Personal History (49 page)
Authors: Katharine Graham
A
WEEK LATER
, we left Washington to return to pick up the children in Rome. In our absence they had all fallen in love with Italy and the mad Italians. The children were good travelers and good sports about everything, even helping with Steve, then only seven. By the time we arrived in London, we were having such a good time that we decided to prolong our stay by almost three weeks and to return by steamer, the
Mauritania
. For me, the trip had been wonderful in its way, despite my grief and my guilty feelings about my father, which persist to this day. For Phil, the trip was a forward step in his recovery. He was considerably more active that fall.
His activity was mostly related to politics. He stepped up his connection with Lyndon Johnson. He also accepted some invitations to speak to various groups, an indication of his near recovery, or at least his return to some balance. Although he hadn’t spoken publicly for a long time, two speeches he gave—one at the end of 1959 and another in February 1960— were vintage Phil, with the added dimension that they were full of thoughts on the necessity for understanding the meaning of one’s life.
In the first, to the American Electric Power Company in Canton, Ohio, he spoke about the “shaking loneliness that a man experiences, whatever his job, whenever he faces up to the meaning of what he is engaged in”:
Where I get in difficulty—at times almost unbearable difficulty—is when I try to examine the meaning of what I am engaged in.
When these difficulties get too great we in the newspaper business … retreat to the ritual of reciting old rules that we know are meaningless.
We say that we just print the objective news in our news columns and confine our opinions to the editorial page. Yet we know that while this has some merit as an over-simplified slogan of good intentions, it also has a strong smell of pure baloney.
If we keep wages too low in some few areas where unions still let us do it or if we neglect decent working amenities as long as we can avoid the cost, we defend ourselves by muttering about our concern for stockholders. As though by announcing compassion for a relatively anonymous and absent group we can justify a lack of compassion for people we spend our working days with.
If we are brutally careless about printing something that maligns the character of some concrete individual, we are apt to wave the abstract flag of freedom of speech in order to avoid the embarrassment of a concrete apology.
If we are pressed even harder, we may salve our consciences by saying that after all there are libel laws. And as soon as we say that we redouble our efforts to make those laws as toothless as we possibly can.
And if we are pressed really quite hard, we can finally shrug our shoulders and say, “Well, after all we have to live.” Then we can only hope no one will ask the ultimate question: “Why?”
I certainly have been guilty of all those stupid actions—and a great many more stupid. And I suppose that more than a few of you have done as poorly.
What I prefer to recall are those rare occasions when I have had some better sense of the meaning of what I am engaged in. In those moments I have realized that our problems are relatively simple and that some simple, ancient, moral precepts are often reliable business tools. In those moments I have been able to keep in mind that it really doesn’t matter whether I am kept in my job. In those moments I have been able to look straight at the frailty of my judgment. And finally I have been honest enough to recognize that a few—a very few—great issues about the meaning of life are the only issues which deserve to be considered truly complex.
… by paying attention to the broader meaning of what we are engaged in, we may be able to join our passion to our intelligence. And such a juncture, even on the part of but one individual,
can represent a significant step forward on the long road toward civilization.
T
HE WHOLE POLITICAL
year of 1960 was very exciting. There is a thrill to knowing someone of your generation who runs for, and actually becomes, president. By the late 1950s, we had gotten to know Jack Kennedy. Early in 1956, he had been one of four speakers at the Post-sponsored Book and Author Luncheon, on hand as the author of
Profiles in Courage
. According to a
Post
article reporting on the luncheon, the young senator “delighted a largely feminine audience by quipping ‘I always used to wonder what the ladies did in Washington in the daytime.’ ” Senator Kennedy was one of the people we knew much better than we normally would have because of Joe Alsop, who had decided very rapidly that he was all for Kennedy. Phil and I had seen the Kennedys at big parties, looking glamorous and handsome, but I never took him seriously. I remember exclaiming to Joe when he said—sometime around 1958—that he thought Kennedy would be president one day, “Joe, surely you’re not serious. You don’t really think Kennedy could be president, do you?” Joe said, “Darling, I think he will certainly be nominated and quite probably be elected.”
The Kennedys had recently moved into a house on N Street in Georgetown, and in the late fall of 1958 or early winter of 1959, Joe invited us to dinner with them. Phil had too much to drink and was visibly and audibly out of control. I was embarrassed—probably too much so—but impressed with Kennedy for his cool approach, which ignored it totally and treated Phil as though he were perfectly sober. I admired that and was grateful. After the other guests left, we and the Kennedys, urged by Joe, stayed on. Phil looked Kennedy straight in the eye and said, “Jack, you are very good. You will be president someday. But you are too young and you shouldn’t run yet”—to which Kennedy replied, “Well, Phil, I’m running and this is why. First, I think I’m as well qualified as anybody who is going to run, except for Lyndon Johnson. Second, if I don’t run, whoever wins will be there for eight years and will influence who his successor will be. And third, if I don’t run I’ll have to stay in the Senate at least eight more years. As a potential candidate in the Senate, I’ll have to vote politically and I’ll end up as both a mediocre senator and a lousy candidate.” I was thoroughly impressed by this, and each time I saw Senator Kennedy I grew more impressed.
We also got to know Jack and Jackie better through Bill Walton, their painter friend and ours. One night we went to a dinner at Bill’s with the Kennedys. Also there was Frances Ann Hersey, an acquaintance of mine
from Madeira School and by then the divorced wife of the writer John Hersey. As Frances Ann Cannon, daughter of the wealthy linen manufacturer in the South, she had had a romance with Jack in college. He had apparently proposed to her and she had turned him down, or so she told Bill. Somehow, Jack had gotten back his love letters and Jackie had read them, so, when Bill called Jackie and suggested this dinner, she responded, “Oh, wonderful, I would rather meet her than any other woman in the world.”
Bill enlisted our help as neutral parties. We accepted, and arrived with great anticipation, particularly because Phil hadn’t then spent many hours with Jack in such a small group. Bill later recalled the evening, remembering Frances dressed seductively in a short and revealing black dress, “switching along to attract.” Jack greeted her with kindness but didn’t seem to speak to her again; from her point of view, Bill said, it was a disaster. Jack and Phil, however, went to each other like magnets and talked solidly all evening. As Bill said, “They were both at their best and it was a really important evening for both of them. And Jackie was in heaven because she saw her old rival being rejected.”
On January 2, 1960, Kennedy formally announced his decision to seek the presidency. Johnson declared only a few days before the convention. What a difference between that and the current process! The
Post
at the time of Kennedy’s announcement editorialized that he had “a tenacity of purpose and maturity of judgment … an acute awareness of the great issues of the day.”
By now, Phil was much better, though he still had moments of depression and at least two periods that year of health problems followed by two-week vacations, or getaways, that allowed him to rest. He was in balance, but only precariously; he was on the edge of a manic period that built with his growing and still-constructive involvement in the political dynamics of that crucial year of 1960. Very early on, Phil predicted that Kennedy and Johnson would be the only candidates to come into the Democratic Convention with sizable blocs of delegates—five hundred for Kennedy and three hundred for Johnson, he thought. He had visions of Kennedy’s not making it and Adlai Stevenson’s emerging as the compromise Northern candidate.
In June 1960, Kennedy, as had Nixon before him, came to an editorial lunch at the
Post
. At that point, he had entered and run in seven primaries—including the roughest, in West Virginia, where only 5 percent of the population was Catholic. I recall Jackie saying later that Caroline’s first words were “West Virginia.” Kennedy had clearly demonstrated he was a vote getter. Much of the luncheon talk concerned Nixon, who was regarded as the almost certain Republican nominee. Eddie Folliard, still the
Post
’s key political reporter, asked Kennedy if he would debate
Nixon on television if it turned out that both of them were their parties’ nominees for the presidency. Kennedy said he would. Reminded of Nixon’s reputation as a debater, Kennedy calmly added, “I think I can take him.” Asked about the possibility of Lyndon Johnson as vice-president, Kennedy scoffed at the idea, saying he felt sure Johnson wouldn’t accept it. Russ Wiggins disagreed, feeling that Johnson would like to broaden his horizon as vice-president. Although the interview was off the record, both these exchanges—about the debate and about the potential running-mate—were of great help to those covering the convention and the rest of the campaign. These days, all such interviews are done on the record and therefore take on an entirely different significance, and are sometimes, I think, less helpful.
On July 5, Johnson held a press conference at which he announced his candidacy. Phil, who had been helping him prepare for this moment for months, was at his side working on his statement. He ended up on his hands and knees, crawling around at the last minute to retrieve one of Lyndon’s contact lenses, which had popped out. The announcement got made and Johnson went to New York to meet with the press and do all the ritual things.
Phil and I flew to California early, five days before the Democratic Convention was to open on July 11. I was already committed to Kennedy. Phil remained loyal to Johnson until he lost the bid for the nomination, but he was entirely realistic, and he, too, admired JFK. My mother, a year after my father’s death, was beginning to come out of her depression. Like the rest of us, she had geared up for politics in this election year and arrived in Los Angeles still staunchly supporting Adlai Stevenson, who as usual had declined to be a candidate but was eligible for a draft.
On Friday, July 8, Johnson arrived, the first of the candidates. Almost immediately he confided to his office staff, “It’s all over with. It’s going to be Kennedy by a landslide.” Only Kennedy had a sophisticated organization already in place in Los Angeles. It was the first time we saw electronic communications between people working in different places, talking to each other through hand-held intercoms and beepers—now so routine. It was very impressive.
Phil called on Bobby Kennedy and got from him confidential figures on his brother’s strength, numbers that showed JFK very close to the number of votes needed to win the nomination—close enough so that the Pennsylvania delegation, or a big chunk of it, could put him over. On Monday, Pennsylvania caucused and announced that the state delegation would give sixty-four of its eighty-one votes to Kennedy, which made Phil and the
Post
reporters write that it would be Kennedy on the first ballot.
At that point, Phil got together with Joe Alsop to discuss the merits of
Lyndon Johnson as Kennedy’s running mate. Joe persuaded Phil to accompany him to urge Kennedy to offer the vice-presidency to Johnson. Joe had all the secret passwords, and the two men got through to Evelyn Lincoln, Kennedy’s secretary, in a room next to his dreary double bedroom and living room. They took a seat on one of the beds and nervously talked out who would say what, while they observed what Joe termed “the antechambers of history.” Joe decided he would introduce the subject and Phil should make the pitch.
When they were then taken to the living room to see JFK, Joe opened with, “We’ve come to talk to you about the vice-presidency. Something may happen to you, and Symington is far too shallow a puddle for the United States to dive into. Furthermore, what are you going to do about Lyndon Johnson? He’s much too big a man to leave up in the Senate.” Then Phil spoke—“shrewdly and eloquently,” according to Joe—pointing out all the obvious things that Johnson could add to the ticket and noting that not having Johnson on the ticket would certainly be trouble.
Kennedy immediately agreed, “so immediately as to leave me doubting the easy triumph,” Phil noted in a memo afterwards. “So I restated the matter urging him not to count on Johnson’s turning it down, but to offer the VPship so persuasively as to win Johnson over.” Kennedy was decisive in saying that was his intention, pointing out that Johnson could help not only in the South but elsewhere in the country.
Phil told the
Post’s
reporters they could write that “the word in L.A. is that Kennedy will offer the Vice-Presidency to Lyndon Johnson.” On Tuesday morning, Kennedy called Phil, who told JFK he was to lunch with Johnson and would get back to him afterwards. But when Phil lunched alone with Johnson, he was unable to bring up the subject.
By clerical error, the Kennedy staff had sent to the Texas delegation a form telegram asking that Kennedy be invited to appear before them. The Johnson staff seized on it and asked for a debate before both the Texas and Massachusetts delegations at 3:00 p.m. that day. Johnson was bone-tired from a grueling morning appearing before three or four delegations but was tremendously exhilarated by the prospect of the debate, which breathed life into his candidacy. At 1:50, Phil, egged on by the Johnson staff, persuaded LBJ to take a nap and, together with the couple from his ranch who had come along to help, got him into pajamas and into bed. While putting him to bed, Phil said, “We’re not going to be
ad hominem
, we’re going to talk about the world. Walter Lippmann came out for Kennedy this morning, saying you were an ignoramus about the world, and we’re going to show him he’s wrong.”