Known and Unknown_ A Memoir - Donald Rumsfeld [41]
I was busy, so I asked my assistant, Dick Cheney, to handle the issue. Cheney was focused more on the need to elect Republicans to Congress than on my friendship with Al, and he drafted a strong statement of support for his opponent, who was then able to make it look as if Lowenstein had distorted his relationship with me for political gain.
I’d like to think that if I’d dealt with the matter personally I might have found a way to meet the needs of both friendship and politics. I’ve always regretted how the situation ended up. Al wound up losing the campaign. He was understandably unhappy with me, and it hurt our friendship. I learned that the political world sometimes made things difficult for friends.
Of all the presidents I’ve observed close up, John F. Kennedy was probably the most charismatic. He radiated warmth and good humor, and his televised press conferences usually offered glimpses of both qualities. The first time I had a conversation with him was at a House of Representatives’ annual party in 1963. The privilege of escorting the President around and introducing him fell to Congressman Albert Thomas, a Democrat from Texas and a friend of Vice President Lyndon Johnson. A thirty-year veteran on Capitol Hill, Thomas was first elected just after I was born.
“Mr. President, this is the best young Republican that we have had around here in years,” Thomas said, introducing me to President Kennedy. “He’s not very good at paddleball, but he’s a great guy.”
Lean and smartly attired, President Kennedy reached out to shake my hand. “It’s nice to meet you, Congressman,” he said, with his distinctive Boston accent. “What district are you from?”
“The Thirteenth District of Illinois,” I replied, “north of Chicago.”
“That’s Mrs. Church’s old district, isn’t it?”
“It is, Mr. President,” I replied.
“They sure did beat me in that district,” he said, smiling.
We chatted for a bit, and then he moved on. I was not surprised that Kennedy, with his acute political instincts, knew my district off the top of his head.
Joyce and I received our first invitation to the White House during the Kennedy administration. Joyce found me at one point and said she had had an interesting conversation with the nicest man. She knew he looked familiar, but she couldn’t quite place him. She pointed to him across the room. It turned out to be Dean Rusk, the Secretary of State. We were not accustomed to meeting such people socially.
Later that evening I saw President Kennedy standing in the hall, close to the elevator that went up to his private quarters. He looked different from the athletic, handsome man I had met some months before. His face was a bit puffy. I would read later that it may have been caused by the medication he took for his back pain. Though he was the same engaging president, he seemed tired. I never spoke with him again.
Sometime after that visit to the White House, I was back home meeting with a group of Chicago-area businessmen. Even though Kennedy, unlike many of the Democrats who succeeded him, recognized the relationship between tax relief and economic growth, he was met with wariness by the business community.* Though Kennedy’s victory over Richard M. Nixon three years earlier had been narrow, I felt he was going to be tougher to beat as an incumbent. He was already putting his political organization in place, which apparently was what had taken him to Dallas, Texas, that November morning.
As I was speaking to the Chicago group, a waiter came into the room, walked up to my host, and whispered into his ear. The host looked at me. I could tell something was wrong.
“Excuse me, Congressman,” he said, a look of disbelief crossing his face. “President Kennedy has just been shot.” Our meeting promptly ended, as we sought out more information about what had happened.
At first, word was that Kennedy