Jacqueline Kennedy - Caroline Kennedy [121]
47. DEAN ACHESON (1893–1971) was Harry Truman's secretary of state, a towering figure in that era and a skeptic about JFK, sharing Truman's view that he was too callow and inexperienced to be president.
48. An exclusive Newport club, frequented by Jacqueline's mother and stepfather, which now represented to her a cloistered social world she had outgrown.
49. Hoping to be drafted for president at the 1960 convention, Stevenson had refused to say he would decline the nomination, if offered.
50. In the spring of 1964, Jackie was reading and much influenced by Edith Hamilton's popular The Greek Way. The following spring, after examining the early version of Schlesinger's A Thousand Days, she wrote him in longhand, "You remember in my oral history—I disputed your remark that Adlai was a Greek + JFK a Roman. . . . Leaving Adlai out of it . . . I know what he brought to American politics in 1952—but he certainly showed many weaknesses + sad deficiencies of character later—you can make him sound as wonderful as you want—but just don't say that JFK was Roman. . . . Lyndon is really a Roman—a classic Emperor—maybe [Michigan Republican Governor George] Romney is one too. . . . Can't you make him Greek + Adlai Egyptian—or leave Adlai out + just make him Greek." After finishing her letter to Schlesinger, Mrs. Kennedy tore it in half and wrote him a milder one on the same theme.
51. During those years, Stevenson was able to build a decent rapport with the First Lady, which he never managed with the President, whom he resented for denying him what he considered his political birthright, starting with the presidency and the State Department. But by now, Jacqueline has adopted her husband's disdain for Stevenson.
52. MICHAEL FORRESTAL (1928–1989) was a family friend; son of the first secretary of defense, James Forrestal, for whom JFK had briefly worked in 1945; a New York lawyer; and later a staff member of Kennedy's National Security Council, specializing in Southeast Asia.
53. This traditional Chicago convention hotel was actually called the Stockyard Inn, and stood across the street from the International Amphitheatre, where the delegates were meeting.
54. Jacqueline's mother and stepfather spent summers at Hammersmith Farm in Newport. The Kennedys sometimes used the place, which was near a naval station and quieter than the Kennedy houses at Hyannis Port, as a summer White House.
55. JFK ran for reelection as senator in 1958. He was eager to win by a margin so impressive that it would give him a running start for the 1960 presidential race.
56. FOSTER FURCOLO (1911–1995) was the Democratic governor of Massachusetts from 1957 to 1961. Kennedy thought so little of him that if Furcolo should win the Democratic nomination against Republican senator Leverett Saltonstall in 1960 (as it happened, he lost), JFK planned to cast a quiet vote for the Republican. Some of the reasons Kennedy's poll ratings were down were his support for the St. Lawrence Seaway, which diverted jobs and commerce from Massachusetts; his work on labor reform, which outraged Teamsters and their allies; residual antagonisms from the "Onions" Burke fight; and political quarrels with the Italian-American Furcolo, which, Republicans vainly hoped, might cause an Italian-American stampede toward Kennedy's little-known opponent, Vincent Celeste.
57. JAMES MACGREGOR BURNS (1918– ) was a Williams College political scientist, biographer of Franklin Roosevelt, and Democratic liberal activist who in 1958 ran unsuccessfully for the U.S. House from western Massachusetts.
THE SECOND CONVERSATION
1. JFK's Senate reelection victory of 1958, winning 73 percent of the vote.
2. In his 1774 "Speech to the Electors of Bristol," the Anglo-Irish statesman-philosopher said, "Your representative owes you, not his industry only, but his judgement; and he betrays, instead of serving you, if he sacrifices it to your opinion."
3. Winston Churchill's long biography of his best-known ancestor, John Churchill, the first Duke of Marlborough (1650-1722). In 1704,