Listening In (9 page)

Look at Kennedy’s history,

You’ll see it’s no mystery,

Why he suits us to a tee.

He’s your kind of man,

So do all that you can,

And vote for Kennedy!

PRESIDENT HARRY TRUMAN HELPS THE KENNEDY SENATE CAMPAIGN, BOSTON PUBLIC GARDEN, OCTOBER 1952

LETTER TO JACQUELINE KENNEDY, CIRCA 1959

Probably recorded in 1958 or 1959, this dictated letter reveals Kennedy speaking with considerable irony as he records his sharp observations of the summer scene in Newport, Rhode Island, for the benefit of his wife. A previous Newport resident, Edith Wharton, might not have disavowed this tart account of the mores of an elite group of Americans, as the author, both of them and separate from them, prepared his ascent.

PRESIDENT KENNEDY WITH JOHN F. KENNEDY, JR., AT BAILEY’S BEACH, NEWPORT, RHODE ISLAND, SEPTEMBER 15, 1963

JFK:
Dearest Jackie, I’m divid[ing] this letter into two parts, one typewritten and the other handwritten, the typewritten part to give you the news of my visit to Newport. I went up there last Friday afternoon, and Caroline looks beautiful. Miss Shaw.
¹
She evidently felt rather strange that first three or four days, but since then has spread her charm out, and seemed in great form when I saw her. Yusha
²
had his two twins there, who looked very Slavic and rather green. He drove them up in his open car, with his great Irish nurse holding them both in the back seat of his Buick with the top down for six hours, which may have been responsible for their color. Alice looks as, looks beautiful and as noncommittal as ever. She walks ten yards ahead of Yusha on the beach, and I think will be walking increasingly far ahead of him as time goes on. She’s planning to enter the Actors Studio this fall, and I would think that this would produce numerous results. She spent the three days of the weekend in close conversation with [unclear]. Both being artists, they had a good deal in common.

Everyone was up there for the golf weekend. Stanley Mortimer
³
was heard to tell Sarah Russell that they’d had a long discussion the night before and decided that Blenheim
⁴
was an “inn.” The Smiths were there, Leverett Shaw and his wife. I did not, I went over and played with Denny—Governor Roberts
⁵
—at Narragansett on Saturday and stayed only, and went to the Ishams’ on Saturday evening. John Isham made several speeches after dinner of the kind that we heard at the wedding. The group was very nice. I was taken into the kitchen and introduced to all the help who were just over from Ireland. I found them more attractive than the guests. I saw Chris Dunphey, who told me Mrs. Fraser’s sister, Mrs. Ayres, does not think that I’m serious about politics and therefore cannot support me.

On Sunday I watched the golf tournament, which Bud Palmer and Freddy Cushing won. Bud Palmer and his wife are about to have a baby. Everyone was asking for you, and asking me what I was doing in Newport. I stated that I was up visiting my daughter. She was a great success on the beach and seemed to love the water. Ginny Ryan was there with her rather squinty-eyed children for a five-week period. Miss Shaw is the loveliest figure actually on the beach, and has a beautiful red-brown bathing suit that goes with her hair. She has let herself go, however, slightly, around the middle.

[I flew back Monday with your mother, who was in an excellent humor.] Your mother flew back with me on Monday, and she’s in a great humor, and spoke warmly of you and Lee. I hope you and Lee do not get upset at the various stories that Grace and Michael report, they both have sour grapes and their only retort is to indicate how pleasant their life is and how pleasant Stas and Lee’s life …
⁶
[sound distorted] I’m sure that Lee when she feels better … very satisfactory in England. [distorted] It looks like we will be here until the first part of September, so the African trip is off. I’m enclosing a letter [sound distorted] that I took the liberty of opening as it had news about our prospective visit. It sounds wonderful there, if we only could go. Perhaps we can, if not this year, maybe in December. I shall …

EXCERPTS FROM DINNER PARTY CONVERSATION, JANUARY 5, 1960

On January 5, 1960, the journalist James M. Cannon recorded a dinner party conversation with a few friends. That was somewhat unusual in an era when tape-recording was still clunky and expensive; what was even more unusual was that the dinner party included a candidate for the presidency of the United States. John F. Kennedy had declared his candidacy three days earlier, on January 2, and on this occasion was relaxing at home with his wife, Jacqueline, and their close friends Ben and Tony Bradlee. Bradlee would later achieve fame as the editor in chief of the
Washington Post
during the Watergate years; in 1960, he was the Washington bureau chief of
Newsweek
and, like Kennedy, a veteran of the navy, the Pacific campaign, and Harvard University. They spoke easily together, as indicated by Bradlee’s 1975 book,
Conversations with Kennedy
, and Cannon entered this convivial group without difficulty. Cannon, a
Newsweek
correspondent (and future staffer for President Gerald Ford), was writing a book entitled
Politics USA: A Practical Guide to the Winning of Public Office
. That book, with its tortured title, faded quickly from view, and the tapes as well. But they resurfaced when Cannon sent them to the Kennedy Library in 2007, with the stipulation that they become part of the library’s collection upon his death. He died in September 2011, and the entire conversation can now be heard by the public. It includes fascinating and candid revelations about Kennedy’s medical problems, his private reasons for wanting to run, and his worry that he was too introverted to be a natural politician.

JFK:
This is on? Can it get me from there?

BRADLEE:
[unclear] How come? Was it Joe’s death that started the …?

CANNON:
Why did you get started in politics? Why were you ever interested in it?

JFK:
In the thirties, when I was home from school, the conversation was always about politics. Want a cigar?

CANNON:
It’s all right. Talk loud.

JFK:
Not in the sense of sort of being emotionally stirred about great issues, but really, just about the whole interest of my father was [unclear] in politics, in the Roosevelt administration.

[break]

CANNON:
… When did you take your first step? What year was that?

JFK:
January ’46, with the election in June.

CANNON:
This was for a seat in …?

JFK:
Congress.

CANNON:
In what district?

JFK:
The eleventh congressional district, which my grandfather once represented in Congress. But I didn’t know anybody in Boston; I hadn’t really lived there much. The war, I’d been away. I’d been at Harvard University. I’d been to Choate School before that, and lived in New York. So I went to live with my grandfather at the Bellevue Hotel, and I began to run, at a much earlier time than anyone else. [To Jacqueline Kennedy and Tony Bradlee: “You might want to go sit in the other room....”]