Kennedy (66 page)

His own physical pain was the other chief source of personal stress. More fit than ever in every other way, a picture of health and vitality, he was still plagued by his aching back. The rocking chair was moved over from his Senate office and more rockers were acquired, becoming a nationally recognized symbol of the traditional values, reflective patience and practical informality prevailing in the White House. A cloth brace, three hot baths a day, rest on a heating pad after lunch, prescribed calisthenics before supper and daily swims in the heated White House pool all helped, but the pain was almost always with him. “He never complained,” said Dave Powers. “You…might have an idea by some of his silences that maybe his back was bothering him, but he never ever complained.”

His injury was aggravated when he planted a tree in the capital city of Canada on his May, 1961, visit. It was not until later that month, as I watched him ease himself slowly and carefully into an ornate bathtub upon his arrival in Paris, that I realized the pain he was in. Back in Washington, he was forced to use crutches around the White House, although, still opposed to evidencing any physical weakness, he stoically put them away when talking to outsiders or departing the grounds. But he had to deliver one speech seated in 1961, and had to cancel a few others.

At times the pain was worse, at times better. “It depends,” he said, “on the weather—political and otherwise.” But at all times he approached climbing stairs, stooping and lifting somewhat gingerly. He was cautious about his annual ceremonial duty of throwing out the first baseball of the professional season, but never satisfied with less than the best in any endeavor, he secretly practiced on the White House lawn. He golfed more rarely than he desired and lifted his children less frequently than both he and they would have liked. The Presidency was by no means the same physical endurance contest as the campaign. But the Kennedy Presidency required of both the man and his aides
long hours, relentless activity and steady concentration, and John Kennedy rarely slowed his pace to ease his pain.
¹

The rigorous series of calisthenics he practiced daily under the direction of Dr. Hans Kraus of New York after the 1961 injury helped immensely. They not only strengthened his back but made him more muscular and trim. At times his vanity was still hurt by pictures showing him puffy in the face, but his weight finally stabilized at 175 pounds. He dieted frequently, once asking the chef to cut out his favorite chocolate soufflé until a forthcoming television appearance was over. He also acquired a few more lines on his face and a little more gray in his hair, and, as Dave Powers put it, “he looked more like a President every day.” To save time both his barber and his tailor worked on him in his office.

He still favored dark-colored, lightweight, two-button suits, with a monogrammed shirt and a PT-boat tie clasp. Not surprisingly, most of his aides did also. Even at Palm Beach and Hyannis Port he felt that the dignity of his office required him to don a coat and usually a tie whenever he was to be photographed at work, and on more than one occasion he handed out coats and ties to his aides before our pictures were taken with him. (He also smilingly chided us at Paris that our button-down collars were out of place in that capital of fashion.) Averell Harriman, reporting at Hyannis Port on his return from Moscow and the Test Ban Treaty negotiations, was touched when the President insisted on his taking a swim, and a Kennedy shirt and tie, before meeting the press.

Neither back pain nor bad luck could ever dim his sense of humor. The public saw part of it at his press conferences. The press saw more of it at their various annual dinners, where he invariably stole the show. Around the White House we saw it every day, on every subject. It was never forced or feigned, and far funnier than it was in public. It flowed naturally, good-naturedly, casually. It was dry, wry, ironic and irreverent. His humor was largely an integral part of his own thinking rather than a deliberate attempt to amuse others. He did not pause before his witticisms for effect or afterward for appreciation, but simply dropped them as part of his comments. Sometimes one could see the eyes twinkling and the smile breaking as he deliberated whether a particularly biting barb should be cast.

At no time did he show disrespect for his office or country, but no other subject was spared. The Attorney General and others thought it
almost sacrilegious for him to parody his own solemn Inaugural at a Democratic anniversary dinner, but he went ahead:

He kidded his staff, his wife, his brothers, his critics, his opponents, foreign leaders, Congressional leaders, columnists (“I’d rather be Fleesonized than Krocked”), everyone without regard to race, rank or relationship. His delicate relations with Prime Minister Diefenbaker of Canada could not restrain him from saying, upon his arrival in Ottawa, that he was less reluctant to try a few words in French after listening to the Prime Minister try it. He good-naturedly razzed Pierre Salinger about his weight, Evelyn Lincoln about her Methodism and me about an obviously borrowed dinner jacket. When Ken Galbraith complained that the otherwise favorable
New York Times
profile of him as the new Ambassador to India had called him arrogant, the President responded, “Why not? Everybody else does.”

Above all, he could still laugh at himself—at the solemnities he pronounced, at the praise he received, at the setbacks he suffered. He still took his problems seriously but never himself.

“I used to wonder, when I was a member of the House,” he told one dinner in the presence of the previous Democratic President, “how President Truman got in so much trouble. Now I am beginning to get the idea. It is not difficult.”

Addressing the 1961 graduating class of the Naval Academy at Annapolis, he might well have dwelt nostalgically on his days in the Navy, or lectured them sternly on the fight then raging over the military in politics. Instead, he was himself. “In the past,” he told the Midshipmen,

He assumed that we all would have to live indefinitely with national and international tensions and imperfect humans and solutions, and
he was blessed with qualities which helped him to prepare to make the best of it. The discipline of his mind and emotions was of a piece with his self-knowledge and his knowledge of his time and trials. He never self-consciously thought of himself as “courageous,” but he lived by the Hemingway definition with which he had opened
Profiles:
“grace under pressure.” (He could even rib that definition, saying it also described a girl he knew by that name.)

The sobering education and searing experiences of the Presidency obviously contributed to his growth but did not otherwise change him. Looking back, I am even more amazed that the White House did not alter his personal qualities. Upon his election, everyone about him automatically became more deferential, his life became more privileged and powerful, his every word became history. Yet he remained natural, candid, measuring his own deeds and words with doubt and amusement as well as pride. He entertained no delusions about himself or others, neither affecting nor accepting any pretensions of grandeur.

As usual, some mistook his humor, gaiety and gentle urbanity for a lack of depth, and some mistook his cool calculation of the reasonable for a lack of commitment. But his wit was merely an ornament to the earnest expressions that followed, and his reason reinforced his deep conviction and ideals.

President Kennedy’s day at the White House did not begin at any heroic predawn hour. Awakening around 7:30
A.M.
, he quickly read the morning papers and often placed calls on their contents. Throughout the day and night, as more newspapers and reports came in, more Presidential phone calls or terse memoranda would follow, inquiring, requesting, suggesting. Action was always expected as soon as possible. He was on the telephone, according to one estimate, more than fifty times in an average day, with a large portion of the calls taking place in the Mansion before and after his hours in the office.

After a bath, shaving as always in the tub to save time, breakfast was around 8:45—sometimes with his family if they were available, sometimes in bed with the newspapers, and once or twice a week on official business, with legislative leaders, staff members or others.

Between 9:00 and 9:30
A.M.
he arrived in his office, checked his mail, read a three-thousand-word CIA briefing and plunged into the day’s round of conferences. In addition to the official calendar of appointments released to the press, he had a far larger number of off-the-record meetings and a still larger number of informal talks with staff aides. Daily events often required new meetings to be squeezed into the
schedule. During the first few weeks, before the crush of crises began, he had received far more outsiders—politicians, newsmen, friends—just as he had found more time to visit friends around the city. In later months his work increasingly confined him to his office, but he still managed to avoid reliance on official channels of information only. “I sit in the White House,” he said, “and what I read…and…see is the sum total of what I hear and learn. So the more people I can see, or the wider I can expose [my mind] to different ideas, the more effective [I] can be as President.”

He refused to take the chance that his subordinates were screening out criticisms, alternatives or information on his or their errors. His compulsive curiosity was a valuable Presidential instinct. He made certain that he had the final decision on whom he would see and what he would read. He made certain that Bundy’s office received copies of every important cable moving in and out of State, Defense and CIA (and he arranged to receive some cables directly from individuals such as Galbraith). Each department made a weekly report on its activities in addition to the usual mountain of memoranda and messages. “I never heard of a President who wanted to know so much,” said one long-time career servant.

Ambassadors paying formal calls of farewell were interrogated as well as instructed. News interviewers found themselves being interviewed. Officials and journalists returning from overseas tours were invited to inform him fully on their findings. His wife was encouraged to report in writing on her observations of American officialdom in India and Pakistan (and those reports held back nothing by way of either praise or criticism). In preparation for Budget decisions, he toured firsthand several military, space and atomic energy installations. (His helicopter pilot had difficulty persuading the President that they should not attempt to land on a fourteen-hundred-foot crater at the Nevada atomic test site.)

He kept meetings as brief as the subject permitted, many no more than fifteen minutes, very few running over an hour, but when necessary sitting for several hours. For long afternoon meetings, he often ordered coffee served to all hands. He kept his own comments to a minimum and often cut short others, no matter how important or friendly, who were dealing with generalities or repeating the obvious. Frequently he saw their point long before they had finished. Focusing full attention upon each speaker, even while doodling on a pad before him, he had a remarkable ability to absorb detail while keeping in view the larger picture. When he considered a subject exhausted or a decision final, he would gather up all his papers as a sign that the meeting was over and, if this hint was not taken by persistent conferees, suddenly rise to his feet to say good-bye.

Despite these efforts, despite a new-found desire to be punctual, and despite Ken O’Donnell’s deliberate interruption of less crucial visits that were running overtime, the President was often an hour behind schedule by the end of his day. It was always an exhaustingly full and long day, as he remained in the office until 7:30, 8:00 or even 8:30
P.M.
, sometimes returning after his customarily late dinner, and usually reading reports and memoranda in the Mansion until midnight. Even when he had guests for dinner and a movie, he would often slip away after fifteen minutes of the film to work, and then rejoin them when it was over. More than once we worked in his West Wing oval office or in his bedroom or oval study in the Mansion until well past midnight. More than once after a late dinner I would invite guests to view the Presidential office only to find him there going over mail or other documents. Saturdays, when he was in Washington, were usually a shorter working day, and on Sundays no regular office hours were kept, But it all added up to an average of forty-five to fifty-five hours of work weekly in his office and still more over in the Mansion. “He lived at such a pace,” his wife has said, “because he wished to know it all.”

He helped himself maintain such a pace by wisely breaking his day for two hours or so at lunch. Around 1:30, and, if possible, a second time in the evening, he would take a fifteen-minute swim in the heated (90-degree) White House pool, usually with Dave Powers. Even at the height of the Cuban crisis he made time for his dip in the pool. Listening to recorded show music in the background, exchanging sports stories or anecdotes with Powers, he regenerated his energies and ideas, often giving Dave a list of messages he wanted delivered during the lunch hour. The swim, a rubdown and his calisthenics were followed by lunch—occasionally official affairs with foreign dignitaries, editors, or business or labor leaders, but more often private. He continued to read while lunching if he were alone—and then he would read or nap in bed while easing his back on a hotpad. Between three and four o’clock he was back in his office or on his way to a press conference, refreshed and ready to act.