Jacqueline Kennedy - Caroline Kennedy [43]
Yeah. Oh, there were so many things he was going to do. I was just thinking. He was going to get rid of J. Edgar Hoover—who's just been signed up again.8 The next tape we do, I'll have a list because I wrote them down the other night of—about five, six things he was going to do this time.
Oh, was he?
And you know, they've all been done the wrong way.
Um-hmm. McNamara was absolutely new, you figure. I don't think the President ever had met him—had he before?
No, and he told me McNamara asked him one thing. They came in for their little conference in our tiny Georgetown house, and the first thing McNamara asked him was, "Did you really write Profiles in Courage?" and Jack said he had. And which again shows—that's why I told you I was so angry at Ted Sorensen—that just seed of doubt. And then McNamara really had this worship for Jack, and then he said, well fine, that he'd love to be it.
He was offered the Treasury, I think, originally.
Was he? I know that Lovett was offered his choice between State, Defense, and Treasury, and he couldn't take either, and Jack said, "You know, that really is quite a tribute to a man to think that he could have any of those three, but he just was too sick."9 And then the big thing with Governor Stevenson wanting State but telling him that he had to have the UN. That was rather—I can remember Jack telling me about that.
How did it—did that give him a lot of difficulty—the President—or was he rather amused by it all?
You know, it was unpleasant. I mean, he didn't like having to do it or anything, but he wasn't going to give him the State Department. I remember the earliest times when we spoke of it, you knew that Governor Stevenson would get the UN and not State, which he wanted. But it's sort of unpleasant to have to tell someone that. And I remember their conference on the doorstep was rather vague or Stevenson said he didn't have anything to say, or something funny. You can go back and find out what it was.10
Why do you suppose he decided not—against Stevenson for State?
Well, why should he give him—Stevenson had never lifted one finger to help him. But yet, it wasn't just bitterness or that, because look at all the people Jack took who had been against him or for someone else. He thought that man had a real disease of being unable to make up his mind and Stevenson irritated him. I don't think he could have borne to have him around every day coming in complaining as secretary of state about something. I mean, it would have been an awfully difficult relationship, and I think it would have just driven Jack crazy and—I really don't think Stevenson would have been as good as Fulbright. I don't think he'd have been terribly different from Dean Rusk. Maybe he would have.
I think also—I think one thing that was in his mind was the purpose of having people who'd be—who have strength on the Hill for the measures. And I think that's one reason why Fulbright appealed to him because he thought the fact that the Senate knew Fulbright would mean that they'd have confidence.
Oh, yeah. Oh, poor Fulbright. If only he'd been picked—yeah, then Lyndon would like him and everything. And Fulbright was—yes, he was right. I remember he was the one—practically the only person who agreed with Jack—or who was against the Bay of Pigs?11
That's right. Um-hmm. The only one who spoke out against it firmly in one of the meetings.
Yeah. Though apparently at the second meeting he thought it might be all right, but you know, he sort of agreed at the end. But still—I think a lot of Fulbright.
When did Dillon12 come into the picture?
Well, sometime around then—but again, I was in the hospital.
But you'd known the Dillons in Washington.
Oh, yes.
But not terribly well, I gather.
Not terribly well, but as well as we knew anyone. I mean, we'd been to their house for dinner a few times and I knew Phyllis Dillon. So they were one of the few people whose house we went to dinner to