THE SECOND CONVERSATION

We ended up, I think, last time talking about the Senate, in which the President was reelected by this great majority and which, for the first time, made him sort of nationally spoken of as a possible contender for 1960. Did that—was it already—was that becoming, a kind of, do you think, a preoccupation in his own life, and yours and so on? Was everything sort of directed more and more to that?

Do you mean to being president?

Yeah.

Well, it was never spoken of out loud, but after election night in Boston¹—I think we went somewhere in the sun or sometime, but then he started speaking all the time. Again, all those years before the White House—every weekend he was always traveling. You know, invitations from all over the country—and then they led up to the primaries, which were what, just 1960?

Nineteen-sixty.

It seems the thing went on forever.

During these times when he was out, like the 1958 campaign and so on, how did—he kept up reading and so on. How and when did he do that?

Well, he read in the strangest way. I mean, I could never read unless I'd have a rainy afternoon or a long evening in bed, or something. He'd read walking, he'd read at the table, at meals, he'd read after dinner, he'd read in the bathtub, he'd read—prop open a book on his desk—on his bureau—while he was doing his tie. You know, he'd just read in little, he'd open some book I'd be reading, you know, just devour it. He really read all the times you don't think you have time to read.

READING IN HYANNIS PORT, 1959
©2000 Mark Shaw/mptvimages.com

He'd read in short takes, and then remember it and come back and pick up a thread?

Anything he wanted to remember, he could always remember. You'd see things he'd use in his speeches. You'd be sitting next to him on some platform, and suddenly out would come a sentence that two weeks ago in Georgetown he would have read out loud to you one night, just because it interested him.

He had the most fantastic and maddening memory for quotes, because—while he remembered the quotes, but he couldn't always remember where they were from.

I remember the winter he was sick. His father had a whole shelf of books—The World's Great Orations or something that his father had given him and he'd read every single one of those books, and then I made—I asked his father to give them to him for Christmas, which, of course, he was delighted to do. But he'd been through every one of those. And he used to read me Edmund Burke's "To the"—what is it?

The address to—

"To the People of—"

Bristol.²

That's it, and well, all things through there, you know, he just—of course, that was a different winter. He'd just have days and days in bed to go through all that.

You gather he'd done this as a child—been a great reader?

Yes, I know he'd read Marlborough³ when he was about ten or eleven, because in his room at the Cape, which he's had since he was a boy, those books were in a little bookshelf by his bed—all old, sort of mauve backs. And he was always sick and in bed. He had scarlet fever. Then one year, he had some—either asthma or blood trouble—anemia or something, when he went out to Arizona.

That was when he left Princeton.⁴

Yeah. Then there was another summer—you know, he'd always been reading—all these things—and he used to give me books when we were going out before we were married. I remember the first one he gave me was Sam Houston by Marquis James—The Raven. Then he'd give me John Buchan—Pilgrim's Way—lots of John Buchan.⁵ But he was just always reading, practically while driving a car.

Would he ever read novels besides thrillers?

Listen, the only thrillers he ever read were about three Ian Fleming books. No, I never saw him read a novel.

Did he really like Ian Fleming much, or was that sort of a press—

Oh, well, it was sort of a press thing, because when they asked him his ten favorite books, he sort of made up a list, and he put in one sort of novel. You know, he liked Ian Fleming⁶—I mean, if you were in a plane or you're in a hotel room and there's three books on your bedside table—I mean, he'd sometimes grab something that way. There was one book he gave me to read—something about "time"—it was a novel where someone goes back in the eighteenth century and uncovers a mystery.⁷ It was just a paperback book he'd found in some plane or something—the last two books he told me to read this fall—he was reading The Fall of the Dynasties⁸ and—

Edmond Taylor.

And Patriotic Gore⁹ he kept telling me to read—neither of which I've gotten around to.

Patriotic Gore, particularly, is a marvelous book.

I still haven't read it. But you know, he was reading all that in the White House, and I was growing illiterate there.

It is a matter of constant mystery, because he was surrounded by all these academics who supposedly read books all the time. None of us ever had time to read books, and he would say in a slightly accusatory way—ask us about books that had recently come out that none of us had read.

Every Sunday, he'd rip three pages out of the Times book section, with an "x" around what I was to get. You know, it'd be rather interesting to look over my bills from the Savile Book Shop, because all these things I'd order that Jack would say to get. And you know, on the weekends all the time, he'd be reading—

It would be fascinating. Are the bills somewhere?

I have all the bills. I suppose they're—and Savile Book Shop has a list. What else would he— For instance, at Camp David sometimes, if it was a rainy day or something, he'd stay in bed in the afternoon. Well, he'd go through two books.

He read very fast.

Yeah.

He did at one time take a fast-reading course. Did that make any difference?¹⁰

Well, that was so funny, because it was about like this tape recorder. Bobby came down with—Bobby had been over to Baltimore and gotten all this equipment with a little card you put in and the line runs down it. Well, we did it about once. You know, you're meant to speed up and answer questions about three crows—how many crows in the cabbage patch, or something. I think we did it twice one Christmas vacation in Florida, and then stopped. So he never really did that.

It was mostly history and biography.

Yeah.

Why not novels, do you suppose?

I think he was always looking for something in books—he was looking for something about history, or something for a quote, or what. Oh, at Glen Ora, he was reading Mao Tse-tung, and he was quoting that to me.¹¹

On guerrilla warfare?

Yeah. Then we started to make up all these little parables like "When an Army drinks, not it is thirsty," or something. He got terribly funny about it. But, you know, I think he was looking for something in his reading. He wasn't just reading for diversion. He didn't want to waste a single second.

Poetry the same—therefore wasn't—wouldn't read much. Would he read things you liked a lot?

Yes, he'd—this summer I was reading the Maréchal de Saxe.¹² I remember General Taylor¹³ came out on the Honey Fitz¹⁴ and I was asking him all about Saxe's battles. He was in Blenheim and everything, and I told Jack what General Taylor said about him. I was halfway through that book, and Jack took it away from me, and read the whole thing. You know, if I'd ever say anything interesting in a book I was reading, he'd take it away and read it.

How about the theater?

Reading plays or going to them?

Going to them.

Well, we never had much time. When we were in New York, we'd go to a play once in a while, but he always liked light plays. You know, he wanted to sort of relax. He would rather go to a musical comedy or something than something heavy. But we used to play—when you say poetry—he didn't really read poetry—well, he loved to read sometimes Byron, you know, whatever was around he'd pick and read—bits of Shakespeare. But we had a John Gielgud record that we used to play over and over—"The Ages of Man"¹⁵ or something. And then we had one this fall—what was it? Maybe it was Richard Burton—I don't know. He liked to play them sometimes at night. You know, when you'd be in bed you'd play records sometimes.

Mostly it was rather British history than American history. I have the impression—British and European history, is that right?

Yes, there was a lot of Civil War—was what interested him in American history. But there wasn't so much American history, really. Then I took a course on it one year by a fascinating man, who—I got to do some research for him later, Dr. Jules Davids.¹⁶ But when I'd come home all excited—what I'd learned about the trustbusters or something, it really didn't seem to interest him too much. He really was—it was British, really. He was sort of a Whig, wasn't he?¹⁷

He was. And was this the result of the time that he spent there when his father was ambassador? Did that sort of give him a—was it before that? It's an odd thing.

No, because he really spent very little time there, when you think he was finishing at Harvard, and he spent—what, maybe a summer, and his term or so at the London School of Economics. No, it was all his childhood—what he picked to read. You know, I keep saying Marlborough, but there were others which—well, I have all his books, that he always had, so when I get them out of crates, I just know—His mother can tell you some things about him—reading when he was six, asking some question—or seven, I guess. You know, some grown-up book that he'd found. It was just—I think his childhood reading.

Reading Marlborough at the age of ten for example. So Churchill was always—at the end, a figure of meaning—

I think Marlborough was more than Churchill. I think he found his heroes more in the past. I really don't think he admired—well, of course, he admired Churchill and he wanted to meet him. We did meet him one summer in the South of France but the poor man was rather, you know, a little bit gone by then. But he never had a hero worship of any contemporary—it was more in the past. What did he say once about the presidency? "These things have always been done by men, and they can be done now," when his father said, "Why do you want to run for president?" I'm not saying that he thought he was as great as Churchill, but he could see that he was up to coping with things and the failures of so many men who were alive now—and their shortcomings. So, he was really looking for lessons in the past from history, but he did—no, you're right—he did admire Churchill's prose, and he read all those memoirs that came out.

I think that's right. I think he really sought—it was Churchill as a writer, more than—I mean, he admired Churchill as a statesman, but it was Churchill as a writer which really excited him and piqued his curiosity.

And I can remember him reading me out loud two things from that—the part where he describes the court of Charles II, which is wonderful sort of seraglio prose and everything—and then how he describes the civil war.¹⁸ You know, he'd be reading, and he'd read aloud a lot.

Anyone in the American past whom he was particularly interested in? Hamilton, Jefferson, Jackson?

Well, Jefferson, I guess, and the one letter he wanted to buy so badly, but it was too expensive, and I was going to try and find and give it to him last Christmas was a letter that came up of Jefferson's, where he'd asked for four more gardeners for Monticello, but he wanted to be sure they knew how to play the violin, so that he could have chamber music concerts in the evening. That letter had come up at Parke-Bernet, and it would have been $6,000 or something, so he hadn't bid on it. You know, Webster.¹⁹ He read all their things. I suppose Jefferson, really.²⁰

What about—did he ever—Theodore Roosevelt, Wilson, FDR—?

Oh, then he was reading a book about Theodore Roosevelt this summer or winter.

Noel Busch—Alice Longworth²¹ gave it to him.

Yeah, and he was saying to me, "Listen to how fatuous Teddy Roosevelt was," and he'd, "Look how—" and then he'd describe several—read me several things where Roosevelt describes what he does. Always in a sort of throwaway way—"And then I marched up San Juan Hill and killed five natives" —and rather apologetic about it. I think he saw through a lot of Theodore Roosevelt. Though he admired him too. But he read everything that came out by everyone.

What did he think of FDR? Did he ever know him at all?

Well, they all met him, because I remember Mrs. Kennedy telling me that I should think of all the children in the cabinet, because how nice President Roosevelt and Mrs. Roosevelt had been—all the Kennedy children met the Roosevelts.²² But I don't think he thought he was any—he often thought he was rather a—charlatan is an unfair word—you know what I mean—a bit of a poseur, rather cleverly.²³ You know, that he did an awful lot for effect, and then he used to get furious—not furious, but irritated when people would tell him he should have fireside chats and things, and he found out how many Roosevelt had, which was something like—you know, very—

Thirteen or fourteen the whole time. I got the figures up for him.²⁴

Yeah. Of course, he was interested in Roosevelt. He didn't have any—he wasn't patterning himself on him, or anything.

He didn't pattern himself on—

On anyone. I remember him telling me the time where Wilson had been wrong, or what their mistakes were, or how—but you know, all with hindsight. He was never arrogant. He just seemed to devour all of them and then, I suppose, it sifted around and came out—he used them all. That's what he did.

Now it always seemed to me quite extraordinary. Here are three men who lived about the same time—Winston Churchill, Franklin Roosevelt, and Joseph P. Kennedy, of whom the first two were in one sense or another great men and the third was a very successful man, a very talented man, but not a great man. And yet the children of Churchill and the children of Roosevelt have all been—in many cases, bright and talented, but somehow it all missed fire. And the Kennedy children have this extraordinary discipline.

I really think you have to give a lot of that credit to Mr. Kennedy, because Jack used to talk about that a lot. You know, he bent over backwards. When his children were doing something, he wrote them letters endlessly. Whenever they were doing anything important at school, he'd be there for it. The way he'd talk at the table. If you just go on being a great man, and your children are sort of shunted aside, you know—he watched—I always thought he was the tiger mother. And Mrs. Kennedy,²⁵ poor little thing, was running around, trying to keep up with this demon of energy, seeing if she had enough placemats in Palm Beach, or should she send the ones from Bronxville, or had she put the London ones in storage. You know, that's what—her little mind went to pieces, and it's Mr. Kennedy who—and she loves to say now how she sat around the table and talked to them about Plymouth Rock and molded their minds, but she was really saying, "Children, don't disturb your father!" He did all—he made this conscious effort about the family, and I don't think those other two men did. Oh, one other thing Jack told me about Roosevelt was how his foreign policy had been wrong and how he hadn't been good there—the mistakes he'd made there. I remember asking him once—

AMBASSADOR KENNEDY WITH JOE, BOBBY, AND JACK, 1938
John F. Kennedy Library and Museum, Boston

In relation to the Soviet Union, I suppose.

I guess so, yeah. And how he underestimated or misestimated—whatever the word is—you know, the men he was dealing with. But perfectly, you know, just looking at it.

He had a great detachment about things because he had a great capacity to put himself in other people's positions and see what the problems were.

I always thought that of him, you know. Maybe that's what makes some people—like Jim Burns, who never knew him, but said he was detached and wondered if he had a heart.²⁶ Well, of course, he had the greatest heart when he cared. But he had this detachment. I always thought he would have been the greatest judge. Because he could take any case—it could involve himself, or me or something, where you—with anyone else, your emotions would be so involved—and look at it from all sides. I remember him speaking that way about General de Gaulle one time, when everyone was so mad at General de Gaulle last year.²⁷ I was so steamed up, and he was saying, "No, no, you must see his side." You know, he was nonetheless irritated.

PRESIDENT KENNEDY AND PRESIDENT CHARLES DE GAULLE, PARIS, 1961
John F. Kennedy Library and Museum, Boston

Well, that was the extraordinary thing. There are those who always see other people's sides to such an extent that it severs the nerve of action for themselves. It never did, in his case. He could see the point. He understood the political urgencies that drove other people doing mischievous things, but that—it never prevented him from reacting to it.

Yeah, I wish I'd given him a wristwatch with a tape recorder in it or something, because if you could hear him explaining de Gaulle to me—what de Gaulle's objectives were, and why he was so bitter. I mean, his analysis of that man—de Gaulle was my hero when I married Jack, and he really sunk down. Because I think he was so full of spite. And that's what Jack never was, and he always would say—I suppose women are terribly emotional, and you want to never speak to anyone again who said something mean against your husband—but Jack would always say, "You must always leave the way open for conciliation." You know, "Everything changes so in politics—your friends are your enemies next week, and vice versa."

Why was de Gaulle your hero?

He wasn't really my hero, but I sort of loved all that prose of some of his memoirs and thought this man who stayed away in the gloomy forest and came marching back, you know, being rather Francophile, just a vague sort of—

I agree. I thought, you know, at the funeral, that he was—in spite of all the mischief he has made—will make—an immensely touching and charming figure.

Yeah, of course he has two sides to him. That's what Jack would always say. You know, nobody's all black or all white. And he did, you know, realize what Jack was. I think he just felt guilty—I don't know— You know, he realized who Jack was, and that's why he came to the funeral. And I think that was an effort. He didn't need to do that.

He had a certain—the thing about de Gaulle and Churchill and the President and a few other people is that they had a sense of history, which produces sort of magnanimity of judgment. Although de Gaulle can be spiteful, he can also be very magnanimous and he recognized that the President— He saw him in the great stream of history, and that—of course, his memoirs are so marvelous in that respect because of the sense of the flow, the necessities which people have to respond to, and the wonderful prose.

Oh, yeah, when Jack made his announcement that he was going to run at the Senate—no, run for president—I'd been reading him the beginning things of de Gaulle's memoirs of how "I've always had a certain image of France" and he used part of that, paraphrased it for his own. Yes, you should look at that speech—"I have a certain vision of America" or something.²⁸ Another person he used to tell me a lot about was Randolph Churchill, Winston Churchill's father. "And I forgot about Goschen—" I remember he'd say that a lot of times, when someone resigned, and they found someone else to replace them. Do you know that story?

No, I don't know that story.

There was some minister who resigned when Randolph Churchill was in the government, because he thought he was—it was on some point. Yeah, who was the one who resigned—of the Exchequer, a couple of years ago? On some little point of whether—some little thing with the budget?

He'd given information—

Not Thorneycroft—anyway, some man resigned and was immediately replaced, and this man thought that he couldn't be replaced, and they'd have to come around to do what he wanted, and right away, they appointed someone named Goschen. And the man—maybe it was even Randolph Churchill—said, "Oh, my God, I forgot about Goschen." [Schlesinger laughs] Which, you know, is a thing to show that anyone can be replaced.²⁹

What did the President think, in 1959, about his contenders? Well, I guess he had Hubert, and he had Lyndon and Stevenson in the wings.

I don't know, exactly. You know, he liked Hubert before, but he always said when you get into a fight, it gets so bitter that you're just bound to sort of hate them at the end. It got very bitter, and he liked Hubert again afterwards. Lyndon sort of amused him. Well, Lyndon was so tricky and he'd come home and tell me things—when Lyndon made an announcement up at the Senate that he was fit to run—to all these reporters—that he could—I don't know—play squash and have sexual intercourse once a week. [both laugh]Lyndon—well, he'd just come over and—you know, he knew what he was dealing with there. I mean, he didn't ever admi—

THE DEMOCRATIC TICKET FOR 1960: SENATOR LYNDON JOHNSON AND SENATOR KENNEDY IN HYANNIS PORT
Fay Foto Service/John F. Kennedy Library and Museum, Boston

He liked Lyndon. Lyndon was sort of—

He didn't particularly like him, but he could trade with him and not come off— It was sort of, when you saw them together, it was really like fencing, in political things. And I always thought Lyndon was arguing with him or being rude, but Jack was sort of parrying with such amusement, and he always sort of bested him. Lyndon would give a big elephant-like grunt. But, you know, he didn't really—it wasn't anything personal.

I think he always felt—that he was amused, rather delighted by Johnson as a kind of American phenomenon, and at the same time, often quite irritated by a particular thing he would do at any point.

You know, Lyndon—I mean he just—what were his things—of Lyndon— Lyndon was the majority leader and he did get the position he wanted in the Senate, but I know he had to trade or really pester hard for that—for Foreign Relations and Labor. That's what he wanted so much. But in the primaries, it was more what you could do in Wisconsin, and who you could get to see, and then whether Hubert would go into West Virginia or not, more than the people. I told you last night how he'd get irritated with Stevenson. He never thought any of them were better than him, but, I mean, he wasn't ever conceited. I mean, if he could just get it—get over this Catholic hurdle and this youth hurdle and this rich—or whatever it was, you know, then everything would be fine. So, it was really overcoming those hurdles more than his opponents.

Do you think one of them worried him more than another, or were they all sort of equal?

I think it was Catholic and youth.³⁰ And I remember before he went out to Chicag—to California, I went with him to New York to see him off, and he made the speech—was it in Grand Central Station or the Biltmore?—about answering Truman's charges that he was too young.³¹ But he did it without any bitterness.

And terrifically effective. At the end of '59, there is a—perhaps around Thanksgiving at Hyannis Port, there was sort of a meeting to plan strategy.

Oh, I remember that. We had one house there, and everybody was closeted for two days in Ethel and Bobby's, and all these men came up—Kenny, Larry, Bobby, everyone, and huddled away and planned. But, you know, when Jack would come home from something like that, I wouldn't ask him, "What did you plan here and there?" He'd come home, and then it would be fish chowder, or what would he like for dinner, or records, or then someone there to laugh. So that's—I mean, I would have been a terrible wife if I tried to pick his brains about that.

The last thing he would have wanted. I mean, he wanted other things. I think in a way, the great difference between—it was also true between Roosevelt and Truman, being—Kennedy and Johnson—is that both Roosevelt and Kennedy were master politicians, but politics was one part of their lives. It was something they enjoyed doing. It was an instrumentality they used to do other things. But then there were a lot of other things involved with life. I think with Truman, Johnson, politics is their whole world.

I know. And when you talk to either of them, it's all they can talk about. Every little metaphor—"my daddy down at the well."³² Or Truman's fascinating about American history. You can just ask him anything. But you never can hear anything different from them. But, you know, Jack—well, I mean—I think a woman always adapts, and especially if you're very young when you get married and, you know, are unformed, you really become the kind of wife you can see that your husband wants. So, if he'd wanted—for instance, my sister's husband loves to bring his problems home, and they're all business, and Lee doesn't understand that.³³ But, you know, if Jack wanted to do that—and talk about things at home—then I'd be asking him questions. He didn't want to talk about the things that were bothering him. But other things of his life—I mean, it was always, you'd have to read the papers and everything. Because he'd be rather irritated if he'd say, "Did you see Reston today?" And if you hadn't, you'd make sure you saw Reston the next day. Because if you'd say, "What did he say?" he'd say, "Well, you know, you should find that out yourself."

His staff were victims of the same. At this meeting, as I recall it, in Hyannis Port, was—the real thing, which kind of changed the whole place, in the sense that Ted,³⁴ who up to that time had been handling both, working both on the speeches and the political side—was taken out of the political side, and Bobby and Kenny and so on came in, and really took over the whole question of political—

Oh, yes, and I remember there was a rather bitter feeling for a while—or at least in Wisconsin, I think. Ted was bitter at Bobby. Ted didn't like whatever slot he'd been put into, and deprived—you know, there was a bit of friction there. But, you know, Jack could always trust Bobby. And, I suppose—I mean, he planned his campaign that way. He couldn't always trust Ted. You know, Ted had shown before that he wasn't—

You mean questions of judgment?

No. Questions of—well, yeah. But I mean that thing of Profiles in Courage. Jack behaved like a great gentleman to Ted then, because Ted didn't behave very well that year. I mean, I'm sure that's not why he gave Ted the speeches or something, but I must say, I couldn't look at Ted Sorensen for about two years after that.

Because Ted gave the impression he had written the book?

Written the book. Of course, the poor boy, he was just starting, he was new in Washington, but he used to really make a conscious effort to go around and take Jack pages, and things that he'd crossed out and added—you know, really to go out of his way to show them to people. And then, when Drew Pearson said it, then there was the lawsuit where Clark Clifford came and defended him—and, luckily, Jack had saved all these pages of yellow legal pad that he'd written himself.³⁵ And, I guess, Jack loved Clark Clifford then, because when he asked Clark to defend him, I think Clark might have been under the impression that Ted really had written most of the book. But he never asked that question, and then Jack got all those yellow pages and showed them to Clark, and Clark was just amazed and said, "These are the most valuable things you have. Lock them up. Everything." You know, and I saw Jack writing that book. So, you know, Ted would send down fifty books on Lucius Lamar—and everyone else—from the Library of Congress—and Jack would sketch it through. And Thaddeus Stevens, and all that. It was back and forth in the mail. You know, I really saw Jack writing that book. I never liked the way Ted behaved then. But you know, his life was all around himself, and, I think, just in the White House, he got to love one other person beside himself, which was Jack. So in the White House, he was fine.

TED SORENSEN AND SENATOR KENNEDY
John F. Kennedy Library and Museum, Boston

As late as that? Because by the time—certainly Ted seemed to be the most devoted and selfless to the point of—

Let's see, Profiles in Courage would have been '55, '56? Well, I'd say, all through '56 and the beginning of '57. You know, Jack forgave so quickly, but I never forgave Ted Sorensen. I watched him like a hawk for a year or so. But then, as he had more to do, he didn't need to prove his little things. And then Jack gave him—again, don't you think this is a nice thing?—Jack gave him all the money from Profiles in Courage, because he felt Ted worked so hard—and he would work and stay up at night. As I said, he worked slowly—he always seemed to have to stay up until two or three in the morning to get something done. But don't you think—if everyone's saying that Ted wrote the book, for Jack then to give him the money from it—which he's made over a hundred thousand dollars—³⁶

Did Ted get all the royalties from Profiles in Courage?

Yeah, because then, you see—when it was published, Jack thought it would just be—

That's fantastic!

You know, just a little book that would make—I don't know—sell twenty-five thousand copies or something? But then it went zooming on to be a bestseller, bestseller, bestseller. Ted's gotten every bit of money from that book until the memorial edition with Bobby's preface came out. And then, from now on, it'll go to the Library. You know, so—

That's extraordinary! I never—Ted must have made hundreds of thousands of dollars.

I know he made at least a hundred. But you know, Jack wanted to give him something extra besides his salary because the boy did just live—and you know, and worked hard all night and everything—but Jack was such a gentleman. I just think that was such a nice thing to do.

Bobby was in Washington, in this period, all the time, but he really wasn't, until '59, sort of day-to-day involved.

Always when we were in Washington, we saw Bobby. It's funny. Just in the White House, we stopped seeing them in the evenings. When we went out, we saw Bobby. Before we were married, we always lived in Georgetown, we were at dinner with them once or twice a week. And then Bobby—they'd talk about the McClellan committee, the McCarthy committee—you know, all the things that Bobby was on.³⁷ But, I guess, then Bobby ran his Senate campaign—didn't he?

Yes, he did.

In '52?

In '52, and Teddy, supposedly, in '58.³⁸

But, you know, Bobby was always sort of—well, they were both so caring of what the other was doing. But then I guess—I suppose, at that Thanksgiving meeting, Bobby just gave up everything else and did everything for Jack from then on. I don't remember what Bobby was doing in '58 that he couldn't run the campaign. Are you sure he didn't run it?

My impression is that Teddy was nominally the campaign manager, but maybe not. The labor hearings were going on, I suppose, at that time.

Well, that's a major thing, I remember, in Jack's life, but I can't remember what year it was. But I can remember every morning for breakfast, Arthur Goldberg³⁹ would appear. Or George Meany,⁴⁰ and everyone—that was the year '57 when we moved in our house, because the first breakfast, I bought these creaky old dining room chairs, and at one of the first breakfasts, Jack and George Meany and someone else all went crashing to the floor. But all that year, you know, we were seeing people for the labor bill. He and Seymour Harris ⁴¹ that spring—

Much more labor than foreign policy at that point—

Well, it was to get through the labor bill. Was it against the Landrum-Griffin Bill?⁴²

The Landrum-Griffin Bill came along as an—alternative, which was eventually passed as a result of Eisenhower's throwing himself into it.

Well, anyway, Jack had one whole spring working on that.

Spring of '59, I think. But at the same time, he would do things like give the speech on Algeria.⁴³

Oh, yeah. Gosh, I had to be married for my contribution to that. Because the summer—that was the summer before we were married—he gave me all these French books, and asked me to translate them. And I was working for the Times-Herald,⁴⁴ living alone at my mother's house in Virginia. And I'd stay up all these hot nights, translating these books, and, as I couldn't tell what was important and what was not—

What sort of books?

I mean, all these—they were all in French on Algeria. No, no, this was Indochina. Sorry, Indochina. That's right.⁴⁵ That's what I did before I got married.

That was '51–'52.

Yeah, translate all on Admiral D'Argenlieu, and Ho Chi Minh, and the Ammonites and the Mennonites.⁴⁶ I think I translated about ten books.

Ten whole books?

No, I mean really sort of skimming through the page, but—

Summarizing. Could he not read French?

Yeah, he could read French, but you know, but not enough to trust himself for a lot of facts and things. And then he would see—we were seeing a lot of French people then, and then they'd give some book. And the same—well, I did some for Algeria. But, you know—and the St. Lawrence Seaway, again I can remember that. You know, all those things were so brave.⁴⁷

The Algeria speech was particularly so, because the whole Council on Foreign Relations crowd in this country were all outraged by it. I happened to be in Paris when the speech came out, and an old friend of mine, Jean-Jacques Servan-Schreiber of L'Express, was absolutely delighted by the speech and ran the full text and claims to be the first magazine in the world which put the President on the cover. And I remember writing to him from Paris, saying, "Pay no attention to these editorials from the New York Times saying how you shouldn't rock the boat. You are absolutely right. The people in France who care about it welcomed the speech."

Oh, yeah, I remember when he went to Poland, he wouldn't take me, because he thought it wasn't serious to travel with your wife. But, you know, he was always more interested—well, so interested in foreign things. And then the minimum wage, I remember—whenever that was.⁴⁸ You know, all the things he cared about—I don't know what year. But, just as an example of him having a heart—I can remember him being so disgusted, because once we had dinner with my mother and my stepfather, and there sat my stepfather putting a great slab of paté de foie gras on his toast and saying it was simply appalling to think that the minimum wage should be a dollar twenty-five. And Jack saying to me when we went home, "Do you realize that those laundrywomen in the South get sixty cents an hour?" Or sixty cents a day, or whatever it was. And how horrified he was when he saw General Eisenhower—President Eisenhower—I guess, in their Camp David meeting before inauguration—and Eisenhower had said to him—they were talking about the Cuban refugees—and Eisenhower said, "Of course, they'd be so great if you could just ship a lot of them up in trucks from Miami and use 'em as servants for twenty dollars a month, but I suppose somebody'd raise a fuss if you tried to do that."⁴⁹ You know, again, so appalled at all these rich people just thinking of how can you live on— Not thinking how you can live just on twenty dollars a month, but just to use these people like slaves. He was just so hurt for them, though he'd say it in a sentence. That awful—Republican sort of— Look, oh and then, another time, when you were trying to raise money for the cultural center,⁵⁰ and a Republican friend of my stepfather said, "Why don't you get labor to do it? If you took a dollar a week out of all of labor's wages, you could have the money raised in no time at all." And he was just really sickened by that and said, "Can you think what a dollar a week out of their wages would mean to all those people?" So all those things show that he did have a heart, because he was really shocked by those things.

Oh, I think the most—of course, he had a heart and he had a—in fact, you know, it wasn't on his sleeve, and people had been so used to a certain sentimental style of expression of that kind of thing. But he was deeply affected. But he was cool also. The fact that he was, is why someone like Hubert, whom I love, who is an admirable man—nonetheless can't connect with as many people as the President could, because Hubert is still—is in an earlier phase of reaction to this kind of thing. Did the President enjoy the primaries in 1960—apart from the fact it was a lot, and a great nuisance having to go through all this, but campaigning and so on?

You don't know the exhaustion of the primaries, and he often said that the four days we took in Jamaica between Wisconsin and West Virginia were what made it possible for him to be president. Because he just worked himself into exhaustion, and then the second wind and the third wind, and when you get that tired, you don't enjoy them. And sometimes, when we were in the White House, and he'd go on some long trip, he'd get tired—sort of a campaigning trip, and he'd come home and say, "Oh, my God, I just don't see how I got through those years." You know, "I just don't see how I did it." I suppose, when you stay that tired for that long—but then he'd lose his voice—I don't think anyone enjoys working out of sheer exhaustion. And in Wisconsin, we'd go into a ten-cent store or something, three people in it. They'd back against the back wall. They wouldn't want to shake your hand. You'd have to go up and just grab their hand and shake it. Or little rallies in a town, where you'd have a band and everything there and nobody'd show up. You know, they were really hard. Wisconsin was the worst.

Worse than West Virginia?

Because in West Virginia, I was so amazed. I thought everyone would be there staring at us like—

These "Papists"?

Yeah, and all that literature they were passing out about nuns and priests and everything. But the people were so friendly. There could be a mother with three blackened teeth, nursing a baby on a rotting front porch, but she'd smile and say, "Won't you come in?" In Wisconsin, those people would stare at you like sort of animals. Jack would say, "All this talk about the rural life is really"—you know—"overestimates it." Because the people are alone all winter long, and cold, and just with animals, and they're so suspicious. Maybe it's because they're Nordic too—I don't know. But they're suspicious people there. Eww!

You feel this was because he was a Catholic, or because he was an easterner, or were they equally suspicious of anybody—Hubert, or anybody?

I think that in Wisconsin, they're just suspicious of anyone sort of gregarious. I mean, I don't think they like someone coming up, or a band, or anything. And I think they were suspicious of him for all those reasons. Whereas in West Virginia, you know, they're a bit gayer, even though they're so poor. But I loved—I never met one person in West Virginia I didn't like, except for this strange man running around with his handbills wherever we spoke. And I never met one person in Wisconsin I did like, except for the people who were working for Jack.

THE KENNEDYS CAMPAIGNING IN THE WISCONSIN PRIMARY, 1960
John F. Kennedy Library and Museum, Boston

When he was exhausted, he'd snap back quickly though, wouldn't he?

Oh, yeah, you'd stumble into some hotel bed and you'd get up at six in the morning. He could snap back. He could have a day home and just sleep all through it, and you'd get all his laundry done or something in the daytime, and pack him at night, and off he'd go or off we'd both go. And he could always sleep. He could sleep in the plane, almost like a soldier. I think that's—so many people's troubles are when they can't sleep.

Clem Norton⁵¹—I don't know if you've heard the tape of his—said Teddy has a street personality, the President didn't have a street personality.

That's true, he didn't. I mean, at the end, you know, he had that incredible thing.⁵² But Teddy's more nineteenth century. He can go down and tell stories. He's more like Clem Norton, and more like Honey Fitz. But Jack never—he never said, "Hi, fella," or put his fat palm under your armpit, or, you know, any of that sort of business. It was embarrassing to him.

But he didn't actively dislike campaigning. He rather enjoyed it, didn't he?

Yeah, he enjoyed it. I mean, if you asked him his three favorite things he can do in a day, I don't think he'd say campaigning.⁵³ But when he got caught up in it, and when it was going well, then he really liked it and responded. And the last—you know, as time went on, he was doing better and better. And he loved the people who really were glad to see him—the little old ladies, or children, or what.

DURING THE NEW HAMPSHIRE PRIMARY CAMPAIGN
John F. Kennedy Library and Museum, Boston

I always felt that when he went out as President on a trip and saw crowds, he'd really come back very refreshed. Didn't you feel him filled with new energy and confidence—

Yes, it was so good for him. And he'd say how good it was to get out of Washington, where it's this little group that just writes—in and in and in—you know, little correspondents hashing others. It was so good for him to get away and to see that he was adored. You know, it was great whenever he did that. And when he went to Europe this June.