Jacqueline Kennedy - Caroline Kennedy [27]
You know, Lyndon—I mean he just—what were his things—of Lyndon— Lyndon was the majority leader and he did get the position he wanted in the Senate, but I know he had to trade or really pester hard for that—for Foreign Relations and Labor. That's what he wanted so much. But in the primaries, it was more what you could do in Wisconsin, and who you could get to see, and then whether Hubert would go into West Virginia or not, more than the people. I told you last night how he'd get irritated with Stevenson. He never thought any of them were better than him, but, I mean, he wasn't ever conceited. I mean, if he could just get it—get over this Catholic hurdle and this youth hurdle and this rich—or whatever it was, you know, then everything would be fine. So, it was really overcoming those hurdles more than his opponents.
Do you think one of them worried him more than another, or were they all sort of equal?
I think it was Catholic and youth.30 And I remember before he went out to Chicag—to California, I went with him to New York to see him off, and he made the speech—was it in Grand Central Station or the Biltmore?—about answering Truman's charges that he was too young.31 But he did it without any bitterness.
And terrifically effective. At the end of '59, there is a—perhaps around Thanksgiving at Hyannis Port, there was sort of a meeting to plan strategy.
Oh, I remember that. We had one house there, and everybody was closeted for two days in Ethel and Bobby's, and all these men came up—Kenny, Larry, Bobby, everyone, and huddled away and planned. But, you know, when Jack would come home from something like that, I wouldn't ask him, "What did you plan here and there?" He'd come home, and then it would be fish chowder, or what would he like for dinner, or records, or then someone there to laugh. So that's—I mean, I would have been a terrible wife if I tried to pick his brains about that.
The last thing he would have wanted. I mean, he wanted other things. I think in a way, the great difference between—it was also true between Roosevelt and Truman, being—Kennedy and Johnson—is that both Roosevelt and Kennedy were master politicians, but politics was one part of their lives. It was something they enjoyed doing. It was an instrumentality they used to do other things. But then there were a lot of other things involved with life. I think with Truman, Johnson, politics is their whole world.
I know. And when you talk to either of them, it's all they can talk about. Every little metaphor—"my daddy down at the well."32 Or Truman's fascinating about American history. You can just ask him anything. But you never can hear anything different from them. But, you know, Jack—well, I mean—I think a woman always adapts, and especially if you're very young when you get married and, you know, are unformed, you really become the kind of wife you can see that your husband wants. So, if he'd wanted—for instance, my sister's husband loves to bring his problems home, and they're all business, and Lee doesn't understand that.33 But, you know, if Jack wanted to do that—and talk about things at home—then I'd be asking him questions. He didn't want to talk about the things that were bothering him. But other things of his life—I mean, it was always, you'd have to read the papers and everything. Because he'd be rather irritated if he'd say, "Did you see Reston today?" And if you hadn't, you'd make sure you saw Reston the next day. Because if you'd say, "What did he say?" he'd say, "Well, you know, you should find that out yourself."
His staff were victims of the same. At this meeting, as I recall it, in Hyannis Port, was—the real thing, which kind of changed the whole place, in the sense that Ted,34 who up to that time had been handling both, working both on the speeches and the political side—was taken out of the political side, and Bobby and Kenny and so on came in, and really took over the whole question of political—
Oh, yes, and I remember there was a rather bitter feeling for a while—or