and so on. and so over the course of several years we hashed out a set of principles on free expression and privacy, and then google, yahoo! and microsoft signed on. they agreed to be sort of evaluated over the extent to which they actually adhere to these things and the first kind of evaluation's going to happen this year. so far, um, we're hoping that more companies will join. it's still early days, and i think it's still very much in the proof of concept stage. >> host: rebecca mackinnon is a fellow with the new america foundation. if people want to read your writings, where should they go? >> guest: well, i have a blog at our conversation.com. >> host: r, letter r. >> guest: letter r, or you can just google my name, rebecca mackinnon, and you'll get my progress and my -- blog and my twitter feed and everything else. >> host: we've been talking with

her on "the communicators." thank you. >> guest: thank you. >> next, we continue our first lady programming with jacqueline kennedy. barbara perry, former judicial fellow at the u.s. supreme court, recounts the transformative effect mrs. kennedy had on the office of the first lady from her renowned celebrity to her engagement in the arts and the championing of cultural institutions. this is about an hour. >> thank you, don, so much for putting this series together, for that very nice introduction. thank you, too, to mary and flesh shah as well. don and i were chatting just beforehand that it's especially appropriate to talk about jacqueline kennedy at a historical society such as this because it was jacqueline kennedy who kicked off the movement to have historical societies for our branches of government. so it was the white house that

had the very first historical society founded by mrs. kennedy in 1961, and then the capitol historical society, don tells me, followed just one year later in is the 62, and then -- 1962, and then a few years later 1974, the supremes as we call them, the u.s. supreme court historical society was founded in 1974. so we're grateful to these associations because they are very helpful, as you can imagine n keeping alive the history of these three very important branches of our government. so welcome to all of you today. i want to begin with a question, actually two questions for you. and i just spoke to c-span, they said since this is going to be informal, we don't have to have the microphone, so i'll repeat your answers. but the, um, the first question is going to be if i can get my powerpoint going here, one moment. there we go. um, what is your first memory of a first lady? and i know some of you, so i can

call on you if no one is brave enough to raise a hand. [laughter] i know that you all have memories. tell me, yes. >> eleanor roosevelt when i was a child. >> eleanor roosevelt when you were a teeny, tiny child -- >> just crawling. >> barely, just an infant. [laughter] but somehow you remember eleanor roosevelt what -- roosevelt. what do you recall about her? >> impressive speaker. i have to recall looking back, and, you know, to me she came across as rather dowdy, but i'm sure at the time she didn't. >> well, we will talk about that and, certainly, next week i know with maureen beasley you'll be talking about her book on eleanor roosevelt, and it was my pleasure to serve as a reviewer for that book, so you will be in for a real treat to hear from maureen and also to read her book. but keep that thought about eleanor roosevelt because we're going to compare and contrast

jacqueline kennedy. other first ladies? your first impression, your first memory of a first lady. yes. >> well, mine is still eleanor roosevelt. i was, i was born in washington shortly before the new deal. my mother was a newspaper reporter, she covered eleanor roosevelt, she was a friend of eleanor roosevelt's. i got invited to white house parties. >> wonderful. wonderful. so if -- we had someone here in the audience who was based in washington at the start of the new deal, her mother covered eleanor roosevelt, she was invited to parties with eleanor roosevelt. this is the wonderful thing about washington, d.c. because everyone here has a story, an interesting story. i must say i've given this talk fairly frequently when i was in sweet briar college, and i asked this question, who's the first lady you can remember, and a nice lady in the front said, mrs. calvin coolidge.

and i said, we have a winner. no one has topped that for going back farther. any more recent memories anyone wants to offer? >> i was, again, very, very little, 5, 6 years old, i remember thinking how goofy looking mamie eisenhower -- >> oh, dear. [laughter] we'll talk about the looks of the first ladies who preceded jacqueline kennedy, again, comparing and contrasting, but mamie eisenhower, of course, was the immediate predecessor to jacqueline kennedy. so, again, if we can move on, tell me who's your favorite first lady. now f you've already spoken, you're not allowed to speak again. this is how the supreme court runs it conferences. you're not allowed to give two opinions on a case you're deciding until everyone has been allowed to give one. so tell me who your favorite first lady is. yes. >> jackie kennedy. >> a likely suspect, since you're here today to hear about jackie kennedy, and i'm told by don this was one of the largest

turnouts for the first three of these in the series on first ladies, and i don't doubt it. jacqueline kennedy still has a tremendous hold on the american imagination. others that anyone would like to volunteer? other first ladies you would consider your favorite? okay. well, let's move on then. why is it that jacqueline kennedy maintains this hold on the american imagination? well, this is what my talk is going to be about today, so all of the slides will illustrate why this is. but here are just some examples. and i won't make you raise your hand to say if you watch qvc for home shopping purposes. and i, of course, only see it when i'm just racing through channel surfing. i would never stop. but occasionally i do. and i tell you what catches my eye, when they have the jacqueline kennedy jewelry for sale. now, wouldn't it be great if we could all afford the actual kind of precious stones and jewelry that she had? these, of course, are costume reproductions of jacqueline kennedy's jewelry.

but this is the kind of akonography that is -- iconography that is available to us about jacqueline kennedy including these poignant and heartbreaking photos of her with her two chirp. and just -- children. and just across the bottom, these are recent books about jacqueline kennedy. there's hardly a year that goes by that there are not several new books out, and the recent are two that came out at virtually the same time about the time she spent after her marriage to aristotle onassis serving in new york as a book editor. and they are referencing jackie's books, the books that jacqueline kennedy edited, so that we get a sense of what she was like in that latter third of her life as she was a senior editor in new york city. all right? now, let's talk about why she, again, has such an impact on our imaginations 50 years, we're celebrating and commemorating the 50 years of camelot, of the kennedy administration starting this past january.

the 50th anniversary of that cold, snowy day here in washington, d.c. when president kennedy was inaugurateed the 35th president of the united states. and i'd like you to take a look at this definition. this is, actually, a political science definition of political symbolism, and i think that, indeed, this photograph here is one of the symbols of mrs. kennedy. and you mentioned eleanor roosevelt. you mentioned mamie eisenhower. how about bess truman? let's stop and think of those three immediate predecessors to jacqueline kennedy. those ladies, when they left office, were all in their 60s. jacqueline ken by was -- kennedy was 31 when she came to the white house to be first lady. there had not been young children in the white house since the teddy roosevelt era in the early 1900s, and they weren't as young as young caroline who was only 3 when her parents entered the white house, and john jr. had just been born between the election and the inauguration, the only time that's ever happened in the

history of the first ladies. can you even imagine mamie eisenhower or bess truman on a horse? one of the reasons i can't imagine that is because like my own grandmothers who were of that generation, i never saw my grandmothers wear trousers. they always wore dresses. so even just to see a first lady in riding clothes and to be as athletic as -- and she was an excellent rider and e questions trend -- to be up on horseback in itself was different certainly, again, from the three predecessors. this horse, by the way, was given to her by the president of pakistan when she made a trip there in 1962. she made a semi-official trip, some of you might recall, to pakistan and to india in 1962. and she was a huge hit there. she loved this horse, and many of the photographs you see of her from that time on during her time in the white house and out on her farm that she rented and then built a farmhouse right at

the end of the presidency in northern virginia. so often times when you see her riding, she's riding this horse, the pakistani president's gift to her. he was very grateful to her, among other things, she had thrown for him an amazing state dinner in the springtime and early summer of 1961 at mount vernon. and, in fact, she had everyone meet and get, catch a boat to go down the potomac river, take an evening cruise, arrive at mount vernon, and then she had had beautiful tents set up at mount vernon and then had a beautiful outdoor, lovely dinner with music for the president of pakistan and all those invited to the state dinner. so it still sets the upper bar for amazing state dinners that jacqueline kennedy had. but this concept of political symbolism i just want to say one thing about. one is that note how it says it taps into emotional and moral and psychological feelings.

if jacqueline kennedy is still in our consciousness, that's why, because she tapped into those elements of our emotion. but when people say, oh, but all that glitters is not gold, you know, camelot, there were some, perhaps, things that were not so good about camelot. well, note that's the very definition of a political symbol, that it may not all be true, but that it taps ideas that people want to believe in as true. and certainly, many americans wanted to believe the legend and even the mythology of camelot. what were the other symbols that jacqueline kennedy is now famous for, and how did they have an impact on her husband's presidency? this photo comes from the summer of 1962. mrs. kennedy is with her husband in mexico on a state visit. notice who's in the front here, all right? here's president kennedy standing to the back. president kennedy was known not to have a facility or a gift for foreign languages. some might say that his boston accent made his english a

foreign accent to some, to those of us in kentucky, for example, it took us a while to get used to that. [laughter] i happened to be taught by dominican nuns in catholic grade school who were from boston, so i was able to tap into that. but look at how mrs. kennedy is dressed. some of you said that some of the previous first ladies to her -- eleanor roosevelt, maybe even mamie eisenhower -- i would describe them as being rather matronly in their appearance with old-fashioned suits or dresses, old-fashioned hats. look at mrs. kennedy. it was not that common for women to wear sleeveless attire in those days to a formal event. and now we take that for grammed, and mrs. obama has brought the sleeveless dress back into vogue, but it's jackie kennedy who does that from the beginning. also note the color, a bright pink rather than a dark, somber suit or dress and full sleeves or a slit l dowdy hat.

i say she could wear this hat to the kentucky derby and be right in style. this gives her husband another boost of symbolism of youth and fashion. now, we also know that one of the other elements that she's quite famous for and remembered for is redecorating, restoring the white house. when i was doing my research for this book, i called the curator of the white house, this would have been in the late 1990s, and told her i was writing a book on jacqueline kennedy, and i was particularly interested in mrs. kennedy's restoration of the white house. and betty monkman was her name, and the curator said do you know that restoring the white house is so associated with the name of mrs. kennedy, that americans think no one has ever touched the white house since mrs. kennedy left in 963. and yet we know that everyone who moves into a new apartment or condo or house does some redecorating, so most first ladies have done some redecorating.

she, though, undertook this project to restore completely the white house, take it from what she called a rather shabby 1950s, knotty fine faux colonial look to a proper, appropriate look for the age in which it was built and initially lived in. so she also established commissions and committees about the arts, about antiques, about paintings in the white house. and she made sure that everything that was there, as best she and these experts could determine, that these were all authentic; paintings, sculptures, paints, up upholstey and antiques. this is a sad day, i have to say, in mrs. kennedy's wife. this is the red room, and that was the first room that she completed in her restoration, but this was the day of her husband's funeral. and she insisted that she meet those who were coming from afar, those who were diplomats, the diplomatic corps from abroad. and so she stood with her

brother-in-law, senator edward kennedy, to her right, and she insisted on greeting everyone who had come to pay their respects to her husband. on a more glittery note, again, we remember her for her state entertaining. in the short amount of time that she was in the white house -- and it was only a little over a thousand days -- she and her husband threw 16 state dinners. in the first term, full four years of the w. bush term, they held, i believe it was two. now, mind you, 9/11 happened during that time, there were security issues, but the bushes, the second bushes from be texas were just not as interest inside that. they weren't as interested in state entertainment. they weren't as interested in bringing people from abroad and entertaining them at the white house. the kennedys loved that lifestyle. they both came, you know, from the northeast, they both had ties to new york city, president kennedy had ties to hollywood going back to his father's day there as a hollywood mogul in

the 1920s. so they loved that glimmer and that panache of entertainment. but they also, particularly mrs. kennedy, loved the art t. so she would use each and every one of these state entertainment occasions to bring artists to the white house. so she would bring playrights, and she would bring singers, opera singers, she would bring orchestras, she would have plays that would be done at the white house. this also, then, reminded her that there was no proper national stage for the arts in washington d.c. and you know eventually what that lead to. that leads to. this particular photograph, and you might be able to see just behind, hold up here and go back, just behind her -- go forward. you'll see the mona lisa, okay? kind of dark. the enigmatic mona lisa. i like to think that's a metaphor for mrs. kennedy. the mona lisa has that

mysterious smile. mrs. kennedy is a bit mysterious to us even today because she maintained a tight hold on her privacy. mrs. kennedy never wrote a memoir. think of hillary clinton's memoir in which she tells of finding out about her husband's infidelities, and in a famous passage she says i want today wring bill's neck. well, maybe on occasion mrs. kennedy wanted to do the same, but if she did, she never wrote about it, she never went on oprah to tell about it. she kept these things in her heart, and it add toss that my speak -- adds to that my speak and the aura. so it was perfect for her to facilitate the borrowing of the painting of the mona lisa from the french. but it's the height of the old cold war, we need france as an ally. france and president de gaulle, president of france at the time, could be prickly, and it could be a little difficult to deal with them at times. but notice how mrs. kennedy is standing here next to andre mall

row. if you can see her shoulder, this is how mrs. kennedy approached men of power. she would tuck her shoulder up underneath theirs, and she would use that very whisper ri voice that she had, and she would whisper to them. and these men would just unload their hearts upon her, and be they would tell her all of the things that they wanted her to know. whether these be matters of state or personal issues, andre was the minister of culture in france, and he adored mrs. kennedy, and she adored him. so notice, she is standing next to him, not her husband, or not even vice president johnson. and that was part of her power as well, not just during the cold war, but just throughout her husband's presidency. now, we also give her credit for saving lafayette square. imagine standing in this day and age in front of the white house with your back to the north portico facing out towards

lafayette park. what if we didn't have the beautiful town oklahomas that are there now -- town homes that are there now including dolly madison's home, the townhome where she lived after her husband's presidency and into her retirement? imagine if we had high-rise, concrete federal office buildings? this is the plan that had been put into motion in the 1950s because the federal government continued to proliferate. and so president eisenhower and president kennedy had signed off on the plan to raze, to demolish all of the townhomes in lafayette square and use that prime real estate to put up high-rise office blocks for the federal bureaucracy. mrs. kennedy got wind of this, and she went to her husband and said, please, don't do that. look at these. and here she is with the architect. look at these beautiful townhomes. they can be restored. she then called on john carl warn key, a west coast architect

who whose particular interest was how to preserve history while adding modern architecture to it, so he suggested put anything low-rise office buildings and making them of red brick. not bright, gaudy concrete but beautiful red, colonial-looking brick that would then go with the beautiful brick sidewalks and pavements throughout lafayette square. so the next time you're down in lafayette square or you go by, think of mrs. kennedy and how she saved that. and in the process, kicked off a movement of historic preservation in the united states. now, she at one time said i sometimes worry the bomb will hit and obliterate us all here in washington, but it didn't, and she saved this beautiful spot. for us. now, that's just in the united states. we haven't talked about what she did when she went abroad, okay in we only mentioned her semiofficial trip by herself --

actually, she took her sister when she went in '62 to india and pakistan. but first of all, even in this day and age just imagine what it took for her to pull off a trip both to pakistan and india? her first trip abroad as first lady with her husband in official state visit was to paris. and it was at that time that president kennedy famously said, let me introduce myself, i am the man who accompanied jacqueline kennedy to paris, and i have enjoyed it. in order, he, again, was a bit in the background because she was so beautiful, and she spoke perfect french. she had spent her junior year abroad in paris. so she spoke fluent french, and here de gaulle doesn't look prickly to me, he looks charmed. he looks happy. and she's wearing a givenchy gown. she tip chi would try to wear -- typically would try to wear

american designers in america, and oleg cassini was viewed by american by the 1960s, so he was her primary style i here. but she thought when in paris, do as the parisians and french would do, and that is why she chose this beautiful gown. she had embroidered flowers in the bottom. this is what she wore to the state dinner at versailles. the next part of that journey, the second leg, was even more important in terms of cold war politics. it was important enough to keep de gaulle on our side, but she also met in vienna when her husband went to the summit with kruschev. now, president kennedy went into that summit meeting in vienna in the summer of 1961, the first time he would meet nikita kruschev. he thought i'm young, i'm bright, i'm dynamic, i'm charismatic, that's how i won the presidency, i will be able to charm this communist russian

peasant with no problem. one problem. he didn't. and kruschev, as the stories go, savaged the president to the point where the president came out of the first summit meeting ashen-faced. kruschev took the measure of the man. mrs. kennedy, on the other hand, is meeting at the same time with mrs. kruschev, and their getting along famously. now, i'm not here to argue that that saves the free world or that that saves us from the bomb being dropped, but if you have some personal diplomacy going on behind the scenes, that certainly helps. here's another point i wish to raise with you. if you can see, mrs. kennedy is wearing a rather sedate, subdued dark suit, but a lovely little pillbox hat that she became famous for. look at mrs. cruise che, right? -- kruschev, right? you're a third world country, you hadn't yet aligned with the soviets, with the communists or with the united states, and you have to decide, am i going to

cast my lot with the united states, or with the soviet union based on how their first ladies look. which one do you pick, all right? it sounds facetious, but i think symbolically there's something to it. the kennedys looked alive and vibrant and stylish, the soviets did not. next, mrs. kennedy meets with kruschev himself. now, again, this is not an official summit meeting where diplomacy is occurring, but she meets him at the state dinner at the palace in vienna. and look at the facial expressions on chairman kruschev's face. again, president kennedy's in the background. here's mrs. kennedy in this lovely beaded gown, and apparently, she said this to chairman kruschev when he began to try to dazzle her with statistics about how many missiles they had and how many cannons they were producing and how many tractors, she supposedly in her breathy voice

said, oh, mr. chairman, don't bore me with statistics. and he broke into this wide smile. as "the washington post" put it the next day, he looked like a russian schoolboy at the start of spring when the ice is melting on the volga. [laughter] she just melted him with her charm. other images, of course, were of her life as a mother. think how perfect this was at the height of the baby boom. remember, the baby boom goes from babies born from 1946 to 1964. caroline was born in 957, john in 960 -- 1960, mrs. kennedy is part and parcel of the baby boom. this, i'm convinced, is why my mother who was having her own baby boom in our family, packed my two older brothers and me in october of 1960, drove us to downtown louisville, kentucky, to see senator kennedy come true

and give a campaign speech. she loved politics on a grand scale, but she didn't marley like the rough and tumble grassroots politics. she did like to -- she didn't like to drive downtown, and she didn't like crowds. and yet this family -- senator kennedy, mrs. kennedy, caroline at that time so drew my mother, a catholic housewife from louisville, kentucky, to go see her new political hero. and she would say to me forever more, don't you remember? we got there early, and we were right in front of the podium, and your brother shook hands with soon to be president kennedy, and i say, mother, i'm trying so hard to remember, but i was 4. i remember the balloons, the confetti, i remember that one of her earrings got dropped off, and we found it on the way out. someone had stepped on it, but still i think she was able to bend it back. i would always say to her, mother, you turned me into a political scientist at the age of 4, and forever more i was

interested in the kennedys. i think this is why jacqueline kennedy resonated with them. this photograph was taken from august of 1963. it is another sad time for the family. mrs. kennedy had just lost her son patrick who had been born prematurely a week before and had died of a lung ailment. he lived only two days, and she and the president were shattered as was caroline who was 6 at the time, and she was old enough to understand she wasn't going to have a baby brother or sister to welcome. young john was a little bit too young to understand. but what president kennedy did this weekend, again, the week after patrick died, but come back from washington and bring all the family dogs as well as new puppies just to try to lighten up the spirit of the time. and so here they are sitting out on their porch, on their patio at hyannis port. now, obviously, the media played a role in all of this. it wasn't just mrs. kennedy putting out these symbols and images and no one paying attention.

think of this: in 1952 when president eisenhower was elected president, 20% of american households had televisions. by is 1960 when president kenney is elected, 80% of american households have television. now, mind grow, they were all -- mind you, they were all black and white. and we only had two channels. my students couldn't comprehend such a thing. that's true, but the kennedyss were on television a lot. and mrs. kennedy and president kennedy were beautiful on television. they were even more beautiful in the glossy "life "magazine covers. think about those. practically every week one or more of the kennedys -- and this is just president and mrs. kennedy. this think of all the brothers and the sisters and the sisters-in-law and the nieces and the nephews, they were always being portray inside one way or another. so as is typical of pop culture icons, they both reflect the time in which they live, and

they become a lens by which we view that time in which they lived. and since television was coming on the scene this middle photo is a still from the famous tour that miss kennedy gave with charles comingwood of cbs on valentine's day, is 1962. remember, she took him through the white house, showed him all the rooms that she had redecorated without a script. she just went through, she wasn't reading from cue card or anything. she had all of this in her brain. she had remembered all of the antiques, all of the portraits, all of the painters, all of the upholstery, all of the furniture. every story she could tell. she won an emmy award for that show, and that show was recorded and sent around the world. it even to the extent we could get it behind the iron curtain, we did. and president kennedy made a cameo appearance in the last fife minutes. -- five minutes. he came in to talk, and he said this white house is a symbol.

it's a symbol of american history. and he said, when we first became a country 200 years ago, there was a czar in russia, there was an emperor in peking, and he said look how much we have grown beyond that. in other words, if you're the third world and you're still wondering which way to go, pick us. pick us. we have great history. we have great art. we have great symbolism. and we have a great first lady. sadly, we know how the story ends. on november the 2 22nd, 1963, interestingly enough, mrs. kennedy volunteered to go to texas with her husband. it was a fundraiser as well as trying to bring together the two warring factions of the texas democratic party. mrs. kennedy had not gone out on a domestic trip with her husband for his entire presidency. she, of course, had gone abroad with him, but she had not gone on a domestic trip. she didn't particularly like the rough and tumble of campaigning,

she was much too refined for that, so she rarely volunteered to go on those trips. this just three months after she had lost her baby. she and the president, according to all accounts, had grown closer because of that shared experience. mrs. kennedy, though, was so distraught and depress inside the fall of 1963 that the president urged her to go abroad. she went on a greek cruise with her sister's boyfriend, aristotle o nasty, and she came back -- onassis, and she came back much more refreshed and happier and volunteered to go to dallas with her husband, and she said many years later for all of the horror that she experienced, what a blessing that she could be there when the end came. and so just an hour after this, we know how this story ends. in those six horrifying seconds in which the shots rang out in the motorcade in dallas, mrs. kennedy lost her husband, her home and her job.

imagine what that must have been like for her. and yet she was willing at the request of the new president, lyndon johnson, to come out into the cabin and stand next the him when -- next to him when he took the oath of office from judge sara t. hughes. and, again, those of you who remember that day, i know, have this image burned in your brains. mrs. kennedy refused to change clothes. she was wearing her famous raspberry chanel suit. she had started out the day with the matching pillbox hat. that had come off in the chaos, but she refused to take off her blood-stained suit because she kept saying, i want them the see what they did to my husband. and even though i was just 7 at the time, i can remember watching that black and white television in our living room with my family, and i can remember we gasped when she came off the plane and was still wearing that suit, but she refused to take it off.

she then became, though, the mourner in chief for the nation. she had a few moments of shock, again, given the horror she had witnessed in dallas, but very quickly she got her wits about her. she asked her husband's family, sargent shriver, and some cabinet members into planning the funeral right away, and she asked that it be based on abraham lincoln's funeral. she was still thinking of symbolism and history even in her grief. so here she is coming down the steps of the capitol with caroline on one hand and john on the other, the president's brother, bobby, behind her. his sister pat to bobby's left and peter lawford behind the group there. and i can only find in the videos one moment in public where she began to cry softly, and it was when they arrived at the capitol with the caseson bearing her husband's casket, and the band struck up "hail to the chief," and with that very famous preface to the song, she

just dropped her head to her chest, and she began to cry a bit softly. now, this is the next step that she takes in the image-making process. one week after the assassination she is in hyannis port with her family for thanksgiving. she calls journalist teddy white who had written that famous book, "the making of the president: 1960," and she asks him to come from new york to hyannis port to write a story about her husband to put into "life" magazine for that week. and mr. white had to say we are ready to go to press with that, and she said, i don't care. stop the presses, don't print it, i need to tell you this story. a nor'easter was developing, teddy white's mother was suffering a heart attack as he left, but he got a chauffer, and he was driven from new york city to cape cod through a driving nor'easter. and he arrives on the scene in

hyannis port late in the afternoon and evening, and mrs. kennedy begins to tell him the story of what she witnessed in the dallas a week before. and she spared no details. she had to get this off her chest. and then she said to him, i want my husband to be remembered as follows: he loved the musical "camelot," which was a very popular stage play in new york at that time. she said, he loved the soundtrack, and at night his back would be hurting, it would be cold, but we'd go out, and we'd put on the hi-fi -- not a stereo, we'd put on the hi-fi, and she says i know this sound trivial, but i can't get this out of my mind. this refrain keeps going over and over in my head. don't let it be forgot that once there was a spot, for one brief, shining moment known as camelot. and so she's the one who picks that metaphor, who picks that

word picture, that image to describe her husband's -- indeed brief -- presidency. and i would maintain, shining and resplendent. and so just to remind us, i have the cast here, richard burton and julie andrews from the broadway show. her very final show of that weekend, those three days of the funeral in washington, d.c. in november of 1963 was to ask that at arlington on the hillside just down from the lee mansion where her husband was buried that there be an eternal flame. she had that idea from the tomb of the unknown soldier in paris where she had studied as a college student. and she thought that would be such an appropriate metaphor going back to his inaugural address where he says the torch has been pass today a new generation. so you might remember she, bobby and teddy all lit this eternal flame at the funeral.

she also then hired john carl warn key again, her architect friend, to put together and design this very grave site, and i'm sure most of you have been out to arlington cemetery to see it. and she also asked, and i think this is telling, that she be buried this when she died in 1994 of lymphoma. she didn't ask to be buried in greece, she didn't ask to be buried with aristotle onassis, her second husband. she asked to be buried with her husband, and these are their two headstones, and then two of the children they lost, patrick and another daughter she lost as a stillborn child in the 1950s. so to help you put this into perspective in terms of where does jacqueline kennedy fall when it comes to literature about first ladies, you may have been here for the first two talks about first ladies, you may come next week for eleanor roosevelt. this is what the scholars think about first ladies in the modern

era. and, by the way, those of us who study first ladies take eleanor roosevelt and put her in a category unto herself. she is, as my mentor henry abraham would say, suey generous. eleanor roosevelt, there's no one like her before or after, but i maintain that jacqueline kennedy is a bridge first lady because she bridges the gap between the very traditional ladies of bess truman and of mamie eisenhower and then the most modern first ladies really starting with lady bird johnson. all of them have had public policy with the possible exception of pat nixon, a pet public policy that they have worked on in their husband's add mrgts. and -- administration. and so if i did a game right now that said name that policy, for every first lady i'm sure one or more of you could say, oh, i know exactly what that first lady is famous for. now i ask you, though, what about laura bush and, currently,

michelle obama? would you put them in the category of the supportive spouses/model wives, or would you put them in the second category of more of a presidential partner or spouse to their husbands? and i would say think about this as a semifinal point, and that is that i think laura bush had to be the un-hillary. hillary, in the minds of the american people, seemed to go too far on her health care initiative so that people began to say, wait a minute, she's not elected, she's not accountable. if we don't like what she's doing, we have no way of reaching her. and remember, hillary then dialed back a notch and became more of the traditional first lady by being in favor of women's issues like child advocacy. so i think that suited laura bush's personality, and it also suited the times in terms of what we wanted for a first lady. and i think michelle obama's still feeling her way. right now she's acting more the traditional first lady, she has a traditional policy in term of

women's issue, it's about diet and children and exercise, and she also has two young children that she needs to focus on too. so here's my last question for you, what about future first ladies? what model will they use, and what about when we inevitably have the first first gentleman? and don had asks -- had asked me to just say a word about any next project. i am writing about another kennedy woman, rose kennedy, and i believe she started the entire process of kennedy imagery by creating images of herself, her children, her husband, her family and her son as president. and so i hope you will look for this in the next couple of years. rose: mother of the kennedy image. there are books available in the back about all of these first ladies about whom you've heard here at the society. i'd be happy to sign mine for you, and i would just like to say we have about ten minutes or so if you have questions.

please, please, feel free to ask. who would like to throw out the first question? yes. >> could you touch upon how she handled or when all of this was going on as far as scandals with her husband? >> yes. the question is did i touch upon the so-called scandals or improprieties, particularly of her husband, is that touched upon in my book? of course. this is a book of scholarship, it's a book of history, t a book of facts, and so one cannot ignore that. in fact, what i think she was trying to do with teddy white that week after the assassination was get out in front of those stories. now, there is a whole book called the dark side of camelot written by investigative reporter sue mower hirsh -- seymour hirsh which came out in the late '90s. and it's about this thick, and if one wants chanter and verse of the infidelities of the

president on the personal side as well as mistakes hirsh believes he made particularly in foreign policy, be my guest, knock yourself out, read it from cover to cover, and you will see that side, the dark side of cam loss. i don't know if mrs. kennedy was taking into mind a week after the assassination how history would view her husband's policies, but most people think she knew at least to some extent of his infidelities, so i think she was trying to get out ahead of that by creating this camelot mythology and legend, if you l. so what i do since i'm focusing more on the images that she's creating, i make the case that, again, symbols are not always true. they tap into ideas people want to believe in as true. and people wanted to believe in camelot. they wanted to believe in this shining, golden age that was the kennedy administration. and that she, transfer,

succeeded in getting out -- she, therefore, succeeded in the getting out in front of both stories that would come out about her husband's personal life as well as revisionist history that will continue to come out. and i would also say that in this 50th year that we are commemorating the kennedy administration and calling it camelot, so we still use that metaphor that she created, i hear, of course, people give both sides of the administration, the good things that they did and do mistakes that they made and about president kennedy's own personal foibles. but i think by and large people still have an interest in his presidency and in her, and you all are testament to that to come out today. yes. >> what do you know or think about the movie that is due out this week called "the kennedys"? it was thrown out by the history channel because the kennedyss objected to it, but it's still going to be -- >> yes. thank you for bringing that up. there is a movie that will be out this coming week, i believe

it starts about the third of april, in any event, it will not be on the history channel because the history channel is committed to telling the truth and to being as factual as possible. and there were some questions about the validity of some of the portrayals of the kennedyss and these very foibles, peccadilloes, especially those, the personal side. because the dark side of camelot -- even if only half of it's true, it's pretty bad. but one must ask, could all of these negative things be true? and what happened with the movie was ted sorenson, president kennedy's famous speech writer, with whom i met, i should say, to do an interview about mrs. rose kennedy. i met with him back in june and, sadly, he passed away this past october. ted sorenson, when i said -- he wanted to know what the title of my book was, and i said, rose: mother of the kennedy image.

he said, i don't like that word image. because to him he was trying to portray the substance of the kennedy administration both when he worked for senator kennedy, president kennedy and all the years after. so he never wanted people to think that there was no substance in the style or the image. so i understood why he took issue with that. but he also was leading the charge against this upcoming movie because he believed it was filled with inaccuracy. and so i guess it's like anything that's in the media whether it's a television show, a movie made for television, books be they of scholarship or journalistic quality, t all up to us to -- it's all up to us to decide based on our own reading and understanding of the record how much is true as being portrayed. but what we should say is this is not a golden portrayal of the kennedy administration. in other words, it contains negatives as well as some of the positives. >> [inaudible] >> well, i'm -- if i can find it on my new digital service from

comcast. [laughter] i was just saying, i came up with my friends, and i said, oh, you know, that movie's coming up, and we were talking about it, and i said i'm pretty sure i saw the channel when i first got my upgraded package, but it seems to have disappeared. i'll probably be on the phone if nothing else than to say i'm a scholar of the kennedys, and i will watch it in case i get questions out on the stump where people will say, what did you think? i'm sensing i'll probably say the same thing i say ant the book, "the dark side of camelot." that's pretty bad, but it's all up to us how we want to bring the balance of our view of the kennedy administration. first to me, policy and foreign domestic, and second, the perm side. i would just say if we disqualify every president who had an extramarital affair, we're going to be down to a low number of men, anyway, who qualify for the white house. i think there was another question, was there, back here?

yes. >> i just wallet today throw in a -- wanted to throw in a few more words about eleanor roosevelt. um -- >> i will say, i know you'll have that chance next week. if you want to compare her to mrs. kennedy, let's do. >> no, i just comment on your statement about children in the white house. for the first two years of the roosevelt administration, she had two grandchildren in the white house. >> there are wonderful photos of her and fdr in the white house surrounded by, i would say, a dozen of them. and i should also say to you that i had the pleasure this past december of dine anything the hotel george, and i was with a colleague, and i said do you see that gentleman who came in? and i said, you know, that looks like one of franklin roosevelt's grandchildren. and my friend, quite understandably, said how would you know what one of franklin delano roosevelt's grandchildren

looked like? i said, i saw him on c-span two years ago. i, of course, showing no embarrassment or fame go up to this man, and i say, are you franklin roosevelt's brand son? and he said, yes, i am. and he said, how did you know me? i said, i saw you on c-span two years ago. he was on the democratic committee that was trying to determine whether mrs. clinton or barack obama would get which of the delegates as they got towards and closer to the democratic convention. so they're around, and we can still see them today. but, indeed, the franklin roosevelts had a number of young grandchildren in the white house which is wonderful, and i'm sure the american people loved seeing it. it's not quite the same as the first couple having young children. there's just something that is beguiling about that, especially if there are two young, beguiling children as there are now in the white house and as

there were in the kennedy years. and you also may have heard the stories that because mrs. kennedy was so concerned about privacy, her own and her children, that she would draw line about when the children and how the children could be photographed. but famously, when she would leave the white house -- as she often did alone to go out to northern virginia or to go abroad without the president or without her children sometimes -- president kennedy would go to pierre salinger and say, pierre, it's time to get pictures of the children. so some of those most wonderfully-compelling photographs that we have of president kennedy in the oval office clapping and the children dancing around him on the carpet, those were often taken when mrs. kennedy was away. i think we have time for one more question. yes, sir. >> can you talk a little bit about her understanding of her image and how that would play out during the onassis marriage? >> absolutely. a little bit about how mrs. kennedy's image played out once she remarried and she

married, of course, aristotle onassis in the fall of 1968. remember the timing of that for her and for our country. her brother-in-law, bobby, to whom she had grown so close in those intervening five years from when her own husband died and bobby, who had become a surrogate father to caroline and john, was himself struck down by an assassin in june of 1968. and mrs. kennedy supposedly commented, our country is just going crazy, and if they're killing kennedys, my children might be next. so she was, obviously, looking for safety and security which aristotle onassis represented by having his own island, right? off the coast of greece to which he could take her and the children. not to mention his own yacht. and not to mention millions and millions of dollars. because even though we think of the kennedys as being wealthy and mrs. kennedy had been left fairly well off by her husband's

will, it was not necessarily enough to support her in the way she had grown accustomed. so she was, obviously, looking for some financial security too. but i think what you're probably driving at is that she did take a hit. her image took a hit for two reasons. one is that aristotle onassis was viewed as a rather unscrupulous businessman. and number two, he didn't look like president kennedy. so if you, if you put yourself out as the queen of camelot and then you marry a troll -- [laughter] i'm just saying, people take that personally. and i can remember my mother and others saying how could she, after she was married to that handsome president kennedy, how could she marry aristotle onassis. but in his defense i should say that about, oh, i'd say it was about ten years ago, maybe a little less, when i was first writing this book mrs. kennedy's sister appeared on larry king,

that very scholarly show that i must watch as a scholar. and he asked her, he said, what was it that your sister saw in aristotle onassis? and lee razzwell who had said, well, i had been interested in mr. onassis, and she said you just have to understand, he was so charismatic, and she said the way he would move through a room or out in public, and she said he moved hike a potentate. so there was something compelling about him in addition to money, apparently, that both the biewf yea sisters were drawn to. but you are actual right to infer that mrs. kennedy's image did take a hit. she dropped in the some of the polls with where people are asked who is your most admired american woman. she tended to drop in those years, but she went back up after he died and after she continued to live this lifestyle in new york of a rather quiet life working as a book editor, but also working for historic

preservation, for example, for grand central station. she worked for that. and so she actually went up in the polls towards the time that she died in the 1994. she was well up into that top ten category of most admired women. so her image came back, if you will, in her final years. so, oh, don, do we have time for one more? we can take one more then. >> [inaudible] [laughter] finish. >> i did not get a chance to ask lee, and i'm not certain that she commented on that on the larry king show when i saw her there. my sense was perhaps things were winding down with that romance and that mrs. kennedy took over where that had wound down. but i have to say i don't know the exact answer to your question, but t an intriguing one, to be sure. so with that, thank you all so much for your attention today and for your wonderful questions. [applause] >> this book is part of the

university press of kansas modern first ladies series. for more information visit kansaspress.ku.e,du. >> so i ended that way because i think that children's stories, your stories are so valuable and, i want to hear them. i want to listen to you and to what you need because that will make me a better person. you are powerful because when your parents and the people who love you do good things, guess who they do it for? you. that makes you very powerful. you inspire us. to greater heights, make us be better and wiser. so this book is about a couple of things. one is that we have to remember

that we are connected to one another in this country, in this community, in this world, that we are connected to one another. and what happens far away matters to you, or it should. and we should be able to feel love and to understand people who are different from i and who are very far away -- different from us and who are very far away even. and another thing i want you to remember is that you are, what? >> powerful. >> powerful. yes. and that means that you can serve, you can begin thinking about how to make others feel better. how to make the word matter, your words matter. be careful with your words.

how to make the world a little more kind, a little more gentle. be sweet. in your interaction. and then, also, it's about thinking about those who came before us, people who have, perhaps, passed on. but, please, know that you are loved by them, that their love comes and finds you. and, um, and that the things that they give aren't lost, that they're here with us still. anyway, i want to make room now for your questions, and i have, by the way, some of suehela's friends here, i see. nice to see you. and mine. thank you. thank you all so much for coming. does anyone have any questions? does anybody have any questions?

yes. >> um, why did you write the book? >> i want today write -- that's a very good question. i wanted to write the book because i lost my mommy when i was 25, and although i was a grown-up, i still needed her. and i missed her. so i wanted, when i became a mommy myself, to share with my daughters and the president's daughters, my nieces, some thought about who she was and what she was like, because i knew she would have loved to meet them and to know them. and she would have given them so much and made them feel so strong. and so that is one of the

reasons i bought the book -- i bought the book, i wrote the book. [laughter] thank you. and i, i also wrote the book because i'm a teacher. i'm an educator. and one of the things that i want to happen is for us to think about the world from more than one point of view. so you see in the beginning gigi morales who wrote the illustration, she's very clever. so here tell me, kids, this is the moon from the earth's point of view, right? now look at the back. has it changed? >> yes. >> what is it now? >> the moon -- [inaudible] i mean -- >> that's right. the earth from the moon's point of view. so the idea is sometimes we need to flip it, we need to make sure that we see things from more than one point of view.

because we can't understand things in the world if we're only looking from one point of view. as a teacher do you know what i get my students to do sometimes? you guy know about some current events, some things that are happening in the world. do you read the newspaper yet? is. [inaudible conversations] >> well, you will. so one of the things i have my high school kids do because i'm a high school teacher is i get them to go look at english-language newspapers from all over the world. and you can see how in be each case -- in each case the stories are written a little differently. and in order to really know a stronger, deeper truth you have to see those differences and think about how things look from other people's points of view. do you have friends and you sometimes get into a disagreement? do you e