Jacqueline Kennedy - Caroline Kennedy [46]
Has that always been so or is it—
Well, in the early days when he used to come for breakfast all the time, for the labor bill—they were obviously talking about the labor bill. But I really started to see much of Arthur Goldberg after the presidency. And I was really horrified. But, I mean, I know he's brilliant. I just think it's such a shame to be so pleased with yourself.
Apart from Rusk and from Day, the President was fairly well satisfied with the cabinet. Did you think?
Yeah, I don't think he cared about Day one way or the other because I don't know—I mean, is the Post Office Department a big problem?
No, I think Day ran it perfectly competently.
Yeah, Day was just sort of a—I don't know—he was always being in little skits at the multiple sclerosis ball. I just thought he was silly. But, that was me and I never really discussed him with Jack. But I don't think he thought much of him.
One of the interesting things is the President's instinct for people because his capacity to pick people whom he knew rather slightly—even Lovett and McCloy,24 for example. He hadn't known them much before, had he?
I don't think so. I mean, he'd obviously known them, but not terribly well. He could tell so much by talking to them, though I guess, with Dean Rusk, he made a mistake, but as you say, Dean Rusk comes over so marvelously when you're talking to him. You think he can save the world.
That would be his—how would he go about sizing them up? He'd talk to them—that'd be the main thing, of course, then he'd get a lot of reports from Sarge.25
Yeah. He'd have all these reports and things, and things that other people would say about them and then they'd come. It's like an interview if you're going to be accepted in a school or something. I mean, he'd be in that living room with them for a couple of hours and they'd just talk.
Did he ever describe what he talked about?
Well, it was such a hard time for him, those busy days. And then when he'd come over to see me in the hospital, he would— Later I told you what he said about McNamara and I know how disillusioned he was with Loveless—just certain, who had no solution to the farm problem, and no original thoughts. The others—I should have asked him all that, but when you live with a man who's so busy and everything, you don't want to just question him, question him, at the end of the day. So you pick it up by what he's telling someone else or what he wants to tell you—though I might have been dying to know. I'll remember more later. Now my mind has gone so blank about so many things that I know I remembered before.
It'll come back. What gave him the most trouble besides Franklin and Stevenson in that period? Do you remember anything else in which he seems [to have had a] problem?
No. I remember—did I say it before—about him getting Clark Clifford to do that reorganization thing? It wasn't trouble. That was something he was very pleased with. Did I say that in the tape before?
No, you haven't.
Well, right after he was elected, he got Clark Clifford. I think he'd asked Clark way before election, saying, "If I get elected you must be prepared right away to do this transition thing." So, Clark had been looking into it, you know, making great things, so that everybody who was appointed to something spent those months between November