Jacqueline Kennedy - Caroline Kennedy [47]
What were your own thoughts about getting in the White House?
It's funny. I used to worry about going into the White House.26 This was before the campaign started or it got so close—you know, thinking all the things anyone thinks. It'll be a goldfish bowl, the Secret Service, I'll never see my husband. Then once Jack was nominated and everything, then you were so happy for him. And then once you got in it, I mean, you were just so happy for him, then you found out that it was really the happiest time of my life. It was when we were the closest—I didn't realize the physical closeness of having his office in the same building and seeing him so many times a day. There was always a great tension living there, but I used to—I remember thinking in the White House, "What was the matter with me that I spent so much time worrying, would it ruin our marriage to get in the White House?" And here it was so happy. And then I thought, you never can know what will be the best for you.27 Then once we were in the White House, I used to worry all the time about getting out of it. And I used to think, what will you do with Jack, who will be fifty-one or something when he leaves? This caged tiger who's such a young age, still able to do so much. And sometimes I used to ask him about that and be worried. And he'd always soothe me and say, "You know, it won't be a problem when it happens."
What did—did he ever talk about what he might do after the presidency?
Yes. In the beginning, he used to sort of treat it as a joke and didn't like to talk about it, and he'll say, "Oh, I'll be an ambassador to Italy," or something. And that would get—but he was just teasing. And then I'd say, "Oh, you have to run for the Senate." And—again, this shows something wonderful about Bobby. Once I told Bobby that I was so worried and that if only Jack could run for the Senate, you know, have Teddy's seat, because Jack said they wouldn't take two brothers from there. So Bobby went and spoke to Teddy and came back and told me that Teddy said that he would not run when Johnny—that's what the brothers always called him—was out, which is so touching because that was the highest thing that I think Teddy could ever have hoped for. And anyway, I told Jack that because I always remember him saying how John Quincy Adams—
Yeah.
—came back and was a congressman all his life, and I thought he could be a senator and have a base and do all his other things from there. And Jack was really wounded when I told him that. And he was touched that I cared so much to be so worried, but he said, "No, I never, never would do that. And take that from Teddy? How could you think I'd do such a thing? So you go back to Bobby and tell him." But I think that shows something so close about those three brothers.
JACK, BOBBY, AND TEDDY, HYANNIS PORT, 1960
John F. Kennedy Library and Museum, Boston
Yes.
That each would—there is Bobby making Teddy give up his prize, which Teddy does gladly, and then Jack refusing. They all worked with such love for each other. And just towards the end, Jack was thinking about being either publisher of a great paper or—I don't know. Bundy said to me the other night that he thought he might have ended up in television or something. I think he would have had to do something. He was getting rather excited about it. Sometimes he talked to Ben Bradlee about it—"Think we could buy the Washington Post?"—or something, rather jovially, but you could always tell when he was toying with an idea that pleased him in his mind. I think he would have gone around the world, written a book, done something with his library, and then really entered into that.
Where would you—where would you have lived, do you suppose?
Well, I just assumed we'd have lived in Cambridge, but maybe we wouldn't have. Or then I thought we should still live in Washington, but now