Cigar, May 11, 1963 Taking a smoking break at Hyannis Port, Mass. Cecil W. Stoughton / John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum Read more: time/time/photogallery/0,29307,2030983,00.html#ixzz2XkLgrGyL John Fitzgerald ”Jack“ Kennedy (May 29, 1917 – November 22, 1963) IN ONE WORD: Intellectual Exposition~ Most unlike Senator Lloyd Millard Bentsen, Jr., I actually did know Jack. When he was a Senator in city, I was already irremediably deep in the “swim” of Washington. I liked Jack very much. He was kind to take the time to be friendly and talkative to a boy far too young to ever be able to vote for him~~and a boy from a family so blatantly, and actively, on the other side of the political ball field from his own. He was very interested in ideas. We spoke about the Russian invasion of Hungary in 1956 and how outraged~~at age 4~~I’d been that the Americans left the Hungarian freedom fighters hanging. Jack said he agreed that we encouraged the uprising and then abandoned the fighters. Politics is a very peculiar sport. Jack was sold to the public as a too pretty to believe paragon of virility, home and hearth. He in fact was very frail and sickly throughout all his life~~and in great pain. He was terribly shy and was forced to stand for politics only following the death at war of his older brother. He was socially hesitant~~his money was so new and so audaciously acquired that I always felt, while watching him, that he was starring in his own home movie of Molière’s Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme~~trying too very hard to guess how rich people behave. I admired his mind and his intellectual curiosity. I think he is the only truly intellectually curious President I’ve known or ever read about, save, perhaps, Mr Jefferson–about whom Jack and I spoke and for whom there was, for both of us, great admiration.
Posted on: Wed, 10 Jul 2013 17:03:45 +0000
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