The Death of a President by William Manchester
On the seventh floor of the State Department Mikoyan was seeking out diplomats, repeating Jacqueline Kennedy’s appeal to him. He was so obviously affected that next day his conduct became the subject of a memorandum to the White House:
At the President’s reception last night Mr. Mikoyan… showed convincingly by the way he discussed the matter that he had been unusually impressed by Mrs. Kennedy. This was due not only to her courage and demeanor throughout the funeral ceremonies, but to some remarks which she had made to him when she received the visiting delegations.… He referred to this incident several times.
He did not mention it to the new President. There wasn’t time. Johnson received the Deputy Premier unsmilingly, jerked his hand once, exchanged greetings through an interpreter, and posed for photographers. The confrontation lasted exactly thirty-five seconds, which made it one of the shortest of the 220. Since Mikoyan was the second most powerful man in the world’s other superpower, this seems remarkable, but the Russian probably wouldn’t have wanted it any longer. He didn’t smile either. He was going to see the President privately tomorrow anyhow, and he had to be wary; as an exasperated member of the Soviet delegation conceded to an American, their dossier on Johnson was “very thin.” All foreign dossiers were. Capitals abroad had few clues to the Johnsonian temperament, personality, grasp of international affairs, and influence in his own government. Satisfying that curiosity was the reason for the reception. The leaders were already here, and so, in the singularly unfortunate metaphor of one of the hosts, the State Department “might as well kill two birds with one stone.” (No one then dreamed that de Gaulle would turn the occasion into a boomerang, using it to kill his promise to Kennedy.) Even so, the reception would be inadequate for the most prominent of them. The French President excepted, they had requested audiences in camera, and meetings had been scheduled over the next two days with Mikoyan, Selassie, Inönü, Douglas-Home, de Valera, Erhard, and the Latin-American chiefs of delegations.
Lyndon Johnson was now beginning to feel the full tonnage of Presidential pressure. Thirty-five governors were waiting in the EOB to see him when he left here; a second full-scale budget meeting was scheduled for 8:45 P.M.; beside his twenty-button telephone console were messages to call almost every major labor and management leader in the country; and Marie Fehmer, whose greatest problem a week ago had been choosing terry-cloth hand towels for Jacqueline Kennedy at the LBJ Ranch, was coping with sixty LBJ cables to foreign heads of state who had been unable to reach Washington in time for the funeral. Of course, Marie didn’t write the cables. Neither did Johnson. The full Kennedy team had placed itself at his disposal. Mac Bundy, hurrying over from the Red Room, was put straight to work on tomorrow’s agenda for the South Americans, and Dick Goodwin was writing the message the President would read there. Similarly, Llewellyn Thompson was drafting the statement which Johnson would recite to Mikoyan next day. U. Alexis Johnson had prepared 3 × 5 briefing cards on every individual in the reception line, and before introducing a man to the new Chief Executive Dean Rusk would hold him up just long enough for an Assistant Secretary or protocol officer to mutter the gist of his card in the President’s ear.
Coming here directly from the second floor of the mansion, Angie Duke was struck by the change in mood: “The environment was pulsating; we were moving into the future.” Angie’s heart was still in the past, and he left most details to his staff. The President, however, was enjoying himself hugely. The knowledge that work was accumulating in the EOB didn’t depress him. Like John Kennedy he had an appetite for it. Furthermore, he relished physical contact. Men from banana republics and emerging nations were given a steely grip and a piercing glance; those he knew or wanted to know received what fellow Texans had long known as “the laying on of hands” or “the treatment”—while his right hand was pumping, his left would shoot out to waggle the shakee’s elbow in a warm clasp. Willy Brandt, U Thant, Jean Monnet, and Paul-Henri Spaak received the treatment, and had Presidential hands laid upon them. As a Southern politician he was strong on chivalry; when Angie roused himself to suggest that Mrs. Johnson’s presence would be appreciated by Queen Frederika and Princess Beatrix—Beatrix had just been twitting Angie about her seat in St. Matthew’s—the President boomed “Fine!” and Robin Duke drove out to the Elms to pick up Lady Bird.
By six o’clock the tall trouper was massaging his right hand. The last of the line passed by and advanced on a buffet in the John Quincy Adams Room. In reply to a telephoned inquiry from Alphand, Angie replied that no, President de Gaulle wouldn’t have to wait now, and President Johnson began the first of sixteen sofa conferences with selected guests in the Thomas Jefferson Room. Alexis Johnson cautioned him to limit each to three or four minutes; otherwise, he warned, a log jam would develop—as it did. “The bodies,” in the words of one man, “began to pile up.” Mac Bundy tried to press the pace. The results were disappointing, so State’s senior men improvised what seemed a brilliant solution. The President would see all the Scandinavians together. In came Premier Jens Krag of Denmark, Crown Prince Harald and Premier Einar Gerhardsen of Norway, and Prince Bertil and Premier Tage Erlander of Sweden. Lyndon Johnson was, in effect, presiding over a conference of the Nordic Council, and it was all going smoothly when the one body which had no intention of languishing outside appeared in the doorway. At Dulles Charles de Gaulle’s pilot was standing by. The plane was due to take off at nine o’clock. Eight hours later—5 A.M. in Washington—he expected to be in his Paris office, and striding forward he wrecked the conference. The Swedes, Danes, and Norwegians sprang apart with little cries of confusion; Dean Rusk hustled up and invited the two presidents into his private office.
According to the Secretary’s memorandum of the subsequent discussion, Rusk opened it by thanking de Gaulle for coming to the funeral. “With deliberation and perceptible emotion,” de Gaulle answered that he had always had “the greatest admiration and respect for President Kennedy,” that his death was “a great loss to the whole world,” and that the people of his country had “a sense of deep personal loss, as of a member of the family.” He spoke of the close ties between France and the United States. “That is the reality,” he said. “That is the only thing that counts.” Rusk didn’t let that one get by him. How the ties were spliced also counted, and he emphasized that the new administration would “pursue the same goals as President Kennedy,” that “the broad lines of our foreign policy” and “our political and military commitments to Europe” would remain the same. President Johnson, as “a very close associate of President Kennedy,” could be counted upon to see to it that there was no “slowing down or hesitation in the pace and the direction of the foreign policy of the United States.” The France, England, America thing, in short, would continue to be a thing.
Johnson kept quiet. He didn’t know the language, he had more confidence in Rusk than Kennedy had had, and so he let his Secretary speak for him in this one conversation when, more than in any other, his vigorous personality might have left at least a dent. Otherwise the reception went well for him. It wasn’t as easy as it looked on television. His fellow countrymen were accustomed to him. He had been a national figure since his rise as Majority Leader in the 1950’s, when Eisenhower had been monarch and Johnson had performed superbly as his prime minister. The success of that relationship had been inevitable. Although they represented different parties and differed sharply in political philosophies and ability, both were cut from the same bolt of homespun. It was a cloth Americans knew well. To foreigners, especially in Europe, Johnson’s folksiness was alien, and hence suspect. The fact that most of their representatives left Washington reassured on the evening of November 25 was a feat. The accomplishment, moreover, is magnified when seen through the special pall under which the new Chief Executive labored. Ben Bradlee may have exaggerated in assuming that Johnson would live out his White House years in Kennedy’s shade, but that afternoon, with the unexplained events in Dallas looking more and more sinister,
To those around him, General de Gaulle kept talking of Kennedy’s youth and the tragedy that one so young should die. Presently there was a stirring among the guests near the reception room entrance; Galbraith and Harriman, whom many of them knew well, were arriving together. Galbraith had come to tell the President that Jenkins and Sorensen had copies of his speech draft. Johnson thanked him shortly, and Ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin introduced Galbraith to Mikoyan as “the prophet of affluence.” While the Deputy Premier was trying to sort out what this meant, Hervé Alphand asked the prophet whether he would like to meet de Gaulle. The two beanpoles began on a light note. Frowning across the room at Mikoyan, the General asked, “Why have you been conversing with such a short man?” Galbraith smiled and said, “Obviously you agree with me that the world belongs to the tall. They are more visible and therefore their behavior is better.” De Gaulle nodded. Still lowering at Mikoyan, he said, “We must be merciless with little men.”
Abruptly he turned to Galbraith. “What does the death of President Kennedy mean?” he asked. “It is the death of John Kennedy,” said Galbraith, “not the U.S.A. The country goes on.” The General listened intently as Alphand translated. He brooded for a moment, peering off across the bobbing heads with that messianic stare which bewitched his admirers and had nearly driven Winston Churchill out of his mind. “As I grow older I think we are too casual about death,” he said. “Why is it that only in your country and mine do we have this fringe of violent men?” The French Ambassador translated the rhetorical question and chimed in to agree in both languages. Galbraith started to reply, “But the Americans are better shots”; then he thought better of it.
After Angie Duke had left, Mrs. Kennedy had recovered her composure and noticed a shy, strange girl sitting off to one side of the corridor. She looked lonely and frightened, which was only natural. Yesterday Mary Ann Ryan had been a nurse in the Irish hamlet of Dunganstown, County Wexford, grieving for the handsome cousin who had put his arm around her last summer and said, “You know, you look like a Kennedy. You have the Irish smile.” Now Lee Radziwill came out of the sitting room to introduce her to Jacqueline Kennedy, who wondered how on earth she had got here. Mrs. Kennedy was too polite to ask, which was a good thing, for it is doubtful that the girl could have explained. Acting on Dean Markham’s request, a task force of Irish police cruisers had plucked Mary from her home and raced to the nearest large airport. A Pan American transatlantic flight had made an unscheduled stop to pick her up, New York customs inspectors had waved her through, and Pan Am had chartered a twin-engine plane to ferry her to Washington in time for the Mass. She knew no one in the executive mansion. She had never been in such a grand house; she could easily get lost in it, and couldn’t possibly find her way out of it and back to Dunganstown without a great deal of assistance. The situation was altogether new to her. Jacqueline Kennedy sensed her anxiety. Excusing herself, she went into the President’s bedroom and returned with the rosary from his bureau drawer for Mary and another gift for her mother.
Then doors began opening; within minutes the hall was swarming with Shrivers, Smiths, Lawfords, Auchinclosses, Radziwills, and Kennedys of all ages. Once more Mrs. Kennedy felt they were “a family close,” and the girl from Ireland was accepted as one of them. So were honorary members named Schlesinger and Powers, and one Bouvier relative who, like Mary Ryan, had just crossed the ocean. A Secret Service agent interrupted a chat between Janet Auchincloss and Rose Kennedy to say that a young man downstairs claimed to be the widow’s first cousin. The White House Detail was edgy; after the reception in the Red Room there had been a serious bomb scare there. Would Mrs. Auchincloss identify him? She did: he was Jack Davis, a schoolteacher who had hurried home from Italy too late for the funeral. Davis was exactly his cousin’s age, and he was welcomed. As evening approached the mob was dwindling—the Shrivers had stumbled out, ready to drop, and the President’s mother was leaving to fly back to her husband—and there was a kind of consolation in numbers. It was as though each of them, knowing that he had to maintain a semblance of poise with the others, was afraid seclusion would trigger private disintegration. In fact, this was the case. Those who broke were those who strayed from the tribe.
A TV set had been rolled into the sitting room. There was only one program, the Johnson reception, and from time to time the young woman who had been television’s chief protagonist for three days joined the national audience. On Channel 4 Merrill Mueller, Edwin Newman, and Nancy Dickerson were identifying the figures passing NBC’s dolly. The Apostolic Delegate had just received the treatment, and Nancy was speculating on the punishment Johnson’s hand had been taking, when, at 5:45 P.M., Willy Brandt appeared on camera. “I didn’t know he’d come,” Mrs. Kennedy said wonderingly to her sister. Lee had been in Berlin with the President; she remarked upon how much Brandt had impressed her. Jacqueline Kennedy remembered how warmly her husband had praised the Mayor, and recalled something else: yesterday she had been told that he had renamed the square where her husband had aroused 150,000 Germans with his pledge to defend West Berlin. The Attorney General entered the sitting room. “Why wasn’t Willy Brandt in the line downstairs?” she asked him. The answer was that he wasn’t important enough. He represented a city, not a nation. “Well, I want to see him,” she said. They couldn’t reach him through Angie Duke—Angie was there on the screen in front of them—so Mr. West was asked to use his expertise. A White House car was dispatched to the State Department, the chief usher phoned word ahead to veteran attendants on the seventh floor, and ten minutes later the Mayor was shown into the Oval Room. Jacqueline and Robert Kennedy went in to receive him together.
She was struck by his height. He hadn’t seemed nearly so tall in photographs. Nothing published about him had suggested that he was unusually demonstrative either, but like a great many public men who had remained steady under extraordinary pressures in the past, he had reached the end of his tether in Arlington. The moment the Kennedys entered the study he burst into tears. She inquired about the rechristening of the square in honor of her husband; wiping his eyes he acknowledged it and said he wanted to do more: a school should be named for Kennedy, too. Did he have their permission? She looked at Bob. “Fine,” he said. He couldn’t say more. This was turning out to be more difficult for him than de Valera. Jacqueline Kennedy walked to the windows and looked out. Darkness had come down upon the city. Beyond the Truman balcony lay the south grounds, the Ellipse, the white needle of the Washington Monument, its winking red lights warning off aircraft; and, across the Tidal Basin, the lovely colonnaded shrine of the Jefferson Memorial, which the President had ordered illuminated at night. “He can’t have this view any more,” she said, “but he can have John F. Kennedy Platz. Thank you for that.” Though her eyes were full, she was composed, and pivoting she saw she was the only one there who was.
The Mayor was the last of the distinguished guests. Maître Fincklin set up a buffet in the study. There was a great deal of maundering about between there, the hall, and the sitting room as the family munched the chicken and ham sandwiches which had been the mansion’s staple since Friday. Everywhere, it seemed, one could hear the reedy, hearty voice of Dave Powers. Dave might have been created for this evening. His career was over. Even the Kennedy team had found him trying at times; when he came humming down the curving corridor in the West Wing, men with work to do had closed their doors. He had been invaluable at ball games or in the pool, when the President wanted to relax, but Lyndon Johnson’s sense of humor ran along different lines, and he would not suffer him gladly or for long. Tonight, however, Dave made the family gathering an apotheosis of an Irish wake. He performed as though it were the climax of his life, which it probably was, telling charming anecdotes of the President’s early years in politics—how he had first met him under a dim 15-watt bulb on the landing of a Boston three-decker tenement and heard him say in his cultivated accent, “My name is Jack Kennedy. I am a candidate for
He was still young John’s indefatigable drill instructor, and the children couldn’t get enough of his “One, two, three, four: Cadence count!” Looking like a defeated alderman yet performing like a Pied Piper, he led them to the end of the South Hall, cried merrily, “To the rear March!” and headed back to the dining room. It was seven o’clock. John’s birthday was to be observed again. A small table had been set for two. Caroline and John sat, and around them gathered their mother, Dave, Sydney Lawford, Bob Kennedy’s children, Bob and Ethel, Steve and Jean, Lee and Stas, Pat, Jamie and young Janet Auchincloss, and Maude Shaw. There were presents from all of them—each time John exultantly ripped the wrappings off a box there was a little chorus of approval—and a cake with three candles.
Ice cream was brought in for all the children, and Mrs. Kennedy suggested they sing some of the songs the President had loved. Someone pointed out that the piano was in the hall, but Dave scoffed at pianos. “We Irish don’t need music to sing,” he said. “The music’s inside us.” The party became what Miss Shaw called “a singsong affair”; Dave led them in “That Old Gang of Mine,” and then said, “What about ‘Heart of My Heart’? It’s a sort of comrady song.”