Jacqueline Kennedy - Caroline Kennedy [154]
69. A planned trip to Japan by Eisenhower in June 1960 was cancelled just before his planned arrival because of anti-American riots.
70. BARRY GOLDWATER (1909–1998) was Republican senator from Arizona and the most prominent conservative of the day. JFK had met Goldwater before World War II when he went to an outdoor work camp near Phoenix, and they remained warm and jocular friends for the rest of their lives. Kennedy presumed that voters would find the Arizonan so extreme that, if nominated, he would lose to Kennedy in a landslide in 1964 (as Goldwater ultimately did to LBJ). Goldwater later insisted that JFK had agreed, if they should be the two presidential candidates in 1964, to fly around the country and debate together, almost like Lincoln and Stephen Douglas in 1858. There is no doubt that when Goldwater raised the idea, the President responded pleasantly, but it does not seem likely that in 1964, the competitive JFK, eager for the biggest victory possible, would have so gingerly offered so weak a challenger as Goldwater the benefit of being seen all over the country arguing with the President as an equal. Kennedy had, however, committed himself to face his 1964 opponent in televised debates like those of 1960 with Nixon.
71. GEORGE ROMNEY (1907–1995) was president of American Motors before his election as Republican governor of Michigan in 1962. RFK later recalled in a 1964 oral history conversation that for a time, Romney was the opponent his brother "feared the most. . . . He thought he had this appeal to . . . God and country. . . . He spoke well, looked well. He perhaps would cause some trouble in the South, where we were in trouble anyway [over civil rights]. . . . That's why . . . we never talked about Romney."
72. NELSON ROCKEFELLER (1908–1979) was elected governor of New York in 1958. Two years later, he seriously considered challenging Nixon, whom he loathed, in the 1960 Republican primaries but decided to stay out. JFK had worried that Rockefeller might be a strong opponent when he ran for reelection; however, he divorced his wife and in May 1963 remarried a younger woman, which at the time was a mortal sin in presidential politics.
73. After the 1960 campaign, JFK told Bradlee that Nixon was "mentally unsound" and "sick, sick, sick." When Nixon was defeated in 1962 for governor of California, Kennedy called the victor, Edmund "Pat" Brown (1905–1996)—the President's hidden tape machine was on—and marveled at how the loser had told reporters in Los Angeles that they wouldn't have Nixon "to kick around anymore" because it was his "last press conference." JFK explained to Brown, "You reduced him to the nuthouse." Brown agreed: "I really think he's psychotic. He's an able man, but he's nuts."
74. WILLIAM SCRANTON (1917– ) was a moderate Republican congressman when elected Pennsylvania governor in 1962.
75. Referring to the relaxation between Washington and Moscow that began after the missile crisis and ripened with the test ban treaty of the summer of 1963.
76. JFK pursued a frequent private correspondence with the Soviet leader, which Bundy puckishly called "the pen-pal letters."
77. In 1963, the Senate Permanent Investigations Committee examined the award to General Dynamics of a $6.5 billion contract, the most lucrative such mandate in American history, to build a new TFX fighter plane. Before his appointment as McNamara's deputy, Gilpatric had been counsel to General Dynamics and was criticized for participating in the TFX decision. Although in March 1963 Gilpatric had announced his return to the law, he remained at the Pentagon until January 1964 in an effort to clear his name.
78. TIMOTHY REARDON (1915–1993) was JFK's administrative assistant in the House and Senate and a special assistant in the White House.
INDEX
The pagination of this electronic edition does not match the edition from which it was created. To locate a specific entry, please use the search feature of your e-book reader.
NOTE: Page numbers in italics refer to illustrations. The letter