by Ted Sorensen
As usual, some mistook his humor, gaiety and gentle urbanity for a lack of depth, and some mistook his cool calculation of the reasonable for a lack of commitment. But his wit was merely an ornament to the earnest expressions that followed, and his reason reinforced his deep conviction and ideals.
HABITS OF WORK
President Kennedy’s day at the White House did not begin at any heroic predawn hour. Awakening around 7:30 A.M., he quickly read the morning papers and often placed calls on their contents. Throughout the day and night, as more newspapers and reports came in, more Presidential phone calls or terse memoranda would follow, inquiring, requesting, suggesting. Action was always expected as soon as possible. He was on the telephone, according to one estimate, more than fifty times in an average day, with a large portion of the calls taking place in the Mansion before and after his hours in the office.
After a bath, shaving as always in the tub to save time, breakfast was around 8:45—sometimes with his family if they were available, sometimes in bed with the newspapers, and once or twice a week on official business, with legislative leaders, staff members or others.
Between 9:00 and 9:30 A.M. he arrived in his office, checked his mail, read a three-thousand-word CIA briefing and plunged into the day’s round of conferences. In addition to the official calendar of appointments released to the press, he had a far larger number of off-the-record meetings and a still larger number of informal talks with staff aides. Daily events often required new meetings to be squeezed into the schedule. During the first few weeks, before the crush of crises began, he had received far more outsiders—politicians, newsmen, friends—just as he had found more time to visit friends around the city. In later months his work increasingly confined him to his office, but he still managed to avoid reliance on official channels of information only. “I sit in the White House,” he said, “and what I read…and…see is the sum total of what I hear and learn. So the more people I can see, or the wider I can expose [my mind] to different ideas, the more effective [I] can be as President.”
He refused to take the chance that his subordinates were screening out criticisms, alternatives or information on his or their errors. His compulsive curiosity was a valuable Presidential instinct. He made certain that he had the final decision on whom he would see and what he would read. He made certain that Bundy’s office received copies of every important cable moving in and out of State, Defense and CIA (and he arranged to receive some cables directly from individuals such as Galbraith). Each department made a weekly report on its activities in addition to the usual mountain of memoranda and messages. “I never heard of a President who wanted to know so much,” said one long-time career servant.
Ambassadors paying formal calls of farewell were interrogated as well as instructed. News interviewers found themselves being interviewed. Officials and journalists returning from overseas tours were invited to inform him fully on their findings. His wife was encouraged to report in writing on her observations of American officialdom in India and Pakistan (and those reports held back nothing by way of either praise or criticism). In preparation for Budget decisions, he toured firsthand several military, space and atomic energy installations. (His helicopter pilot had difficulty persuading the President that they should not attempt to land on a fourteen-hundred-foot crater at the Nevada atomic test site.)
He kept meetings as brief as the subject permitted, many no more than fifteen minutes, very few running over an hour, but when necessary sitting for several hours. For long afternoon meetings, he often ordered coffee served to all hands. He kept his own comments to a minimum and often cut short others, no matter how important or friendly, who were dealing with generalities or repeating the obvious. Frequently he saw their point long before they had finished. Focusing full attention upon each speaker, even while doodling on a pad before him, he had a remarkable ability to absorb detail while keeping in view the larger picture. When he considered a subject exhausted or a decision final, he would gather up all his papers as a sign that the meeting was over and, if this hint was not taken by persistent conferees, suddenly rise to his feet to say good-bye.
Despite these efforts, despite a new-found desire to be punctual, and despite Ken O’Donnell’s deliberate interruption of less crucial visits that were running overtime, the President was often an hour behind schedule by the end of his day. It was always an exhaustingly full and long day, as he remained in the office until 7:30, 8:00 or even 8:30 P.M., sometimes returning after his customarily late dinner, and usually reading reports and memoranda in the Mansion until midnight. Even when he had guests for dinner and a movie, he would often slip away after fifteen minutes of the film to work, and then rejoin them when it was over. More than once we worked in his West Wing oval office or in his bedroom or oval study in the Mansion until well past midnight. More than once after a late dinner I would invite guests to view the Presidential office only to find him there going over mail or other documents. Saturdays, when he was in Washington, were usually a shorter working day, and on Sundays no regular office hours were kept, But it all added up to an average of forty-five to fifty-five hours of work weekly in his office and still more over in the Mansion. “He lived at such a pace,” his wife has said, “because he wished to know it all.”
He helped himself maintain such a pace by wisely breaking his day for two hours or so at lunch. Around 1:30, and, if possible, a second time in the evening, he would take a fifteen-minute swim in the heated (90-degree) White House pool, usually with Dave Powers. Even at the height of the Cuban crisis he made time for his dip in the pool. Listening to recorded show music in the background, exchanging sports stories or anecdotes with Powers, he regenerated his energies and ideas, often giving Dave a list of messages he wanted delivered during the lunch hour. The swim, a rubdown and his calisthenics were followed by lunch—occasionally official affairs with foreign dignitaries, editors, or business or labor leaders, but more often private. He continued to read while lunching if he were alone—and then he would read or nap in bed while easing his back on a hotpad. Between three and four o’clock he was back in his office or on his way to a press conference, refreshed and ready to act.
Nor was every office hour spent on matters of state. His conversations with visitors sometimes turned to a kind of nineteenth-century court gossip about public figures and private lives, astonishing strangers from all fields with his curiosity about the personalities and politics of their professions, his knowledge of high and low goings-on, and his willingness to spend time in lighthearted conversation. He found time in 1963 to plan a surprise birthday party for Dave Powers and to attend one the staff had planned for him.
Those parties typified the rapport between the President and his staff. He was informal without being chummy, hard-driving but easy-mannered, interested in us as people without being patronizing. While neither he nor we ever forgot that he bore the responsibilities of leadership, he treated us more as colleagues or associates than employees. He made clear that we were there to give advice as well as to take orders. All of us, no matter how long or how well we had known him, addressed him only as “Mr. President,” and all of us referred to him in private as well as public only as “the President.” (I found this a bit awkward when talking with his wife, but not with the Attorney General, who largely followed the same practice.)
Above all, the President was remarkably accessible. He could not afford to be bothered by insignificant details and did not like listening to whiners, but no staff member, Cabinet member or Congressman with important business to lay before him had any difficulty seeing him alone. “You might have to wait until late in the night,” as Maxwell Taylor said, “but if you sent word you needed to see the President you got to see him.”
O’Donnell and Salinger—and usually Bundy, O’Brien and myself—were in and out of the oval office several times a day. No appointment was necessary for most of these quick informal visits, but we did not interrupt other conferences, and O’Donnell often
suggested when we might catch him between appointments. Many times I would walk in to find the President totally absorbed in reading a report or writing a letter, and he would completely concentrate on that effort, unbothered by my presence, until he had completed it. Other times I would obtain answers to a series of questions or report on new developments as I walked with him over to his quarters before lunch or dinner, or talked with him as he changed clothes or lay in bed. On rare occasions he would come to my office down the hall from his.
There was no pattern to the number of times I would see him in a given day. Most days one or more of his formally scheduled meetings involved my participation. Often I would be summoned to his office by telephone. Frequently I would catch him between meetings or before lunch to review quickly a number of smaller problems. Only a few words from him on each topic would usually suffice.
Around 7:30 in the evening, after the last of his official conferences, was often the best time for me to drop in and raise miscellaneous matters not covered during the day. He was usually in a relaxed mood then, sometimes in his shirt sleeves, sometimes watching the news on TV or signing mail while we talked, sometimes striding out to Mrs. Lincoln’s office to read whatever was on the top of her desk. He was at his reflective best in those hours, relating some crisis or anecdote of the day, asking me to check into some new problem or suggestion, or raising some question on which he sought my opinion. One evening, for example, he was absorbed in the task of selecting names for new Polaris submarines. He was amused that the Quakers had objected to William Penn, a pacifist hero, and that the Pentagon had objected to those Indian chiefs who had fought against the U.S. The Navy felt that the name of Chief Red Cloud had particularly unfortunate international connotations. Those talks were among my most treasured, and I often dropped in at that hour with only the flimsiest excuse of official business.
The same time period was utilized by other aides unable to see him during the day, and it was not uncommon for two or three of us to be standing simultaneously at his desk presenting problems. His daughter Caroline and son John, Jr. would also frequently drop in at this hour for a prebedtime romp with their father and a piece of candy from Mrs. Lincoln’s desk, just as they sometimes would during the day. Their father, depending upon his work, would either encourage their questions and antics or continue his work oblivious of them until finished. At times he would introduce them to his guests, Caroline curtsying and John giving a little bow, and then ask them to wait in the outer office, where his daughter might draw pictures while his son played with the toys kept for him by Mrs. Lincoln.
John Kennedy, Jr. (contrary to popular impression, his parents did not call him “John-John” and in fact disliked the nickname) liked to crawl through the “secret door” in the side of his father’s desk or play somewhat dangerously with the works of scrimshaw (finely engraved whale tooth) which ornamented the office. The entire room, in fact, had been redecorated by the President and his wife with a nautical motif. Ship models graced the shelves, and pictures of ships and naval battles dominated the walls. A whaling harpoon and the sword and flag of Commodore John Barry stood on one side of his desk, facing the American and purple-and-gold Presidential flags on the other. Even his desk, discovered by Jacqueline in a White House storage room, had been made in the nineteenth century of battleship timbers; and on it was the coconut shell on which Kennedy had carved the message that rescued his crew and himself. Family photographs, a picture painted by his wife and bird models of two Cape Cod sandpipers varied the decor.
The desk was usually disordered during the day, as was the table crowded with newspapers and magazines behind it. Its other fixed items included a metal prop for his daily schedule, a black alligator desk set presented by General De Gaulle, the usual paraphernalia for writing and, between two bookends, specially leather-bound copies of his five books: the private volume he edited about his brother, As We Remember Joe; Why England Slept; Profiles in Courage; and his two books of speeches, The Strategy of Peace and To Turn the Tide (publication of The Burden and the Glory was not completed while he was President).
The whole White House crackled with excitement under John Kennedy, but the soundproof oval office, the very center and stimulant of all the action, symbolized his own peace of mind. The tall French windows opened onto the completely renovated flower garden of which he was inordinately proud. Even on gloomy days the light pouring in through those windows on the blue rug and freshly painted cream-colored walls bathed his ash splint rocking chair and two beige couches, brought in for more friendly talks, in a quiet glow. He tried the fireplace only once and, to his embarrassment, promptly filled the entire West Wing with smoke. (I rushed in offering to save George Washington’s portrait.)
RELAXATION
In a larger sense, the President’s office is wherever the President may be. For unlike the Congress and Supreme Court, the Presidency never recesses or adjourns. Unlike the arrangement in most departments and states, his absence from the country does not make his running mate Acting President. Wherever he went, Kennedy was linked by telephone to the White House switchboard, guarded by the Secret Service, and discreetly followed by one of an alternating team of Army warrant officers carrying in a slender black case the secret codes by which the Presidential order for nuclear retaliation would be given. Wherever he went, he received the same daily CIA briefing from a military or other aide and read most of the same daily newspapers, which were flown in to him if necessary. Wherever he went, he took with him the bulky black alligator briefcase he had carried since his first days in the House—the same bag he often took over to the Mansion in the evening—bulging with whatever he and his staff felt he needed to read by way of mail, magazines, books, briefing memos and assorted dispatches and documents. During absences of forty-eight hours or more, additional materials were flown to him regularly. Wherever he went, he kept in constant touch with Washington, signed bills and Executive Orders, and conferred on or contemplated current crises.
Despite these continuing burdens, a break in the routines helped prevent them from breaking him. The President thought it best for his family life and personal outlook to get away from the White House, when possible, for at least twenty-four hours on a weekend, for the whole weekend in the summer and for a longer holiday on occasion. In the summer, and occasionally in the fall, he traveled to his home at Hyannis Port on Cape Cod, with additional visits to the summer home of his wife’s family in Newport, Rhode Island. (The persistent recurrence of weekend rain and fog at the Cape in 1961 brought on a debate, only partly humorous, between the First Lady and her father-in-law about whether the climates of the two communities differed.) In the winter and spring Palm Beach was the site for the longer stays; and for a brief weekend respite the Kennedys would sometimes use Camp David, the official Presidential retreat in the Maryland Hills, or the rented estate Glenora in the Virginia countryside. A home of their own in the same area was built in 1963.
During these family weekends the President, when it was time for play, could, whatever the strains of the moment, devote every inch of mind and body to leisure as intensively as he had to work, completely shaking off and shutting out the worries of the world beyond.
When at the seaside, he took long walks and swims, played with his children in the sand, devoured light as well as heavy reading and went boating with his father and family. He held to no official schedule, alternating work and play, reading and resting, talking to his children and talking to one of us on the telephone or in person. Occasionally I accompanied him to Cape Cod or Palm Beach for working weekends, and Salinger and a military aide always traveled with him on such trips. But, except for his daily briefings, he tried to keep Glenora and Camp David free from official visitors.
If we were working at Cape Cod he usually asked me to meet him at his house after church. Having changed into sport clothes, he would work over my latest draft or memorandum in his living room or on the back porch, usually smoking a cigar and sometimes, just before
supper, drinking a daiquiri. On a very few occasions we worked during his daily boat ride, lunching on fish chowder and other preparations of the White House assistant chef, watching his wife water-ski, and lounging on the fantail talking in a lighthearted manner about people more than problems.
He relaxed best of all on the water. Although he sailed less frequently than he had in his younger days, and had perhaps forgotten the channels, judging from his embarrassment one day upon running aground on a sandbar, he loved the sea, as he had since childhood. (When he first sailed with his brother Joe, his father recalled, they were still “so small you couldn’t see their heads and it looked from the shore as if the boat were empty.”) On board either the family or Presidential cruiser, the President read history or biography or fiction, chatted with family and friends, waved at passing boats, watched local sailing races and enjoyed the distance between himself and the Secret Service. Birthday outings or weekends—his father’s, his wife’s, his children’s, his own—were very special, for the President could be quite sentimental about presents and reunions. At night he would watch a movie, though he was increasingly inclined to walk out on bad ones, and in Hyannis Port he would each weekend drive his children, and whichever of their twenty or so cousins were around, to the local candy shop.
Sundays included not only attending church but watching the political panel shows on television, as though he did not get his fill of that during the week. When I appeared at his request on Meet the Press at a delicate time—between the Cuban crisis and the 1962 election—the program had no sooner ended than the telephone rang in the studio. “They didn’t lay a glove on you,” said the President from Glenora.