Kennedy (67 page)

Nor was every office hour spent on matters of state. His conversations with visitors sometimes turned to a kind of nineteenth-century court gossip about public figures and private lives, astonishing strangers from all fields with his curiosity about the personalities and politics of their professions, his knowledge of high and low goings-on, and his willingness to spend time in lighthearted conversation. He found time in 1963 to plan a surprise birthday party for Dave Powers and to attend one the staff had planned for him.

Those parties typified the rapport between the President and his staff. He was informal without being chummy, hard-driving but easy-mannered, interested in us as people without being patronizing. While
neither he nor we ever forgot that he bore the responsibilities of leadership, he treated us more as colleagues or associates than employees. He made clear that we were there to give advice as well as to take orders. All of us, no matter how long or how well we had known him, addressed him only as “Mr. President,” and all of us referred to him in private as well as public only as “the President.” (I found this a bit awkward when talking with his wife, but not with the Attorney General, who largely followed the same practice.)

Above all, the President was remarkably accessible. He could not afford to be bothered by insignificant details and did not like listening to whiners, but no staff member, Cabinet member or Congressman with important business to lay before him had any difficulty seeing him alone. “You might have to wait until late in the night,” as Maxwell Taylor said, “but if you sent word you needed to see the President you got to see him.”

O’Donnell and Salinger—and usually Bundy, O’Brien and myself—were in and out of the oval office several times a day. No appointment was necessary for most of these quick informal visits, but we did not interrupt other conferences, and O’Donnell often suggested when we might catch him between appointments. Many times I would walk in to find the President totally absorbed in reading a report or writing a letter, and he would completely concentrate on that effort, unbothered by my presence, until he had completed it. Other times I would obtain answers to a series of questions or report on new developments as I walked with him over to his quarters before lunch or dinner, or talked with him as he changed clothes or lay in bed. On rare occasions he would come to my office down the hall from his.

There was no pattern to the number of times I would see him in a given day. Most days one or more of his formally scheduled meetings involved my participation. Often I would be summoned to his office by telephone. Frequently I would catch him between meetings or before lunch to review quickly a number of smaller problems. Only a few words from him on each topic would usually suffice.

Around 7:30 in the evening, after the last of his official conferences, was often the best time for me to drop in and raise miscellaneous matters not covered during the day. He was usually in a relaxed mood then, sometimes in his shirt sleeves, sometimes watching the news on TV or signing mail while we talked, sometimes striding out to Mrs. Lincoln’s office to read whatever was on the top of her desk. He was at his reflective best in those hours, relating some crisis or anecdote of the day, asking me to check into some new problem or suggestion, or raising some question on which he sought my opinion. One evening, for example, he was absorbed in the task of selecting names for new
Polaris submarines. He was amused that the Quakers had objected to William Penn, a pacifist hero, and that the Pentagon had objected to those Indian chiefs who had fought against the U.S. The Navy felt that the name of Chief Red Cloud had particularly unfortunate international connotations. Those talks were among my most treasured, and I often dropped in at that hour with only the flimsiest excuse of official business.

The same time period was utilized by other aides unable to see him during the day, and it was not uncommon for two or three of us to be standing simultaneously at his desk presenting problems. His daughter Caroline and son John, Jr. would also frequently drop in at this hour for a prebedtime romp with their father and a piece of candy from Mrs. Lincoln’s desk, just as they sometimes would during the day. Their father, depending upon his work, would either encourage their questions and antics or continue his work oblivious of them until finished. At times he would introduce them to his guests, Caroline curtsying and John giving a little bow, and then ask them to wait in the outer office, where his daughter might draw pictures while his son played with the toys kept for him by Mrs. Lincoln.

John Kennedy, Jr. (contrary to popular impression, his parents did not call him “John-John” and in fact disliked the nickname) liked to crawl through the “secret door” in the side of his father’s desk or play somewhat dangerously with the works of scrimshaw (finely engraved whale tooth) which ornamented the office. The entire room, in fact, had been redecorated by the President and his wife with a nautical motif. Ship models graced the shelves, and pictures of ships and naval battles dominated the walls. A whaling harpoon and the sword and flag of Commodore John Barry stood on one side of his desk, facing the American and purple-and-gold Presidential flags on the other. Even his desk, discovered by Jacqueline in a White House storage room, had been made in the nineteenth century of battleship timbers; and on it was the coconut shell on which Kennedy had carved the message that rescued his crew and himself. Family photographs, a picture painted by his wife and bird models of two Cape Cod sandpipers varied the decor.

The desk was usually disordered during the day, as was the table crowded with newspapers and magazines behind it. Its other fixed items included a metal prop for his daily schedule, a black alligator desk set presented by General De Gaulle, the usual paraphernalia for writing and, between two bookends, specially leather-bound copies of his five books: the private volume he edited about his brother,
As We Remember Joe; Why England Slept; Profiles in Courage;
and his two books of speeches,
The Strategy of Peace
and
To Turn the Tide
(publication of
The Burden and the Glory
was not completed while he was President).

The whole White House crackled with excitement under John Kennedy, but the soundproof oval office, the very center and stimulant of all the action, symbolized his own peace of mind. The tall French windows opened onto the completely renovated flower garden of which he was inordinately proud. Even on gloomy days the light pouring in through those windows on the blue rug and freshly painted cream-colored walls bathed his ash splint rocking chair and two beige couches, brought in for more friendly talks, in a quiet glow. He tried the fireplace only once and, to his embarrassment, promptly filled the entire West Wing with smoke. (I rushed in offering to save George Washington’s portrait.)

In a larger sense, the President’s office is wherever the President may be. For unlike the Congress and Supreme Court, the Presidency never recesses or adjourns. Unlike the arrangement in most departments and states, his absence from the country does not make his running mate Acting President. Wherever he went, Kennedy was linked by telephone to the White House switchboard, guarded by the Secret Service, and discreetly followed by one of an alternating team of Army warrant officers carrying in a slender black case the secret codes by which the Presidential order for nuclear retaliation would be given. Wherever he went, he received the same daily CIA briefing from a military or other aide and read most of the same daily newspapers, which were flown in to him if necessary. Wherever he went, he took with him the bulky black alligator briefcase he had carried since his first days in the House—the same bag he often took over to the Mansion in the evening—bulging with whatever he and his staff felt he needed to read by way of mail, magazines, books, briefing memos and assorted dispatches and documents. During absences of forty-eight hours or more, additional materials were flown to him regularly. Wherever he went, he kept in constant touch with Washington, signed bills and Executive Orders, and conferred on or contemplated current crises.

Despite these continuing burdens, a break in the routines helped prevent them from breaking him. The President thought it best for his family life and personal outlook to get away from the White House, when possible, for at least twenty-four hours on a weekend, for the whole weekend in the summer and for a longer holiday on occasion. In the summer, and occasionally in the fall, he traveled to his home at Hyannis Port on Cape Cod, with additional visits to the summer home of his wife’s family in Newport, Rhode Island. (The persistent recurrence of weekend rain and fog at the Cape in 1961 brought on a debate, only
partly humorous, between the First Lady and her father-in-law about whether the climates of the two communities differed.) In the winter and spring Palm Beach was the site for the longer stays; and for a brief weekend respite the Kennedys would sometimes use Camp David, the official Presidential retreat in the Maryland Hills, or the rented estate Glenora in the Virginia countryside. A home of their own in the same area was built in 1963.

During these family weekends the President, when it was time for play, could, whatever the strains of the moment, devote every inch of mind and body to leisure as intensively as he had to work, completely shaking off and shutting out the worries of the world beyond.

When at the seaside, he took long walks and swims, played with his children in the sand, devoured light as well as heavy reading and went boating with his father and family. He held to no official schedule, alternating work and play, reading and resting, talking to his children and talking to one of us on the telephone or in person. Occasionally I accompanied him to Cape Cod or Palm Beach for working weekends, and Salinger and a military aide always traveled with him on such trips. But, except for his daily briefings, he tried to keep Glenora and Camp David free from official visitors.

If we were working at Cape Cod he usually asked me to meet him at his house after church. Having changed into sport clothes, he would work over my latest draft or memorandum in his living room or on the back porch, usually smoking a cigar and sometimes, just before supper, drinking a daiquiri. On a very few occasions we worked during his daily boat ride, lunching on fish chowder and other preparations of the White House assistant chef, watching his wife water-ski, and lounging on the fantail talking in a lighthearted manner about people more than problems.

He relaxed best of all on the water. Although he sailed less frequently than he had in his younger days, and had perhaps forgotten the channels, judging from his embarrassment one day upon running aground on a sandbar, he loved the sea, as he had since childhood. (When he first sailed with his brother Joe, his father recalled, they were still “so small you couldn’t see their heads and it looked from the shore as if the boat were empty.”) On board either the family or Presidential cruiser, the President read history or biography or fiction, chatted with family and friends, waved at passing boats, watched local sailing races and enjoyed the distance between himself and the Secret Service. Birthday outings or weekends—his father’s, his wife’s, his children’s, his own—were very special, for the President could be quite sentimental about presents and reunions. At night he would watch a movie, though he was increasingly inclined to walk out on bad ones,
and in Hyannis Port he would each weekend drive his children, and whichever of their twenty or so cousins were around, to the local candy shop.

Sundays included not only attending church but watching the political panel shows on television, as though he did not get his fill of that during the week. When I appeared at his request on
Meet the Press
at a delicate time—between the Cuban crisis and the 1962 election—the program had no sooner ended than the telephone rang in the studio. “They didn’t lay a glove on you,” said the President from Glenora.

When his back permitted, he played golf, often immediately upon arrival at whichever weekend home was near a course. Although neither his back nor his duties permitted much practice, he was a natural golfer and a good one, shooting in the low 80’s. Red Fay told of the game in May of 1960 at Cypress Point, California, when the candidate pleaded with a drive headed straight for the hole not to drop in. The publicity from a hole-in-one, he said, would not help a Democratic candidate at a time when Presidential golfing was a subject of not always friendly comment. He never used the putting green Eisenhower installed behind the White House, and was amused by the children’s forts dug in the sand trap and the toys planted near the cup. At least once, however, he was out in the back driving golf balls toward the Washington Monument.

His friends have related how he fancied himself to be Ben Hogan, Arnold Palmer or some other professional champion whenever he swung a golf club (or Y. A. Tittle, the famed New York Giants quarterback, whenever he picked up a football). “He never started a game [of golf],” said British Ambassador David Ormsby-Gore, a frequent partner, “without working out a very complicated system of bets” in a discussion that usually lasted through the first three holes, with all bets doubling on the ninth.

The Ormsby-Gores (later Lord and Lady Harlech) were often guests of the Kennedys at Cape Cod, Camp David and Palm Beach, but their discussions rarely centered on British-U.S. affairs. They had been personal friends for many years, and the President felt no obligation either to transform all his personal relationships to an official level or to transfer all his professional relationships to the social level. I saw them socially on comparatively rare occasions, without the slightest embarrassment about this on either side.

When he was not working, he and Jacqueline liked having people around who were cheerful, amusing, energetic, informed and informal. While the friends mentioned in
Chapter I
also served as sources and sounding boards for independent ideas and information, they sought, with rare exception, no influence or favors, and they were all as candid
and casual with the Commander in Chief as they had been when he was a Congressman. He found, after the first few weeks, that it was difficult for him as President to take walks with an old friend around the Washington Monument or to drop in on one as casually as he had dropped in at Joe Alsop’s his first night as President (where he hungrily devoured terrapin soup, the only food that could be located, while discussing the experiences of Inaugural Day). But he did continue his practice of calling his old friends by telephone at all hours of the day and night.