Jacqueline Kennedy: Historic Conversations on Life With John F. Kennedy (11 page)

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

He liked Lyndon. Lyndon was sort of—

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You mean questions of judgment?

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

Because Ted gave the impression he had written the book?

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

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

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

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

Did Ted get all the royalties from
Profiles in Courage
?

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

That's fantastic!

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

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

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

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

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

Yes, he did.

In '
52
?

In '52, and Teddy, supposedly, in '58.
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But, you know, Bobby was always sort of—well, they were both so caring of what the other was doing. But then I guess—I suppose, at that Thanksgiving meeting, Bobby just gave up everything else and did everything for Jack from then on. I don't remember what Bobby was doing in '
58
that he couldn't run the campaign. Are you sure he didn't run it?

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

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

Much more labor than foreign policy at that point—

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

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

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

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

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

What sort of books?

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