C-SPAN FIRST LADIES/JACQUELINE KENNEDY
May 09, 2014 9:56 a.m. ET
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) JACQUELINE KENNEDY: And I think every first lady should do something in this position to help the things she cares about.
I just think that everything in the White House should be the best -- the entertainment that's given here.
The art of children is the same the world over. And so, of course, is our feeling for children. I think it is good in a world where there's quite enough to divide people, that we should cherish the language and emotion that unite us all.
(END VIDEO CLIP) SUSAN SWAIN: Jacqueline Kennedy's 1,000 days as first lady were defined by images -- political spouse, young mother, fashion icon, advocate for the arts. As television came of age, it was ultimately the tragic images of President Kennedy's assassination and funeral that cemented Jacqueline Kennedy in the public consciousness.
Good evening and welcome to C-SPAN's series "First Ladies: Influence and Image.” Tonight, we'll tell you the story of the wife of the 35th president of the United States, named Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy. And we have two guests at the table for the next two hours to tell you more about her life story.
Michael Beschloss, presidential historian, author of many books on the presidency, and has a special focus over the years on the Cold War era and the Kennedy administration. Thanks for being here.
MICHAEL BESCHLOSS: Pleasure. SWAIN: Barbara Perry is a UVA political scientist and as part of the "Modern First Ladies" series at the University of Kansas has written a Jacqueline Kennedy biography. Nice to see you.
PERRY: Great to be here. SWAIN: I want to start on our program before we get into more details about her White House years, with the assassination and the imagery of the assassination since anyone alive at that age certainly has those images seared in their mind. And subsequently because of the power of the Internet -- in the video we were talking before about, it's a collective consciousness. People have experienced this since it happened.
She was just 34 years old, is that correct? BESCHLOSS: Just 34 years old. And, you know, from the moment at Dallas, you know, I think we know so much about this story, you sometimes forget he was shot, in fact into her arms for five minutes they were going to the hospital. He was there with sightless eyes. And she felt almost from the moment that they left the hospital to go back to Washington that her great mission had to be to do something to make sure that he had the historical reputation that he deserved, but would not be there to fight for.
SWAIN: But where did a 34-year-old woman have the sense to -- and the experience -- what did she draw from to put this funeral with so many iconic images together in such a short time?
BESCHLOSS: She once said when she was a young women and she said this somewhat jokingly, "My ambition in life is to be the art director of the 20th century.” And oddly enough, she almost turned out to be that, at least for the Kennedy administration. And she felt that one thing that would be very important for his legacy would be, as horrible as Dallas was, to sort of wipe out the view of that and restore the American people's dignity by having three or four days of ceremony that she hoped would be what they remembered, rather than the tawdriness of what had happened in Texas.
SWAIN: Barbara Perry, unfortunately, as we've gone through the first ladies, this is not our first presidential assassination and presidential widow. But it's the first one really in the television age. As a political scientist, you talk about the power of television to affect the public view. How did it play out in this case?
PERRY: Well, certainly for the funeral, she knew that she wanted to go back to the Lincoln rites -- the funeral rites for Abraham Lincoln, our first assassinated president. And that is indeed what she did. She asked her brother-in-law and she asked the president's various friends and aides to come -- come to her aid and to find books on the Lincoln funeral. And they did. And then all of this played out on television.
So, I always like to point out that when Eisenhower was first elected in 1952, about 20 percent of American households had television sets. And by this time in 1963, probably 90 to 95 percent had televisions. And I'm sure like Michael and perhaps you as well, I can remember sitting in our family's living room on that night of November 22, 1963 and seeing Mrs. Kennedy walk out of Air Force One behind her husband's casket. And I think I can remember my parents and my two older brothers gasping to see Mrs. Kennedy in her bloodstained suit.
BESCHLOSS: Right. And she -- we now know that what she was saying to people, Lady Bird Johnson on that plane said, "Please, Jackie, let me get someone to help you change your clothes.” She said, "No, I want people to see what they have done to Jack."
SWAIN: Understood the power of that imagery. BESCHLOSS: Yes. SWAIN: We will have two hours for your questions and comments. And to tell you with video clips, audio clips, and your conversation, the story of Jacqueline Kennedy.
What's made this series so interesting, really, is the questions that you ask, and we'd like to encourage you to take part once again tonight. There are three ways you can do it. You can tweet us at first ladies; you can post a comment on our Facebook page and there's a conversation already underway with a number of questions; and you can also call us. Our numbers are 202-585-3880 if you live in the Eastern or Central time zones; Mountain, Pacific and farther west, 202-585-3881. And we'll get to your calls in just a bit.
I'd like to start with a phone conversation with President Johnson. I'm going to ask you to explain about Johnson's phone conversations and why we have them before we listen.
What did he do in the White House... (CROSSTALK) BESCHLOSS: He taped his telephone conversations, as Eisenhower and Roosevelt had a little bit and as Kennedy had a little bit more, but Johnson about 650 hours over five years. And taped people in most cases without their knowledge, which would include Jacqueline Kennedy, whom at that point she had a very good relationship more or less with LBJ. But I think she would not have been too thrilled to know that he was having this call taped.
SWAIN: This is a phone conversation from just 10 days after the death of her husband, Jacqueline Kennedy and the new president, Lyndon Johnson. Let's listen.
(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP) PRESIDENT LYNDON B. JOHNSON: Listen, (Lady), now the first thing you've got to learn, you've got some things to learn. And one of them is that you don't bother me. You give me strength.
JACQUELINE KENNEDY: But I wasn't going to send you one more letter. I was just scared you'd answer it.
PRESIDENT JOHNSON: Don't send me anything. Don't send me anything. You just come over and put your arm around me. That's all you do. When you haven't got anything else to do, let's take a walk. Let's walk around the backyard and just let me -- let me tell you how much you mean to all of us and how we can carry on if you give us a little strength.
JACQUELINE KENNEDY: But you know what I want to say to you about that letter? I know how rare a letter is in a president's handwriting. Do you know that I've got more in your handwriting than I do in Jack's now?
PRESIDENT JOHNSON: (inaudible). JACQUELINE KENNEDY: And for you to write it at this time and then send me that thing today of, you know, your (tape) announcement and everything.
PRESIDENT JOHNSON: I want you to just know this, that I told my mama a long time ago, when everybody else gave up about my election in '48...
JACQUELINE KENNEDY: Yes? PRESIDENT JOHNSON: ... my mother and my wife and my sisters, and you females got a lot of courage that we men don't have. And so we have to rely on you and depend on you, and you've got something to do. You've got the president relying on you. And this is not the first one you've had. So there are not many women, you know, with a good many presidents. So you just -- you just bear that in mind that you've got the biggest job in your life.
(LAUGHTER) JACQUELINE KENNEDY: She ran around with two presidents. That's what they'll say about me. (LAUGHTER) OK. Any time. PRESIDENT JOHNSON: Good-bye, darling. JACQUELINE KENNEDY: Thank you for calling, Mr. President. Good-bye. PRESIDENT JOHNSON: Do come back. JACQUELINE KENNEDY: I will. (END AUDIO CLIP) SWAIN: Barbara Perry, this relationship between LBJ and President Kennedy was not always the easiest of relationships. But after his assassination, how did he treat the departing first family and Jackie Kennedy in particular?
PERRY: Oh, very well. And Mrs. Kennedy often talked about how grateful she was to President -- the new President Johnson, though I think it sometimes caught in her throat to have to say "President Johnson" to him.
BESCHLOSS: True, understandably. PERRY: Understandably. And unlike the president's mother, who, when she was called just a couple of hours after the assassination from Air Force One by President Johnson, just very easily slips into calling him "Mr. President.” But I think that kind of stuck in the throat of Mrs. Kennedy. But she was very, very grateful to both Mrs. Johnson and President Johnson that they were so gracious to her, and let her stay in the White House until December 6th.
And so, she was both able to stay there with her children until she got a sense of where she was going to go. She had no home to go to. And, as one writer has said, in those seconds of carnage in Dallas, Mrs. Kennedy lost her husband, her home and her job. So, she literally had no place to go until Averell Harriman opened his home to her in Georgetown. So, she needed a place to live.
Caroline was going to nursery school and kindergarten there, so she was very grateful to the president for that.
SWAIN: Now, you have listened to a lot of Jacqueline Kennedy on The Tapes Project, which we'll tell people more detail about.
BESCHLOSS: Many times. SWAIN: But she sounds so in control of herself in what we heard, 10 days after the assassination and going through that whole funeral. Help us understand her and her psyche, as you've come to understand it.
BESCHLOSS: Well, there was strength there, but I think you would find this often with someone who's lost a spouse, or someone very close to them. She said just, you know, during the days of the funeral and the ceremony, she said to one of her associates, you know, "Just -- just keep on moving right now.
We can all collapse later.” And really, until she left the White House, there were enough decisions that she had to make -- where to live, you know, even early decisions about the presidential library, trying to make sure that her children were as -- in as normal an environment as possible in this unbelievably -- you can't think of anything that's more abnormal than the children lose their husband - - or their father this way. And once they got to Georgetown, I think that's when she really did, you know, sort of almost collapse. And that was late December through the beginning of the spring. She went through a terrible depression, you know, quite understandably. But before then, you couldn't ask for more than she did in terms of keeping this whole situation together.
SWAIN: So, in the days before the trip to Dallas, what was the popularity level of the Kennedy administration and Mrs. Kennedy in particular?
PERRY: Right. Well, the president had suffered in the Gallup polls because of civil rights, because of...
BESCHLOSS: About 20 points. PERRY: Yeah, indeed. He had fallen particularly in the Southern states. So, he -- he was concerned. And, of course, he was going to Texas to try to cement the party there and raise money for the '64 campaign. It was really the kickoff for the '64 presidential reelection campaign.
Mrs. Kennedy, though -- Gallup did not take regular polls about the first lady at that time. BESCHLOSS: Isn't that amazing that it was not... PERRY: It is. But early on, in '61, she was polling at about 59 percent. And then starting in 1962, Gallup did take -- it started actually in 1948 -- they had started their "most admired woman" poll. And so, in '62, she's finally supplanted Eleanor Roosevelt, who had been the most admired number one for about 12 years. And then Mrs. Kennedy was for about five or six more years after that.
So, I would say she was -- she was riding high. And remember, they had lost their baby, Patrick, in August of '63. And so, I think people felt particularly kindly toward her.
SWAIN: And the -- you have a point? BESCHLOSS: There's also an irony, because during -- when John Kennedy was planning his campaign in 1960, once made an offhand remark: "During this campaign, we'll have to run Jackie through subliminally.” And what he meant by that was that Jackie was someone who he thought of had been raised in a rather elite way, and rode horses, and would have a life experience that -- that might not be too politically helpful. And there was no one who was more astounded and absolutely delighted that she had turned into this vast political asset so that when JFK was planning this trip to Texas, John Connally and the others down in Texas, the governor of Texas said, "You have to bring Mrs. Kennedy because she is so popular, you'll have much bigger crowds," as indeed he did.
SWAIN: I just have to say, though, John Kennedy, much wealthier than she. So why was it -- why would the public not react to his wealth in ways that he was concerned about with her?
BESCHLOSS: I think he felt that, as many political leaders who come from affluence do, that he managed to give at least the impression of a regular guy in the Navy, and did not -- for instance, she once bought him in 1957 as a birthday gift a Jaguar. How politically innocent she was. And he had it returned. I think he traded it in for a Buick.
(LAUGHTER) But he felt that she was not someone who would have much political experience and, you know, compared to, for instance, Pat Nixon in 1960, might be a difficult comparison. It turned out to be just the opposite. PERRY: And she talked in the oral history about how she felt that she was a drag on him in the early days.
BESCHLOSS: Right. She said, "I said to Jack I'm sorry I'm such a dud for you." PERRY: That's right. BESCHLOSS: Very quickly, that proved not to be the case. SWAIN: Before we get into more detail on the 1960 campaign, I would like to understand the creation of the imagery of Camelot. How did that come about?
BESCHLOSS: That was a week after the assassination, Jackie Kennedy asked Teddy White, who was a family friend and a journalist, by then was writing often for Life magazine, to come up to Hyannis Port and interview her with the idea that what she wanted to say would get into Life magazine. The presses were held for this.
And she said, you know, "Late at night, you know, before Jack and I went to sleep in the White House, we had this little victrola and we used to play the record of "Camelot," you know, the play.” And needless to say, editors at Life and also Teddy White saw this was going to be the big theme. And actually, she urged him to make Camelot the major theme of his article.
But when it came out, the Kennedy presidency and Camelot made its debut. I think in the end, she may not have been doing the presidency of -- it may not have been something that helped because to say that those years which, you know, had their lights and darks, were all, you know, knights and, you know, great noble deeds, were almost setting him up for the revisionist movement of the 1970s, as indeed did happen.
PERRY: I think she also must have known that these would come along and that she could get out in front of them perhaps with this -- this wonderful shining moment, as the lyric said, "one brief shining moment.” And we know, as you say, there was a dark side of Camelot, but it certainly was brief. And all you have to do is look at the imagery to see that they were a shining couple with two beguiling shining children.
BESCHLOSS: True. SWAIN: Well, we're going to spend a little bit of time on the 1960 campaign that brought the Kennedys to the White House. And to do that, we'll be visiting the JFK Library. We'll do that throughout our program tonight, to learn more about her role in helping her husband during that campaign.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) JAMES WAGNER: In her oral history, Mrs. Kennedy speaks at great length about President Kennedy's love of reading, love of history; his belief in the power of words. And that's something I think that's a belief they both shared.
And what I like about this story here is it shows -- it's an example of that belief in the power of words. And it's a great example of the collaboration between husband and wife. And this is very early in his presidential campaign, late 1959. In those early days, Mrs. Kennedy did travel with him on the campaign trail as much as possible. This is a reading copy of a speech he presented in Washington state in June of 1959. Mrs. Kennedy was with him at that dinner. And President Kennedy obviously had speechwriters, but he would often rewrite and edit his speeches up until the moment he was about to deliver it. And at this particular dinner, as he was waiting to speak, he wanted to close his speech with some verses from Ulysses, the great poem Ulysses.
So he actually asked Mrs. Kennedy -- he's written a note here to Mrs. Kennedy, "Give me the last lines from Ulysses, come my friend.” And then following in Mrs. Kennedy's hand is actually the rest of the poem, which she knew from memory and gave it to him so that he could close his speech with those words.
(END VIDEO CLIP) SWAIN: We have a Facebook viewer that writes: "In clips from the 1960 campaign, you rarely see Mrs. Kennedy.” This is (Kurt Herner) who writes this. "She was not present at the Democratic National Convention in Los Angeles. Because of the difficulty during her 1956 pregnancy, which she was actively campaigning for her husband to be on the national ticket for V.P., did Mrs. Kennedy feel, since she was pregnant again, she couldn't bear losing another baby?"
PERRY: This is so true. She had just a terrible record in her pregnancy. She had lost a baby to miscarriage in 1955, and then as this person points out, she had lost a baby, stillborn, a little girl in 1956, right after that very hot, non-air conditioned...
BESCHLOSS: And she remembered the jostling in the crowds and... PERRY: Right. So she was really just afraid to go. And so I think what this person is referring to is from about April onward in 1960, she did tend to stay home, though she did go with the future president, president to be, to a jostling parade in October 1960 through Manhattan, through the canyons of Manhattan with lots of tickertape. But she was definitely great with child -- the child would be, of course, John, Jr.
BESCHLOSS: And of course, JFK, who always had this great sense of humor, his friend Ben Bradlee also had a wife who was great with child. And so right after the election was won in Hyannis Port, JFK said to the two women, "All right, girls, you can take the pillow out. We've won."
(LAUGHTER) SWAIN: So, what role really did she play? And at one point you talked about the vetting, the concern that she would seem too effete. But at what point did John Kennedy realize he actually had a political asset on his hands?
BESCHLOSS: Probably the moment that that began to happen was when they went to Paris in the spring of 1961 and there were a lot of people who turned out both to see John Kennedy, and also to see Jackie, who had been -- who had been a student in Paris, was known to be; had French ancestry, spoke French, and certainly knew French art and history. That was the first time she began to get enormous crowds.
And then domestically, what really did it, and I know we'll talk about this a little bit later on, is the program in February of 1962 when she did the tour of the White House that she had worked so hard to restore.
SWAIN: So it wasn't for the campaigning for the White House, but after he was in he began to realize that she could help with sustaining popularity.
BESCHLOSS: Right. Exactly. Indeed. SWAIN: We're going to take a few calls. First is (Ida) in West Palm Beach, Florida. (Ida), you're on the air. Welcome.
IDA (ph): Thank you so much, Susan. I'm really enjoying the series very, very much. My question is, I was only five years old when the president was assassinated, so I don't really remember it. But I've read so many books about the President and Mrs. Kennedy and I'm a very great admirer of hers. And obviously one of the biggest images was the day of the assassination, her pinkstained suit. And I would like to know after she removed it, because I know she did not want to remove it before they returned to Washington, as she said she wanted the world to see what had happened to him.
What did become of that suit? Was it destroyed? Or has it been preserved somewhere? And if so, where? And will it ever be shown to the public?
And I thank you again very much. PERRY: As I understand it, once she removed it, it was stored I believe in her mother's attic in Georgetown. And if people are familiar with the book by William Manchester, "Death of a President," they'll see the last paragraph of that book talks about when he saw, after some years went by, the packaged dress. And he could see the stains and he said, "If one didn't know the story of that pink Chanel suit, one would say the person who wore this had met a terrible end."
I think as I understand... BESCHLOSS: It goes on to say the last line of the book, "You might even wonder who had been to blame."
PERRY: Right. (CROSSTALK) BESCHLOSS: The mystery of the assassination. PERRY: The mystery of the assassination. But as we understand, it's with the archives now. The pillbox hat, I understand is still missing, but it's with the archives and Caroline has made sure that it will not appear to the public before I think it's 2103.
BESCHLOSS: I don't think any of us will be seeing that dress. PERRY: We will not see it, unless there are changes in medical science. SWAIN: Mary is in Logan, Utah. Mary, you're on. Good evening. MARY (ph): Yes, this program has been amazing and wonderful and one of the best things on television, and thank you for that.
My question is, Jacqueline Kennedy was such a great style icon and known for that. But in reading her books by her private secretary, Mary Barelli Gallagher, this was an issue with the president of the cost of the wardrobe. As much as was spent on her clothing, was she known as a frugal individual otherwise during the White House years?
And thank you so much. BESCHLOSS: Not by her husband, I think if he were here to say about that truthfully. But as far as, you know, the way that she dressed, she spent an awful lot on clothing. And that was I think by the best information we have, that was actually supported by Joseph Kennedy who said, "You know, dress as you need to and send me the bills," because they felt that this was something that would be very important to that presidency. And in those days, it turned out to be a great asset.
