Personal History (51 page)

In the midst of all my activities in this busy political year, I had undertaken a major renovation of our house in Georgetown, and we had moved out in June and taken up residence in my mother’s house on Crescent Place. Unbowed by the failure of her “Draft Stevenson” effort, and even though she was never a Kennedy devotee, Mother had embraced the Democratic ticket and become a national vice-chairman of Citizens for Kennedy and Johnson. She wrote to Kennedy, asking to see him to discuss campaign strategy in New York State and how she—as a Protestant “who has the reputation of having been anti-Catholic”—could help him fight the religious issue.

I had become a real Kennedy enthusiast and conveyed my excitement for the charismatic candidate whenever I could. Even while still in Los Angeles at the convention, I had been swimming with Marian Sulzberger Dryfoos, the wife of Orvil Dryfoos, the publisher of
The New York Times
, and had told her—while both of us stood waist-deep in the pool—how I had become impressed by Kennedy, and why I was an ardent supporter. That conversation led to a dinner Phil and I gave at my parents’ house on August 16 for Jack Kennedy to meet Orvil, as well as to spend some more time with Scotty Reston. We felt they were both uncertain about Kennedy, and we wanted to let Kennedy sell himself to the
Times
. What still amazes me is that Kennedy drove up our circular driveway alone, in a convertible with the top down.

Phil and I had decided that, as publisher, he couldn’t contribute to the campaign, but it would be okay for me to do so. We played this game in several other situations, but I now think it was questionable, since we believed
in nonpartisanship for a publisher. We were both so concerned about the District and its problems that Phil told me that, if there was a chance to get Kennedy alone before the others came, I should give him my check personally and tell him there
was
something I wanted in return—for him to pay some attention to the District and its problems. I did as Phil suggested, and remember JFK looking a little startled when I delivered the first part of my speech, about wanting something. Although I was embarrassed, I managed to get through the second part, and he thanked me and took the check.

The whole atmosphere in Washington that fall, as well as the real intensity of Phil’s highly subjective feelings about Kennedy, was best described by him in a letter to Isaiah Berlin, written on October 9. He told Isaiah he had time to write because he was “lying at home coughing and gulping achromycin pills the size of the new U.S. Embassy eagle.” He wrote:

Despite his zeal for Kennedy and his worries about Nixon, Phil continued the paper’s policy of nonendorsement. Hindsight had convinced him that it would have been wiser for an independent newspaper in the nation’s capital not to endorse, even in the Republican nomination fight in 1952. The
Post
had commented on the issues as they arose throughout the campaign, and Phil thought the responsibility remained to comment freely. In fact, in 1960 our editorials left little doubt about which candidate we thought preferable. And in private Phil worked hard to bring about the result he wanted. In late October, he drafted a long statement for Lyndon Johnson to deliver, asking people to rally behind JFK. He also wrote a speech for Johnson to use in Texas to appeal to his fellow Texans to vote for Kennedy.

E
LECTION NIGHT CAME
at last. Joe Alsop and I stayed in Phil’s office at the paper, while Phil came and went from the newsroom floor. The election was so close throughout the night that we didn’t leave the building until the
Post
’s last edition had been closed, at about three or four in the morning, carrying the headline “Kennedy Near Victory.” Chal Roberts, in his history of the
Post
, wrote that Phil, remembering the paper’s profound embarrassment in the 1948 Truman election, would not let Eddie Folliard, who was writing the lead story, call the election “for a few thousand lousy papers.”

When the final edition closed, the three of us moved to Joe’s house, where the sleeping housekeeper owned the only television set, but we listened on the radio while I cooked us scrambled eggs at about 6:00 a.m. Later, when it appeared there would be a hiatus on returns until 11:00 a.m., I told Joe I was going home, to which Joe, in his usual style, said, “You go home, darling. I may have to sell my house in the morning.”

Phil and I retreated to Crescent Place. It was late in the morning before we were reassured that Kennedy had indeed won. The deal that Phil had engineered in Los Angeles at the convention had helped bring about the election of our friend as the next president of the United States, and another, even closer friend as his vice-president.

To calm down from the excitement of the Kennedy victory, Phil and I spent two weeks in Phoenix at the Arizona Biltmore. When we returned home, Phil went directly back to politicking. Except for weekends, which we still tried to spend at Glen Welby with the children, he was immersed in politics. In fact, he facetiously turned down one invitation by saying,
“We go to the country with the children every possible weekend, as an aid to such limited sanity as I possess.”

Right after the election, he started talking to and writing the presidentelect about appointments to the new administration. Both Phil and Joe Alsop thought Kennedy ought to appoint our friend Douglas Dillon as secretary of the Treasury. Dillon was a liberal Republican who had served as undersecretary of state in the Eisenhower administration and had contributed to the Nixon campaign, so this didn’t seem like a strong possibility. Arthur Schlesinger and Ken Galbraith had dinner with us one evening, and, as Arthur noted in his book
A Thousand Days
, “we were distressed by [Phil’s] impassioned insistence that Douglas Dillon should—and would—be made Secretary of the Treasury. Without knowing Dillon, we mistrusted him on principle as a presumed exponent of Republican economic policies.” But as Arthur also wrote, “When I mentioned this to the President-elect in Washington on December 1, he remarked of Dillon, ‘Oh, I don’t care about those things. All I want to know is: is he able and will he go along with the program?’ ”

What a refreshing thought—if only more presidents felt that way! In fact, the president-elect called Joe about the liberals wanting Albert Gore (father of the Clinton administration vice-president, Al Gore) for the position, but he told Joe that he wanted Dillon. Joe recalls Kennedy saying, “They say that if I take Doug Dillon he won’t be loyal because he’s a Republican.” Joe responded that it would be very hard to imagine a man less likely to be disloyal than Dillon. He also added, “And if you take Albert Gore you know perfectly well, a) he’s incompetent; b) you’ll never be able to hear yourself think, he talks so much; c) when he isn’t talking your ear off, he’ll be telling
The New York Times
all.” I’m sure this whole conversation with Kennedy was recalled in Alsopian terms, but I’m also sure that some such conversation did indeed take place.

Kennedy agreed with Phil and Joe about Dillon and said he wanted to get the message to Doug. Joe told Kennedy that the man to do that was Phil, not himself, so Phil called Doug, who was giving a dinner, and said he needed to see him. Not wishing to be observed by the dinner guests, Phil crawled in through a dressing-room window, which had been left open for him. The butler called Doug out of the dining room, and Phil and Dillon had a conversation right there in the dressing room, during which Doug assured Phil that he would love to be secretary and that he would most certainly be loyal.

Phil and Joe also recommended David Bruce for secretary of state, advice that the president didn’t take. Later, Phil effected David’s being sent as ambassador to London, not Rome, which Kennedy had promised; David was so modest that he hadn’t told JFK he would actually prefer London. Phil realized the situation, thought David would be just right for
London, and went to JFK to tell him so. David was named ambassador and stayed all eight years of the Kennedy-Johnson administrations. He and Evangeline were an enormous success in London, and David turned out to be one of JFK’s favorites, particularly since he not only kept the president in touch with what was going on substantively in Great Britain and in Europe but amused him with London gossip.

Phil also suggested Robert Weaver for a high-level position. Weaver, a black, Harvard-educated, distinguished economist, had become an expert on housing and urban affairs whom Phil had known through the board of ACTION. Among his other credentials, Weaver had advised Franklin Roosevelt’s administration and had been in Averell Harriman’s New York State Cabinet. Kennedy did appoint him as administrator of the Federal Housing and Home Finance Agency, and Weaver later became the first black appointed to the United States Cabinet, when LBJ made him the first secretary of housing and urban development in 1966.

Phil was involved in a scoop for the paper on the appointment of Dean Rusk as secretary of state. Chal Roberts had narrowed the choices and was prepared to predict his likely appointment when Phil, in Chal’s presence, called JFK in Palm Beach. Kennedy confirmed Rusk’s appointment, and the
Post
put it in banner headlines. Kennedy was extremely angry and told his press secretary, Pierre Salinger, to track down the leaker immediately. Within two hours, Salinger called the president to say he had tracked down the leaker: “It’s you.”

“What do you mean, me?” Kennedy asked.

Salinger asked Kennedy if he hadn’t spoken to Phil the evening before. Kennedy said he had. “Did you tell him he couldn’t use the story?” There was a long silence, Salinger later recounted in his own book, “before Kennedy chuckled and replied, ‘No, I guess I didn’t.’ ”

T
HE BEGINNING OF
the new administration was an exciting and very busy time for us. For Phil and me personally the big moment was supposed to come on the afternoon of the Inaugural Gala—January 19, 1961. In the tradition of my family, we had planned a large reception at our R Street house, back into which we had just moved. Phil had written President-elect Kennedy to invite him personally, reminding him that he and Jackie had come to the inaugural reception in January 1957 and hoping he would drop by this time—“unless you are dissatisfied with your progress in the past four years.” Both the president- and the vice-president-elect had promised to come, although Jackie, recently having had her second baby, John, had written that she was saving every bit of strength to get through the two days of official activities.

On the early afternoon of the reception, an icy snow started to fall and
quickly rendered Washington’s streets so perilous that cars slid all over the place and traffic became gridlocked. Some people took hours to get home; others gave up and took shelter. It was an unprecedented mess. The Secret Service descended on us and held out the promise that either Kennedy or Johnson or both would still manage to get to our house, but we could see by the snowdrifts and by the few guests who had managed to trudge through the blizzard that this was not likely. Finally, we were told it was hopeless—even with an escort, cars couldn’t move, and the city and the Secret Service were doing everything they could to get the president-elect and Jackie to the gala that night. So, instead of a big party for six hundred people who would drop by for a while and then leave, we had about two hundred who got to our house mostly on foot and wouldn’t leave—a jolly gathering of a different sort.

The next day, the streets were mostly cleared, but it was bitter cold. We went to the swearing in and were amused by Cardinal Cushing’s long blessing, during which the podium seemed to start to smoke because of some wiring problem. Along with so many others, we were thrilled by the inaugural speech, which had mostly been crafted by Ted Sorensen, helped by Ken Galbraith. Then we watched the parade with families of
Post
employees from a hotel room on Pennsylvania Avenue.

Joe and Phil had planned a dinner at Joe’s house to precede the Inaugural Ball at the Armory. I no longer remember who came, except for Mrs. Longworth, the Bohlens, the Joyces, and the Mac Bundys, who were recent arrivals in Washington. I do remember that Bob Weaver was there, and it may have been the first time Joe had a black person to dinner at his house.

Everyone was a little delirious with excitement. Phil had hired limousines to get us all to the ball, and we set out with the Bundys, whom I didn’t know well, and Joe and another couple, and a bucket with champagne on ice. When we got bogged down in traffic and held up while the official motorcade whizzed past, someone mentioned opening the champagne. Goody Two-Shoes yet again, I nervously suggested waiting until we got to the dance. Whenever I saw Phil starting to drink in a certain way, I became anxious, having lived a lot with the inevitably difficult and contentious results. But Mac Bundy, the ex-dean of Harvard and new national security adviser, turned around from the front seat and authoritatively and merrily commanded, “Open the champagne.”