The Death of a President Read online

  Observing that he was still concerned, she asked him, “If it’s so important that I look all right in Dallas, why do I have to be blown around in a motorcade first?” He knew why. Exposure, like patronage, was a source of political strength. You had to move through crowds. And you had to move slowly. He remembered a sardonic El Paso letter after his trip there last June: “We enjoyed you going by in your jet.” Nevertheless he had always been a bear for detail, and he tried to do something about this one; twice on the day before their departure for Texas he telephoned Pamela Turnure, his wife’s press secretary, to discuss the First Lady’s hair. Pam suggested putting up the bubbletop on the Presidential car. No, he replied; that was out of the question. Barring rain, they had to be where the people would see them. Pam recommended a shorter route. Another veto; the motorcade had to last forty-five minutes. They discussed women’s hats until the President, out of his element and painfully aware of it, reduced it to a joke. “Take a forty-five-minute drive around Washington in an open car with Dave Powers,” he ordered. “See what you look like when you come back.”

  That was on Wednesday, November 20, 1963, the second of his last two full days in Washington, and anyone under the impression that the President of the United States was devoting his full energy to wardrobes and coiffures is invited to examine his activity during those final White House hours. Monday had been a day of formal speeches and informal politicking in Florida (another ten electoral votes that couldn’t be written off), and Tuesday he had reached the office early. His telephone log for the next forty-eight hours records a barrage of official calls to the Cabinet, the sub-cabinet, Presidential aides, the Supreme Court, and the Congress. There were seven phone conversations with Robert Kennedy, who later remembered that his brother’s manner then—as, indeed, for the past ten days—was rather gloomy.

  Certainly he had been saturnine that Tuesday morning. The children were in the country with their mother, cutting school, so he had missed his French lesson after breakfast. This was a closely guarded secret. Charles de Gaulle was becoming increasingly difficult to deal with, and the President had concluded that the most effective way to tackle Gaullian amour-propre would be to learn his language—really learn it—and then negotiate in it. It was pure Kennedy, a decision undertaken with zest and pursued with improvisation. His teacher was Madame Jacqueline Hirsh, Caroline’s French teacher. Since September she had been tutoring the President and his daughter mornings in the mansion. “How long do you think it will take me?” he had asked Madame Hirsh at the outset. “A year,” she had replied. He couldn’t resist the challenge: “I bet I do it in six months.” Undeniably he was making amazing progress. Unable to suppress the temptation, he tried a few sentences on visitors from a former French colony, and while no one had guessed what he was up to, Madame Nicole Alphand, the bird-eyed wife of the French Ambassador to Washington, had heard vague rumors and had relayed them to her husband.

  No lesson today, however, so he stalked dourly over to the office and asked Mrs. Evelyn Lincoln, his dark, frail secretary, who looked far more like a schoolmarm than Jacqueline Hirsh, “Where are those clowns?” Clowns, unless otherwise specified, meant O’Donnell, O’Brien, and Powers. “They’re home, worn out from Florida,” she said. He snorted. Instead of the distraction Powers would have provided, his office was invaded by a delegation from the Poultry and Egg National Board, lugging the President’s annual Thanksgiving turkey and shepherded by that master carver, Senator Everett M. Dirksen of Illinois. They were followed by other appointments: the U.S. Ambassador to Ghana, a conference of ninety state educators, Secretary of State Rusk, the U.S. Ambassador to Indonesia, and—another secret project—Pierre Salinger.

  At midnight Pierre would fly to Honolulu with Dean Rusk and McGeorge Bundy for a Vietnam council of war; then he, Rusk, and five other Cabinet members would proceed to Japan. You couldn’t conceal all Pierre’s movements, and the press knew he would be in Tokyo. They had been told, and they believed, that it was a junket, a joy ride. It wasn’t. Kennedy hadn’t forgotten his predecessor’s Japanese fiasco, when leftist riots had forced Eisenhower to cancel a call there. He meant to restore American prestige with a February visit. Pierre’s job was to set things up.

  The President was seated behind his desk, signing letters. Perched on the end of his nose was a pair of spectacles. During the past three months his farsightedness had grown more marked, an inevitable sign of age, and except in public he relied entirely upon his glasses.

  “I’m off tonight,” Salinger said. “I just wanted to say good-bye.” Kennedy looked up and smiled. Pierre told him that Mac Kilduff would act as his press secretary in Texas. Normally the No. 2 man in the press office was Andy Hatcher, but Hatcher, a Negro, would stay in Washington.

  “Who’s going to handle Chancellor Erhard’s visit here?” Kennedy inquired. The West German Chancellor was to arrive Monday, and Salinger wouldn’t return until Wednesday.

  “Andy will be here.”

  “O.K., that’ll be fine.” The President paused and removed his glasses. Then he said, “I wish I weren’t going to Texas.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” Salinger said. “It’s going to be a great trip, and you’re going to draw the biggest crowds ever.”

  Kennedy smiled again. “Hurry back.”

  Dusk gathered in the Rose Garden, night fell, and the appointments continued: the Hon. Roger Hilsman, the Hon. James Bell, Mr. Richard Helms, Mr. Hershel Peake. Special Assistant Fred Holborn came over from the East Wing for talks about Germany and the new Presidential Medal of Freedom, and at this point the solemnity, the deep voices, and measured discussions of issues were interrupted by a familiar intrusion. Mrs. Kennedy was still at Atoka, but the children were back. Young John burst in weeping with a cut nose, consoled by Caroline. The nose was quickly bandaged, and they stayed in Mrs. Lincoln’s office, Caroline quietly drawing pictures and John playing with a child’s tea set. Mac Bundy, dropping by for his farewell, was given a mock serving of John’s “cherry vanilla pie.” He stood gravely, pretending to munch; then, having pronounced it delicious, he was allowed to depart for Hawaii.

  Walter Heller, Chairman of the President’s Council of Economic Advisers and the last visitor of the day, was doggedly scooping up invisible portions with a toy spoon when Kennedy beckoned him in. “I’ll be back in a minute,” the economist promised the boy, “but I have to talk to your daddy first.” “Daddy” sounded awkward to Heller, but “the President,” he knew, would seem even stranger to the boy. In the office he reported on unemployment and Kennedy’s new antipoverty program. “I’m still very much in favor of doing something on the poverty theme if we can get a good program,” the President told him, “but I also think it’s important to make clear that we’re doing something for the middle-income man in the suburbs. But the two aren’t at all inconsistent with each other. So go right ahead with your work on it.” With that, he took the children for a swim in his pool and then retired, after dinner, to an evening of paperwork in the yellow-walled oval study on the second floor of the mansion.

  It was incredible how much he could cover between their bedtime and his own. There were the drafts of the Texas speeches. There was a personal matter—he planned to surprise the First Lady Christmas morning with a fur rug. There were new items of political significance, for 1964 pressures were building up month by month. He had a strong hunch that the GOP would follow its death wish and nominate Barry Goldwater, but he couldn’t count on such fantastic luck, so he was planning a maximum effort. Since Labor Day, for example, Johnson’s trusted aide, Cliff Carter, had been setting up Texas headquarters in Austin. The President’s brother-in-law, Steve Smith, was now spending four days a week in Washington on National Committee business. Pat Lucey was already at work in Wisconsin, and Helen Keyes in Cleveland. If Goldwater became the sacrificial lamb, so much the better; he would vanish in an historic landslide, carrying a handful of states. The size of the Democratic majority was a matter of conjecture, but th
e President was confident of a smashing re-election. Before he left office, he felt, he would be the senior statesman of the West, perhaps of the world, and he was already planning the second Kennedy administration. The Cabinet would have to change. His brother wanted to bow out as Attorney General; he had already begun to speak of his Justice Department years in the past tense. The second most powerful man in the government couldn’t retire in his thirties. But where would he be most useful? Then there was Dillon, who wanted to leave the Treasury and return to his banking firm. And there was also the matter of Rusk. Aware that the President intended to be his own foreign minister, Rusk had leaned on him increasingly in other ways. After the second inaugural, the Cabinet would almost certainly be headed by Secretary of State Robert S. McNamara. Who would then lead the military establishment? Secretary of Defense Robert F. Kennedy? Probably not; the younger Kennedy, eager to do something about the deteriorating situation in Latin America, had tentatively decided that once Rusk had left he would ask to be Assistant Secretary for Inter-American Affairs. But the Cabinet reshuffle could wait. Meantime there was the everlasting, exasperating problem of Congress.

  Ordinarily the legislative leadership breakfasted with the Chief Executive Tuesdays. Because of his Florida trip the breakfast had been postponed and was, at 8:45 A.M., his first meeting on Wednesday. To the guests in the executive mansion—Senators Mansfield, Humphrey, and Smathers and Congressmen Albert and Boggs—the President seemed buoyant that morning. That didn’t prevent him from goading them. Here it was November, practically Thanksgiving, nearly the end of the year, and they hadn’t even passed the regular appropriations bills. What were they doing up there? They exhorted him to be patient. Unhooking his spectacles, he worried the bridge of his nose with his restless right hand—that busy, fisting hand which at times seemed to have a life of its own—and murmured in an aside, “Things always look so much better away from Washington.” Senator Hubert Humphrey of Minnesota and House Whip Hale Boggs of Louisiana, who had heard the murmur, strolled over to the West Wing with him afterward. Some Congressmen, they said, were disturbed over reports that there might be trouble in Dallas. Kennedy shrugged. He and Boggs had held this conversation before, when he had been threatened with a New Orleans demonstration in 1962. His reply now was the same: the notion that an American President could not go into any American city was simply unacceptable. Boggs then mentioned the strife among Texas Democrats. “Mr. President,” he said half-jokingly, “you’re going into quite a hornet’s nest.” Kennedy replied absently, “Well, that always creates interesting crowds.”

  In his office, bright now with the promise of a crisp autumn day, he plunged afresh into administrivia. At 9:15 Under Secretary of the Treasury Henry Fowler reported new developments on the tax bill. Fowler, a courtly Virginian and a favorite of the President’s, was given a pep talk and a glimpse of Kennedy’s latest ship model. At 9:38 three Berlin high school students tiptoed in shyly and were greeted. At 9:42 a delegation of tank officers honored the President with the Eighth Armored Division Citation. At 9:31 there had been a telephoned report from Douglas Dillon: the Secretary was on the Hill, testifying about the wheat sale to Russia. That was a real hornet’s nest, and at 9:48 Smathers returned with Larry O’Brien for pointers on the Senate strategy. After them, in order, Angie Duke of the State Department pranced in, squiring the U.S. Ambassador to Sierra Leone; Jerry Wiesner, the President’s science adviser, introduced a delegation of American scientists just back from the Geneva Conference on Space Communications; Democratic National Committeeman John Bailey beamed as Lena Horne and five fellow entertainers received Presidential handshakes; Secretary Orville Freeman and Charlie Murphy reviewed agricultural problems before Freeman made his own departure for the Cabinet trip; and then Dick Goodwin entered escorting seven Latin-American intellectuals. Kennedy detained the escort a moment. On Friday Goodwin was to be named his Special Assistant for Cultural Affairs, but first the President wanted his thoughts about U.S. personnel posted in Latin America. By the time Goodwin had given them it was nearly lunchtime. There were a few minutes for private business. Jim Reed, Assistant Secretary of the Treasury and a close Kennedy friend since their days together in PT boats, had been moonlighting as real estate agent for the President, negotiating a July lease for a summer home on Hyannis Port’s Squaw Island. Actually Kennedy wanted to buy the house, but the owner, a Pennsylvania textile manufacturer, was being difficult. He wouldn’t sell, and at first he had insisted on $3,000 rent. Too much for a month, Kennedy had protested. Reed had just settled for $2,300, and now the President signed the lease with a flourish and went off for a swim with Dave Powers, jester in residence.

  The day ended with a minor crisis. After a nap he had returned for more ambassadorial appointments. Carl Rowan (Finland) followed Douglas Henderson (Bolivia). Then there was a brief lull. Feeling at loose ends, Kennedy wandered into Mrs. Lincoln’s office and found her chatting with her aunt, Mrs. Nettie Carlson of Polk, Nebraska. Mrs. Carlson, meeting her first President, flushed. “Why not take a picture?” Kennedy suggested. Flustered feminine protests: she’d spoil the picture. “Call Captain Stoughton,” he commanded, and Cecil Stoughton, the chubby, genial White House photographer, appeared to snap the three of them. The crisis ended Mrs. Carlson’s embarrassment. A State Department limousine disgorged Under Secretary U. Alexis Johnson—with both Rusk and George Ball away he was running Foggy Bottom—and two frowning aides. The Cambodians were being impossible again. Prince Norodom Sihanouk seemed determined to wind up inside the Chinese tiger. He had just asked the United States to terminate economic assistance to his country. Q.: Should our ambassador in Pnompenh reason with him? A.: He should not. Kennedy was blunt. All aid was to end immediately, this very afternoon. Since it was already 5:50 P.M., the three diplomats hurried off. Kennedy peered out and waved at Mrs. Carlson, who tittered, and Evelyn Lincoln’s phone rang.

  “It’s Mrs. Kennedy,” she told the President. “The judges are waiting upstairs.”

  Jacqueline Kennedy had again moved up the date for her re-emergence into public life. Plans for the executive mansion’s annual judicial reception had specified that Mrs. Earl Warren would act as the President’s hostess. Mrs. Kennedy had decided to remain in Virginia, saving her strength for Texas. She expected to resume her official duties in the mansion on Monday, November 25, at the state dinner for Chancellor Erhard. A phone conversation with her husband at 7:45 the evening before the reception had changed her mind, however, and after a five-mile gallop on her Arabian gelding that Wednesday morning she had returned. At noon a helicopter had deposited her in Anacostia—Kennedy, sensitive to Congressional criticism, reserved the mansion helipad for official business—and one of the black Mercurys from the White House garage on Twenty-second Street had whisked her through the Southwest Gate at 1:19 P.M. Upstairs a pyramid of unanswered correspondence awaited her, but Nancy Tuckerman, her social secretary, had sent over a thoughtful note: “Forget the Treaty Room until you come back. I thought you might like to see the list of people invited tonight.… Good luck!” Pam Turnure had relayed word of the President’s calls to her, and the First Lady had summoned Kenneth of Lilly Daché, the hairdresser. Then she had slipped into a gown of mulberry-colored velvet. While Kennedy had been instructing the State Department to tell off the Cambodians she had entered the yellow study, ready for the first guests.

  The reception, which was destined to be John Kennedy’s last public appearance in the capital, was divided into two acts. In Washington the name of the game is protocol, and no one enjoys playing it more than judges. Nobody, on the other hand, was readier to set it aside than the Kennedys. Obviously the President had to receive the Supreme Court. But that was only eleven couples, counting the retired justices. Even after the minor jurists had been included it was still the mansion’s smallest formal affair. Everyone wanted to meet the President, and the Attorney General felt that some of the clerks and secretaries who worked unsparingly for the administration should have
a chance to see him. This being a Justice Department function, the guest list was therefore expanded. The first act, upstairs, featured the Court and the Attorney General. Downstairs the cast for the second act waited—565 Justice functionaries and White House spear carriers. These included some of the most devoted New Frontiersmen: the volunteers who had come to Washington three Januarys ago to line snowbound Pennsylvania Avenue, fan ablaze the spark he had ignited, and acquire themselves the celebrated élan which the nation had come to know as the Kennedy style.

  That style had an almost magical quality. There was an air of high drama about the man; as Eisenhower put it privately, Kennedy had become “the darling of the population.” Something was always happening to him—something always lay just ahead. And beneath the public crescendos his life was vibrant with countless personal anticipations. Everything interested this man. The dullest detail could excite him. There was, for example, the redecoration of his office, financed by the sales of Jacqueline Kennedy’s dollar guidebook to the White House. The decorators had been ready for weeks, waiting for him to be absent from his desk for a day and a half. The Texas trip would give them ample time. This afternoon the new draperies had been hung in the Cabinet Room, and on Friday the bright red rug would be put down in the office itself. Interior decorators are a nuisance to most executives. The Chief Executive was fascinated, and eager to see their work.

  And then there were the private celebrations. The season, as penciled notations in the First Lady’s appointments book testified, was a time of anniversaries. In September she and the President had been married exactly a decade. Today was Bob Kennedy’s birthday. Friday Ted and Joan Kennedy were to celebrate their fifth anniversary—too bad to be away in Texas—and next week John would be three years old and Caroline six. Caroline was now old enough to visit friends overnight. In a room across the corridor she had put aside her pink bear and Raggedy Ann, anticipating Friday noon, when she would leave to spend her first weekend away from relatives with little Agatha Pozen, whose mother had taken the two girls through Arlington’s Custis-Lee Mansion last March. Caroline, enchanted, had told her father of it, and the following weekend he had crossed the river with Charlie Bartlett to see for himself. The view was spectacular; “I could,” he had told Bartlett, “stay here forever.”