Jacqueline Kennedy - Caroline Kennedy [86]
David has more wisdom, I think, than—Mac is a brilliantly intelligent man but David's judgment is more—
And David has also the conciliatory sort of side that Jack did. You know, Bundy can get mad and then sort of arrogant and then make conciliation impossible. And Bundy in the missile crisis, when you think of that great mind, in the beginning he wanted to go in and bomb Cuba. And at the end, he wanted to do nothing. So, if you'd been relying on that great intelligence, look where we'd be? But—
How often would he see David?
Well, we'd see them a lot. We'd always see them. They would stay with us, usually on vacations, or they'd come for a weekend to Camp David, or the country, or the Cape. Or they'd come for dinner maybe once a month or so. You stopped asking them too much. We used to do it rather spontaneously, and of course they'd be involved in something official and then they'd get out of it, so I thought I just can't do that to them. So we didn't see them as much as we would have. We would have seen them every week if they hadn't been ambassador.
It killed the Alphands, as it was.41
And they'd always be talking on the phone. So many times, "Get me the British ambassador." And David would tell you sometimes of the extraordinary places he'd been when he was ferreted out to talk to Jack. And as I said, with David—well, there was this one thing about British Guiana which one night David really was worried about and Jack said, "Well, what shall I do?" and it was against rather our position, but David said, "You should call U Thant"42 and tell him whatever it was. So anyway, Jack did that and everything, you know, worked out well. And then this Skybolt thing—after Nassau,43 David came back to Florida with us and, of course, the next day the whole thing blew up. Godfrey McHugh came tearing in, saying, "Have you heard the wonderful news, Mr. President? They've just shot off Skybolt and it worked," or something. And Jack said, "What? Goddamn you, Godfrey, get out of here!" And he—so, anyway, he and David sat there and everything was so awful. And they called Gilpatric, and McNamara was away and then David went into another room and called Harold Macmillan. But you know, that closeness kept—well, I mean, everything could have blown apart between England and America then. And of all Jack's friends now, David Gore's the one, I'd say next to Bobby and me, he's the one who's been the most wounded.44 Perhaps that's not fair, but he's the friend that I'll always see for the rest of my life. So many of the others I can't bear to see because I miss—Jack's lacking. I mean, the Bartletts, the Bradlees, the people you saw like that. Anyway—
Well, David is one of the—sort of intellectually and emotionally he's a rich person, and a generous one, and—
And he's not—ambitious. I always kept hoping he'd give up his title and be prime minister one day, but I think he'll be foreign secretary. He's not—he doesn't have this drive that Jack did, but he still cares. I suppose he can do as much that way.
Well, I've been after him too to try to get him to give up his title, but it's clear that he's probably not—not going to do it.
It isn't because he cares that much about his title. It's just that he's never been pushy.
That's right. He thinks if he does this it will signal the fact that he wants to be prime minister, which he thinks is an absurd thing for him to want to be. Well, of course, it isn't. In the winter of or in early spring of '63, one big thing, of course, was the steel crisis and—were you—you were around then?45
And I remember how really outraged Jack was. You know, it's one of the few times—he really controlled his temper. I mean, you never saw him lose it, but just sometimes that flash. I mean, he was really—what Roger Blough did to