Jacqueline Kennedy: Historic Conversations on Life With John F. Kennedy (45 page)

4
. In January 1953, Robert Kennedy started work for McCarthy's committee as an assistant counsel under McCarthy's abrasive and unscrupulous counsel, Roy Cohn. The animosity between the two men over matters great and small at one point almost led to a fistfight. By the summer, Robert had moved to the Democratic side of the committee staff, then quit altogether.

5
. H
ENRY
"S
COOP
" J
ACKSON
(1912–1983) was a Democratic senator from Washington whom JFK seriously considered for vice president in 1960.

6
. M
ILES
M
C
M
ILLIN
(1923–1982) was a reporter and later publisher of the
Capital Times
of Madison, Wisconsin. His wife Elsie Rockefeller McMillin (1924–1982) had been married to the state's new senator, William Proxmire. JFK thought McMillin was anti-Catholic.

7
. In 1964, Mrs. Kennedy still thought of liberals as people who gave Jack trouble—as did, on occasion, her husband. Members of the group that JFK called "professional liberals" had mistrusted him since he first ran for the House in 1946 because of his conservative father. Once he was President, they charged that he was a militant Cold Warrior and too intimidated by conservative southern Democratic congressional committee chairmen to vigorously pursue the liberal agenda on civil rights, education, labor, health, poverty, and other domestic issues.

8
. F
RANKLIN
R
OOSEVELT
, J
R.
(1914–1988) served in Congress with JFK from 1949 to 1955. Kennedy especially valued his endorsement in 1960 because it offset the pre-convention opposition of his mother, Eleanor, who much preferred her close friend Stevenson. After failing to find him a suitable position in his government (he asked McNamara to appoint him secretary or assistant secretary of the navy, as his father had been under Wilson, but the new Pentagon chief refused), the President made him undersecretary of commerce in 1963.

9
. Campaigning for JFK in West Virginia, Roosevelt told reporters that Humphrey was "a good Democrat, but I don't know where he was in World War II." In fact, the Minnesotan had tried to enter the wartime military but was rejected because of a hernia.

10
. This melodrama was
Private Property
, by director Leslie Stevens, so low budget that it was filmed in Stevens's Hollywood Hills home, starring his wife, Kate Manx. It portrays a housewife taking up with hoodlums, with scenes of rape and murder. By Bradlee's recollection, JFK speculated (correctly) that
Private Property
was on the Catholic Church's index of prohibited films, and joked that it would have helped him with some of West Virginia's Catholic-hating voters, had they known he would be watching it.

11
. T
OM
M
BOYA
(1930–1969) was a young Kenyan nationalist leader who, during their July 26, 1960, meeting in Hyannis Port, convinced JFK, chairman of the Senate subcommittee on Africa, to have the Kennedy family foundation support the effort by Mboya's Airlift Africa to place Kenyan students in American universities. One young Kenyan studying in America was Barack Obama, Sr., an Mboya friend and supporter who had arrived in 1959.

12
. S
TANISLAS
A
LBERT
R
ADZIWILL
(1914–1976), known as Stas, was an exiled Polish prince and London real estate investor who was the second husband of Jacqueline's sister Lee. He campaigned among Polish voters for JFK in 1960 and was John's godfather.

13
. Although it was not publicly advertised at the time, Mrs. Kennedy was suffering through a difficult pregnancy. She had been asked by doctors to stay as quiet as possible until the expected birth in December. "Janet" refers to her half-sister, Janet Auchincloss.

14
. Referring to the Illinoisan's encouragement of a Stevenson draft movement in Los Angeles.

15
. Before the convention in Los Angeles, operatives for Lyndon Johnson had cast grim forebodings about Senator Kennedy's health.

16
. In Los Angeles, LBJ had castigated Joseph Kennedy (with whom he had previously been quite amicable and who had quietly urged him to run for president in 1956 with Jack as running mate) for his pessimism before World War II about Britain's chances against Nazi Germany. Johnson said, "
I
never thought Hitler was right."

17
. Off the tape, Jacqueline told Schlesinger that during the visit, she had asked Lady Bird what she had been doing since the convention, expecting her to say something like she had been "resting up since that madhouse." Instead Mrs. Johnson replied that she had been sending notes to all those people who had been so kind to her husband in Los Angeles.

18
. On the day of his nomination, Kennedy had told Symington's close Missouri friend Clark Clifford that he intended to make Symington—who had run his own desultory presidential campaign, hoping to be chosen after a convention deadlock—his running mate. Symington thereupon started writing his acceptance speech. But the next day, JFK told Clifford that, having been persuaded during the night that he couldn't win without Lyndon, he would have to "renege on an offer made in good faith." Jacqueline wrote to Eve Symington that it would have been "such fun if it had been you and Stu."

19
. LBJ had called an extraordinary post-convention session of the Senate. Jacqueline had always liked Johnson—he felt she was "nicer" to him than anyone else in the Kennedy entourage, but this passage suggests some disenchantment with the new president. Two days before Christmas 1963, LBJ demonstrated his tendency to overreach. He telephoned Mrs. Kennedy to wish her a happy holiday ("How's my little girl?") without telling her that he had reporters listening in so that he could show off his closeness to the revered widow. And Robert Kennedy, who detested Johnson, had regaled her with such tales as LBJ's hasty request of JFK's personal secretary on the morning after the assassination to vacate her West Wing office "so I can get my girls in" and his reversal of various Kennedy appointments, policies, and intentions. But, although unsettled by Johnson's periodic gaucheries and his negation of a number of JFK policies, Mrs. Kennedy liked LBJ and had great fondness and admiration for Lady Bird, who had often filled in for her as First Lady. Jacqueline was also grateful to her successor for pledging to complete her White House restoration designs and to preserve the White House Historical Association and her other improvements intended to ensure that the mansion would remain a museum-quality showcase of American history and culture.

20
. P
HILIP
G
RAHAM
(1915–1963) was publisher of the
Washington Post
and a close Johnson ally who, in the habit of many newspaper proprietors of the time, liked to be involved in politics behind the scenes. But in his posthumously published memorandum on his role in LBJ's selection, he in no way suggests that he was anything close to a kingmaker. Nor does Alsop in his memoirs. By Graham's account, his own role was limited to urging both men to run together and then—after JFK went down to Johnson's Biltmore Hotel suite and made the deal with him—encouraging LBJ not to bolt the ticket when angry liberals threatened a floor fight. RFK, who even in 1960 disliked the Texan, much later insisted that his brother's offer of the vice presidency had been merely pro forma, and that Johnson had "grabbed" it. Graham, Alsop, and others insisted that JFK had planned in advance of his nomination to make a serious offer to Johnson in order to carry important southern states and thus win the presidency. There is unlikely to ever be a definitive verdict on how much Kennedy really wanted Johnson on his ticket.

21
. Now John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York.

22
. Meaning JFK's father, the former envoy to the Court of St. James's.

23
. Referring to the director, who made pictures such as
The Informer
(1935), about an Irish rebel who betrays a comrade.

24
. J
OHN
C
ONNALLY
(1917–1993) was a lawyer and Texas crony of Lyndon Johnson's. At a press conference before the balloting in Los Angeles in 1960, Connally had demanded a medical evaluation of whether Kennedy was healthy enough to serve as president. Nevertheless, JFK made him secretary of the navy. Elected governor of his state in 1962, Connally and his wife Nellie rode with the Kennedys through four Texas cities on November 21 and 22, 1963. During the Dallas motorcade, in the last words they spoke, Connally, a conservative Democrat, told the President of a soon-to-be-published poll that showed him running ahead of JFK in Texas in 1964. Kennedy replied, "That doesn't surprise me."

25
. One of the purposes of the Texas trip of November 1963 was to resolve an intra-party feud in that state which pitted Johnson and Connally against their political nemesis, Texas senator Ralph Yarborough. Connally refused to ride in the presidential motorcades with Yarborough. Yarborough refused to ride with Johnson. In Fort Worth that final morning, JFK had been compelled to tell Yarborough, "For Christ's sake, Ralph, cut it out!" The other politician with the same name was liberal Don Yarborough (no relation), who had almost defeated Connally for the Democratic nomination for governor of Texas in 1962.

26
. W
ILLARD
W
IRTZ
(1912–2010) was Kennedy's undersecretary of labor before moving to the top spot in 1962. George Ball (1909–1994) was his undersecretary of state for economic affairs. Thomas Finletter (1893–1980) was his ambassador to NATO. All three men had been ardent Stevensonians.

27
. H
ENRY
C
ABOT
L
ODGE
, J
R.
(1902–1985) was a Republican senator from Massachusetts and namesake grandson of the Brahmin senator who killed Woodrow Wilson's dream of American membership in the post–World War I League of Nations. Appearing alongside the well-respected Lodge gave JFK a boost similar to that of appearing with the vice president of the United States in debate. After losing to Kennedy, Lodge served as Eisenhower's ambassador to the United Nations before joining Richard Nixon's losing ticket in 1960.

28
. W
ILLIAM
G
REEN
(1910–1963) was a congressman from Philadelphia and the city's Democratic chairman. Jacqueline's description here of Joseph Kennedy's efforts for his son's campaign is minimalist.

29
. J
OHN
B
AILEY
(1904–1975) was chief of Connecticut Democrats and an early Kennedy supporter whom the President appointed as Democratic national chairman.

30
. The modest apartment some distance beyond the gold-domed Boston State House that JFK had taken in 1946 to establish residency for his first campaign for Congress, which by 1960 served as his and Jackie's voting address.

31
. The Convair plane bought by the Kennedy family for JFK to use in the 1960 campaign.

32
. C
ORNELIUS
R
YAN
(1920–1974) was the Irish-born author of
The Longest Day: June 6, 1944
, a 1959 bestseller made into a feature film by Darryl F. Zanuck at Twentieth Century Fox.

33
. JFK's press secretary, Pierre Salinger.

34
. Meaning on the tape recording.

35
. The seventeenth-century philosopher Blaise Pascal argued that even though God's existence could not be proven by reason, one should behave as if He did exist because there was nothing to lose by living in a God-fearing manner—and potentially everything to gain.

36
. P
HILIP
H
ANNAN
(1913– ) was auxiliary bishop of Washington, a World War II Army chaplain who parachuted into the Ardennes and helped to liberate a concentration camp, with whom JFK had maintained an unpublicized, quiet running conversation about religion and politics during his presidency, and who officiated at his funeral. John Cavanaugh (1899–1979) was a priest who was president of Notre Dame from 1946 to 1952.

37
. F
RANCIS
C
ARDINAL
S
PELLMAN
(1889–1967) was archbishop of New York from 1939 until his death. Although he had officiated at the weddings of Robert and Edward Kennedy, he strongly supported Richard Nixon in 1960, disdaining JFK's opposition—in his ardor to demonstrate fealty to the separation of church and state—to federal money for parochial schools and to the appointment of a U.S. ambassador to the Vatican. In 1945, Spellman launched the annual white-tie Alfred E. Smith Memorial Foundation Dinner, a fund-raiser for Catholic charities which, in presidential election years, usually features jocular speeches by both candidates, as it did in 1960.