Jacqueline on JFK, 44 Years Late

An old wound reopens with news that a book of Jacqueline Kennedy interviews about her husband will be published next year, recalling a story of my naïveté that ended in disappointment and insight in how the Kennedys protected their legend.

In 1965, I had asked Mrs. Kennedy to become a contributing editor of McCalls, but she seemed too deep in grief, musing, "If there were only some way to keep President Kennedy’s spirit alive...But it wouldn’t be natural for me to do it directly. Perhaps I could work with a man I trusted completely. Robert Kennedy would be ideal but, of course, that’s not possible...“

Two years later, she agreed to take part in a project for what would have been JFK’s fiftieth birthday in May, 1967, prompted by Ted Sorensen’s remark that he was being remembered too much for how he died rather than what he lived for. She would talk to Sorensen and Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., who had been Kennedy advisors and written books about his Administration, and the results would appear in McCalls.

Just before the taping date, I was offered US rights to an article to appear in a British magazine, The Queen, about Mrs. Kennedy’s unguarded conversations with a British journalist, Robin Douglas-Home--a smarmy piece, ostensibly admiring but showing her as the bitter, bitchy consort of a detached husband, “the original ‘bird in a gilded cage,’ too intelligent, too proud and too stubborn to accept her captivity.” I turned it down, alerted her to its existence and was duly thanked.

Soon afterward Mrs. Kennedy backed out of our project, and not long after that, a my-life-now interview with her appeared in another publication, which had bought American rights to The Queen piece and negotiated with her to grant an interview rather than see it published.

Wooing the Kennedys sometimes worked, but blackmail was apparently better. Clare Boothe Luce, who knew them well and was one of my contributors, tried to assuage my disappointment. "The Kennedys," she said, "leave no good deed unpunished."

Now we are told by Caroline Kennedy, in announcing publication of the 1964 Schlesinger interviews, "My mother's passion for history guided and informed her work in the White House. She believed in my father, his vision for America, and in the art of politics, and felt it was important to share her knowledge and excitement with future generations."

Perhaps I can be forgiven for feeling that she might have shared that "knowledge and excitement" 44 years earlier.

Kennedy Candor

“Atonement is a process that never ends,” Ted Kennedy writes in his memoir, confronting the shame shadowing his life that was avoided in a weekend of tributes--the death of a young woman at Chappaquiddick.

In a preview of the 532-page volume to be published later this month, the New York Times discloses that Kennedy "called his behavior after the 1969 car accident that killed Mary Jo Kopechne 'inexcusable' and said the events might have shortened the life of his ailing father, Joseph P. Kennedy.

"In that book, 'True Compass,' Mr. Kennedy said he was dazed, afraid and panicked in the minutes and hours after he drove off a bridge on Chappaquiddick Island with Ms. Kopechne as his passenger.

"The senator, who left the scene and did not report the accident to the police until after her body was found the next day, admitted in the memoir that he had 'made terrible decisions' at Chappaquiddick."

Such candor has not been typical of the Kennedys, who fought fiercely to protect their family myth over decades. That's underscored in this month's Vanity Fair story of how Jacqueline Kennedy commissioned William Manchester's book about JFK's assassination, "Death of a President," and then went to court to force him to cut parts of it that family advisers (she herself couldn't bear to read it) deemed personally or politically incorrect.

During that period, I published excerpts from a light-hearted book by Red Fay, a college friend of JFK's who had been his Undersecretary of the Navy. After strong-arming the publisher into cutting dozens of such harmless revelations as two-year-old John Jr. splashing his father at poolside and calling him "poo-poo head," Robert Kennedy solemnly thanked me for going along to "protect the children."

In the 21st century, such control is long-gone. In its account of the Ted Kennedy memoir, the Times notes, "The book does not shy from the accident, or from some other less savory aspects of the senator’s life, including a notorious 1991 drinking episode in Palm Beach, Fla., or the years of heavy drinking and women-chasing that followed his 1982 divorce from his first wife, Joan."

The last of the Kennedy brothers lived long enough to learn that the public now insists on seeing its heroes in the full, warts and all.

Michelle and the Queen

After his first foreign trip as President, JFK said, "I am the man who accompanied Jacqueline Kennedy to Paris--and I have enjoyed it!" Barack Obama may be feeling that way in London this week as the Gallup Poll shows the First Lady's favorable ratings eclipsing his own.

The British press, as always on the lookout to criticize crude Americans, half-heartedly tried to stir a flap about Michelle Obama "hugging" the Queen, but apparently Her Majesty hugged first, so there is no sequel to George W. Bush's faux pas in winking at the royal eminence.

Journalistic shenanigans aside, for someone who lived through the Kennedy era, there is both joy at seeing an African-American couple standing for the country at Buckingham Palace and a sadness at their towering over the now shrunken royal couple, especially Prince Philip who was always a tall, dignified figure half a step between the Queen.

Time and Change work both ways.

The Right Office for Caroline Kennedy

Writing about her withdrawal from seeking Hillary Clinton's Senate seat, I committed a journalistic sin--burying the lead.

The last sentence was: "The Obama Administration should ask her to serve as ambassador to Great Britain (as her grandfather did) or France or Ireland, where her intelligence and instincts, along with her Kennedy and Bouvier background, could be an important American asset."

This self-rebuke arises after reading the new New Yorker piece about Caroline Kennedy, which sheds no light on the reasons for her decision but is a reminder of how much she is like her mother:

"It was, evidently, Jacqueline Kennedy’s intention to raise children who were as unaffected as possible by the extraordinary circumstances of their lives, and it seems that she succeeded: Caroline Kennedy’s life has in many ways been indistinguishable from that of any other smart and reasonably diligent child raised on Fifth Avenue in the nineteen-sixties."

Back then, Caroline's widowed mother was taking her children to the playgrounds of Central Park herself and, on one occasion, warning her brother John not to ram into one of mine while careening down a slide.

The year after JFK's death, I asked Jacqueline Kennedy to become a contributing editor of McCalls. She was still too deep in mourning, but when she talked about wanting to find a way to keep alive her husband's "ideas and ideals," she could conceive of doing that only through someone else with a more public persona.

"Robert Kennedy would be perfect," she said, "but that's not possible."

In her lifetime since then, Caroline Kennedy has been her mother's child, with public service for good causes behind the scenes on boards and collecting best-selling anthologies of poems and essays, not by herself but others.

The right place for her now is not out glad-handing in the "Me, me, me" atmosphere of the US Senate but helping the most public person of our era by representing him--and us--as a gracious ambassador to a generation of Europeans who have never known what it is like to love an American president.

Caroline Kennedy's Genetic Conflict

News that she is interested in being appointed to Hillary Clinton's Senate seat is coming as a surprise to those who have always seen Caroline Kennedy as an essentially private person, temperamentally more like her mother than her father.

“I believe that she is considering it,” her cousin Robert F. Kennedy Jr. tells the New York Times. “A lot of people the last couple of weeks have urged her to do it.” She apparently called New York Gov. David Paterson this week to discuss the position.

That would represent a drastic midlife switch for the 51-year-old wife and mother of three who has kept a low profile in her career as a lawyer, writer and philanthropist, very much like her mother, Jacqueline Kennedy, in her widowhood.

She emerged last January with a Times op-ed piece titled, "A President Like My Father," to endorse Barack Obama and then actively campaign for him and serve on his vice-presidential search team.

If Caroline Kennedy were to replace Sen. Clinton, she would be committing herself to run in a special 2010 election and for reelection in 2012, two grueling political campaigns for someone who has spent a lifetime so far in relative privacy.

But it's also easy to understand what has led her to consider such a change. A year after JFK's death, I asked Jacqueline Kennedy to become a contributing editor of McCalls. She was still too deep in mourning for that, but she talked about wanting to find a way to keep alive her husband's "ideas and ideals."

It's a measure of the difference between then and now that she could conceive of doing that only through a man. "Robert Kennedy would be perfect," she said, "but that's not possible."

Now her daughter, even with the same tendencies toward privacy, seems to be ready to step out and emulate her father in the Senate.

Caroline Kennedy may have given us a clue when she wrote that OpEd about Obama:

"I have never had a president who inspired me the way people tell me that my father inspired them. But for the first time, I believe I have found the man who could be that president--not just for me, but for a new generation of Americans."

The Woman Behind "The Women"

They're showing Clare Boothe Luce's satire of her gender again on Turner Class Movies tonight and, in the year of Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin, memory brings back one of the most famous--and fascinating--political women of the past century.

As the new editor of McCalls in 1965, I inherited her as a columnist after my predecessor hired her to balance Eleanor Roosevelt with a conservative icon. But now Mrs. Roosevelt had died, and, to my discomfort, I was left with the caustic writer, a former member of Congress and Ambassador to Italy, wife of America’s most powerful publisher, known for consigning enemies to publicity hell, as she did a respected politician by noting her problems with him went back to “when Senator Wayne Morse was kicked in the head by a horse.”

After cocktails at lunch, I said earnestly, "Since you and I disagree about so much politically, I don’t see how we’re going to work together. We might keep making each other uncomfortable.”

With a dazzling smile, she answered, “Why don’t we try? I promise never to make you uncomfortable.”

She kept her promise. For the next three years, she wrote charming, sometimes touching pieces on manners, morals and culture, carefully skirting politics.

We would meet for lunch, spend a few minutes talking about the column, then argue amiably about politics. In her early sixties, Clare was a seductive storyteller and shrewd observer. When I told her about trying to protect Jacqueline Kennedy from embarrassment only to have her cancel an interview and give it to a competing magazine, Clare said sweetly, “The Kennedys leave no good deed unpunished.”

She talked often about her husband. Their turbulent marriage had settled into a kind of prickly peace, and she loved telling stories at his expense, about his misadventures as “the world’s worst driver” and his cantankerousness. They had just built a house in Hawaii, and the new cook asked, “How does Mr. Luce like his eggs?” “Any way,” Clare answered, “that you can’t cook them.”

She liked men but was an affectionate skeptic. "They say women talk too much," she once said. "If you've worked in Congress, you know the filibuster was invented by men." And: "A man's home looks like his castle on the outside. Inside, it's more like his nursery."

Early in 1967, after Luce died suddenly, I went to see her. Dressed in black, Clare seemed pale and fragile. In a disembodied voice, she talked about how free his life had been of suffering, how even death had come without pain. As always, her tone was wryly affectionate with an undercurrent of anger.

Just before I left, her voice softened. “The people from Time Inc. came yesterday,” she said, “and I made up my mind not to cry, so I put on false eyelashes...”

She looked at me. “But I don’t have them on now,” and broke into tears.

On the way out, I reminded myself Clare had been an actress, but if those tears were a performance, it was a good one.

"A President Like My Father"

In an interview after her husband's death, Jacqueline Kennedy told me she was disturbed that JFK was being remembered for how he died rather than what he had lived for.

Forty years later, their daughter is doing something about that. In an OpEd piece in today's New York Times, Caroline Kennedy writes, "All my life, people have told me that my father changed their lives, that they got involved in public service or politics because he asked them to. And the generation he inspired has passed that spirit on to its children. I meet young people who were born long after John F. Kennedy was president, yet who ask me how to live out his ideals.

"Sometimes it takes a while to recognize that someone has a special ability to get us to believe in ourselves, to tie that belief to our highest ideals and imagine that together we can do great things. In those rare moments, when such a person comes along, we need to put aside our plans and reach for what we know is possible.

"We have that kind of opportunity with Senator Obama."

This comes two days after the Times endorsed Hillary Clinton for president in the New York primary. Is its Editorial Board trying to tell us something?

Giving Thanks for President Kennedy

For anyone over 50, tomorrow will be not only Thanksgiving but the day JFK died 44 years ago. He has been gone now for almost as long as he lived and, in these days of White House infamy, not nearly as much in the national mind as his antagonist, Richard Nixon, whose all-time low approval ratings have just been eclipsed by George W. Bush.

A few years after the assassination, Jacqueline Kennedy wistfully told me that her husband was being remembered too much for how he died rather than what he had lived for. She was right. It was too soon then for Americans to appreciate what they had lost.

In 1960, I had made an unintentional contribution to Kennedy’s election. After my magazine ran a piece by Eleanor Roosevelt, “My Advice to the Next First Lady,” the producers of the “Tonight” show called me to ask Mrs. Roosevelt 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, comparing 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, and he didn't disappoint her.

John F. Kennedy was the last president in memory who was still learning while in office. He admitted mistakes and profited from them.

Despite misgivings, he went ahead with the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba after being told Americans would be greeted as liberators and withdrew when he realized he had been misled, accepting “sole responsibility” for the fiasco.

As the world teetered on the brink of nuclear war during the Cuban Missile Crisis, he put that lesson to use by overruling “experts” who wanted to bomb or invade Cubs and trusting his own instincts to avoid disaster.

After November 22, 1963 I wrote an editorial attempting to define the deep grief over his shocking death-—that beyond his attractiveness and intelligence, there was the loss of a leader “who was still growing—-in understanding, in skill, in compassion, in commitment."

Today's leading contenders for the Presidency are, for the most part, as cool and rational as Kennedy was when he was running for the office. For all our sakes, we can only hope that whoever wins can attain the stature he did in the thousand days he spent in the White House.

First Ladies in a Fix

The Washington Post today ruminates about the role of Presidential spouses and concludes that they, well, differ from those of the past.

They sure do. In half a century as an editor, I knew First Ladies from Eleanor Roosevelt to Nancy Reagan, both of whom wrote for me. They differed from one another back then, too, but what they had in common was, after Mrs. Roosevelt, they had little to say about policy issues--in public.

But now, according to a professor of government quoted by the Post, “there is a greater acceptance of assertive women that is consistent with other societal trends. But there is still a divide in the country in what people want and expect. Look at how much people like Laura Bush."

First Ladies were in a bind back then, and they still are today. How much resentment of Hillary Clinton comes from the fact that in 1992 she said she was not the little woman who bakes cookies and stands by her man? She wasn’t, isn’t and is now running for President on her own, but some voters will never forgive her for not being Barbara Bush or Nancy Reagan.

For other spouses, it’s still like walking a tightrope. Shouldn’t Michelle Obama have kept her high-powered job instead of helping her husband? Is Jeri Thompson too involved in Fred’s campaign? Is Elizabeth Edwards too outspoken? Does Judith Giuliani ring Rudy’s cell phone at the wrong time? What gives with Elizabeth Kucinich’s pierced tongue?

Today some of them will be talking about all this on TV with Maria Shriver, who as the wife of Governor Arnold and the niece of Jack Kennedy, knows a little something about the subject.

In 1960, when I sent a reporter to interview her aunt, Jacqueline Kennedy, she sounded 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, but even then, it wasn’t simple. When the reporter was about to leave, Mrs. Kennedy looked him in the eye and said, "But I'm smarter than Jack, and don't you forget it."