Read Online Jacqueline Kennedy: Historic Conversations on Life With John F. Kennedy by Caroline Kennedy & Michael Beschloss - Free Book Online
Authors: Caroline Kennedy & Michael Beschloss
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necessary for him to campaign, but he worked so hard in that campaign.
Yeah, I remember when we came back on the boat from Europe, someone met us with a poll of how Foster Furcolo 56 was doing. Would that be it? Jack's polls weren't so good. [talk about tape recorder] So then there was this major, frantic effort. Somehow that seems to me the hardest campaign of ever—that Senate campaign.
JOHN F. KENNEDY CAMPAIGNING FOR REELECTION TO THE SENATE WITH JACQUELINE KENNEDY AND EDWARD M. KENNEDY
John F. Kennedy Library and Museum, Boston
You mean, just the extent of more—
I mean just I never can remember sleeping at home for however many months it was. Two months, I guess. But you know, just running, running.
All those teas.
Mostly just endless cars. It was awful. Oh yeah, with Professor Burns, 57 and Jack telling him who to shake hands with on platforms, but all through the Berkshires, through Springfield, different hotels, you know.
Do you like campaigning?
I do—until you get exhausted. You know, about the fifth day out, it's just sheer exhaustion, and then, you know—I love it when it's going wonderfully—I love it when it's going wonderfully for Jack.
There's nothing more exciting than entering a crowded hall and watching the candidate come in, everyone going mad.
Yeah, well, all that part I loved, and towards the end, it was getting better and better.
W e ended up, I think, last time talking about the Senate, in which the President was reelected by this great majority and which, for the first time, made him sort of nationally spoken of as a possible contender for 1960. Did that—was it already—was that becoming, a kind of, do you think, a preoccupation in his own life, and yours and so on? Was everything sort of directed more and more to that?
Do you mean to being president?
Yeah.
Well, it was never spoken of out loud, but after election night in Boston 1 —I think we went somewhere in the sun or sometime, but then he started speaking all the time. Again, all those years before the White House—every weekend he was always traveling. You know, invitations from all over the country—and then they led up to the primaries, which were what, just 1960 ?
Nineteen-sixty.
It seems the thing went on forever.
During these times when he was out, like the 1958 campaign and so on, how did—he kept up reading and so on. How and when did he do that?
Well, he read in the strangest way. I mean, I could never read unless I'd have a rainy afternoon or a long evening in bed, or something. He'd read walking, he'd read at the table, at meals, he'd read after dinner, he'd read in the bathtub, he'd read—prop open a book on his desk—on his bureau—while he was doing his tie. You know, he'd just read in little, he'd open some book I'd be reading, you know, just devour it. He really read all the times you don't think you have time to read.
READING IN HYANNIS PORT, 1959
©2000 Mark Shaw/mptvimages.com
He'd read in short takes, and then remember it and come back and pick up a thread?
Anything he wanted to remember, he could always remember. You'd see things he'd use in his speeches. You'd be sitting next to him on some platform, and suddenly out would come a sentence that two weeks ago in Georgetown he would have read out loud to you one night, just because it interested him.
He had the most fantastic and maddening memory for quotes, because—while he remembered the quotes, but he couldn't always remember where they were from.
I remember the winter he was sick. His father had a whole shelf of books— The World's Great Orations or something that his father had given him and he'd read every single one of those books, and then I made—I asked his father to give them to him for Christmas, which, of course, he was delighted to do. But he'd been through every one of those. And he used to read me Edmund Burke's "To
Yeah, I remember when we came back on the boat from Europe, someone met us with a poll of how Foster Furcolo 56 was doing. Would that be it? Jack's polls weren't so good. [talk about tape recorder] So then there was this major, frantic effort. Somehow that seems to me the hardest campaign of ever—that Senate campaign.
JOHN F. KENNEDY CAMPAIGNING FOR REELECTION TO THE SENATE WITH JACQUELINE KENNEDY AND EDWARD M. KENNEDY
John F. Kennedy Library and Museum, Boston
You mean, just the extent of more—
I mean just I never can remember sleeping at home for however many months it was. Two months, I guess. But you know, just running, running.
All those teas.
Mostly just endless cars. It was awful. Oh yeah, with Professor Burns, 57 and Jack telling him who to shake hands with on platforms, but all through the Berkshires, through Springfield, different hotels, you know.
Do you like campaigning?
I do—until you get exhausted. You know, about the fifth day out, it's just sheer exhaustion, and then, you know—I love it when it's going wonderfully—I love it when it's going wonderfully for Jack.
There's nothing more exciting than entering a crowded hall and watching the candidate come in, everyone going mad.
Yeah, well, all that part I loved, and towards the end, it was getting better and better.
W e ended up, I think, last time talking about the Senate, in which the President was reelected by this great majority and which, for the first time, made him sort of nationally spoken of as a possible contender for 1960. Did that—was it already—was that becoming, a kind of, do you think, a preoccupation in his own life, and yours and so on? Was everything sort of directed more and more to that?
Do you mean to being president?
Yeah.
Well, it was never spoken of out loud, but after election night in Boston 1 —I think we went somewhere in the sun or sometime, but then he started speaking all the time. Again, all those years before the White House—every weekend he was always traveling. You know, invitations from all over the country—and then they led up to the primaries, which were what, just 1960 ?
Nineteen-sixty.
It seems the thing went on forever.
During these times when he was out, like the 1958 campaign and so on, how did—he kept up reading and so on. How and when did he do that?
Well, he read in the strangest way. I mean, I could never read unless I'd have a rainy afternoon or a long evening in bed, or something. He'd read walking, he'd read at the table, at meals, he'd read after dinner, he'd read in the bathtub, he'd read—prop open a book on his desk—on his bureau—while he was doing his tie. You know, he'd just read in little, he'd open some book I'd be reading, you know, just devour it. He really read all the times you don't think you have time to read.
READING IN HYANNIS PORT, 1959
©2000 Mark Shaw/mptvimages.com
He'd read in short takes, and then remember it and come back and pick up a thread?
Anything he wanted to remember, he could always remember. You'd see things he'd use in his speeches. You'd be sitting next to him on some platform, and suddenly out would come a sentence that two weeks ago in Georgetown he would have read out loud to you one night, just because it interested him.
He had the most fantastic and maddening memory for quotes, because—while he remembered the quotes, but he couldn't always remember where they were from.
I remember the winter he was sick. His father had a whole shelf of books— The World's Great Orations or something that his father had given him and he'd read every single one of those books, and then I made—I asked his father to give them to him for Christmas, which, of course, he was delighted to do. But he'd been through every one of those. And he used to read me Edmund Burke's "To
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