TOM PUTNAM: Good evening. You've read the news stories, bought your copies of the book, watched the ABC Primetime special, morning television, and even the Daily Show with Jon Stewart. And now, tonight, live from the Kennedy Library, with its oral history so carefully housed for the past half-century, we'll hear directly from Jacqueline Kennedy about her life with our 35th President and from their daughter, who has brought this fresh, new history to light.
I'm Tom Putnam, Director of the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, and on behalf of Tom McNaught, Executive Director of the Kennedy Library Foundation, members of our Foundation board, many of whom are here with us tonight, and all of my Library and Foundation colleagues, I thank you for coming, and all those watching on C-SPAN, and acknowledge the generous underwriters of the Kennedy Library Forums: Lead sponsor Bank of America, Boston Capital, the Lowell Institute, the Boston Foundation, and our media partners, The Boston Globe and WBUR.
The opening text panel of our new exhibit, "In Her Voice: Jacqueline Kennedy, The White House Years," which pairs this new oral history with never-before-seen documents and artifacts from our collections, reads: "Jacqueline Kennedy had a rare combination of gifts – intelligence, courage, discipline, artistic creativity, and a style all her own. She had an adventurous spirit and was an accomplished horsewoman who lived life at full gallop."
The oral history provides us with many of Mrs. Kennedy's personal recollections and insights, and I hope you will allow me to comment on just one. When asked by Arthur Schlesinger, whose son Andrew is here with us this evening, about where the President best relaxed, Mrs. Kennedy replied, "It was while sailing. He loved the sun and the water, and not the phone." And she remembers JFK as blissfully happy with the wind blowing his hair and adds, "It was for him what getting out on a horse was for me."
Through her thoughtful foreword to the book and some of her mother's recollections, we also learn about Caroline Kennedy, whose presence animates this institution like no other and whose steady leadership has put this Library in the forefront of the Presidential Library system in providing worldwide access to archival collections.
We learn of the adventure stories her father told Caroline as a young girl, stories about two ponies, White Star and Black Star. As he wove these tales, the President would let her pick which horse she was to ride and ask which of her cousins should race on the other. In an interview in Parade magazine, Caroline describes often choosing Stevie Smith as her adversary, whose father this hall is named for. When asked by the interviewer if she was always the heroine in JFK's stories, she quipped, "Of course. Would you want to go to bed thinking that Stevie Smith triumphed over you?" [laughter]
We will open tonight with a brief introduction from the triumphant horsewoman in our midst.
After Caroline's comments, our panel will feature Michael Beschloss, described by Newsweek as the nation's leading Presidential historian, who wrote the introduction to this new book as well as its extensive annotations; and Richard K. Donahue, a member of the Kennedy Administration, the Vice Chair of the Kennedy Library Foundation Board of Directors, who knew and worked with Jacqueline Kennedy in the White House, here in Massachusetts, and during the 1960 campaign. We're delighted to have Ted Widmer, a former speechwriter for President Bill Clinton, and now Director of the John Carter Brown Library at Brown University as the evening's moderator.
Towards the end of the program, we'll take written questions from the audience. There are index cards available and staff will collect them from you.
Let me note a few other special guests who are here with us tonight, including Vicki Kennedy, Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, Sydney Lawford McKelvey, Stephen Smith himself, and two former Kennedy Administration officials, who both happen to be my predecessors as Director of this Library, Charles Daly and Dan Finn.
Also joining us this evening is Jim Gardner, who, among other duties, oversees the Presidential Library system for the National Archives.
"A nation reveals itself by the men and women it produces," JFK once stated. And in Jacqueline Kennedy, this nation produced a most remarkable woman. Among the many compliments one can bestow on this new book is that it is truly revelatory of her extraordinary life, keen wit, and historical accomplishments. As Maureen Dowd noted in a recent column, "Who else could read War and Peace during the Wisconsin primary, persuade the French to lend the Mona Lisa to the US, the only time it has ever left France, and encourage White House chefs to serve French cuisine at state dinners rather than Irish stew?"
In its editorial, the Boston Globe praised Caroline for publishing this oral history and demonstrating her trust in the general public and posterity to judge these recordings for themselves. She is, for many of us, our own gallant knight, still astride White Star, galloping through these troubled times on behalf of the causes her parents believed in, not the least of which is an appreciation of history. Much is revealed, Caroline writes in the foreword to the new book, by her mother's statements, her tone, and even her pauses. And the same can be said of the decision to publish this oral history by the daughter that Jacqueline Kennedy raised so well.
Ladies and gentlemen, Caroline Kennedy. [applause]
CAROLINE KENNEDY: Good evening. Thank you all for coming. I want to thank the staff of the Library and the Foundation for the stewardship and the tremendous care and dedication that they show every day here at the Library; and Board members who are here; and people that I've worked with over the years; and especially the members of my family who are here. It means so much to me, and I think it's a wonderful tribute to our parents that we're all here together. So thank you all.
Most importantly, it means a great deal that 50 years after my father's Presidency, so many people still share his vision for America and are interested in learning about his Administration. His time is really becoming part of history, rather than living memory. Yet, President Kennedy's words, his spirit and his example remain as vital as ever. Now, when young people often feel disconnected from politics, it is up to us as adults to reach across the generations and recommit ourselves and our country to the ideals he lived by. For my family and the Kennedy Library, the goals of these anniversary years are to stimulate interest in public service and use the power of history to help us solve the problems of our own time.
We've undertaken a number of important projects. We've created the largest Presidential digital archive in which my father's papers are now available online, worldwide, so that people can study his decisions and see history in the making. We've launched the JFK 50th website, which includes downloadable exhibits and curriculum for students, and where kids can upload testimonials about their own public service in the spirit of JFK. We've sponsored conferences on the Presidency, civil rights, scientific innovation and the space program, and the quest for nuclear disarmament, all issues that continue to shape our national destiny.
And as you all know, we've published the seven interviews my mother gave in 1964 as part of an oral history project, in which more than 1,000 people were interviewed about my father's life and career. When these interviews were completed, she sealed the audiotapes here at the Kennedy Library and put the transcripts in a safe deposit vault in New York. Though she often spoke of them to me and John, few other people knew of their existence, and she never gave another interview on the subject.
The underlying goal of the oral history project, which was the largest of its kind at the time, was to capture recollections while they were fresh, before the stories had been told a million times, or become overly mythologized. No one interview was expected to be complete or comprehensive, but together, with the underlying documentary record and historical archive housed here at the Kennedy Library, it was hoped that they might form a composite picture that would be valuable in later years. To me, their most important value is that they make history come alive. They give us a glimpse of the human side of the people in the White House and remind us that they are just as imperfect as the rest of us.
People have been surprised that my mother, who was so famously private, participated in this project and gave it her full commitment. But to me, it makes perfect sense. My parents shared a love of history. As a child, my father was sick a great deal. While his brothers and sisters were out playing football, he spent hours reading in bed. I have his books on British Parliamentary history, the Federalist Papers, the American Civil War, and the great orators of ancient times.
My mother preferred novels, poetry and memoirs. As Tom said, she read War and Peace during the Wisconsin primary -- two bleak winter landscapes. [laughter] She has some nice things to say about Wisconsin, also. [laughter] And she always told us that the best preparation for life in the White House was reading the memoirs of the Duc de Saint Simon, who describes how courtiers jockey for the king's attention at the Court of Louis XIV.
My mother brought the same intellectual curiosity to current affairs. When she was engaged and first married to my father, she translated countless French books for him, about the struggles for independence in the French colonies of Algeria, Tunisia, Vietnam and Cambodia, all of which gave her a deep understanding of parts of the world that most Americans were barely aware of at the time, yet are still shaping our history today.
So she brought to the oral history interviews a respect for accuracy and historical scholarship. That's why she chose to be interviewed by Arthur Schlesinger, the Pulitzer Prize-winning historian who had served as a special assistant to my father. It took a good deal of courage to be as honest as she was, but her own reading of the chronicles of the past convinced her that future generations would benefit from her commitment to tell the truth as she saw it. It wasn't easy, but she felt that she was doing this for my father's sake and for history.
Since this book has come out, some people have been surprised by her statements and opinions. In today's world of cautious political memoir, it's hard to imagine a contemporary public figure writing such a forthright book. But she did knock Dick Cheney out of the number one spot on the bestseller list. [laughter/applause] So I think she deserves a lot of credit for her honesty.
One of the difficult decisions I faced was whether to edit the interviews. There are repetitions, issues that haven't stood the test of time, comments that can be taken out of context, and views that she would later change. It didn't seem fair to leave them in, but on the other hand, these were formal interviews, not accidentally recorded conversations. And both participants understood that they were creating a primary source document. So although there are good arguments on both sides of the issue, I felt that I didn't really have the right to alter the historical record.
I also wanted people to see what and how my mother thought at a particular moment in time. It's sometimes difficult for me to reconcile that people feel they know her because they have a sense of her image or her style. But they've never been able to appreciate her intellectual curiosity, her sense of mischief, her deep engagement with the people and events around her, and her fierce loyalty to my father.
For a modern listener, one of the striking things about these interviews is how they evoke a moment in time. In her statements, my mother takes care to come across as an obedient wife of the 1950s, who thinks only of creating a home for her husband and children. In keeping with the purpose of the interviews, but also in keeping with the times, Arthur Schlesinger asks fewer questions about her own activities or conception of her public role than an interviewer would ask a First Lady today.
And now that she's become sort of an international icon, it's hard to remember that she was only 31 when my father became President and totally overwhelmed by the prospect. It's interesting to track her evolution into a modern woman, and ironic that despite the hopelessly old-fashioned views she expresses, that transformation began in the White House.
Though she played a largely traditional role as First Lady, like so many women she found her identity through work. When she moved into the White House, she had a three-year-old [laughter] and a newborn baby. Her pregnancies had been difficult and she would lose another child in 1963. So caring for us and protecting us was her top priority. But it had been a long time since there had been children in the White House and the obligations of a First Lady included a busy official schedule. She fought to carve out the time that she spent with us each day, an early version of the work/family balancing act that women are so familiar with.
But she was dismayed by the uninspiring -- or shall we be honest and say hideously unattractive -- look of the White House and its surroundings. She shared my father's belief that American civilization had come of age and was determined to project the very best of our history, art and culture to the world. She wanted the legacy of Washington, Jefferson and Lincoln to be visible to American students and families who visited our nation's capital and to foreign heads of state who were entertained there.
So she set about to transform the White House into one of the nation's premier museums of American art, decorative arts and history. This was more complex than simply redecorating, a word she didn't like. The project involved Congressional oversight and interagency debate. She was determined that it be self-financing and self-sustaining, and proud that it elevated academic research and scholarship in the field of American art. And her television tour stimulated new interest and pride in our cultural heritage.
She set up the Fine Arts Committee, founded the White House Historical Association, and reorganized the White House library to showcase works of American literature. She created and mostly wrote the first guidebook and got Arthur Schlesinger to help with a book of Presidential biographies on one page, both of which are still sold today.
Of course, people were eager to help her. But this was an ambitious, high visibility undertaking and though it's hard to believe today, it was controversial and carried political risk. During my father's Senate campaign in 1958 and the 1960 primaries, my mother felt that she was a political liability to my father because of her fancy French accent and clothes. And his advisors did, too. They lined up against the White House restoration, which they thought was elitist, and they were concerned about the propriety of creating a guidebook.
I recently came across a few memos on the subject, and I thought you might like to hear some excerpts. The first is from a memorandum to the President, re: proposed sale of mementos in the White House, from Jack McNally, a loyal Irishman from Worcester, Mass, who was put in charge of White House administration. He attached supporting memos from the White House police and the Department of Interior, who joined him in opposing the idea of a guidebook. In behavior that could not be called a profile in courage, my father just gave the memo to his secretary to forward to my mother who was on the Cape. [laughter]
It reads, in part: "The large flow of people through the White House was accomplished by the fact that there were no obstructions to slow up traffic. The Secret Service and White House police contend that a moving crowd is a safe crowd. We must take into consideration the possibility of severe criticism from the public.
"Frequent references are made by tourists that commercialism does not, and has never existed in any form in the President's home. Consideration must also be given to the impressions formed by visiting dignitaries who would be exposed to such a commercial venture in the President's home, also, possible criticism from the press and members of Congress.
"As examples of the criticism that might result, we would like to cite the unfavorable publicity that was given the Truman Balcony and the efforts of the Eisenhower Administration to keep squirrels off the President's putting green." [laughter]
This last reference was too much for my mother, who wrote in the margin: "Absurd. How stupid. This is not a concession stand. There is absolutely no connection." [laughter]
Like other people who came up against my mother, McNally didn't stand a chance. Not long afterwards my mother wrote to J. B. West, the White House chief usher, "Mr. West, the President tells me that Jack McNally, who was against selling guidebooks in the beginning, now says lots more could be sold on the way out but timidly says this is your province and doesn't want to mention it, which is rather sweet of him. I agree, we can use the money; every penny is needed." [laughter]
Not long after, her commitment to history led her to pressure my father to support a UNESCO effort to save the Egyptian temples at Abu Simbel, which were going to be flooded by the construction of the Aswan Dam. She wrote a long memo to JFK, which you can see downstairs, laying out the importance of the temples and suggested that, "This would be a nice gesture to Nasser, as he promised Ramco not to interfere with them in Yemen and South Arabia." She demonstrates an understanding of Cold War diplomacy writing, "The psychological and political argument carries more weight than the economic one. The Russians are building the dam as strictly an economic enterprise. By saving the temples, the US could show they care about the spiritual side and realize the importance of saving the cultural patrimony of Egypt." I think my father rolled over on this one, too. [laughter] The temples were saved, and the Temple of Dendur, now at the Metropolitan Museum of New York, was a gift from the government of Egypt to the people of the United States to thank them for their support.
Her commitment to history also led her to encourage my father to save Lafayette Square and start restoring Pennsylvania Avenue. These efforts helped launch the historic preservation movement at a time when neighborhoods across the country were being demolished for modern office buildings and urban renewal projects.
And she didn't give up. In 1970, she was still twisting my Uncle Teddy's arm. A letter to him reads, "Dearest Teddy" – [laughter] You can tell where this is going – "I send you Pat Moynihan's letter to me. The week before I left the White House, I went to see President Johnson to ask him if he would see President Kennedy's Committee for Pennsylvania Avenue. Before we left Washington, Jack had been working on the President's Pennsylvania Avenue project. When he would drive from the White House to the Capitol, and sometimes we would walk halfway there at night, the tawdriness of the encroachments to the President's house depressed him. He wished to do something that would ensure a nobility of architecture along that Avenue, which is the main artery of the government of the United States.
"This was not something that came of my trying to restore the White House. It was his own vision. That's why I felt such an urgency about asking President Johnson. I knew he would have so many things piling on him, he would not give priority to the Committee for Pennsylvania Avenue. That's why I begged him to receive them. He did. You can ask them how surprised they were to be among the first meetings of Lyndon Johnson."
Here comes the hard part:
"I gather from Moynihan's letter that he has reason to feel uncomfortable with you. I don't know the reasons, but I can guess them. I just wanted to tell you with all my heart this is one thing that really meant something to Jack. Love, Jackie"
So Teddy had to resolve his differences with Moynihan. And as he always did for Mommy and all of us, he found a way to make it happen.
In so many ways, both private and public, she defined the role of First Lady for the modern age. She straddled two eras, the one she describes in the oral history when women stayed home and had few opinions that differed from their husband's, and the coming age when women broke free to become independent and self-supporting. She lived fully in both.
As First Lady, she took the traditional woman's focus on the home and transformed it into a full-time job and a source of national pride. In doing so, she created her own identity as an independent woman. She became an international sensation, a new kind of American, speaking the languages of the countries she visited with my father, and traveling abroad to India and Pakistan on her own.
Most of all, my mother was a patriot. She believed that her time in the White House was the greatest privilege, and worked hard to be worthy of the honor. She loved my father and her courage held this country together after his death. And when it was over, she resumed the life of a private citizen, a status she cherished. She found the strength to create a new life for herself and embraced new worlds. Although John and I would have preferred to stay near the penny candy store in Hyannis Port, she remarried, took us to Greece, and expanded our horizons immeasurably.
She devoured everything she could about ancient civilizations and renewed her unsuccessful efforts to teach us French. [laughter] Then, like so many women of her generation, she went back to work when her children were grown. She took tremendous satisfaction from her job as an editor and from the fact that it was a job that she could have gotten if she had never married at all. She loved her colleagues and her authors. She enjoyed the case for the next big bestseller. She was excited when she landed Michael Jackson's autobiography, and she was proud to bring quality literature to a wide audience when she was the first to publish the work of the Egyptian Nobel Laureate Naguib Mahfouz in English. Her love of history continued to inspire her. She published an early book about Sally Hemings and was always trying to get us to read the only known Diary of a Napoleonic Foot Soldier, which she discovered in an obscure library.
And she continued to advocate for historic preservation, mixed use neighborhoods and the quality of urban life. She led the fight to save Grand Central Station and secured that victory with a landmark Supreme Court decision.
Though she rarely talked about herself and gave almost no interviews, her evolution as a public figure and her life as a private citizen inspired millions of women to live life on their own terms and continues to do so today.
When I was growing up, she often used to say that she thought American history was boring because there weren't enough women in it. I'm proud that she helped to change that and make possible the world that we're fortunate to live in today.
Now I'd like to share a few of my favorite excerpts with you. First, you will hear a description of my father's reading habits; then a section on the Cuban Missile Crisis; and finally, a brief description of the White House restoration. I hope you enjoy them. [applause]
Schlesinger: During these times when he was out, like the 1958 campaign, how did … He kept up reading and so on. How and when did he do that?
Jacqueline Kennedy: Well, he read in the strangest way. I mean, I could never read unless I 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 while he – on his bureau while he was doing his tie. He'd just read a little, and he'd open some book I'd be reading and, you know, just devour it. He really read all the times you don't think you have time to read.
Schlesinger: He'd read in short takes, and then remember it and come back and pick up a thread?
Jacqueline Kennedy: And 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 the sentence that two weeks ago in Georgetown he would have read out loud to you one night, just because it interested him.
Schlesinger: It was mostly history and biography.
Jacqueline Kennedy: Yeah.
Schlesinger: Why not novels, do you suppose?
Jacqueline Kennedy: I think he was always looking for something in books.
He was looking for something about history or something for a quote. Oh, at Glen Ora he was reading Mao Tse-tung, and he was quoting that to me.
Schlesinger: On guerrilla warfare?
Jacqueline Kennedy: 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. 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.
* * * * *
Schlesinger: Did the President comment at all on the question of whether there should be a raid to knock the bases out or blockade or what? I mean, you mentioned Mac Bundy's …
Jacqueline Kennedy: Well, that I all knew later and that was never told to me until much, much later. Then, I remember he did tell me about this crazy telegram that came through from Khrushchev one night. Very warlike. I guess he'd sent the nice one first where he looked like he would -- Khrushchev had - where he might dismantle. And then this crazy one came through in the middle of the night. Well, I remember Jack being really upset about that and then deciding that they would just answer the first and being in on that. I also remember him telling me about Gromyko, which was very early in it.
Schlesinger: Oh, yes.
Jacqueline Kennedy: How he'd seen Gromyko and he talked to him and everything they'd said, and that he really wanted to put Gromyko on the line of just lying to him and never giving anything away. And I said, "How could you keep a straight face?" or "How could you not say, 'You rat!' sitting there?" And he said, "What, and tip our whole hand?" He described that to me.
And then I remember another thing which …The man that Roger Hilsman wrote me a letter about just this winter, about how one of the worst days of it all, the last day, suddenly some U-2 plane got loose over Alaska or something?
Schlesinger: Violated Soviet airspace.
Jacqueline Kennedy: Yeah, but some awful thing. Oh, my God, you know, then the Russians might have thought we were sending it in and that could have just been awful. I remember him telling me about that.
Oh, and then I remember hearing how Anderson at the Pentagon was mad at McNamara, wouldn't let …I don't know if that was afterwards or before but all that thing. And then I remember just waiting with that blockade. The only thing I can think of what it was like was like an election night waiting, but much worse.
But one ship was coming and some big fat freighter had turned back, but it didn't have anything but oil on it anyway and all these ships cruising forward. And I remember being, hearing that the Joseph P. Kennedy was there and saying to Jack, "Did you send it?" or something. And he said, "No, isn't that strange?" And just remembering. And then, finally, some ship turned back or was boarded or something, and then that was when you heaved the first relief, wasn't it?
And I can't remember … The day finally when it was over and saying to me, and Bundy saying to me either then or later, that if it had just gone on maybe two more days, everybody really would have cracked because all of those men had been awake night and day. Taz Shepard in the Situation Room or something.
I remember I had something to ask him once and they said, "You can't." He's been day and night, everyone. And you just thought … And then I wrote a letter to McNamara afterwards, which I showed to Jack. But I remember everyone had worked to the peak of human endurance.
* * * * *
Schlesinger: How did the President feel about the restoration?
Jacqueline Kennedy: The restoration?
Schlesinger: Of the White House.
Jacqueline Kennedy: Oh, well, he thought – he was interested in it. He'd always get so interested in anything that I cared about, but – and he was nervous about it. I mean, he wanted to be sure it was done the right way, so he sent Clark Clifford to see me. And Clark Clifford was really nervous because he tried to persuade me not to do it, which Jack never …
Schlesinger: Why? On the grounds of politics?
Jacqueline Kennedy: He said, "You just can't touch the White House." He said, "It's so strange. Everyone, America feels so strangely about it and look at the Truman Balcony. And if you try to make any changes, it'll just be like that." And I said, "It won't be like the Truman Balcony." And then I told him all about Harry du Pont and all the people we hoped to get.
So as it went along bit by bit, and how you'd set this committee up and certain legal things and … Then Clark was very good about setting up the guidebook. So once Jack saw it was going along with sort of good counsel, I mean, he was so excited about it.
Schlesinger: Was there ever any criticism of the things that you did in the White House in these years?
Jacqueline Kennedy: Never. No, the most incredible interest. And then the tours would start going, and every night he'd come home saying, "We had more people today" – this would be after you'd found the Monroe pier table or something – "than the Eisenhowers had in their first two years." And then the guidebook was selling a lot. He'd always be teasing McNally about it.
So he was just so proud. I was so happy that I could do something that made him proud of me. Because I'll tell you one wonderful thing about him. I was really – I was never any different once I was in the White House than I was before, but suddenly everything that'd been a liability before – your hair, that you spoke French, that you didn't just adore to campaign, and you didn't bake bread with flour up to your arms. And when we got in the White House all the things that I'd always done suddenly became wonderful. And I was so happy for Jack, that he could be proud of me then. Because it made him so happy. It made me so happy. So those were our happiest years.
[applause]
TED WIDMER: Good evening. Can you hear us all right? In her foreword to this book, Caroline said that for her parents the past was the gathering of the most fascinating people you could ever hope to meet. And thanks to these remarkable interviews, which we can hear as well as read, we are privileged to attend a gathering of the fascinating people of the past, people ranging from Edmund Burke to Onions Burke.
At the center of this gathering is a family living in a home that has famously not been welcoming to its inhabitants, that has been likened to a prison. And Michael, I want to start with you. You've studied many Presidencies, the Franklin Roosevelt Presidency, Lyndon Johnson. Were you struck by how many times the word happy came up in these conversations?
MICHAEL BESCHLOSS: I was. And she is nothing if not frank throughout these interviews. One thing the says more than once is that when her husband was elected in 1960, she had a novel reaction, very unlike most incoming First Ladies. She was terrified and she was depressed, partly because she'd just given birth, but partly because she thought that it would wreck their family life, that there would be just such a fishbowl and so many pressures. And she was amazed to find, as she says, that it actually had the opposite effect.
During their marriage, since 1953, John Kennedy had run for Vice President, then for reelection to the Senate, run for President. So he was gone, she says, almost every weekend, very much apart. For the first time now, they were there in that house. He worked in the Oval Office. They were together in physical proximity a lot more. So I think there was an exhilaration finding that, contrary to what she expected, that they really were their happiest years.
TED WIDMER: We heard about her interesting style of campaigning in Wisconsin, reading War and Peace.
MICHAEL BESCHLOSS: She just loved Wisconsin, as Caroline said. [laughter] It's a good thing that no one's running there this year.
TED WIDMER: I don't know if these proceedings are being televised in Wisconsin, but I don't remember pro-Wisconsin statements.
MICHAEL BESCHLOSS: Oh, she is extremely fond of Wisconsin. [laughter] Everyone in Wisconsin, just don't read that part, please.
TED WIDMER: In fact, there's a word in your transcript I always wondered how to spell in describing Wisconsin in the winter. She says, "Ew."
MICHAEL BESCHLOSS: E-w-w-w-w.
TED WIDMER: E-w. Thank you for clearing that up.
MICHAEL BESCHLOSS: I think she says that she didn't like a single person that she'd met in Wisconsin, except for the people that worked for Jack. And then, in West Virginia she liked almost everyone she met.
TED WIDMER: That's right. But, Dick, obviously she brought great charisma to the art of campaigning and was an asset from well before the election. In the hard work of daily politicking, how did the staff feel about her?
RICHARD DONAHUE: Oh, she was great. And I am sorry that she was not as happy about Wisconsin as I saw her, because we were in a Main Street, broken-down storehouse and that was the headquarters. I remember her being there with writing and things, and at least entertaining the people who came. They found out who she was and they wanted to visit with her, and they did. So I do not remember her bad part of that.
I do remember that there was a pestiferous salesman for some newspaper and kept bothering her and bothering her. And eventually she was riding with the President – Kenny O'Donnell told me this – and she said, "You know that fellow, I bought an ad." He said, "Well, what money?" "I wrote a check." "Oh," he said, "that's my money." [laughter] So it was not what they had hoped it would be. But thereafter, in West Virginia, of course, she was great, and she was marvelous.
The best part about her was that if you got an assignment for her, it was done completely and fastidiously and as beautifully as it possibly could have been. So if you were on the committee, you had better make sure that you did everything proper. But she was very good in that milieu.
MICHAEL BESCHLOSS: One of the fascinating things is that there was a film crew doing a documentary of the Wisconsin primary, which I'm sure many of you have seen. Just to give you a sense of how far she came in such a short period of time, she's standing there in a grocery store with a microphone, almost begging people to come over and say hello, and they're still shopping and not paying her any attention. So I think that may have had some influence on her opinion of Wisconsin, too. [laughter] Quite deservedly.
TED WIDMER: When the book was published on the 14th of September, there was a huge amount of media attention. And as usual, the media got some things right and a few things not so right. And a lot of attention was paid to her remarks about the obligation of a wife to subscribe to the political opinions of her husband, a fairly uncontroversial statement.
I'm glad someone laughed, thank you. [laughter]
And yet, on the feminism meter that was coming into existence in the '60s – as you mentioned, Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique is published in '63 – obviously, she has very independent thoughts. She's a sharp judge of human nature and of all the people populating the White House and the actions happening all around her. And she later did work. So where do you see her as a feminist in evolution?
MICHAEL BESCHLOSS: I'd say she was an unwitting feminist in the early 1960s. She explicitly says in the oral history, "I'm not a feminist like Tish Baldridge," her social secretary. But when you read and when you listen to her, this is someone who, as Caroline said very well, she came to the White House. Yes, she decided to do it in her way. She found for herself an enormous project, which was restoring the White House, which was probably three careers at the same time, at the same time as she had young children.
She did the job of First Lady in a way that was very much her own choice. And she made other choices about her life, too. So I think by the definition of feminism that we now suggest, I think she was an early feminist, but her political instincts would have caused her in these tapes to say, "No, I'm absolutely not a feminist."
TED WIDMER: Does that track with your sense, Dick, as well?
RICHARD DONAHUE: Yes. I mean, there's no question that she was a feminist. She just basically took over and did a job that somebody might have assigned it to a man. Because when she undertook the remodeling, the remaking, or the refurbishment, or the correction of the mistakes that were made in the White House, she did it with a strength and a verve and an intelligence that captured everybody. I would not dismiss her on any count, but certainly not for her lack of some wishy-washiness. That wasn't her style.
TED WIDMER: One of the observations that jumped out at me reading this book was the extraordinary degree of physical pain President Kennedy was in for much of his adult life, including much of his Presidency. Dick, if I can continue with you as someone working in campaigning and in Congressional liaison, was that constant pain something you picked up on as a staffer in the White House?
RICHARD DONAHUE: No. He never complained of pain. But he complained about lack of having sufficient hot water, or something, in order to get a bath to relieve the back pain. But he did not complain about what was happening to him. Indeed, I was really struck by the book, because Dr. Travell was sort of offering herself as the corrector of all illnesses, including with Sam Rayburn, and obviously was not giving him the relief that he should have had. The last thing was with the doctor that taught him stretching; that’s what gave him relief. But he was not a complainer about anything.
MICHAEL BESCHLOSS: He was a stoic. And Mrs. Kennedy tells two things that illustrate this. She talks about after his two back operations in 1954 and 1955, and one of the most poignant things is she describes what torture it was and how he went through this. And then she says, "We later found out that it was absolutely unnecessary." And she says that the following summer he went back to the Senate. She says, "He looked so wonderful in his gray suit. And he was strolling around the Senate floor as if there was nothing wrong. Then he would go back to bed at night in a hospital bed.”
The other thing is that when he was President – I think Dick would confirm this – the number of times we now know he was in agonizing pain, you never saw it. One image of that is in the spring of 1961, their first foreign visit, which was to Canada, and he planted a tree. He had been told to bend his knees, not to aggravate his back and he just forgot to do it. So he went over and essentially almost ripped his back, put himself in absolutely unbearable pain, which he suffered the next number of months. But if you see the video of it, he goes a little bit like this, but he was such a stoic and he was so accustomed not to making people uncomfortable, that even the people who were close to him didn't quite know what had happened.
TED WIDMER: Do you think any other President was ever in such constant physical discomfort, including Franklin Roosevelt, whom you have worked on?
MICHAEL BESCHLOSS: Hard to think of one. I think, for instance, Robert Kennedy says in his preface to the memorial edition of Profiles in Courage, 1964, that at least half of his days on earth were spent in physical pain. And if that's the truth, I think more than Franklin Roosevelt, absolutely.
TED WIDMER: You must have been thinking about Arthur's questions as you were researching this book. He was a friend of all of ours. Were there questions he didn't ask that you wish that he had?
MICHAEL BESCHLOSS: Did, but everything is always 20/20 in hindsight, 47 years later. As Caroline mentioned, for instance, in those days, most historians would not have thought to ask her a lot about her own experience. A First Lady in those days, even by so knowing an historian as Arthur Schlesinger, was sort of a side event. So there's less on her.
Also the purpose of the oral history was basically to talk about President Kennedy. But Caroline and I discussed this, too. There are things that, since we know what happened later on, you sure wish he had asked. For instance, what President Kennedy might have done in Vietnam, other issues that were not so important in early 1964 that, in retrospect, we now know were very important.
TED WIDMER: It seems like by asking Arthur, and there was no one else to ask with better skills and training as an historian, a decision was made to take a certain path to the story, which was the path of the Harvard elites who had come down to the White House.
Dick, did you feel that there were stories that weren't told in this history?
RICHARD DONAHUE: Yes. Including anything that Arthur told, because Arthur was the greatest author of stories about himself. [laughter] I know specifically, because Kenny O'Donnell told me when Dean Rusk came to visit the President, he had a particular message to deliver: Would you please get Arthur Schlesinger off the list of people who get my cables? Why? Because Arthur was about the most garrulous, party-going person in the whole White House. Because Rusk said, "Listen, anything you get by cable he has around town by nightfall." [laughter] Then he said to Kenny, "No, you better not. I'll have to do it. You're going to come out poorly in his book as it is." [laughter]
MICHAEL BESCHLOSS: And one thing she says in here is how in many ways compartmentalized President Kennedy's life was. She explicitly mentions the staff.
RICHARD DONAHUE: Well, yes. And one of the things that I found remarkable -- but it's true -- nobody on the staff really did business in memos. We communicated by phone and conversation and that's it. So there are not great records.
MICHAEL BESCHLOSS: That's one reason the oral history program …
RICHARD DONAHUE: That's right. And it made it very refreshing when you could know that something that you had seen or done was not recorded. But you could also see …
MICHAEL BESCHLOSS: Was there anything particularly that you would have …
[laughter] It's not too late, Dick.
RICHARD DONAHUE: No, no. I have saved up for my book. [laughter] No, the thing that I remember best about all of that was it was really about getting some stuff done at the White House, and everybody would get all excited about, "Why is so-and-so writing a memo? Why are they doing that? We don't need a memo. We just get things done."
I think Dave Powers remarked that we should have no historian. We should have just some people give a report of what went on. Because that was his personal look at the President's attempt to deal with people on the staff. But the people on the staff dealt very, very generously with one another. I mean, generously? Or not so generously, but critically, you bet. But not in an offensive way. We were not offensive to one another, although I could have been. [laughter] But the most important memory I have was the formation of the campaign for the Presidency. That really began with the fight for the control of the Democratic State Committee in Massachusetts.
MICHAEL BESCHLOSS: This is Onions Burke, not Edmund Burke.
RICHARD DONAHUE: Yes, Onions Burke. And Onions Burke was from the western part of the state, and he got to be known as Onions, I think because they have an onion patch out there.
MICHAEL BESCHLOSS: He was an onion farmer, as well as a bartender and some other things.
RICHARD DONAHUE: Well, that was not untypical of the leadership of the party. [laughter]
MICHAEL BESCHLOSS: It hasn't changed either.
RICHARD DONAHUE: No, no. But it started because that was when we determined that this guy, who had just been elected to the Senate, should take a shot at getting control of the mechanics of the party. Now, that is really where you get recognition nationally. Nobody cares who is chairman of the Democratic Party in New Hampshire, or anyplace else, but who are the officers. But if you are getting ready for a convention, the people who care about who are the party leaders want to know who's in charge. Even though they find that being in charge doesn't put you in charge of much, but they did.
So that's when we started the campaign for the control of the Democratic State Committee.
And it was a tumultuous event that went on and on and on. Although I remember only clearly that it was on Mother's Day in the year in which the election was held when we were in the hotel Park Plaza, Copley Plaza, and the President was interviewing the people in the State Committee, asking if they supported him or not. And if they did, we thought they were wonderful people. And if they seemed a little hesitant, we'd want to find out …
MICHAEL BESCHLOSS: And you remembered years later who was for you and who was against you.
RICHARD DONAHUE: Oh, yes, you do! [laughter] Oh, you remembered, yes. And if you wanted to get a ticket to go to the White House, you better had been on the right side.
MICHAEL BESCHLOSS: In 1956.
RICHARD DONAHUE: Yes. But that's when it began, and it was a crucial campaign.
Remember, we didn't have Onions Burke and Juicy Grenara.
TED WIDMER: Who was Juicy Grenara?
MICHAEL BESCHLOSS: Mrs. Kennedy talks about these wonderful figures that had not been a part of her previous life, like Juicy Grenara and another gentleman who was referred to as the China Doll.
RICHARD DONAHUE: Yeah.
MICHAEL BESCHLOSS: Tell about them.
RICHARD DONAHUE: This really goes back to the Hotel Bellevue. And the Hotel
Bellevue, which apparently no longer exists, was at that time a block from where the President's apartment was, right across from the State House. It was the buzzword of all pols who were around, and they were in and out.
MICHAEL BESCHLOSS: Mayor Fitzgerald had his headquarters there, hadn't he?
RICHARD DONAHUE: Perhaps. It was not a place … You don't have emails and Twitters and all of that type of thing, because you just met … We had one fellow at home we called Whispering Eddie Smith.
TED WIDMER: Why did you call him Whispering Eddie?
RICHARD DONAHUE: Because he whispered. [laughter] They would spread rumors as quickly as you could spread a disease, and they frequently did, what they'd spread was a disease. But as we were getting ready for the fight for the control of the State Committee, we had Mayor Lynch of Somerville, who was our champion, and they had Onions Burke, was the champion of McCormacks. But Knocko McCormack, who was Eddie McCormack's father, was also on the State Committee.
MICHAEL BESCHLOSS: He was the brother of the House Majority Leader.
RICHARD DONAHUE: Yes. And Knocko was about as different as a speaker as you could have. He was coarse and rough and tough. I remember when his son was withdrawing from a campaign for the attorney generalship, or something of that nature, and the father stood in the middle of the aisle in the Mechanics Hall, yelling at his son, "Sit down! That's a stupid thing to do!" [laughter] So he wasn't what you'd call the wise counselor that you think of who's in the back of a lot of these things. But we got through this fight, and everybody was convinced that there were big piles of money, because the Kennedys were going to buy this thing, and how much are you getting? So I went home and said, “Gee, I hope there's something waiting for me.” [laughter] It was dinner was waiting for me.
But that was the meter of the day, to determine who was good and who was bad. But that continued on, and everybody is correct. People will recall where were they in the fight for Lynch and O'Neill, Burke. And they never did get it solved, because people were still mad much, much later. And they never would ever stop that.
MICHAEL BESCHLOSS: I think they were still mad about 1980, or so.
TED WIDMER: I had high hopes of talking about the Duc de Saint Simon and Andre Malraux, but it really is fun to talk about Onions Burke.
RICHARD DONAHUE: Yeah!
TED WIDMER: There is some fascinating what-ifs in the story, Michael. There is the hint that an opening to China was anticipated in the mid-'60s in the quoting of Mao, and a trip to Russia. Did that strike you as a surprise when you heard that?
MICHAEL BESCHLOSS: It was interesting. I suspected it, but it's the first time we've really had more solid evidence from a prime witness. John Kennedy essentially was beginning to plan his second term, and two of the things that he planned to do were to go to the Soviet Union. It would have been the first time a President had been there, believe it or not. And also an opening to China, which, in retrospect, given what our world is like today, was enormously prescient. But he used to say in private, "Face it, those are subjects for a second term after I'm re-elected."
TED WIDMER: And Lyndon Johnson, whom you've worked extensively on, doesn't fare that well in this treatment. There's a story of how he went out one night in Georgetown and had a bit too much to drink and just felt he wasn't up to the job. Does that track with your sense of where LBJ was in '62?
MICHAEL BESCHLOSS: I think Mrs. Kennedy, if she had read this later on, probably would have felt that she was a little bit hard on LBJ. This was spring of 1964. LBJ had just become President. She was not happy that he was beginning to overturn a number of her husband's intentions, and the rather little personal glitches that had gone on the previous three months. I think if she were here the one cautionary note that perhaps she would have wanted emblazoned on the front of the book would be, "This is a snapshot in time." What she may have thought in the spring of 1964 may not have tracked with her feelings later on. And later on, as she said in the oral history, she came to resume her old fondness for LBJ. She was very close to Lady Bird. So I think one thing you always have to remember when you're reading this book is that some of the more fascinating opinions, she didn't always keep them years later.
TED WIDMER: One interesting insight into his political temperament – and Dick, this is almost the opposite of the story about Onions Burke, where everyone remembered which side you were on in 1956. But she said he had a remarkable magnanimity, that he forgave everyone. And it was a little bit self-serving, because you never knew who you'd need in the next fight. But also it seemed that it proceeded from a genuine inclination to forgiveness.
Was that your sense of how he did politics?
RICHARD DONAHUE: Well, no one could understand how he could ever forgive the Senator from Florida, his dear friend …
MICHAEL BESCHLOSS: George Smathers.
RICHARD DONAHUE: … who stabbed him in the back every chance he ….
MICHAEL BESCHLOSS: Whose Administration voting record was about 2%.
RICHARD DONAHUE: Yes, and whenever you needed his vote, he couldn't have it. Then you'd find the President inviting him down to the White House for dinner. We frequently complained about it, which did us absolutely no good, because he continued to entertain him. Happily, he determined that his career was not going to be furthered in politics and he got out.
But there were those that you couldn't really understand why he could be so charitable to them. But he feeling and his modus operandi was if you may need him tomorrow, you better not stab him in the back today, things of that nature. And he was very, very fair about that.
MICHAEL BESCHLOSS: And in these times, it just stood out so much for me because she says, "I used to tell him why are you being so nice to that guy? I've been hating him for the last three weeks because of what he did to you." And the President said, "Oh, no, he's done such-and-such last week, which was actually very good." The thing that he says to her is, "Never close off a relationship so that there's no possibly of reconciliation." And I do hope that everyone who's in Washington right now will read that sentence and take it to heart. [applause]
TED WIDMER: Michael, the term soft power has been in vogue for about a decade, a book by Joe Nye. I believe Caroline uses the phrase in her foreword. I don't know if there ever was a First Lady before or since who had that kind of ability to change people's attitudes around the world towards the United States. Even if she doesn't talk about her political thoughts as much as we might like in these interviews, there's clearly the sense of getting a great deal done to support the Administration, even in her choice of countries to visit, her choice of how to present herself, all the cultural work she was doing. Was there anything like that before her?
MICHAEL BESCHLOSS: She really could see around corners and see things that others could not see. One of them was Latin America, which then and later on got very short shrift from American Presidents. She thought it was important. They went to Costa Rica, they went to Mexico, they traveled there. One of the most poignant things in the book is she talks about a newspaper headline, that Mrs. Kennedy was nice enough to actually shake hands with little children who were from a Latin American country, because that was so unusual at the time.
One thing both John and Jacqueline Kennedy I think both felt was exactly what you were saying, Ted, which is that one test of American power is the number of missiles and nuclear weapons and so on, but oftentimes just as important is how people think about America in their hearts. That's what the Peace Corps was about.
TED WIDMER: There are some wonderfully undiplomatic statements in this book.
MICHAEL BESCHLOSS: One or two?
TED WIDMER: One or two, thank goodness. I learned she named her poodle de Gaulle in the 1950s, and Indira Gandhi …
MICHAEL BESCHLOSS: I think that was my footnote; she should not be held responsible for that.
TED WIDMER: That was a nice detail. Did those surprise you?
MICHAEL BESCHLOSS: When she says that she came to have the same, I think, opinion of French people as she did of people in Wisconsin? I think sort of for the same reasons, because Wisconsin did not ultimately vote overwhelmingly for John Kennedy, and the French, particularly Charles de Gaulle, was giving her husband a great deal of trouble. So I think you can see these things, to some extent, as a great test of loyalty.
TED WIDMER: There's some beautiful language as well in the middle of the account of the Cuban Missile Crisis. She says, just a throwaway line, "There was no day and no night."
MICHAEL BESCHLOSS: No difference between sleeping and waking. I thought that was so signal, because one of the toughest things that I think in the story and always has – and I think you'd agree with this, we talked about this a little bit – is to find out what someone … Two things: one, the depth of his or her religious belief, particularly the President; and also the true nature of marriage.
And she describes the Cuban Missile Crisis, that they were together probably more during that period than perhaps any other time during that Presidency. He would call her and they would go for walks on the lawns, spent a lot of time together, and that does tell you something because you were mentioning Franklin Roosevelt. He admired Eleanor, but when he was at a moment of great anxiety, I don't think he would have found her restful or supportive company; probably would not have spent a lot of time with her in a crisis like this.
In the case of JFK, whom does he turn to? It's Jackie.
TED WIDMER: Were there any parts of this CD set and book, Dick, that surprised you, that revealed new sides to President Kennedy?
RICHARD DONAHUE: Not really. But I must say that I marveled at her concern about, for instance, the remodeling of the White House, the detail that she went to, and the research that she did, and then her ability to administer it is really overwhelming. I just can't believe that a person could do it on short notice. Unless she had been planning it for much longer than we know.
MICHAEL BESCHLOSS: I think it was the depth of her reaction when she came to the White House and had a lovely experience with Mrs. Eisenhower who did not treat her terribly well. You'll have to read it in the book if you haven't seen it yet. But she was shown through the State Rooms and she said that they looked like Lubianca or a bad convention hotel. And there was actually a reason for that, which I'm not sure she knew, which is that when the White House was reconstructed during the Truman Administration because it was falling down, they left the four walls on the outside, scooped out everything in the inside, and built new floors, and so on. They ran out of money, so Harry Truman, quite characteristically, made a deal with B. Altman's, the department store in New York. They just furnished the whole ground floor of the White House, and it looked that way. [laughter] And she felt it did.
But Dick is actually right, because sometimes the restoration of the White House is sort of written off as interior decoration or just sort of superficial. She had to raise this money, which was not easy. She had to keep particularly two, three advisors, architectural advisors from essentially colliding with one another, Harry du Pont and Stephane Boudin. And Sister Parish, I think also, to some extent. So if anyone doubts her political skills, the fact that she was able to do all this, get it in on time under budget, and for the White House to look the way it does today, if it were not for her, I think the White House would still look like a bad convention hotel.
TED WIDMER: The Eisenhowers don't come off terribly well. President Eisenhower's walking around the residence in his golf shoes, making little holes in the floor. Mamie Eisenhower is not a very sympathetic figure. But I felt a little bit sorry for her, because to have been succeeded by Jacqueline Kennedy must not have been the easiest thing.
MICHAEL BESCHLOSS: I think not. But as Mrs. Kennedy says, things would drift to her ears, such as Mrs. Eisenhower saying of the restoration, "I hear they've made the Red Room purple." Things like this.
TED WIDMER: We're at an interesting moment in the history of publications, because I wasn't sure whether to listen or to read and which would be faster. And really, between the two, you get so much more from hearing her speak, although I had one alarming moment in my car. I had them all loaded in, and I accidentally left one CD from Keith Richards in the middle. It took a little understanding to figure out. [laughter]
MICHAEL BESCHLOSS: I think she'd love that, wouldn't she?
TED WIDMER: But do you think your readers, her readers, are they even readers? Or should people listen to the recordings?
MICHAEL BESCHLOSS: I think really both. You get different experiences. When you read it, I think you can perhaps absorb what is said a little bit more. But when you listen – I think you're absolutely right, Ted, and this is probably true of most tapes of this kind – you get a sense … In fact, I've heard Caroline talk about this. When you hear her tone of voice, there are shades of meaning that you just can't possibly get just from reading the words.
TED WIDMER: Right. We're now at the part of this event where we are taking questions. I have a few to begin. This is for you, Dick. She talks about Joseph P. Kennedy and Rose Kennedy. You must have known those two individuals. Do her impressions match with your memories of them and her interactions with them in public?
RICHARD DONAHUE: Yes. [laughter]
MICHAEL BESCHLOSS: You see why Dick had a very long career in political life.
[laughter] And distinguished.
RICHARD DONAHUE: No, Mr. Kennedy was very much a dominant figure in almost everything that went on in the political life of John Kennedy. His mother was even more dominant on their prayer life and kept after them for all of the reasons that good mothers do – to make responsible children. But they kept very, very close track of what each was doing.
So I would not disagree with anybody who thinks that they were enormously influential. The only thing I am conscious of, however, is that Ambassador Kennedy could not influence certain people in the Democratic Party. People that we were supporting he frequently did not.
MICHAEL BESCHLOSS: Who are you thinking of?
RICHARD DONAHUE: Well, I'm just really thinking of one fight that we had. He just was not responsive. Bobby was the responsible one. What happened was that Bobby had indicted the brother of a Congressman from New York and the Congressman, who had been very, very responsive to us, wanted desperately for the indictment to be withdrawn. Bobby refused. Then it was "talk to the Ambassador," who said, no, he will do what he's going to do anyway. So it caused us some pain, but not a great deal. But it's the type of thing on which they would differ. And if he differed, he differed. Because one strong rascal …
MICHAEL BESCHLOSS: I think around that time, Ambassador Kennedy used to joke that he was a Robert Taft Democrat.
RICHARD DONAHUE: Yeah. [laughter]
TED WIDMER: Michael, what surprised you the most? Did any of her assessments of key players differ from your views and those of other historians?
MICHAEL BESCHLOSS: Sure, in all sorts of ways. But I think, in a large sense, the thing that really surprised me was that if we were talking a year ago, I would have said that she was a large influence during that period, but I wouldn't have particularly said that she was a large political figure in this Administration. And I think if you read this book, you'd have to say that, because the number of times she talks mainly about people, but not always only about people, and you notice that the people that she is very critical of wound up not doing terribly well during the Administration, and vice versa.
To some extent, I think she was absorbing her husband's views, but she does talk about a few cases where … For instance, she was in Pakistan – which had been added to her trip to India to balance it off for political reasons – and two things happened, actually. John Kenneth Galbraith was the Ambassador to India, whom John Kennedy had known since the 1930s when he was at Harvard. The Ambassador to Pakistan did not have that kind of relationship.
So for diplomatic reasons it was thought that it was a good idea to imply that Walter McConaughy and Pakistan had not an equal, but at least some relationship with the President.
So Mrs. Kennedy, sort of implying that the President thinks very well of Ambassador McConaughy and so on, and McConaughy says, "Well, that's funny, I've only met him once when I left to take this job two weeks ago." So that didn't work terribly well.
But not as a result of this, but having been in Pakistan and watched him in action, she went right back home and wrote her husband a memo saying, "This is exactly the kind of Ambassador we should not have in a job like this." And it went to the State Department, and Ambassador McConaughy served till 1966. So maybe a comment on Dean Rusk.
TED WIDMER: She didn't seem to get as involved in domestic politics, would you agree, Dick?
RICHARD DONAHUE: Well, I don't know that she didn't get involved in domestic politics, because, for instance, with the talk about the monuments and the Aswan Dam flooding, I remember going to see – what the heck was his name? – the Congressman from Brooklyn, who was in charge of the appropriations?
MICHAEL BESCHLOSS: Now, would he have been politically very eager to help Egypt at that point?
RICHARD DONAHUE: No, he was not. He was not at all anxious to help the President, because he fancied himself, being in opposition would strengthen him domestically.
MICHAEL BESCHLOSS: That's John Rooney?
RICHARD DONAHUE: Yeah. Type. [laughter] I went up to call him off the floor, to ask him to please vote the thing, the President wanted it. And he eventually said yes, he would, but he never forgave me for it.
TED WIDMER: We've got another question for Michael. As a Presidential historian, are you aware of any First Lady, prior to Jacqueline Kennedy, who provided a candid, public revelation of her experience in the White House?
MICHAEL BESCHLOSS: No. And one thing, if you study her life, she always broke the mold; she was always innovating. Perhaps maybe pretty near the most important innovation she made was this idea that she would be asked for eight-and-a-half hours very personal questions in great detail about her time as First Lady. That had not happened before. And since then, it almost always happens. First Ladies even write books, which in those days was very unusual.
TED WIDMER: There's not a page of this book that isn't suffused with her wit and the sense that she and President Kennedy were sharing ….
MICHAEL BESCHLOSS: There's a wonderful story, if I can interject for a second, where Sukarno of Indonesia is coming for a state visit and his not-very-good reputation had preceded him, but they were trying to make the best of it. So oftentimes, as she says, when there was a leader who was coming to the White House, the President would bring the leader upstairs to visit with the First Lady as sort of a special thing to do for him. And Sukarno was said to have published his art collection. It was actually published by the Chinese. So Mrs.
Kennedy – this is the kind of detail that she went into – got a copy of the book from the State Department about 20 minutes before Sukarno arrived. She wasn't able to read it before he got there. So Sukarno was there on the sofa; Mrs. Kennedy on one side, President on the other and she said, "Oh, we have this wonderful book of your art collection." And they opened it, and virtually every page was a topless woman. [laughter] Sukarno would pick through it, say, "There was my second wife. That was my third wife." And she says, "Jack and I had to make such an enormous effort to keep from laughing, almost didn't make it."
TED WIDMER: Dick, could you tell how funny she was?
RICHARD DONAHUE: Well, I'll tell a funny story about her family. She was very close to her sister, who was married to the Prince of Poland. He came here during a campaign, and he was very big in the Polish crowd but he was not an American citizen; he was a Polish citizen. The drive was to get him out and see the people. There's a fellow who worked in the State Department by the name of Mish Szablinski [sp]. Mish Szablinski was a very, very powerful political figure in the Polish world. So he definitely wanted Stash to come to his district to campaign. I said, "Mish, we can't do that. We can't have a foreign dignitary campaigning in a domestic election." "Well," he says, "let me see what I can do." So the next thing I remember is I get a call from Szablinski: "Hello, Dick?" "Yeah." "Mish. Last night in Wilkes-Barre, Stash was a smash." [laughter] "Do you hear me? Last night in Wilkes-Barre, Stash was a smash." "Well, thank you, Stash."
MICHAEL BESCHLOSS: And Pennsylvania went Democrat that year by a much larger margin than expected. [laughter] So we now know the reason.
TED WIDMER: Michael alluded earlier to the toxic political climate we live in now and Dick, how do you think President Kennedy would have negotiated within that kind of a climate? How would he have helped our system recover?
RICHARD DONAHUE: I really do not know with this system, as we have it today, where people refuse to tolerate the other person's view, how he could possibly have honed up to it.
When I left Washington, which was exactly a week before the President was assassinated, I had been working on the Civil Rights Bill. Now, we had put together, with a lot of work, a real coalition of Republicans and Democrats prepared to support a real civil rights bill. And I left Washington with a certain assurance that it was over; there was no need to do it.
I used to be able to name the Republican Congressmen that I could line up on almost any given matter, because they respected President Kennedy and they respected the things he stood for. You don't have any of that today. No one respects anyone else. No one has shared with anyone else. So I do not know how he could have fit into today's world. Unless he could have bombed them or something. [laughter]
MICHAEL BESCHLOSS: One thing that sort of does it for me is the space program. When he went to Congress – and Dick, I'm sure, was a part of this – and said, "I think a moon landing before 1970 is essential to national security," a lot of Republicans who didn't want to spend the money said, "If our President tells me that national security is at stake, I'll vote for it." Which they did.
TED WIDMER: Well, I think we should all take from this book a measure of optimism about ways that our system can perform well at its very best. And on that note …
TOM PUTNAM: So even though we're not American Idol, there's no phone number for you to call in to place your vote, our bookstore does report directly to the New York Times bestseller list, so if you would like to keep Jacqueline Kennedy ahead of Dick Cheney [laughter/applause], we encourage you all to buy a copy, or two, or three of the book at our bookstore.
I ask you to remain in your seats, if you will. We'll get Caroline. The book signing will be right outside this door. Those of you in the satellite, there'll be a room that'll be coming in from the front. Those of you in this room, the line will form literally around the back of this wall. But most of all, what I want to do is to thank Caroline Kennedy for her comments, and for this terrific panel, Michael Beschloss, Dick Donahue, and Ted Widmer. [applause]
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