He always talked at home of what he was thinking about, or people. I mean, people say he never talked about politics at home with me, but that's all that was talked about. But he'd never sort of plot little goals and tell you when he was aiming for them then, and life with him was just so fast—that it isn't until you look back that you see what happened when.
SENATOR JOHN F. KENNEDY AT THE 1956 DEMOCRATIC NATIONAL CONVENTION, CHICAGO
John F. Kennedy Library and Museum, Boston
With people, life is not like that, anyway. I don't think people have objectives which they sort of plot to reach. There are things organic in them which emerge as they continue living, and which are implanted and not sort of consciously striven for. When people do that, you get a kind of Nixon business,5 which is unattractive, and the President lived so intensely from day to day that the thing that was rather implicit in his career in both the shape of his consciousness and destiny, rather than, I imagine, explicit in his mind, or anything that he ever would talk about. You—when he decided to run for the vice presidency in 1956, what was it —just the occasion suddenly overpowered him, do you think? Or—
I was out at the convention then with him in Chicago, but I was having a baby, and so I stayed with Eunice,6 and he lived in a hotel with Torb.7 And I saw him—you'd see him in the day at the convention, you'd have dinner, but it was such—I can't tell you the confusion—you should talk to Torb about that. You know, he was so tired and he was working all the time. And every day was different, so I think it was when— The worst fight in his life, which you should ask me about sometime, is when he got control of the Massachusetts legislature. That was to lead the Massachusetts delegation there, wasn't it?
Yes, against Bill Burke.
Yes, against "Onions" Burke.8 Because that was the only time in all of the fights he's been through in his life when I'd really seen him nervous when he couldn't talk about anything else before. So that was the big thing of all the spring, I guess was, you know, to win that fight. And it really was on his mind all the time. So, anyway, then he went out there as sort of an important person, and I guess he had rather an unsatisfactory couple of meetings with Stevenson, and suddenly there was that night. And I remember I stayed up all night at the headquarters, and Bobby came running to me and said, "We don't know anything. What do we do about Nevada?" And I was in a little corner doing something with envelopes or getting someone to make signs, and I timidly said, "I have an uncle who lives in Nevada." And nobody ever thought I had any political relatives or anything, but this uncle was a great friend of Pat McCarran.9 So we went in the little back room, Bobby and I, and called him up.
Who was the uncle?
Norman Biltz. And he's always been in Nevada politics. He's married to my stepfather's sister, Esther, who was, before that, married to Ogden Nash's brother. Then she married Norman Biltz, I think, and lived in Reno for the rest of her life.10
Norman Biltz is a Democrat?
Yeah. You know, but Pat McCarran and all these sort of types were all, I don't know, rather—I don't know if he's "shady," because I love him, but he's certainly someone to know in Nevada. And he said, "All right," because Nevada hadn't been for Jack, and the next day, all Nevada's votes were for Jack. [Schlesinger laughs] So all I know is that when he decided, I don't know, but I just know that I knew that he was going for vice president that day—that night. And before—I suppose Torb could tell you that, because he was closeted in the room with him.
Yes, we'll talk to Torb. That's my memory, because I can remember Stevenson's decision to throw it open, and then again Ted or someone from the President's staff getting in touch with me about things, and I think, obviously it was in the mind of some people around—before, I think, it had become dormant and then it was suddenly revived. Let's talk about the fight against Bill Burke. It was really a fight against John McCormack, wasn't it?
Yes, and again, you'd have to tell me about it, and I could tell you things that rang bells, because it's—
The great problem was the control of the Democratic state committee, and Burke had been—
And Lynch there was—
There was Lynch, who was our man—
Yeah.
And who has been state chairman through the years since. Kenny and Larry11 were in that fight, were they?
SENATOR KENNEDY WITH KENNY O'DONNELL, 1960
John F. Kennedy Library and Museum, Boston
I think so, yes.
They were. But I think that neither of them yet had come on the senator's staff—Senate staff.
That's right. I think Kenny told me about that just now—I mean, just a couple of weeks ago. But—first, that Jack was traveling a lot then, but I can just remember every night talking. I remember at Jean's wedding—he was so busy up in Massachusetts, and she came—she had a dinner the night before she got married.12 Well, even Jack was going all around at that dinner, talking to his father, talking to Bobby, Torb, everyone. It was sort of about this thing—it was just obsessing him. Because it was going to be known—she was married on May 6—something like that—May 19 she was married, and, I guess, the vote or whatever it is was going to come up a few days later, and I remember thinking—the only time in my life I've ever thought that Jack was a little bit thoughtless. But I didn't really think that, because you could see how worried he was, because all that night, when everyone should have been making little toasts to Jean and things—which they were, and he made a touching one—he was talking to everybody at the dinner about that fight. I mean, it was just on his mind, and I've never seen him like that—in the first Cuba, the second Cuba,13 any election—I mean, the election—the presidential election, when I think of how calm he was that night—whether it would come out well or not, but still—but that was just all that spring. And as I have—you know, you musn't think it bad that I don't have all of these political memories, because I was really living another side of life with him, but I just remember that was a terrible worry of all that spring.
I had the impression it must have been an awfully critical thing. It was the first big test of strength within the party organization. I know Kenny's told me from time to time when we've been talking about people in politics, and he would say, "So and so, he was for us in the Burke fight," which meant, we forgive him everything else. Or someone, "He was against us in the Burke fight." And this became the standard of judgment, which, years later, in the presidential years, would still be very much in everyone's mind.
And I remember all the people—it fascinated me because when I came back from my honeymoon, I was taken immediately to Boston to be registered as a Democrat by Patsy Mulkern, who was called "the China Doll," because he was a prize fighter once, and he took me all up and down that street, and told me that "duking" people means shaking hands, and things. And then there was another man with "Onions" Burke, named "Juicy" Grenara. Well, I mean those names just fascinated me so. You know, to sort of see that world, and then we'd go have dinner at the Ritz. [both Jacqueline and Schlesinger laugh] Then you'd be going someplace else. It just seems it was suitcases, moving, and then you'd go to New York for a couple of days. We never had our own house until we'd been married four years. So I can't tell you—
That was in Georgetown, or out in McLean?
Oh no, that's right. We had one—for three years in Hickory Hill.14 We didn't buy a house. You know, we'd rent January until June, then we'd go live at my mother's house, which was in Virginia, for the summer, because we didn't have a child for four years. So the summers we'd spend at her house, going up to the Cape when we could on weekends—and in the fall, we'd stay with his father—you know, living right with our in-laws. And then we'd go to his apartment in Boston or we'd go down to New York for a couple of days. It was terrifically nomadic, you know. And then we'd go away after Christmas or something for a few days to Jamaica or something. Such a pace, when I think of how little we were alone, or always moving.
I know, in the political life—you are never alone in politics. It's terrible.
And never alone. Later on, Jack said, when Teddy got married and got his house right away, "What was the matter with me? Why didn't I get our house sooner?" And I thought, why didn't I? But you were just moving and everything was so fast. And then we got Hickory Hill, but that turned out to be a mistake because it was so far out of town. That was the year after Jack's back.15 Well, again we spent a lot of money to buy this house in Virginia, and I thought it would be a place where he could rest on weekends the year where he would be recovering from his back. And we discussed that when we bought it. Again this shows you how he didn't sort of tell me what was ahead because once we got to the house, he was away every weekend, traveling. And it was no good to him during the week—it was that much farther from his office. And then, when I lost the baby—you know, that I had made nurseries and everything for there, I didn't want to live there anymore, so that's when we moved.16 We rented a house—no, the next year we rented a house on P Street, and then had Caroline and bought our house in 1957.17 Yeah, we must have had Hickory Hill—no, when did we have Hickory Hill? His operation was '55. Yeah, I guess it was two years before we had a house.
You got the N Street house in '57.
'Fifty-seven. And, I guess, we got Hickory Hill the winter after his back, which was '55.
Some people have speculated, and I have written, that the operation and the sickness of the back was kind of a turning point. I have never known whether there was anything—whether this was kind of a false knowledge of FDR and really whether there was anything in that.
No, I don't think there's anything in that. And it's just so easy. Max Freedman18 said to me the other night, "And when do you think the dedication started?" Well, that just irritated me so. It was always there. You know, the winter of his back, which was awful, just to keep himself from going mad, lying there, aches and pains, and being moved over, side to side, every twenty minutes or something, or beginning to walk, and just as he was starting to walk on crutches, one of his crutches broke, so then he was back in. You know, then he started to write that book which he'd always had in his mind a long time—he'd had Edmund Ross—he talked to me about that a year or so before as the one classic example of profiles in courage.19 And he'd always thought of writing an article or something on that, and then so that whole winter, he started to search out other people—enough to make a book. So, that wasn't any changing point. He was just going through that winter like he did everything—getting through an awful winter of sickness and doing the book.
The back had been an overhanging thing for some time before.
Yeah, with the back, it had just gotten worse and worse. I mean, the year before we were married, when he'd take me out, half the time it was on crutches. You know, when I went to watch him campaign, before we were married, he was on crutches. I can remember him on crutches more than not. And then, in our marriage, he'd be off it a lot, and then something would go wrong. It was really—I mean, the problem everyone found later—he didn't even need the operation. It was that he'd had a bad back since college, and then the war, and he'd had a disk operation that he never needed, so all those muscles had gotten weak, had gone into spasm, and that was what was giving him pain—the muscles. And so, then he'd go— I think if he went on crutches for four days, you know, he'd get everything better, but again that was only weakening it. And it wasn't until after his back operation that the poor doctor who'd been his medical man, Ephraim Shorr, said to him, "Now I think I am at liberty to tell you something which I wanted to tell you before, but I didn't think it was correct to do that to Dr. Wilson," who was the back surgeon.20 This made me so mad how doctors just let people suffer, and don't say anything to hurt the other eminent physicians' feelings. But then Dr. Shorr told him about Dr. Travell, who was a woman in New York, and lived down on 16th Street, and had been doing terrific things with muscles. And Jack went to see her. She put in this Novocain for spasms. Well, she could fix him. I mean, life just changed then.21Because, obviously, after a year of surgery and a year out, his back was weaker than ever. If you don't think that wasn't discouraging for him—to have been through that year and find that his back was worse, not better—
SENATOR KENNEDY ON STRETCHER ACCOMPANIED BY ROBERT KENNEDY AND JACQUELINE KENNEDY, NEW YORK, DECEMBER 1954
Dan McElleney/BettmanCORBIS/John F. Kennedy Library and Museum, Boston
In other words, the operation of 1955 was not necessary?22
It was no more necessary than it is for you to have one this minute. And it was just criminal. But, you know, all those bone surgeons look at X-rays—you see, Jack was being driven so crazy by this pain. They even said to him before it, "We can't tell if it will help or not." I remember his father and I and he talking, and he said, "I don't care. I can't go on like this." It was, you know, one chance in a million, but he was going to take it. And if it hadn't been for Dr. Travell—I mean, no one can underestimate her contribution then. Though later on, it was apparent that what he should be doing was build up his back with exercises. She was very reluctant to let him leave her Novocain treatments, which by then were not doing any good. This is once we're in the White House. But she changed his life then.
And she came on the scene when? 'Fifty-six?
No. When did he have his back?
'Fifty-five.
October—no, he had it October of '54.
The operation, it was the winter of '54–'55.
Yeah, and he came back to the Senate, June '55. So she must have come on the scene about June '55. He made a great effort to walk that day and walk around. But he'd come back, we stayed at the Capitol Arms Hotel23 or something—right near the Capitol—he had a hospital bed there. He'd walk all around the Senate looking wonderful and tan in his gray suit, and then he'd come home and go in a hospital bed.
Oh, God, I think one of the most terrible sentences I've ever read was the one in Bobby's Introduction of Profiles in Courage24—about "half his days on this earth spent in pain." Because, you know, around the White House, occasionally one could tell when he started to reach for something and then would stop or pull himself short, or he didn't want to stand too much. Yet I never—from what I saw of him, it was total stoicism about this. Did he ever mention it?
He was never—when you think how many people are hypochondriacs, or complain, he never liked you to ask him how he felt. You could tell when he wasn't feeling well—you'd take care of him and put him to bed or something—but he was never irritable—he never liked to discuss it and he made a conscious effort to get his mind off it by having friends for dinner or talking about—you know, or going to see a movie, or—just to not let himself be sitting there having a pain.
And of course, this cut him off from sports, which must have been at one time—sailing—
Except—it's funny—because the month before we were married, we both went bareback riding in a field in Newport on two unbroken work horses and galloped all around the golf course. On our honeymoon, we'd played golf. It would cut him off for periods, but then he'd come back again. And then he played baseball all the time in Georgetown in the spring with the senators.25 And he always would play touch football, but he couldn't run—I mean, he could run enough, but he could never be the one to run for the touchdown. He would pass and catch and run around a little.
SENATOR KENNEDY RECUPERATES IN PALM BEACH, FLORIDA, 1955
Caroline Kennedy/John F. Kennedy Library and Museum, Boston
It would sort of come and go, would it?
Yeah.
I suppose when he was more tired, it would be worse. Or was it unpredictable?
It was unpredictable. Now that you know it's a spasm, I suppose it probably could come when he's tired. Or some thing might just put it out—something you wouldn't expect. He could go riding and nothing would happen. And some funny thing of dropping a pile of papers and stooping quickly to pick them up would set it off. But he wasn't in any way—I never think of being married to an invalid or a cripple, and I don't want it to look as if—because it hampered him so long.
That's the striking thing, because when I read that sentence of Bobby's—it is the last thing that one would think, having seen him off and on for many years, because he always seems to have had this extraordinary joy and vitality, and the fact that he had this, with this kind of business nagging at him—pain nagging at him—it was just a tremendous spiritual victory of some sort—a psychological victory.
Yeah. Oh, once I asked him—I think this is rather touching—if he could have one wish, what would it be? In other words, you know, looking back on his life, and he said, "I wish I had had more good times." And I thought that was such a touching thing to say because I always thought of him as this enormously glamorous figure whom I married when he was thirty-six. I thought he'd had millions of gay trips to Europe, girls, dances, everything. And, of course, and he had done a lot of that, but I suppose what he meant was that he had been in pain so much, and then hustling—well, then, those awful years campaigning, always with Frank Morrissey,26 living on a milkshake and a hot dog. [whispers about whether to discuss "stomach"] He had also stomach trouble, which gave him a lot of pain sometimes, so it wasn't always his back. But all his family have it. It's just a Kennedy stomach. It obviously comes from nerves.
During campaigns and so on, did these things continue, and he just—
Oh, yeah. As I said, he was always campaigning on crutches. It was so pathetic to see him go up the steps of a plane, or the steps to a stage or something on his crutches, you know, because then he looked so vulnerable. And once he was up there and standing at the podium, then he looked so, you know, just in control of everything.
What did he make of sort of the Last Hurrah world of Massachusetts?27 Obviously he enjoyed it and got a great kick out of it.
He enjoyed it the way he loves to hear Teddy tell stories about Honey Fitz.28 He enjoyed stories about his grandfather. But he really wasn't—Kenny and Dave29 and everyone, now that people are talking about writing books about Jack, they always say to me, "Why should Sorensen and Schlesinger write books? They won't be for the ones he belonged to. Why doesn't someone write a book for the three-deckers?"30 [Schlesinger laughs] You know, and they think that Jack is theirs. But he wasn't, really. When I think now that he's dead and the different people who come to me—you'd think he belonged to so many people, and each one thought they had him completely, and he loved each one just the way love is infinite of a mother for her children. If you have eight children, it doesn't mean you love them any less than if you just have just two—that the love is diminished that much. So he loved the Irish, he loved his family, he loved people like you and Ken Galbraith.31 He loved me and my sister in the world that had nothing to do with politics, that he looked to for pleasure and a letdown. He loved us all. And you know, I don't feel any jealousy. He had each of you. He really kept his life so in compartments, and the wonderful thing is that everyone in every one of those compartments was ready to die for him. And we all loved everyone else because they all liked me—because they knew I would. And I love Dave Powers, though I never saw him much before. It's just now that you see how Jack just knew in every side of his life what he wanted. He never wanted to have the people in the evening that he worked with in the daytime. And often I'd say, in the White House, "Why don't we have Ethel and Bobby for dinner?" because I thought Ethel's feelings might be getting hurt. But he never wanted to see Bobby, and Bobby didn't want to come either, because they'd worked all day. So you'd have people who were rather relaxing. You'd have Charlie Bartlett32 and the Bradlees33 a lot. It was sort of light—or I don't know—those parties that we used to have.
PRESIDENT KENNEDY AND DAVE POWERS, 1961
Abbie Rowe, National Park Service/John F. Kennedy Library and Museum, Boston
THE KENNEDYS WITH BEN AND TONY BRADLEE IN THE WEST SITTING HALL OF THE WHITE HOUSE
Cecil Stoughton, White House/John F. Kennedy Library and Museum, Boston
Best parties I've ever attended. Weren't they great? The greatest girls, the nicest times. Everyone was so much better than normal. Everyone was the gayest and prettiest and nicest.
And it was a mixture of cabinet and friends from New York, and young people. And I worked so hard on those parties because I felt once we were in the White House, I felt that I could get out, and I just can't tell you how oppressive the strain of the White House can be. I could go out and whenever Jack saw it was getting me down a little bit he'd really send me away—not exactly, but he'd say, "Why don't you go up to New York, or go see your sister in Italy?" And then he sent me to Greece, which was, you know, for a sad reason this year, but he thought I was getting depressed after losing Patrick.34 I thought, I can go out, I can go to a restaurant in New York or walk down the street and look at an antique shop or go to a nightclub. You've heard of the Twist, or something—not that you care about nightclubs—and I don't want to go more than once a year—but Jack couldn't get out. So then I used to try to make these parties to bring gay, and new people, and music, and make it happy nights. And did he love them.
He loved them. Danced very rarely, but loved to—
Just walked around, puffing his cigar.
Talked to the girls—make Oleg dance the Twist. Or Steve or somebody. 35
Yeah, then he'd move on very quickly. You know, to sort of see everyone.
He did have an extraordinary range of acquaintance and ability to enter in—to, sympathetically—to people of the whole range of the spectrum.
Yeah, that's so true, because the luckiest thing I used to think about him, you know, when we were early married and then later, was whatever you were interested in, Jack got interested in. When I started to be interested in French furniture, he got so interested in it, and then he'd be so proud, he'd go to Joe Alsop's36 and recognize Louis XVI and Louis XV. And I started to collect drawings, and then he wanted to know about them. And he got interested in animals, or horses. Or then, when I was reading all this eighteenth century, he'd snatch a book from me and read and know all of Louis XV's mistresses before I would. So many of the senators, when we'd go out to dinner—senators and embassies this first year—all those men would ever talk to me about was themselves. And Jack was so interested—maybe it's Gemini, or what?37 And once I asked him, the month before we were married in Newport, what he thought his best and his worst qualities were. And he thought his best quality was curiosity, which, I think he was right. He thought his worst was irritability, but, I mean, he was never irritable with me. I think by that he meant impatience. You know, he didn't like to be bored, and if someone was boring, he'd pick up the newspaper, but he certainly wasn't irritable to live with.
WEDDING OF JOHN FITZGERALD KENNEDY AND JACQUELINE LEE BOUVIER, SEPTEMBER 12, 1953
John F. Kennedy Library and Museum, Boston
He was not irritable in the current White House sense.38 No, I've just not seen anyone—from South Boston through Harvard to Palm Beach—he was at home in a greater variety of things and, as you say, made people from each of these kind of segments feel that he was with them. It was an extraordinary—
Yeah, then they'd all get interested in politics and things. You know, there's never been such a universal president before. It doesn't mean absolutely anything, but in the Washington Post the other day, I read the theater page—and Alain Delon, who's this little French "jeune premier" young movie star now, came to Washington. And so the drama critic went to interview him, and all he could talk about was Jack. And say, you know, how "all we young people"—well, I mean, there's a little sexy young French movie actor and he's so wounded by Jack. It's because Jack was young, and loved—you know—everything—elegance, girls, you know, in all the best senses of the word. It was like he had many things in common with that young man, the same way he'd have, you know, things in common with so many sides of you. Everyone found a part of him in Jack. Before that, politics was just left to all the corny old people who shouted on the Fourth of July—and you know, all the things that made me so bored with politics.
He gave youth and intellect and taste a world voice, which was felt all around the world, and he had this extraordinary combination of idealism and realism, which—
That's again—the Kennedys taught me all this—Jack, really—all this questioning, questioning. You know, if you didn't get on the offensive, they'd have you on the defensive all night. And so these questions he'd ask me or my sister—so once I asked him how he'd define himself, and he said, "An idealist without illusions."
Um-hmm. That's perfect.
Then once somebody asked me about him, and I said that—I saw that attributed to myself. But Jack said it.
In the senatorial years, whom would you see most of? In the Senate, I mean.
Well, in the senatorial years, when you think Jack was away every weekend, and so you'd have three or four days a week, two of which he'd be tired—but the ones we'd see—I remember little dinners—who would you have? The Symingtons, Smatherses, Coopers—they were always—funnily enough, John Sherman Cooper and Lorraine.39
He's the nicest man in the Senate.
Yeah, I guess.
Not Hubert particularly?40
No, I never saw—the only ones I can remember having to dinner at our house the first year we lived on Dent Place—3327 Dent Place—we rented from the Childses41—I can remember having the Symingtons, Smatherses, and Coopers for dinner and—those are the only senators I can think of—oh, and Mansfield42 sometimes. The year before, 1960, then you'd have others—I remember we had McCarthy—Eugene McCarthy43 and a couple of others, I can't remember.
Johnson, ever?44
Never.
You mentioned the Chicago convention—a couple of unsatisfactory conversations with Stevenson. Of course, the Stevenson-Kennedy relationship has always been a puzzle and slightly a sadness to me, because I think if the President ever saw Stevenson in a genuinely relaxed mood, he would have quite liked him, because he can be awfully engaging. But somehow, Stevenson would always freeze and become sort of prissy and so on with the President.
Well, this is all retrospect, but I always thought that every time Stevenson—Stevenson just let Jack down so many times. So, you know, Jack really worked hard for him and everything, and he wasn't nice to him at that convention. I remember he had a meeting with Stevenson before Stevenson threw it open—maybe the point of that meeting was—I don't know, I'm just thinking—was he hoping that Stevenson would ask him to be vice president, or what? Then I think—I don't know whether Stevenson—but I think this about so many people—Jack made them jealous.
I think eventually he made Stevenson deeply jealous because Stevenson saw the President taking away not only the nomination, but also many of his own supporters and doing really better than he had ever been able to, the kinds of things he most wanted to do. But in '56, I don't know—I think it's partly a generational thing, Stevenson was fifteen years older.45
Well, I see that with more people who were bitter about Jack while he was President. And then you hear about it. For instance, one is Scotty Reston.46 And someone very close to him told me it was a jealousy of generations. He couldn't bear to see someone younger, or maybe his age, come on. So Jack incited that—and Dean Acheson47 the same way. And then there was also a jealousy of contemporaries, because someone who was just Jack's age, and sitting behind some little bank clerk's desk and hanging around the bar at Bailey's Beach48 would just feel that he was a nothing when he saw all that Jack was doing. So he incited so many bitter jealousies, and they were the ones who'd say mean things about him. And I thought Stevenson was really horrible to Jack at the convention in1960. When Jack asked him—was it in the Oregon primary?—to come out for him, or to pull out of it?49 But he had been asking him things all spring, and Stevenson was just—Oh, I know what Stevenson said to him, that he couldn't do it because he couldn't be disloyal to Lyndon Johnson or something.
That's right. I was an intermediary. There were a number of intermediaries, I'm sure. But I talked to Stevenson a couple of times that winter and spring on the President's behalf—and Stevenson's answer was that he had told Lyndon Johnson in 1959 that he would remain neutral and would not come out for any candidate, and that he had to keep his word to Lyndon Johnson.
But then, I remember one night Jack coming home and rather—not rudely but with that sort of laugh he had, telling me that's what Stevenson had told him, and he thought that Stevenson was hoping to be named as running mate with Johnson. And then he told me something so insulting that Johnson had said to him the day before about Stevenson. You know, he was thinking, "How silly can this man be?" But Jack knew then, I think—I mean, he knew that he was going to get the nomination.
I think Stevenson, although he would not admit it to himself or to anybody else, was holding out for a deadlock in which he would be the presidential candidate. I doubt that he would have wanted to go on as a vice presidential candidate. But he wouldn't admit this, and so we people who had been for him in '52 and '56, as I had, would ask him whether he was a candidate. He would say he was not a candidate, and that released me, I felt, from any obligation. But in all this period, you know, if you've won twice, you keep hoping.
Yeah, oh, it's hard for him. But, you know, he just never had the breadth or depth that Jack did. You know, I just see it all now.
Someone once said that Stevenson was a Greek and Kennedy a Roman.
No. I think Kennedy was a Greek and Stevenson was a, well—
Kennedy was an Athenian and Stevenson from Thebes.50 [laughs]
[laughs] Yes, I don't know, he was a little— He was all right, Stevenson. I mean, he was the first time anyone spoke anything in politics that you could listen—the first time anyone brought anything intellectual to politics.
He helped prepare the way. He helped open up the situation, and the President came along as a kind of climax.
But he couldn't make—I mean, there's no point to talk about Stevenson. Where he couldn't make decisions, or he'd go over his little papers, or he'd carefully take something typewritten and copy it in longhand because he was so proud of everyone saying he wrote all his speeches—I don't know, poor man. It's sort of sad. You know, Jack achieved all he dreamed of in his life, and it must be sad not to have.51
It is sad. After the convention in '56, the President was quite relieved, was he—in not having got—immediately so—I know later, he would say often how pleased he was.
It's funny. There was just—I remember watching it with Michael Forrestal.52 I'd gone to get a Coca-Cola or something, down underneath all those seats, and as I was coming back, suddenly that race started, and all the blackboards, the numbers started changing. I bumped into Michael Forrestal, and he grabbed me into a Westinghouse exhibit, and we watched the whole thing on television. And then we went to Jack's room at the Stockade Inn, or whatever it was?
Yes, Stockyards Inn.53
But he was just let down, like in any fight, and when he went on to say that—and do it so beautifully—just a little let down. Then we flew back—I can't remember if it was that afternoon or the next day—and then he wasn't anymore—he was just exhausted.
Do you remember who were the closest to him at that point at the convention? Torb and Bobby, and Ted Sorensen, I imagine.
Yeah, was he taking a bath over there and watching it on television? I guess, those three. They'd know what other people were. It was in that little room, you know, right out in back, and there was someone else there too—I have to think who—I can't remember.
And then, after '56, by the time he ran for the Senate in '58, he was quite clearly going to try for the presidency in 1960.
Well, he never once said to me in all his life, before we started the primary year, "I'm going to try for the presidency," or not. You know, it just went on. But of course he was, because then he came back— After the convention, he flew to Europe to stay with his father and just rest a few days in the South of France. And I lost the baby and he came back to Newport54 a couple of weeks. Then we came down and lived at Hickory Hill that fall, while we were finding another house, but he was always on the move. And all that winter, he was on the move. And so, obviously, all that speaking, speaking, speaking, yes, he was aiming—yeah, I guess he did decide then.
I remember suddenly realizing it when he was so determined to win the Massachusetts senatorial race in '58 by the largest possible margin.55 It was perfectly clear he was going to win, and therefore it wasn't very necessary for him to campaign, but he worked so hard in that campaign.
Yeah, I remember when we came back on the boat from Europe, someone met us with a poll of how Foster Furcolo56 was doing. Would that be it? Jack's polls weren't so good. [talk about tape recorder] So then there was this major, frantic effort. Somehow that seems to me the hardest campaign of ever—that Senate campaign.
JOHN F. KENNEDY CAMPAIGNING FOR REELECTION TO THE SENATE WITH JACQUELINE KENNEDY AND EDWARD M. KENNEDY
John F. Kennedy Library and Museum, Boston
You mean, just the extent of more—
I mean just I never can remember sleeping at home for however many months it was. Two months, I guess. But you know, just running, running.
All those teas.
Mostly just endless cars. It was awful. Oh yeah, with Professor Burns,57 and Jack telling him who to shake hands with on platforms, but all through the Berkshires, through Springfield, different hotels, you know.
Do you like campaigning?
I do—until you get exhausted. You know, about the fifth day out, it's just sheer exhaustion, and then, you know—I love it when it's going wonderfully—I love it when it's going wonderfully for Jack.
There's nothing more exciting than entering a crowded hall and watching the candidate come in, everyone going mad.
Yeah, well, all that part I loved, and towards the end, it was getting better and better.