JFK's Last Hundred Days: The Transformation of a Man and the Emergence of a Great President (30 page)

Her friend Princess Irene Galitzine was also aboard, giving the cruise an additional jet-set patina. Galitzine was descended from Russian nobility and had become one of Italy’s most famous designers on the strength of launching a line of “palazzo pajamas,” colorful silk evening trousers that had become the rage after Claudia Cardinale wore a pair in the first Pink Panther movie. The Italian industrialist Gianni Agnelli had introduced the two women during Jackie’s holiday in Amalfi, and Galitzine had been mesmerized by how her irregular teeth, large mouth, and big feet added up to something “
inexplicably fascinating and beautiful
.”
During the cruise she noticed
that Jackie would sometimes lock herself in her cabin after dinner with a glass of champagne. Jackie explained that she was writing to her husband and when she did this she felt as if she were talking to him. She expressed sentiments in her letters that she found too hard to tell him in person, writing, “
I loved you from the first moment
I saw you,” and “If I hadn’t married you my life would have been tragic because the definition of tragedy is a waste. But ten years later I love you so much more.” In similar letters from Italy she had written, “
I think that I am lucky to miss you
—I know that I always exaggerate but I pity everybody else who is married,” and concluding, “I’ll show you how much I love you when I get back.”

The cruise ended on October 13, but she decided to extend her holiday by accepting an invitation from King Hassan of Morocco to visit Marrakech. The king sent his private jet to collect her and installed her in a guest palace. Kennedy asked a military aide to ascertain its size and appearance, no doubt praying that it would be small and modest.
She shopped in the bazaars
, admiring brass pots, rugs, and leather goods that the
New York Times
speculated would be sent to her as gifts. It was also reported that the king had flown in hairdressers from Paris who had given her “
a Parisian style to suit her personality
.”

CAMP DAVID AND WASHINGTON

O
n Monday, Salinger announced that the president had decided to stay at Camp David with his children because it was a lovely day and he had no pressing engagements in Washington.
Articles that morning
in the
New York Times
and
the
Washington Post,
ones he surely read, summarized the findings of a Louis Harris poll surveying the racial attitudes of white Americans. The poll confirmed what he had told Birmingham’s white leaders: that providing equal access to public accommodations and university classrooms was easy compared with integrating neighborhoods and public schools. It reported that although 71 percent of whites, including a solid majority in the South, believed that “Negroes are discriminated against,” many thought that they were partly to blame. Sixty-six percent thought they “had less ambition” than whites, and 55 percent cited their “looser morals.” The poll concluded that “substantial numbers of white people in both the North and the South still believe the composite stereotype of the Negro as lazy, unintelligent and inherently inferior to whites.”

A Gallup poll released that weekend
showed Kennedy’s approval rating falling to 57 percent nationally, the lowest level of his presidency, and dropping in the South from 50 to 35 percent after he submitted his civil rights bill.
There was better news in a second Harris poll
appearing in the
Washington Post
on Monday. It reported that although he had lost the support of 6.5 million Americans who had voted for him in 1960, he had gained the backing of 11 million who had voted for Nixon, meaning that if the election were held that day, he would defeat a Republican opponent by 4.5 million votes. His prospects in the Electoral College were less encouraging, with Harris predicting the loss of half of the Southern states he had won in 1960, a dismal showing that
Newsweek
blamed on his being “
the most widely disliked Democratic President
of this century among white Southerners.”

His civil rights bill remained stalled in the House Judiciary Committee, where a subcommittee dominated by liberals had added provisions making it too extreme to appeal to Republican moderates, many of whom represented districts containing the very white-middle-class voters that the Harris poll had identified as opposing discrimination in theory yet resisting the integration of their own neighborhoods and schools. The liberals had added a Fair Employment Practices Commission (FEPC) to the bill, a more expansive definition of “public accommodations,” and a clause permitting the Department of Justice to bring suit in federal court on behalf of individual Americans whose rights were being infringed.
Writing about the impasse in the
New York Times
,
Anthony Lewis cautioned that “by pressing for all they [the liberals] want, they risk alienating the votes needed to pass anything at all.” Southern Democrats on the Judiciary Committee confirmed the folly of the liberals’ position by announcing their intention to vote for the bill because they were certain that it would be easily defeated on the House floor.

Bobby Kennedy testified
before the House Judiciary Committee on Tuesday. He criticized the liberals’ additions to the public accommodations section, arguing that they would lead to the regulation of law firms, medical practices, and other private entities, but then surprised the committee by endorsing an FEPC. It was a shrewd compromise. By capitulating on the issue that meant the most to the civil rights movement, he and the president were making it harder for liberals to demand a bill incorporating everything they wanted. The
Detroit Free Press
called it “
politics in its purest definition
—the art of the possible,” and the
Atlanta Constitution
declared, “
There always comes a time
in the legislative process for compromise.” Two days after Bobby’s testimony, Representative William McCulloch of Ohio, the ranking Republican on the House Judiciary Committee,
reported an “improved climate
” for a bipartisan bill.
A spokesman for the Washington NAACP
attacked the compromise as a “sell out,” but given the polls showing that a majority of Americans believed the president was moving too fast on civil rights, it was a courageous one.

•   •   •

K
ENNEDY
’
S
BACK
HAD
continued bothering him
during the weekend, and he asked Dr. Kraus to meet him at the White House when he returned from Camp David. Kraus noted that he was experiencing discomfort on his left side, and told him that if he resumed his full exercise program, his pain would disappear. He again urged him to discard his back brace. Kennedy promised to get rid of it on January 1, 1964, making it a New Year’s resolution.

•   •   •

I
N
THE
SPRING
OF
1964, Jackie would tell Father Richard McSorley, a Jesuit priest at Georgetown University who had become her confidant, “
I was melancholy after the death
of our baby and stayed away last fall longer than I needed to. I could have made his life so much happier, especially for the last few weeks. I could have tried harder to get out of my melancholy.” Her comment about staying away too long probably referred to the weeks she had spent in Newport in September, her cruise, and her decision to add an excursion to Morocco, a change of plans enabling her to skip the October 15 state dinner for Prime Minister Seán Lemass of Ireland, an event that may have meant more to her husband than any of his presidency.

There were no real foreign policy reasons for giving Lemass a state visit, and Kennedy was doing it to thank him for his hospitality in Ireland the previous summer. The Irish ambassador to Washington, Thomas Kiernan, believed that this trip had changed Kennedy’s feelings about his ancestral homeland.
Before, Kiernan said
, his “Harvard attitude” and desire “to be accepted as part of the establishment” had led him to side with Great Britain in disputes between the two nations. These prejudices began falling away in Ireland. As he and Kiernan flew from Dublin to Galway by helicopter, he had pointed out the largest houses and asked how much they would cost.
Back at the White House, he had shoved
a picture postcard of his family’s ancestral home into the frame of his bedroom mirror, adding it to a postcard that Caroline had sent him from Amalfi, a snapshot of her standing in her mother’s shoes, and a Polaroid photograph of Jackie— all thrust into the mirror at odd angles and resembling the kind of collage found on any family refrigerator.

Jackie was willing to indulge his affection
for Ireland, up to a point. When Kiernan presented him with the Kennedy coat of arms, she had it mounted on a seal ring that he mischievously used on a letter to Queen Elizabeth. She decided things were going too far when he asked Kiernan to track down
her
coat of arms. She complained that he wanted to put her Irish crest on his cufflinks, on everything, and
Kiernan sensed that the Irish were “getting her down
.”
Kennedy’s insistence that the three days
he had spent in Ireland had been the happiest of his life could not have helped, since these were also three days that he had spent without her. So instead of attending the Lemass dinner she stayed in Morocco, where it was reported that “
like a desert queen she sat before
a low table covered with a lace tablecloth and was offered sweet mint tea in golden glasses.”

Lemass received the full treatment: a multigun salute, honor guard, and motorcade in an open car. After the state dinner, Kennedy invited a dozen guests upstairs to the family quarters to continue the party. The Air Force string band played Irish melodies, Gene Kelly danced, and Dorothy Turbidy, a Kennedy family friend who had accompanied Lemass from Ireland, sang “The Boys of Wexford,”
the same song that children from that town had sung to welcome Kennedy to Dublin. Its subject was bleak but stirring—a battle during the 1798 Irish Rebellion when Irishmen armed only with pikes and pitchforks had defeated the British at Wexford, only to be wiped out days later. After noticing how much the song had moved him,
Eunice had bought a recording
to give him for Christmas. Turbidy sang “Wexford” well, according to Kennedy’s former Navy buddy, Assistant Secretary of the Treasury James Reed, but it was a sad song, and despite having known Kennedy for years, Reed thought he had never seen
such sadness so plainly visible
on his face.

The next day Kennedy became the first American president to host a Communist head of state at the White House. Inviting Josip Broz Tito of Yugoslavia to Washington had been a brave move, particularly a year before Kennedy would be seeking reelection, but the way Kennedy treated Tito was not. The result was a half-profile in courage. After leading the most effective anti-Nazi partisan movement of World War II, Tito had broken with the Soviet Union in 1948 and accepted U.S. aid under the Marshall Plan. Truman and Eisenhower had provided Yugoslavia with economic assistance and, after declaring that he did not consider Tito a Soviet puppet, Eisenhower had invited him to the White House, only to rescind the invitation following protests from Congress. Kennedy faced similar pressures. Republicans denounced him for hosting a Communist, with Goldwater declaring, “
To the disgrace of every living American
, we are welcoming this tyrant to the American capital.”

Kennedy attempted to make
Tito’s visit as brief and invisible as possible. There were no pictures of him welcoming the Yugoslav leader, and the official photograph showed them on opposite sides of a vast conference table, with only the back of Kennedy’s head visible. Hundreds of Yugoslav Americans picketed the White House,
leading Kennedy to complain
that every hour Tito remained in town was costing him ten thousand votes. The State Department described their talks as “cordial and frank,” but there were rocky moments. Tito realized that he was not getting a first-class welcome, and when Kennedy tried to pump him for information about the Latin American nations he had just visited, he made a pompous disclaimer about never taking an interest in the internal politics of a host nation. Kennedy quickly changed course, becoming chummy and making him feel they were two sophisticated men who could speak frankly. “
Look, I asked for your opinion
, I didn’t ask you for a report,” he said. “Now come on and tell me, who’s winning in the Communist party apparatus in Latin America, the Chinese or the Russians?” Tito replied, “Well, if you’re really going to put it that way, I will tell you.”

Jackie called before leaving Morocco
to say she was furious that de Gaulle—that “spiteful man”—had refused to sign the test ban treaty. She claimed that she never wanted to go near the French again, adding that she had decided against making a brief stop in Paris on the way home.

“
No, no, you mustn’t be like that
,” he said. “Don’t you see that you’re the one avenue that’s open [to de Gaulle and the French], and they think I’m a so-and-so but they think you’re nice because you like France.” Repeating the maxim that had guided him through the Cuban missile crisis, he urged her to remember that “you must always leave an avenue open.” She changed her mind and flew through Orly.
During a short layover
she chose a dozen silk ties for him from a collection that she had asked Dior to messenger to the airport, and accepted a large bouquet of roses and orchids sent by de Gaulle.

The moment her private plane landed in Washington, Caroline and John dashed up the metal staircase and disappeared inside.
Caroline carried a clay bird’s nest
she had made in pottery class, taking to heart her mother’s advice not to buy things for people, but to learn something from memory or make something. When Kennedy got to the door she reached out with a white-gloved hand to caress his neck and draw him inside.
Caroline recited a French sentence
she had memorized for the occasion, saying, “
Je suis content de te revoir.
”
Kennedy’s French was so rudimentary that he thought “
content
” only meant “contented” and told Caroline it was too weak for the occasion. The family emerged together. King Hassan’s Parisian hairdresser had given Jackie a simple, straight cut. Perhaps she was making amends for the Battelle hairdo.

Later that evening she told him, “
I’ll never be away again
at such important moments of accomplishment.” Referring to the test ban treaty ceremony, she added, “Everyone needs to have support and pride from those they love when they have accomplished something great.” Still, she took the children to Camp David the next day, leaving him alone on the eve of his departure for a two-day trip to New England.

On Friday morning, an editorial in the right-wing
Delaware State News
declared, “
Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus
. His name right now happens to be Kennedy—let’s shoot him, literally, before Christmas.” That afternoon, Kennedy addressed members of the National Trust for Historic Preservation.
Standing on a platform on the South Lawn
, he recited a passage from a poem by Edna St. Vincent Millay: “Safe upon the solid rock / the ugly houses stand. / Come see my shining palace. / It is built upon the sand.”