Monday, December 29, 2003

Jackie, Oh!

"A perfect example of (the glamour of Kennedy power) would be ... the way Jacqeline Kennedy acquired the use of the estate she wanted for riding in the hunt country of Virginia. She found a country place and set her heart on it, but the widow who owned it did not want to leave her home, since she had also set her heart on it, years before, and had shared the place with her husband before sharing it with his memories. Mrs. Kennedy called on the then-powerful lawyer Clark Clifford, who wanted to become ... 'an honorary Kennedy' by doing the will of the family, even down to its most arbitrary whims.

"The first two times Clifford tried to persuade the woman, he was turned down; but Mrs. Kennedy told him to keep trying. Clifford then resorted to what he called his National Security argument: it was the woman's patriotic duty to help the President meet challenges to the nation by giving him a place to relax. This worked. The delighted Mrs. Kennedy sent Clifford a drawing to congratulate him on these ingeneous bullying tactics. (The drawing) shows him striding up to a woman's house with a lawyerly sheaf of documents labelled 'Acts of Exile, Tortures, Lists of Jail.' All very funny, except to the woman."

From The Kennedy Imprisonment, by Garry Wills, p. xii

1 comment:

Dale said...

It can't succeed in fact, that is what I think.
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