WASHINGTON
Kennedy stopped at Lincoln’s desk to chat as she was reading the memorandums from the previous day’s campaign meeting. She told him that staging a convention as electrifying as the one in 1960 would be difficult and that the next would not be as exciting because everyone knew what would happen.
“Oh, I don’t know,” he said. “There might be a change in the ticket.”
The White House electrician and dog handler Traphes Bryant had noticed an increase in the barbed comments about Johnson that fall. He overheard a staffer saying that because FDR had dumped Wallace for Truman and still won reelection, voters would not hold it against Kennedy if he did the same to Johnson. Another asked, “How would you like to work for him?” Another said, “We’ve got to get that Texas cornpone out of here before he uses the vice presidency as a springboard into the White House in ’68,” and another claimed that even Jackie wanted the president to drop him, adding, “Jack won’t pay any attention to her, of course, but for once she’s right.”
Kennedy had dismissed the rumors about Johnson being replaced at his October 31 press conference, and when Bartlett raised the possibility with him he angrily denied it. But if he was considering replacing Johnson, he would certainly not have announced it at a press conference a year before the election, or tipped his hand to Bartlett, Bradlee, Joe Alsop, or any of his other journalist friends. But Lincoln was in a different category, and he had such faith in her discretion and loyalty that she not only knew about his lovers but had acted as an intermediary, receiving their billets-doux at her home address.
After examining Kennedy on Wednesday, Dr. Burkley noted that he weighed 170½ pounds, had complained about “a slight ache in his right groin after resistive exercises,” but insisted that he felt fine after taking a swim and using an anesthetic spray. He concluded that “his energy is excellent . . . and [he] now reports that he has resumed his full number 1 exercise program with 12½ pounds of weights.”
Kennedy chaired an afternoon meeting to finalize his new program to alleviate poverty in eastern Kentucky that was attended by the state’s governor and U.S. senators, the secretaries of agriculture and labor, and Undersecretary of Commerce Roosevelt. They agreed on an enhanced school lunch program, more public health services and surplus food, and initiatives to provide jobs and housing grants. The only proposal requiring congressional approval was an accelerated public works program. A week later, Roosevelt sent Kennedy a memorandum from his new office in Kentucky, reporting that the first emergency medical teams would be in the state by the end of the week, a survey of school lunches and a county-by-county survey of surplus food supplies would be on Kennedy’s desk by December 5, food was being rushed to needy areas and distributed by surplus vehicles supplied by the federal General Services Administration, and the Kentucky Highway Commission and U.S. Forest Service would be hiring eight hundred men by the end of the month. It was testimony to how quickly a president can use his executive powers to ease suffering.
Later that afternoon, he and Jackie appeared together at a White House function for the first time since Patrick’s death, watching a performance on the South Lawn by the Royal Highland Black Watch for an audience of underprivileged children. The commander of the Black Watch presented him with a ceremonial dagger and said that their motto was “Nobody wounds us with impunity.” He replied, “I think that is a very good motto for some of the rest of us.”
The family watched the piping and marching from the second-floor Truman Balcony. Caroline and John wore matching powder-blue overcoats with black velvet collars, the same ones they would wear when the Black Watch pipers returned to Washington twelve days later. Caroline threw her arm around her father’s neck, and John crawled in and out of his lap. Afterward, Nanny Shaw brought them into the Oval Office in their pajamas to say good night. Kennedy lay on the rug so they could swarm all over him. Lincoln walked in and asked, “What would the people think if they saw the President down on the floor?” Looking up from the floor, he said, “After all, Mrs. Lincoln, I am also a father.”
Lincoln and Shaw took the children into the Rose Garden. While John chased one of the family dogs, Caroline stared into the night sky and recited, “Star light, star bright . . .” but could not remember the rest of the ditty. He appeared silently behind her as she went on: “Star bright, star light . . .”
“First star I’ve seen tonight,” Lincoln prompted.
“Up above the world so high,” Kennedy said. “Why don’t you go over and say that to Mommy?”
• • •
PRINCESS GALITZINE HAD MET the reclusive screen star Greta Garbo on a previous Onassis cruise and had renewed their friendship when Garbo attended a showing of her fashions in New York. Garbo had declined several invitations to dine at the White House, but after learning that Galitzine was coming on Wednesday she accepted on condition that the event would be small and discreet. Jackie invited her sister, Lee, and the Washington socialite Florence Mahoney. Kennedy asked Lem Billings, who had met Garbo in 1962 and claimed to have become her great chum while accompanying her on a driving tour of the Riviera the summer before. Ever since then, he had been regaling and perhaps irritating Kennedy with paeans to her beauty and humor.
One of Kennedy’s least-appealing attributes was a fondness for practical jokes and a tendency to let them continue too long. A prime example was his treatment of Stevenson in Newport the previous year. The sky had been threatening, the seas rough, and the winds strong, but he summoned Adlai from Washington anyway. Oleg Cassini, who was his guest that weekend, had protested that it was a terrible day for flying. “Good. He’ll be airsick,” Kennedy said. Stevenson was green and mopping his brow as he disembarked from a helicopter. Kennedy proposed they talk while taking a cruise, a suggestion that Stevenson received with what Cassini called “horror in his eyes.” The seas pitched and rolled, lightning flashed, and Kennedy sat with him in the stern, braving the weather without a jacket and forcing him to follow suit. When they docked, he said, “Well, Adlai, there’s your helicopter waiting.” As it strained to gain altitude, Cassini said, “Mr. President, that is truly cruel and unusual punishment.”
“He could use it,” Kennedy replied. “It’s good for his health.”
The previous weekend at Wexford he had persuaded Bradlee to participate in a prank on Torby Macdonald. At his urging, Bradlee had called Macdonald and, as Kennedy listened on an extension, warned him that Newsweek was preparing to run a Bobby Baker story that would link Macdonald to a minor lobbyist named Micky Weiner. As Macdonald became increasingly frantic, protesting that he barely knew Weiner, Kennedy put his hand over the mouthpiece and said, “Torb’s hurting. Tuck it to him some more.” Bradlee continued tormenting Macdonald, and Kennedy collapsed on the sofa, helpless with laughter.
Kennedy had invited Garbo to come early so he could brief her on the prank that he planned to spring on his best friend. When Billings arrived, he bounded over to Garbo and exclaimed, “Greta!” She turned to Kennedy with a puzzled look on her face and said, “I have never seen this man before.” Billings was too mortified to eat. He listed everywhere they had been together, but she insisted she had never met this “Mr. Billings.” As he became increasingly upset and disoriented, Kennedy was solicitous, suggesting that he might have met someone resembling Garbo. When he finally put his friend out of his misery, everyone laughed uproariously. Billings grinned, trying to be a good sport, but later called the prank “one of the worst things I ever went through in my life.”
Garbo became inebriated and shouted, “I must go!” But she stayed and stayed. Jackie gave her a tour of the White House, and she took off her shoes and sat on Lincoln’s bed. She refused an invitation to stay overnight because she feared it might have entailed what she called “a visit from the President.” Kennedy usually retreated to his study after dinner. Tonight he remained at the party, pointedly telling Garbo that he never stayed with guests this long. Before she left he gave her one of his prized pieces of scrimshaw, prompting Jackie to remark, “He never gave me a whale’s tooth.”