Opinion Memoirs of a geisha

But she maintains her reputation as JFK’s best image wizard,a novelistic observer of history and the most deliciously original,glamorous and compelling political spouse we’ll ever see. Who else would read War and Peace during the Wisconsin primary and recommend the memoirs of the Duc de Saint-Simon as the best preparation for life in the White House? Who else could persuade the Egyptians to hand over the Temple of Dendur and the French to lend the Mona Lisa,and rediscover the sidelined HMS Resolute desk for the Oval Office? Who else could talk about “that egomaniac” de Gaulle in one breath and the fact that her husband had Gemini characteristics in the next? Who else could argue that JFK should be seen as a Whig and as a Greek,not a Roman,and then astutely dissect why the ambassador to Pakistan didn’t understand the culture there? Who else would describe a head of state (the Colombian president,Alberto Lleras Camargo) as “Nordic in his sadness”?

Her snobbery was mostly directed at the self-regarding,incompetent,inconsiderate,hypocritical and power crazed — and at anyone she felt was hurting her husband or children. And even I have to agree with her asperity about the suitability of French cuisine for the White House rather than Irish stew and the tendency of the Irish to have “a persecution thing.”

She loved the patriarch Joe,calling him “Mr Kennedy,” and,in a phrase ahead of its time,“the tiger mother.”

President Kennedy told her not to get angry at his foes at any given moment,because they might be allies the next. He treated politics like a chessboard,she said. But she was protective of JFK,who was often in physical pain and dealing with what she called the first and second Cuba,and she always on guard against men — and women — who might resist or envy his youth,sex appeal and “ease.”

Defending her husband against charges that he was overly concerned with image,she described her own vulnerability when some around JFK wondered if she was too exotic a bird for rough-and-tumble politics. “I was always a liability to him until we got to the White House,” she told Schlesinger. “And he never asked me to change or said anything about it. Everyone thought I was a snob from Newport,who had bouffant hair and had French clothes and hated politics. … Sometimes I’d say,‘Oh,Jack,I wish — you know I’m sorry for you that I’m just such a dud.’”

So,she concluded,“that shows you he wasn’t thinking of his image or he would have made me get a little frizzy permanent and be like Pat Nixon.”

She was anything but a dud. People around the globe were riveted by her. Back then,at the dawn of feminism,she had not yet transformed into the working woman who would give an interview to Ms magazine about how women cannot live through men. She was a geisha and prided herself on it,saying “It was really a rather terribly Victorian or Asiatic relationship which we had.” When Schlesinger noted “a Japanese wife,” she agreed: “Yeah,which I think’s the best.”

She could be cutting about women,calling the earnest Indira Gandhi “a real prune — bitter,kind of pushy,horrible woman” who looked as if she’d “been sucking a lemon” and suggesting in a naughty whisper that Clare Boothe Luce was so macho she must be a lesbian.

She said she considered her main job to be distracting and soothing her husband and making sure the children were in a good mood when the leader of the free world got home. She did not see herself as an Eleanor Roosevelt,wanting to pester him about some pressing political matter.

“I remember I said it in an interview once,” she recalled,“and all these women — we got all these irate letters — someone said,‘Where do you get your opinions?’ And I said,‘I get all my opinions from my husband.’ Which is true. How could I have any political opinions,you know? His were going to be the best. And I could never conceive of not voting for whoever my husband was for.”

But the young Jacqueline Kennedy underestimated herself in those dark days long ago. She had plenty of opinions of her own,tart and tantalising.