Jacqueline Kennedy - Caroline Kennedy [97]
Do you remember anything about the President's mood, before he went to Nassau?
Well, not exactly. What would it have been? Well, some anticipation.
Yes, and concern, because it did weaken Macmillan's political position. And I think the actual solution was worked out by the President and Mac Bundy and David on the plane down to Nassau.
And I remember Jack being really mad, either talking to me on the phone from Nassau or telling me before. He hated Diefenbaker, and Diefenbaker had made some snotty condition that he had to come down there and have lunch with him one day, or something. He was mad about that. But, you know, they had a good time, always, he and Macmillan—I mean, sort of it was rather wry laughter. You know, they always managed to have their jokes, even though they were tinged with despair a bit. But that was too bad, that whole thing.
Actually, the problem of the testing of Skybolt, although it was a big thing then, didn't have the effect that everyone feared and—it did for about a week, but I think it was so well handled that it—
Well, maybe here, but it really caused trouble for Macmillan at home, didn't it?
Well, to some degree—for a time. But Labour didn't want Skybolt either, so they weren't in a position to exploit it for themselves.
I see. And then I remember Randolph Churchill, when Jack went to Washington, came over. Well, he was so pro-Jack in all of—that was very nice. I don't think he saw Jack that time. Maybe he did.
Yes, he came to Washington thereafter, and was very proud of the fact that he'd written the one pro-Nassau piece to appear in the British press.
That's right.
The next big thing was de Gaulle's veto of British entrance into the Common Market.2 The President was rather fascinated by de Gaulle, wasn't he? As a historical phenomenon?
Well, of course, he was always interested in him, but really it was more Churchill. And I think probably because I read, or said I did, de Gaulle's memoirs and because he used a sentence from one of them when he announced for the presidency—"I've always had a certain image of America"—that's taken from the opening line of de Gaulle's—"I've always had a certain image of France." Just that. But he saw—he used to talk to me about de Gaulle so realistically. You know, that that man was just consumed really with grudges, and he'd explain of how he'd never forgotten the slights of the last world war, or practically, that we didn't come earlier into the first world war. When everybody that he was dealing with then is dead, and everything, and he just—he was nice about it. He never got mad the way he did about the Germans or anything. But he just seemed to have such distaste for someone who was so spiteful. I remember he asked him, in Paris and he was very interested, who he got along with best—Churchill or Roosevelt. And de Gaulle said, "With Churchill I was always in disagreement but we always reached an accord. With Roosevelt I was always in agreement but we never had an accord"—or some lovely little French wordplay—but, you know, so when de Gaulle did that, well, I wouldn't be surprised if Jack almost expected it. And I remember one time later—oh, I was having to answer a letter to Malraux or something—when Malraux came over for the Mona Lisa,3 which was way after that, I think. He came for dinner one night alone, afterwards, and Jack said he purposely wasn't going to talk to him about all this—you know, France and England and everything, the kind of thing that Hervé was always so frantic about. He talked to him only about Red China. Bundy could tell you that conversation. He said, "Why are all of