Jacqueline Kennedy - Caroline Kennedy [123]
17. The Whig party of the seventeenth through nineteenth centuries epitomized the British style of wealthy aristocrats standing for political office. The Whigs resisted a strong monarchy, just as their nineteenth-century American namesake party opposed powerful presidents such as their hated Andrew Jackson. Asked by James MacGregor Burns in 1959 about presidential power, JFK insisted, "I am no Whig!"
18. In Churchill's four-volume A History of the English-Speaking Peoples. She means the English civil war of 1692–1696.
19. DANIEL WEBSTER (1782–1852), senator from Massachusetts, had his own chapter in Profiles in Courage for supporting the Compromise of 1850.
20. In 1970, Jacqueline wrote about her husband to Ted Kennedy, "He was the only president after Jefferson, to care about gardens—(A letter that came up at Parke-Bernet the fall of 1963, which he thought was too expensive to buy, I was going to try and give him for his birthday—Jefferson writes to France—for 4 gardeners—they would also play chamber music at Monticello in the evenings.) Like Jefferson, he cared about architecture—or rather the harmony of man in his environment."
21. ALICE ROOSEVELT LONGWORTH (1884–1980), herself a landmark of Washington social life for most of the twentieth century, was Theodore Roosevelt's daughter by his first wife. Busch's book was T.R.: The Story of Theodore Roosevelt and His Influence on Our Times (1963).
22. This was in the 1930s, while Joseph Kennedy served FDR as chairman of the Securities Exchange Commission and ambassador to the Court of St. James's.
23. JFK's private coolness toward Franklin Roosevelt was almost unique among Democratic leaders of the 1960s, who usually regarded him as a household saint. It reflected Joseph Kennedy's painful break with FDR in 1941 over intervention in Europe, JFK's lingering resentment over Eleanor Roosevelt's hostility toward him before the 1960 Democratic convention, and his own lifelong aversion to almost all hero worship. Like many others, JFK was critical of what he considered to be FDR's overtolerance of Soviet military power in Europe at the end of World War II, leaving the West at a military disadvantage in Berlin and the rest of Europe, which proved to be one of Kennedy's biggest troubles as President. Still JFK was not unwilling to recognize Roosevelt's qualities of greatness, especially in domestic affairs. In the Republican household of her early upbringing, Jacqueline's father used to jocularly quote from Peter Arno's famous New Yorker cartoon, "Let's go down to the Trans-Lux and hiss Roosevelt!"
24. Criticized for speaking too rarely to the American people on television, Kennedy was urged to follow the example of FDR's radio "fireside chats." He asked Schlesinger to find out exactly how many such chats Roosevelt had during twelve years as president to counter the popular impression that they were almost weekly. By contrast, President Kennedy had a press conference roughly every two weeks.
25. ROSE ELIZABETH FITZGERALD KENNEDY (1890–1995) was the President's mother, whom Jacqueline called "Belle Mère." At this point, she had an affectionate but somewhat distant relationship with her mother-in-law, especially in comparison to the instant connection she had felt on first meeting Joseph Kennedy. After the President's death, Rose and Jacqueline became closer.
26. Both Kennedys had resented the closing passage of Burns's 1960 book John Kennedy: A Political Profile, written with JFK's cooperation, which, while praising the Senator's talent and energy, questioned his emotional commitment to political goals. (In the final sentence of his book, Burns wrote that for Kennedy to bring "passion" to the presidency "would depend on his making a commitment not only of mind, but of heart, that until now he has never been required to make.") Jacqueline so vehemently objected to this that she wrote Burns a crisp rebuttal