Jackie reaching out to the Secret Service man over the rear of the presidential limousine, her terrible cry: “My God, they’ve killed Jack. They’ve killed my husband!”
In the next few unforgettable days, Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy taught the nation the deeper meaning of aristocracy. An aristocrat may have some wayward, willful patches in his or her character. But by and large aristocrats also have a sense of their own stature, as well as life’s depths. They have been trained to speak and behave in a style that befits the occasion, no matter what their private feelings may be. Jackie’s previous three years, in which, behind her various masks, she had forged her own unique identity as First Lady, became a resource on which she drew to sustain not only herself but the American people in this tragic ordeal.
Imagine, for a moment, what might have happened if Jackie had simply collapsed, like wives of other assassinated Presidents. Mary Lincoln became hysterical and stayed that way for the rest of her life. Epileptic Ida McKinley was the least visible First Lady in our history and remained an absent blank when her husband was gunned down in 1901. Fortunately, there were strong men ready to take charge of the nation, without their help. But America
needed
Jackie Kennedy’s help in 1963.
Jackie’s dignity, her sense of history, enabled the nation to focus on its grief. The riderless horse with the reversed boots preceding the casket on its solemn cavalcade to the Capitol, the grace with which she greeted Charles de Gaulle and other heads of state, the serenity withwhich she presided over the entire funeral with her children beside her, became a kind of catharsis, an antidote to thoughts of violence and revenge. The woman in the black veil became as much a part of Jackie’s mystery, her complex public persona, as the smiling, joyous advocate of beauty and art in the resplendent, festive White House.
If I am right, Jacqueline Kennedy’s struggle to become her own woman in the White House is one of the most important hidden dramas in American history. Her success was not only a personal triumph, it is a legacy that continues to live in the American soul.
Chapter 4
—
PIONEER
CRUSADERS
M OST F IRST L ADIES HAVE HAD NO TROUBLE EVADING THE PITFALLS OF an aristocratic style, even though they often were several notches above their husbands in social standing (a little-known fact which suggests—but does not prove—that Presidents start aiming for the top at an early age). Until recently it was a basic part of a woman’s role to be agreeable and charming. Also, Presidents soon recognized the folly of offending the sensibilities of Mr. and Mrs. John Q. Citizen with anything that smacked of highfalutin ways. A number of First Ladies have thus felt free to use the symbolic power of their office to do some quiet—and sometimes not so quiet—crusading to solve national problems or correct injustices in the American scheme of things.
The pioneer in this department is a First Lady I had smugly dismissed until I started writing this book: Lucy Webb Hayes. She was the wife of Rutherford B. Hayes, elected in 1876 thanks to the only stolen presidential election in American history. It was a contest shadowed by the million dead of the Civil War. The Democrats won theWhite House by a hefty half million popular votes, but the Republicans, appalled at seeing the party of rebellion and secession returning to power, self-righteously purchased the electoral votes of several southern states which were still under military occupation, putting Hayes in the White House by a whisker—one electoral vote. For a while it looked as if we were going to have another civil war.
Although President Hayes himself seems to have had nothing to do with the moneybags that were highballed south in the night, he entered the White House as a President violently disliked by more than half the voters. That made First Lady Lucy Hayes loom large in the
In the next few unforgettable days, Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy taught the nation the deeper meaning of aristocracy. An aristocrat may have some wayward, willful patches in his or her character. But by and large aristocrats also have a sense of their own stature, as well as life’s depths. They have been trained to speak and behave in a style that befits the occasion, no matter what their private feelings may be. Jackie’s previous three years, in which, behind her various masks, she had forged her own unique identity as First Lady, became a resource on which she drew to sustain not only herself but the American people in this tragic ordeal.
Imagine, for a moment, what might have happened if Jackie had simply collapsed, like wives of other assassinated Presidents. Mary Lincoln became hysterical and stayed that way for the rest of her life. Epileptic Ida McKinley was the least visible First Lady in our history and remained an absent blank when her husband was gunned down in 1901. Fortunately, there were strong men ready to take charge of the nation, without their help. But America
needed
Jackie Kennedy’s help in 1963.
Jackie’s dignity, her sense of history, enabled the nation to focus on its grief. The riderless horse with the reversed boots preceding the casket on its solemn cavalcade to the Capitol, the grace with which she greeted Charles de Gaulle and other heads of state, the serenity withwhich she presided over the entire funeral with her children beside her, became a kind of catharsis, an antidote to thoughts of violence and revenge. The woman in the black veil became as much a part of Jackie’s mystery, her complex public persona, as the smiling, joyous advocate of beauty and art in the resplendent, festive White House.
If I am right, Jacqueline Kennedy’s struggle to become her own woman in the White House is one of the most important hidden dramas in American history. Her success was not only a personal triumph, it is a legacy that continues to live in the American soul.
Chapter 4
—
PIONEER
CRUSADERS
M OST F IRST L ADIES HAVE HAD NO TROUBLE EVADING THE PITFALLS OF an aristocratic style, even though they often were several notches above their husbands in social standing (a little-known fact which suggests—but does not prove—that Presidents start aiming for the top at an early age). Until recently it was a basic part of a woman’s role to be agreeable and charming. Also, Presidents soon recognized the folly of offending the sensibilities of Mr. and Mrs. John Q. Citizen with anything that smacked of highfalutin ways. A number of First Ladies have thus felt free to use the symbolic power of their office to do some quiet—and sometimes not so quiet—crusading to solve national problems or correct injustices in the American scheme of things.
The pioneer in this department is a First Lady I had smugly dismissed until I started writing this book: Lucy Webb Hayes. She was the wife of Rutherford B. Hayes, elected in 1876 thanks to the only stolen presidential election in American history. It was a contest shadowed by the million dead of the Civil War. The Democrats won theWhite House by a hefty half million popular votes, but the Republicans, appalled at seeing the party of rebellion and secession returning to power, self-righteously purchased the electoral votes of several southern states which were still under military occupation, putting Hayes in the White House by a whisker—one electoral vote. For a while it looked as if we were going to have another civil war.
Although President Hayes himself seems to have had nothing to do with the moneybags that were highballed south in the night, he entered the White House as a President violently disliked by more than half the voters. That made First Lady Lucy Hayes loom large in the
Similar Books
