Jacqueline Kennedy: Historic Conversations on Life With John F. Kennedy (38 page)

Yeah, I think he did.

Or that he was talking to the press, or something. I mean, I never heard him say anything against Walter Heller. I always thought Walter Heller was sort of a—well, a jerk when you meet him. I never could believe he was such a brilliant economist.

He did a good job, I think—

But—

And has been very unhappy—since.

So, I never heard him—but I mean, we didn't—Jack and I didn't really talk economics, so—I guess he thought he was fine.

On the Supreme Court, the President—

Oh, he loved Douglas Dillon.

Yeah.

But—and he thought a lot of Dave Bell.

Yes, he relied heavily on—did he?—on Dave Bell. When Kermit Gordon became director of the budget, did—was there any particular reaction?
⁴⁴

Well, that's because he wanted what? Dave Bell—

Dave went over to AID.

AID, yeah.

Yeah, but Gordon didn't—

I don't know anything about that. Wasn't he sad that Dave Bell had to leave being director of the budget? Yeah, he was really sad about that.

He felt Dave was the only man who could straighten out the AID situation.
⁴⁵
You remember Fowler Hamilton
⁴⁶
had—

Oh, that's right. And he was very sad, the way it came out about Fowler Hamilton. I can't remember exactly but it looked as if he—oh, no, no. Labouisse.
⁴⁷

Labouisse.

Labouisse. It looked as if he'd been fired for incompetency or something, and he—Jack so badly wanted to have it come that he was being promoted by being ambassador to Greece. However, that story came out, he was sorry for Labouisse—he was sad. It shows a certain charity again.

The President made two appointments to the Supreme Court, you remember. Byron White
⁴⁸
and Arthur Goldberg. Did he talk much about the Court or about—

Well, I remember he was really happy that he'd have two appointments to make and I think he thought both his appointments were good.

Yes.

And I know that Justice Frankfurter, he knew wanted him to appoint whoever it was—Paul someone?

Paul Freund.
⁴⁹

Yeah. And he knew of that wish. He was—he went to call on Frankfurter a couple of times and again once—brought him to his office. But he wanted to put Goldberg in there.

He used to be—he and Bill Douglas used to be—at least, Bill Douglas—was a great friend of Mr. Kennedy.
⁵⁰

Of his father's, and then really of Bobby's. They were always going off all through Russia and everything together. We never really saw Bill Douglas much, but I think he liked him.

He wasn't around the White House much.

No, never.

Never.

But none of those people were. Arthur Goldberg used to be around our house in Georgetown a lot for the time of the labor bill, but that was always for breakfast. And Arthur Goldberg—I said to Jack once—some dinner where I sat next to him—"He is the biggest egomaniac of any man I've ever seen in my life." And it's true. I've never seen a man who never stops talking about himself.

Yeah, he does it with sort of an innocent, joyous way, but it is hard.

Well, I find that horrifying. I'm not sure Jack didn't make a mistake putting him on the Supreme Court because that just seems to make people think they're more and more special.

And as they're out of the newspapers, they feel they have to make up for that by talking more about—

And the decision that I thought this winter—you know, that was made after Jack's death, this case where it's all right to print anything, even libel, about someone in the press. It's a little more complicated than that, but you remember.

The
New York Times
case.

Yes. But that seemed such an awful thing to do—and Goldberg was the one who held out and said that it could even be malicious and completely untrue. And I thought, that's right after that ad of the day in Dallas, of the picture of Jack—"Wanted for Treason." And there you, his appointee, go and say that everything, even this, is all right? But it's because the Supreme Court is so isolated. They're never affected by newspapers, anything. So Arthur Goldberg's head's going to be even more swelled in a few more years. So, I guess, Jack always said he was the most brilliant labor lawyer that ever was.

What about the President and the press—apart from Charlie Bartlett and Ben Bradlee, who were—

I suppose so many of our friends before the White House were in the press. I mean, there's Rowlie Evans, Hugh Sidey—Bill Lawrence he played golf with.
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You know, he basically liked them. I always thought in Washington, politics and the press—you're both sort of involved in doing something. So many of his friends were there. Bill Kent in Florida would be around, sometimes. He liked the kind of badinage and everything you could have with them. Much more than his colleagues in Congress, though we had some there. And then—people always used to say that he was so thin-skinned by the press, but that really wasn't true. And it was so funny, because one night Ben Bradlee was taunting him—or, no, he was saying to Ben Bradlee something that was written was untrue. And Ben Bradlee came one night for dinner in an absolute rage because some tiny little Republican newsletter that his John Birch mother-in-law subscribed to had had a paragraph written by—not Tony Lewis but Tony someone who wrote for Nixon—

Ralph de Toledano.
⁵²

Ralph de Toledano had written something bad about Ben Bradlee. You would have thought it had been over the front page of the
New York Times
. Just one or two sentences, and Ben was in a rage. And Jack just sort of lean—I mean he didn't really rub it in, he just leaned back and looked amused and said, "Well, see how you fellows feel when something unfair is written." I guess the one thing he admitted was a mistake was canceling the
Herald Tribune.
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He was a little bit more that way in the beginning, but at the end he'd never mention unfavorable things, or if I'd say, "Oh, I think so-and-so is so awful"—when I'd come home to him and he'd say, "Don't think about it. Don't read those things." You know, he just accepted it as part of the—you know, when there was something good, I mean, he wouldn't mention it. I'd say, "Wasn't it wonderful what"—I don't know—"someone said today?" If I could find it.

What about the great statesmen of the press, like Lippmann and Scotty and all the rest of them—and Joe Alsop?

Well, Joe was his friend. And, I think, Lippmann and Reston—Reston was awfully sanctimonious and sort of—so they were never close. I mean, I'm sure Jack saw them in his office and things. And, of course, they had this kind of jealousy or resentment of Jack because for the first time there was a president who probably was brighter than they were, who was younger, who was—Lippmann had two things against Jack, partly his father and partly being Catholic, strangely enough. And you hear this in conversations with other people but he could never sort of purge from this—

Yeah. And I think Lippmann's wife was an ex-Catholic. She was brought up and went to a convent and broke with it and I think that had some—

Well, I remember when—

Though, remember in 1960 that Lippmann wrote marvelous columns.

Yeah. I can't really remember what they wrote and what they didn't, sometimes. But—I mean, he wouldn't sort of be a sycophant to them. I mean, he wouldn't suck around. In the press, he really saw the people who—he liked. Someone funny like Bill Lawrence, just—you know.

But you don't feel that he was unduly sensitive—

Unh-unh
[meaning no]
.

—to the press. One thing a lot of people have written about the administration is that no administration was more interested in its own image, to use that odious word, and so on.
⁵⁴

Well, that to me, it's like reading about someone—you know, it's so untrue. And then they'd all talk about the public relations setup that we had going before the—during—before the campaign, and the this and the that, and our image. Which I'd never thought of as image. And there was never anyone in public relations, except—Charlie Bartlett always used to say, "You're doing too many articles." But he used to say to Charlie, "You know, I have so many—much against me. The only one—and in a certain position that mightn't be the best way to get what I'm aiming for—the nomination. But this way, it is. You know, to just get more and more known and bombard them." So many public relations things were that when they asked for interviews, and he would do them. But he never had anyone advising him and he never thought about our image. In fact, our image—when you think of something so incredible about me, I was always a liability to him until we got to the White House. And he never asked me to change or said anything about it. Everyone thought I was a snob from Newport, who had bouffant hair and had French clothes and hated politics. And then because I was off and having these babies, I wasn't able to campaign, you know, and be around with him as much as I could have. And he'd get so upset for me when something like that came out. And sometimes I'd say, "Oh, Jack, I wish—you know, I'm sorry for you that I'm just such a dud." And, he knew it wasn't true and he didn't want me to change, I mean, he knew I loved him and I did everything I could, and when I did campaign with him, I did it very hard and I spoke French all through Massachusetts to counteract Henry Cabot Lodge—until people came up and used to be surprised that I could speak English! He was, you know, proud. So, he never asked me—there I was the worst liability and there were Lee—Princess Radziwill and everything. And—and I was so happy, I remember thinking, once you got in the White House—it's really true of any president's wife. Everything that was bad is suddenly new, and so it's interesting. So whereas, then that you have decent French food is a plus instead of a minus—that you don't like, stay in a kitchen all day making Irish stew. And when I did the tour of the White House, he was so proud of that. He used to show that and ask people about it. And then I did the guidebook over everybody's objections. They all said in the West Wing that it would be awful to have money change hands in the White House.
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But then he was proud of me, and I was so happy that at last I'd been able to be something that he could be proud of. But, I mean, that shows you he wasn't thinking of his image or he would have made me get a little frizzy permanent and be like Pat Nixon. You know, "Pat and Dick," and he never—he never would hold hands in public or put his arm around me, or—because that was naturally just distasteful to him, as I think it is for any married— So he didn't do anything for his image. And he used to tell me—sometimes he'd tell me I should wear hats instead of sc[arves]
⁵⁶
—oh, and all these letters about my skirts too short. And I said, "But they're not too short," and he said, "Oh, I guess you're right." But, you know, he never said, "Lengthen them" or—

PRESIDENT AND MRS. KENNEDY GREETING GUESTS AT A WHITE HOUSE RECEPTION ON LINCOLN'S BIRTHDAY, 1963
Robert Knudsen, White House/John F. Kennedy Library and Museum, Boston