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Grace and Power Page 55

by Sally Bedell Smith


  Jackie had actually invited Galitzine to stay at the White House on Friday, October 25, but JFK had objected. From Monday through Thursday that week the Kennedys had endured the ubiquitous presence and persistent questioning of Jim Bishop, who was writing a cover story for Reader’s Digest on “A Day in the Life of President Kennedy.” Kennedy consented to the project, he said, because “the way things are going for us right now, we can use anything we get. Anyway, we have the right of clearance.” By day three, both Jack and Jackie were describing Bishop’s various intrusions to Ben and Tony Bradlee over dinner. Jackie was upset that Bishop was “prying awfully deep into their privacy.” Her session with him that day had been “chaotic, with one dog biting the other, with the children shouting and screaming up a storm, and with the telephone buzzing like mad.” JFK was cross with valet George Thomas for disclosing that the President owned twenty-five pairs of shoes.

  At JFK’s meeting with Governor John Connally and Lyndon Johnson in El Paso the previous June, they had discussed a trip to the Lone Star State in the fall. “Kennedy had wanted to go to Texas for a long time,” Charley Bartlett later told Manchester. Connally officially extended the invitation during a visit to the White House on October 4 and asked if Jackie would come along. She was away in Greece at the time, but it seemed unlikely she would agree. She had declined to campaign with her husband since the 1960 primaries, and she was not scheduled to resume her activities as first lady until early 1964.

  During the cruise, Irene Galitzine had detected remorse in Jackie about the negative political fallout produced by her jet set activities. “She agonized over it,” Galitzine recalled. Five days after her return, JFK played on what he called “Jackie’s guilt feelings” during dinner with the Bradlees. “Maybe now you’ll come with us to Texas next month,” said JFK. “Sure I will, Jack,” she replied. She opened her red leather engagement book with JACQUELINE KENNEDY in gold letters on the cover and scrawled TEXAS on November 21, 22, and 23.

  Jackie’s decision to campaign surprised Pamela Turnure. “It was significant,” Turnure recalled, “the first domestic trip she had ever taken with the President as President.” Turnure wanted to know what to tell the press. “Say I am going out with my husband on this trip and that it will be the first of many that I hope to make with him,” Jackie instructed. “Say yes that I plan to campaign with him and that I will do anything to help my husband be elected President again.”

  But the White House withheld the announcement because Jackie wavered several times about going. At dinner on Friday, October 25, with Irene Galitzine, Franklin and Sue Roosevelt, and Hervé and Nicole Alphand, Jackie expressed concern about an ugly incident the previous night during Adlai Stevenson’s visit to Dallas. Seventy anti-UN demonstrators had swarmed Stevenson after he gave a speech celebrating world peace. The crowd of 20,000 had given Stevenson a standing ovation, but as police escorted him from the Dallas Memorial Auditorium, the protesters jeered and spat on him, and hit him in the head with a placard. The city fathers said Dallas had been “disgraced” by such “storm trooper actions,” and issued a profound apology.

  The Roosevelts cautioned Jackie to be careful. She responded by saying “she wanted to take a ‘pass’” on the Texas trip, citing the advice of her doctors. “But Jack wanted her at his side,” Alphand noted in his diary. In the following days, Jackie continued to balk. Finally John Connally called the White House and “laid down the law,” recalled George Christian, then press secretary to the governor. “He started raising hell when she wasn’t coming. She was popular in Texas, and she really needed to be there.”

  On November 7, Turnure announced that Jackie would join her husband in Texas, a trip that would include her first visit to the Johnson Ranch in Stonewall. The Johnsons made special preparations to please their guests: a hard mattress for Jack, a supply of Poland Water, and a walking horse in readiness for Jackie. There would also be swimming, a ranch tour, and a demonstration of roping and herding at the barbecue grounds.

  Connally scheduled a fundraiser at the governor’s mansion in Austin on Friday night, November 22, but otherwise the President’s trip consisted of speeches at “nonpartisan” events in San Antonio, Houston, Fort Worth, and Dallas. “Kennedy wanted to come to Texas for money,” said George Christian. “He needed support. It was his idea, and the focal point was Austin.”

  The drop in JFK’s popularity during 1963 had resulted mainly from his stand on civil rights. Whites, especially in the South, felt he was moving “too far and too fast,” while blacks were disappointed that his legislation wasn’t offering enough. According to a Newsweek poll in early October, Kennedy was “the most widely disliked Democratic President of this century among white Southerners,” with 67 percent of them “dissatisfied with the way he has handled racial problems.” As the biggest southern state, Texas was just as crucial to Kennedy’s reelection in 1964 as it had been in 1960. But by the autumn of 1963 “a lot of Texas had decided Kennedy was a big eastern liberal and Johnson was his lap dog,” said Christian. “Kennedy was interested in his reelection and he needed desperately to get Texas in his corner.”

  Polls showed that JFK’s most likely opponent was conservative senator Barry Goldwater of Arizona, although New York governor Nelson Rockefeller and Michigan governor George Romney were also contenders. In trial matchups, Kennedy held comfortable leads against each of them. Surveys also showed Goldwater to be the main beneficiary of southern hostility toward Kennedy.

  JFK not only welcomed a Goldwater candidacy, he actively talked it up at news conferences and in speeches. Press reports on Kennedy’s Boston speech in late October noted that he took some “political pleasure” at the prospect of taking on the Arizonan. Kennedy liked Goldwater and appreciated his quick wit, but felt his extreme views would sink him.

  Romney was a strict Mormon who had been a highly successful automotive executive. He posed a mild threat because he had such an impeccable reputation, although Kennedy was suspicious of a man with “no vices whatsoever.” JFK believed the most formidable opponent would be fifty-five-year-old Rockefeller, whose centrist views were far more palatable than Goldwater’s. The New Yorker also had a magnetic personality, a huge fortune, and the mystique of a family even more illustrious than the Kennedys. “Jack was scared stiff of Rockefeller,” said Charley Bartlett. JFK told Ros Gilpatric that with Rockefeller “it would be a close contest.”

  Kennedy took every opportunity to buttonhole Gilpatric, who had known the Rockefellers for decades. “He endlessly questioned me about every phase of the Rockefeller family,” said Gilpatric. Whenever the New York governor was coming to Washington on official business, JFK would ask his subordinates to engage in “concentrated espionage—who Rockefeller was seeing . . . what he was doing,” Gilpatric recalled. During his service in Washington, Gilpatric “never saw more concentrated attention given to any political subject” than Kennedy’s focus on Nelson Rockefeller.

  On November 7, Rockefeller was the first to officially announce his candidacy—six months and three days after his marriage to Margaretta “Happy” Murphy. He and his new wife—the mother of four children—had both divorced their spouses, which most political professionals considered an insurmountable liability. Still, Rockefeller came out swinging, attacking Kennedy’s “failures at home and abroad” as well as Goldwater’s opposition to progressive ideas, including the civil rights bill.

  A week later Kennedy held his first strategy session for the 1964 campaign. The White House meeting included Bobby Kennedy, Steve Smith, Ted Sorensen, Kenny O’Donnell, and Larry O’Brien. “As usual, the campaign will be run right from here,” Kennedy said. Steve Smith would be in charge, and the theme of the campaign would be “peace and prosperity.”

  Lyndon Johnson’s conspicuous absence from the session was picked up by the press, fueling speculation that he would be dumped from the ticket. “Preposterous on the face of it,” Kennedy told Ben Bradlee. “We’ve got to carry Texas in ’64 and maybe Georgia.”
When Bartlett quizzed the President, he “turned on me and he was furious,” Bartlett recalled. “‘Why would I do a thing like that? That would be absolutely crazy. It would tear up the relationship and hurt me in Texas.’”

  The conjecture was prompted in part by the Baker investigation, which was widely interpreted in political and journalistic circles as Bobby Kennedy’s effort to damage Johnson, Baker’s former mentor. Johnson, who had a conspiratorial cast of mind, firmly believed he was the real target.

  When George Smathers asked about the rumored link between the Baker probe and LBJ’s future, Kennedy exploded. “Can you see me now in a terrible fight with Lyndon Johnson, which means I’ll blow the South?” JFK said. “George, do you know how that would read if Bobby Baker was indicted tomorrow morning with the girl situation involved? Life magazine would put twenty-seven pictures of these lovely looking, buxom lasses running around with no clothes on, twenty-seven pictures of Bobby Baker and hoodlums, and then the last picture would be of me, and it would say, ‘Mess in Washington under Kennedy Regime,’ and 99 percent of the people would think I was running around with twenty-nine girls because they don’t read the story, and I’m going to defeat myself. You think my brother doesn’t like the attorney general’s job? He wants to be out? Smathers, you just haven’t got any sense, and if Lyndon thinks that, he ought to think about it. I don’t want to get licked. I really don’t care whether Lyndon gets licked, but I don’t want to get licked, and he’s going to be my vice president because he helps me!”

  Still, during a Kennedy family meeting that fall, “Bobby had strongly attacked Lyndon,” Agriculture Secretary Orville Freeman wrote in his journal. “This would confirm the rumors that he was doing so around town following the Bobby Baker matter.” On hearing RFK’s attack, “Jackie Kennedy had climbed all over Bobby, saying she wouldn’t listen to this, that Lyndon had been kind, helpful and loyal, and this just wasn’t fair. She wouldn’t tolerate it or listen to it.”

  Bobby Kennedy kept after Baker, mindful that with the Rometsch matter eliminated, the prospect of “buxom lasses” linked to JFK had disappeared. Baker was eventually convicted in 1967 of theft, fraud, and income tax evasion based on his acceptance in 1962 of $100,000 that he described as “campaign donations.” He served sixteen months of a three-year sentence.

  In the two weeks before the Texas trip, Jack and Jackie pursued busy schedules and were apart as much as they were together. They hosted a few small dinners where Jackie played records of Moroccan dances and demonstrated some of the “bumps and grinds” she had seen in Marrakesh, and Jack spoke excitedly about the coming election. “He was looking forward to ’64,” said Bradlee. “There is no question he was full of confidence about it.” With the Alsops, Jackie talked up their Texas plans, although Susan Mary felt her enthusiasm was forced. One evening Jack and Jackie invited Ben, Tony, Bobby, and Ethel to watch From Russia with Love, the latest James Bond movie. Bradlee noticed that JFK “seemed to enjoy the cool and the sex and the brutality” and that Bobby was “dressed like a Brooks Brothers beatnik.”

  The most diverting private dinner was on November 13 in honor of Greta Garbo. JFK had lured the reclusive Swedish actress to the White House with the help of Washington hostess Florence Mahoney, who had met Garbo at La Fiorentina, the Riviera home of philanthropist Mary Lasker. Garbo was to be accompanied by her best friend, the Russian dress designer Valentina Schlee, and husband Georges Schlee, who was the film legend’s lover.

  JFK also intended the dinner as a practical joke on Lem Billings. After meeting Garbo at the Lasker villa, where he was a frequent guest, Billings had boasted to Kennedy of “blithe and enchanting adventures” with the actress. His curiosity piqued, Kennedy decided it was “time to hear Garbo’s side.” That autumn Billings had not been much in evidence at the White House, so the invitation from JFK was especially meaningful. “I got the feeling at the end that Jackie was trying to close Lem out,” recalled Bartlett. The evening with Garbo would be the final time Billings would see his oldest and dearest friend.

  Helen Chavchavadze was invited to dine as well—her second visit to the White House that day after a hiatus of nearly a year. Jackie had invited Helen to bring her daughters to the afternoon performance of the Black Watch Regiment of bagpipers on the South Lawn for 1,700 underprivileged children. The spectators sat in bleachers, while the First Family and their guests watched from the South Portico balcony outside the Blue Room.

  Both invitations stirred feelings of ambivalence in Chavchavadze. Following her release from Sibley Hospital, she had spent the summer and fall rebuilding her confidence, starting a new job teaching Russian at American University, reclaiming her children, and regaining her home. She had met the man who would become her second husband and was feeling optimistic about her future. “After I had been so down, I went to the White House again,” she recalled. “I did not want to be pulled back in. I was relieved that that part of my life was over.”

  Billings was thrilled that he would be seeing Garbo at the White House. “Greta!” he exclaimed as she walked into the dining room with Jackie. Fixing Billings with a blank stare, Garbo said to Kennedy, “I have never seen this man before”—a ruse JFK had concocted with her only moments before his friend arrived. To Billings’s bewilderment, she kept the deception going until the second course. Kennedy milked the prank for every drop of amusement, watching his old friend squirm. Chavchavadze was far more intrigued by Garbo’s ménage à trois and sensed that Jackie also admired the sophistication of Garbo’s arrangement with the Schlees.

  After dinner, Kennedy took Garbo to the Oval Office where she admired his scrimshaw and mentioned her own small collection. Impulsively he presented her with one of his intricately carved whale’s teeth as a gift. Writing to Jackie afterwards, the actress thanked her for a “most unusual evening. . . . I might believe it was a dream if I did not have in my possession the President’s ‘tooth.’” According to Chavchavadze, “Jackie was very upset, because she had given that beautiful piece of scrimshaw to Jack.”

  Jack and Jackie invited the Bradlees to join them for their third weekend together at Wexford. The weather was chilly and clear, and the foursome had cocktails on the terrace. Bradlee judged the house “very swell,” but took note of the “unlived-in decorator look.” Kennedy confessed that the house had indeed cost more than $100,000, as Bradlee had bet it would—although JFK declined to pay off the wager.

  Kennedy fretted about the Texas trip because Connally was feuding with Senator Ralph Yarborough, who also had bad blood with Lyndon Johnson. Connally and Johnson represented the conservative wing of the Texas Democratic party, and Yarborough the liberal flank—an ongoing statewide rivalry dating from Roosevelt days. Connally had infuriated Yarborough by excluding the Texas congressional delegation from the Austin fundraiser and limiting the invited politicians to Democratic state legislators. Kennedy complained to Bradlee that Johnson had become “a less viable mediator than he had once been.” JFK was also concerned that the Stevenson incident in Dallas several weeks earlier had signaled that “the mood of the city was ugly.”

  Pat Lawford, whose estrangement from her husband had been reported in the press, showed up for Sunday lunch “looking very upset and nervous,” Bradlee noted. She drank too much that afternoon, and Jackie stayed with her “literally all night talking” while everyone else went to bed.

  Monday, November 11, was Veterans Day, and the group spent a leisurely morning taking walks, reading the newspapers, and watching Jackie on horseback. Kennedy left first on his helicopter with John Jr. to attend a ceremony at Arlington Cemetery. “It was the last time I ever saw him,” Bradlee wrote.

  At Arlington, Kennedy was “alternatively somber and smiling” during the ceremony at the Tomb of the Unknowns. Instead of leaving right afterwards as planned, he took John Jr. to the amphitheater for more music and speeches. As the President marched with military officers, the little boy broke away from his Secret Service detail to join the parade, an
d his father burst out laughing.

  By mid-November, Kennedy’s tax reduction bill—at the time the biggest in history—had been whittled down to $11 billion ($66 billion today) from his requested $13.5 billion. The legislation was stuck in Wilbur Mills’s House Ways and Means Committee, and the Senate Finance Committee was dragging its feet on hearings. The civil rights bill was similarly tied up in the House Judiciary Committee. Kennedy worried as well about the likelihood of a Senate filibuster on civil rights.

  In foreign policy, Kennedy continued to be sorely vexed by France. Hervé Alphand had recently given a tough speech denying that France wished to “dominate” Europe and justifying his country’s refusal to sign the test-ban treaty on the grounds that de Gaulle had seen “no obvious sign” of true détente. In those circumstances, Alphand said, it was vital for the French to maintain their own nuclear deterrent.

  Kennedy had complained bitterly to Alphand about de Gaulle’s refusal to play by the “rules of the alliance,” and Alphand had shot back that France simply wanted to be “an ally without being a protégé.” Yet Kennedy was eager for a visit by de Gaulle in February 1964, and he even hoped his progress with Jacqueline Hirsh would enable him to impress the French president by negotiating in his own language. JFK was pushing for a ceremonial trip to Washington, complete with a parade. Alphand insisted that de Gaulle wanted a “working trip” away from the capital “to avoid public displays.” “But the Irishman would not let go of his idea,” Alphand noted in his diary.

 

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