Kennedy: The Classic Biography (70 page)

Providing a normal life for her children and a peaceful home for her husband was only one of Jacqueline Kennedy’s contributions to the Kennedy era, but she regarded it as her most important. “It doesn’t matter what else you do,” she said, “if you don’t do that part well, you fail your husband and your children. That really is the role which means the most to me, the one that comes first.” No one should have been surprised by her refusal to give more speeches, press interviews and women’s receptions. In the campaign candidate Kennedy had avoided mawkish references to his wife, made no pretense of involving her in political and policy decisions, and, even had she not been expecting their son, would not have urged upon her a large campaign role apart from his own. And Jacqueline, when asked about her role in the White House, had replied:

I’ll always do anything my husband asks me to do…. [But] I think the major role of the First Lady is to take care of the President…[and] if you bungle raising your children, I don’t think whatever else you do well matters very much.

In the White House husband and wife were very close. His election, to her surprise, strengthened instead of strained their marriage. Those were their happiest years. Jacqueline and the children, contrary to her fears during the campaign, saw more of her husband than ever before, and he found with her a happiness and love he had never known before. He became more relaxed, less demanding and very proud of his wife. Often, as I boarded a helicopter on the White House lawn to begin some Presidential journey, I would see Jacqueline walking with her husband to his plane, hand in hand, without regard to the police or politicians all about them.

She never interfered with his work or volunteered advice on his decisions, wisely content to let him be concerned with the country’s life while she concerned herself with their family life. She provided not only a welcome change from his political and official chores but a fresh perspective on the world as well. Equipped with a gentle satirical wit of her own, she could deflate any pompous Presidential posture he did not immediately deflate himself. Refusing to let either her tastes or time be swept away by a sea of strong-minded Kennedys, she gave her husband new interests and tastes to round out the old, even as she studied history and golf to keep up with him. They learned from each other.

Like her husband, Jacqueline remained essentially unchanged by either adulation or adversity. She was herself at all times, even when not everyone wanted her to be herself. During the campaign we had received constant advice on how Jacqueline Kennedy should be more of a politician like Eleanor Roosevelt or more homespun like Bess Truman. Her clothes, it was said, were too expensive, her hair-do too fancy, her interests too rarefied. Even in her first months in the White House she was criticized for not addressing countless women’s groups, for not equaling Mrs. Khrushchev’s response to a women’s peace petition, and for not devoting more time to a hundred worthy causes and crusades.

But Jacqueline Kennedy, sensitive but strong-willed, so long as her husband would not be harmed by her decision, had no desire to be anyone else. By maintaining her own unique identity and provocative personality, she never bored or wearied the President, and had full time for him and her children. As the Attorney General once commented, “Jack knows she’ll never greet him with ‘What’s new in Laos?’” In addition, by continuing with her “fancy ways” and fox hunting, her water skiing and antique hunting, by refusing to appear more folksy at political rallies or less glamorous in poorer nations, by carrying her pursuit of quality and beauty into White House decorations and dinners, she brought great pleasure to millions in every land, rich and poor alike. She became a world-wide symbol of American culture and good taste, and offered proof in the modern age that the female sex can succeed by merely remaining feminine.

Her televised tour of the White House was a memorable gift to the American people. No longer bothered by crowds, she became John Kennedy’s proudest asset when accompanying him on state visits abroad and on political trips in this country. She also won countless friends for her husband and country on an official trip of her own to India and Pakistan (where she had, as the President told an audience that week, “her first—and last—ride on an elephant”) and on quieter vacation visits to the Mediterranean. On the night of November 21, 1963, she told her husband how happily she looked forward to being able to campaign with him in 1964. Earlier that evening, says Dave Powers, the President had asked him for a comparison of crowds between that visit to Houston and the President’s previous trip there in 1962. “Just about as many came out to see you as they did on our last visit, Mr. President,” replied Dave, “but there were about a hundred thousand more for Jackie.” And the President, beaming at his wife, said, “You see, you do help.”

The vicious rumors about the President and his wife which had circulated in the campaign recurred from time to time. None angered him more than the report that, as a young man, he had been previously married. “I wouldn’t be the last to know
that!”
he said bitterly.

The fact is that Kennedy’s own candor and humor, his refusal to take himself too seriously, his constant stimulation of excitement and controversy, his recognition of intellect and art, his assault on myths and complacency, and perhaps even his genuine attachment to his family in an age when some thought that “unsophisticated”—all made possible an unprecedented atmosphere in which the President of the United States and his family could be mimicked, mocked, criticized, insulted and made the subject of countless stories, songs and skits. It was a lively, new and healthy atmosphere, and President Kennedy was willing to take its bad points along with its good.

He was amused, and amusing, about success symbols of this new atmosphere. Asked at a news conference whether he was annoyed by a sometimes funny recording of skits about “The First Family” by a very skillful Kennedy impersonator named Vaughn Meader, the President said, “I listened to Mr. Meader’s record, but I thought it sounded more like Teddy than it did me—so
he’s
annoyed.”

INTELLECTUAL AND CULTURAL REVIVAL

This atmosphere of gaiety and verve was by no means limited to critics and mimics. A wave of intellectual interest and excitement rippled out from the White House. Learning and culture were in style. “The quality of American life,” said the President, “must keep pace with the quantity of American goods. This country cannot afford to be materially rich and spiritually poor.”

He cared deeply and personally about education, human rights, better health, cleaner cities and greater dignity for the aged. Believing that “A nation reveals itself not only by the men it produces but also by the men it honors,” he initiated the new Medal of Freedom Awards as an annual civilian honors list for those who have enriched our society, personally worked on the medal’s design, and insisted that awards go to several controversial figures, including some critical of his administration. He kept in touch with Robert Frost, whose poetry had graced his inauguration, visited with him at the White House, corresponded with him through the years and paid a posthumous tribute to him at Amherst. He gave as much attention to French Cultural Affairs Minister André Malraux as he gave to the foreign affairs ministers of many other nations.

The White House became both a showplace and a dwelling place for the distinctive, the creative and the cultivated. It was also, cracked the President to one gathering of intellectuals, “becoming a sort of eating place for artists. But
they
never ask
us
out.” At a dinner honoring American Nobel Prize winners, their first official recognition by our government, he announced: “This is the most extraordinary collection of talent… that has ever been gathered together at the White House—with the possible exception of when Thomas Jefferson dined alone.” One of the Nobel scientists honored, pacifist Linus Pauling, sought to attract attention to his cause by picketing the White House that day. But the President merely congratulated him on expressing his opinions so strongly, and the First Lady chided him that Caroline had asked, “What has Daddy done now?”

State dinners at the White House, I can testify from my few firsthand experiences, had an atmosphere of warmth as well as elegance. Formal protocol was held to a minimum. Changing clothes in my office and walking over, I was given my seat assignment and introduced to my dinner partner by one of the military or social aides. As the guests talked in the East Room, martial music announced the arrival on the staircase of the President and Mrs. Kennedy and the guests of honor. A receiving line formed, the President usually laughing at being formally introduced to me by a military aide and adding some humorous twist to my job description as he introduced me to the visiting chief of state.

From my seat well below the salt at dinner, I could observe the President amusing the ladies on either side of him, then knitting his brow as he asked a guest a more serious question, then laughing once again at some bantering exchange. The guests on either side of me were among those personally selected by the President, who used dinner invitations as a means of honoring, influencing, thanking or meeting all kinds of people. Occasionally, the long horseshoe-shaped banquet table was replaced by a cluster of little tables. The food, the wine and the background music were delightful, the toasts short and frequently funny.

After the toasts, we went into the redecorated Red, Green and Blue Rooms of the White House.
²
Fires burned in the fireplaces, flowers filled every niche, and all the guests talked about Jacqueline’s transformation of those rooms from a cold museum and hotel lobby into authentic restorations of the best in American history. The President and First Lady moved from group to group, talking informally about newly collected paintings or heirlooms, and joking with me on one occasion about the antique chair which had suddenly cracked and collapsed under the President at our legislative breakfast that morning.

A performance was then presented in the East Room which honored both guests and artists by selecting the best in the nation, including a Shakespeare company (the first in the White House since 1910), a ballet troupe, a musical comedy, opera stars, Frederic March reading from Hemingway, Isaac Stem, Igor Stravinsky and Pablo Casals in his first visit to the White House since playing for Theodore Roosevelt. At the end of the evening, all of us felt we were truly in the First House of the land.

Jacqueline Kennedy acted to preserve the Mansion’s greatness for posterity. She obtained legislation from the Congress placing the White House under the National Park Service, permitting unneeded objects to be stored or exhibited in the Smithsonian Institution and preventing the loss or neglect of any heirloom. She appointed a Fine Arts Committee of experts (mostly Republicans) to advise her on historical re-creations and to receive contributions. She established the post of White House Curator. She created a White House Historical Association to publish a guidebook and other pamphlets about the Mansion, its history, its occupants and its contents, and the guidebook (which the President had been warned would be assailed for commercializing the White House) was a one-dollar best-seller which raised still more money for the work of restoration.

Nor did she confine herself to the rooms toured by the public. She redid the private living quarters above the first floor to fit her own tastes and family needs with art and furniture of her own choosing. (She and her husband also insisted that the private quarters remain truly private, and a staff member who had taken friends on a tour of the upstairs, even though the Kennedys were absent, was severely reprimanded.) The White House library was restocked and restored with the best in American literature. She rearranged furniture and pictures in the West Wing’s offices and Reception Room. She and the President were particularly proud of the once dilapidated Rose Garden which became a blazingly beautiful flower garden.

Kennedy had ambitious plans for beautifying the District of Columbia. With Jefferson’s love of architecture, he initiated a master plan for the sweeping redesign of Pennsylvania Avenue between Capitol Hill and the White House. With advice from his wife and Bill Walton, he took action to prevent historic, graceful Lafayette Park, across the street from the White House, from being permanently ruined by modernistic Federal structures on either side.

John and Jacqueline Kennedy had more than an architectural effect on the capital city. They had both lived there throughout most of their adult lives, they were more widely acquainted with its residents than any previous First Family, and they cared deeply about its role and stature.

Some skeptics said that the President was trying to prove that he was for “culture” in the same way that he was for Medicare or Mass Transit. Many artists, on the other hand, looked upon Kennedy as one of their own. Neither, in my view, was wholly right.

Clearly he was an intellectual, if that term has any solid meaning, although many of his fellow intellectuals would have disputed that conclusion almost as vehemently as he. He meditated, but on action, not philosophy. His was a directed intelligence, never spent on the purely theoretical, always applied to the concrete. He sought truth in order to act on it. His mind was more critical and analytical than creative, but it was better balanced by humor, practicality and even profanity than that of the typical intellectual.

Typical intellectuals, in fact, were rarely among his closest friends. He preferred the Waltons and Bundys and Galbraiths of this world, whose interests were not confined to their artistic or intellectual specialties. But he enjoyed the exchange of specific facts and ideas with almost anyone from whom he could learn.

To be sure, his own artistic talents and interests were limited. He had dabbled briefly in oil painting after his 1955 back operation, and some of the results, hung in his home, were considered good. But he felt he had “no gift” for it, soon tired of it and turned to more active pursuits. Nor could he sing, although at times, when the spirit (or, more likely, spirits) moved him, he was known to render a passable version of “Won’t You Come Home, Bill Bailey.” In Dorchester, Massachusetts, on the last night of his 1958 campaign, too tired to present another speech to an already solid audience, he instead presented the three Kennedy brothers singing “Heart of My Heart.” They were awful.