We
had run a piece by FDR’s widow, “My Advice to the Next First Lady.” The
producers of the “Tonight” show called me to ask her if she would appear with
Jack Paar. To my surprise, she agreed.
On
the way to the studio, I asked Mrs. Roosevelt, who had supported Adlai
Stevenson during the convention and been visibly cool to JFK, what made her
decide to take part in a talk show. “I want to help elect Senator Kennedy,” she
said.
On
the “Tonight” show, she did just that. As Paar sat beaming deferentially, she
compared Kennedy to FDR during his first campaign in 1932, inspiring voters and
responding to their enthusiasm, and predicted he would make a fine President.
In Kennedy’s hairline victory, her testimonial may well have been significant.
Jacqueline
Kennedy’s contribution was more iffy. For the 1960 article I sent my college
classmate Bob Levin to interview her. A few years earlier, he had taken his
family to Italy while writing a novel. I asked him to try for an interview with
Ingrid Bergman, the first since the uproar over her affair with Roberto
Rossellini. Surprisingly, he got it.
Back
home, I assigned him to write about Grace Kelly, who had agreed to marry Prince
Rainier after spending only a few hours with him. Why would a beautiful, rich
and famous young woman marry a man she hardly knew to become princess of a tiny
realm? Her sisters were so intrigued by the question they persuaded Grace to
see him. Her musings about being a quiet, overlooked and undervalued member of
a hyperactive family was on the stands the day her first child was born.
Bob
spent several days with Jacqueline Kennedy in Hyannisport. She was less
forthcoming than Ingrid Bergman and Princess Grace, sounding more like a
Stepford Wife: "The most important thing for successful marriage is for a
husband to do what he likes best and does well. The wife's satisfactions will
follow...If the wife is happy, full credit should be given to the husband
because the marriage is her entire life."
She
never deviated from this submissive line until Bob put away his notebook. Then
she looked him in the eye and said, "But I'm smarter than Jack, and don't
you forget it."
From
today’s perspective, the 1960 campaign boils down to the first TV debates ever,
Kennedy’s speech to Houston ministers about his Catholicism and the beginning
of a “youthquake” decade symbolized by a 43-year-old with young children moving
into the White House after all those gray-haired elders.
All
true enough, but that fails to appreciate the enormity of JFK’s accomplishment.
He was in so many other ways “other” than Americans had come to expect in a
President, from a family even richer than FDR’s, nouveau riche at that and culturally more sophisticated.
His
sexual proclivities were not a campaign issue but not entirely a secret either.
When a young Manhattan matron wearing a Kennedy button was told by another,
“There’ll be a line of women at the back door of the White House,” she
responded with a smile, “Where does it form?”
In
that campaign, the advantage of a sitting Vice President was overcome both by
Nixon’s sleaziness and Kennedy’s confident authenticity. “It must be terrible
to be Nixon,” JFK told friends, “and wake up every morning having to decide who
you’re going to be that day.”
As
Eleanor Roosevelt observed, Kennedy gained confidence as the campaign wore on and
eked out a victory to usher in something new in American history.
Next: The glamorous White House.
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