Jacqueline Kennedy - Caroline Kennedy [26]
I agree. I thought, you know, at the funeral, that he was—in spite of all the mischief he has made—will make—an immensely touching and charming figure.
Yeah, of course he has two sides to him. That's what Jack would always say. You know, nobody's all black or all white. And he did, you know, realize what Jack was. I think he just felt guilty—I don't know— You know, he realized who Jack was, and that's why he came to the funeral. And I think that was an effort. He didn't need to do that.
He had a certain—the thing about de Gaulle and Churchill and the President and a few other people is that they had a sense of history, which produces sort of magnanimity of judgment. Although de Gaulle can be spiteful, he can also be very magnanimous and he recognized that the President— He saw him in the great stream of history, and that—of course, his memoirs are so marvelous in that respect because of the sense of the flow, the necessities which people have to respond to, and the wonderful prose.
Oh, yeah, when Jack made his announcement that he was going to run at the Senate—no, run for president—I'd been reading him the beginning things of de Gaulle's memoirs of how "I've always had a certain image of France" and he used part of that, paraphrased it for his own. Yes, you should look at that speech—"I have a certain vision of America" or something.28 Another person he used to tell me a lot about was Randolph Churchill, Winston Churchill's father. "And I forgot about Goschen—" I remember he'd say that a lot of times, when someone resigned, and they found someone else to replace them. Do you know that story?
No, I don't know that story.
There was some minister who resigned when Randolph Churchill was in the government, because he thought he was—it was on some point. Yeah, who was the one who resigned—of the Exchequer, a couple of years ago? On some little point of whether—some little thing with the budget?
He'd given information—
Not Thorneycroft—anyway, some man resigned and was immediately replaced, and this man thought that he couldn't be replaced, and they'd have to come around to do what he wanted, and right away, they appointed someone named Goschen. And the man—maybe it was even Randolph Churchill—said, "Oh, my God, I forgot about Goschen." [Schlesinger laughs] Which, you know, is a thing to show that anyone can be replaced.29
What did the President think, in 1959, about his contenders? Well, I guess he had Hubert, and he had Lyndon and Stevenson in the wings.
I don't know, exactly. You know, he liked Hubert before, but he always said when you get into a fight, it gets so bitter that you're just bound to sort of hate them at the end. It got very bitter, and he liked Hubert again afterwards. Lyndon sort of amused him. Well, Lyndon was so tricky and he'd come home and tell me things—when Lyndon made an announcement up at the Senate that he was fit to run—to all these reporters—that he could—I don't know—play squash and have sexual intercourse once a week. [both laugh] Lyndon—well, he'd just come over and—you know, he knew what he was dealing with there. I mean, he didn't ever admi—
THE DEMOCRATIC TICKET FOR 1960: SENATOR LYNDON JOHNSON AND SENATOR KENNEDY IN HYANNIS PORT
Fay Foto Service/John F. Kennedy Library and Museum, Boston
He liked Lyndon. Lyndon was sort of—
He didn't particularly like him, but he could trade with him and not come off— It was sort of, when you saw them together, it was really like fencing, in political things. And I always thought Lyndon was arguing with him or being rude, but Jack was sort of parrying with such amusement, and he always sort of bested him. Lyndon would give a big elephant-like grunt. But, you know, he didn't really—it wasn't anything personal.
I think he always felt—that he was amused, rather delighted by Johnson as a kind of American phenomenon, and at the same time, often quite irritated by a