Jackie's Thousand Days

By Laura Miller

What the American public likes in its First Lady--a warm, domestic woman strong enough to support her husband in his demanding work but without the initiative to actually participate in it--doesn't offer much to the serious biographer. Jacqueline Kennedy, who brought youthful chic to the White House but didn't test any of the limits of her role, has inspired dozens of books in which the photographs often seem more important than the text. With Mrs. Kennedy: The Missing History of the Kennedy Years (Free Press; 406 pages; $25), Barbara Leaming seeks to correct the balance, arguing that Jackie played a key part in her husband's presidency.

It's a tough sell. Jackie spoke frankly of her lack of interest in politics and seemed eager to spend nearly as much time out of the White House as in it. Leaming founds her case on a portrait of the First Lady as a woman whose "tormented childhood" had taught her "that her emotional survival depended on her ability to keep the world at a distance" and whose polished reserve hid a core of "crippling insecurity." The source of this self-doubt lay in shame over her parents' ugly divorce and in her mother's relentless criticism of her unusual looks (especially her "kinky hair") and "love of books and learning."

Landing the most eligible bachelor in the Senate and becoming not only the First Lady but also a celebrated beauty might seem to be the ultimate vindication. By then, however, the damage was done, and Jackie would struggle through much of her life to throw off her mother's baleful view of her.

Leaming depicts John Kennedy as a man who made a bumpy political journey from ruthless opportunist (after the model of his father) to a man who had "found himself morally at last" under the influence of British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan. When Kennedy's callow self-assurance first foundered after the Bay of Pigs debacle in 1961, Leaming writes, Jackie stepped in, using her social skills and talent for imagemaking to wrap his presidency in an aura of maturity and dignity that it did not yet possess.

She blossomed in her role with the couple's visit to Europe later in 1961. Her "flawless French," exquisite sense of style and formidable knowledge of French history had both General Charles de Gaulle and his nation at her feet; even Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev was smitten. A later, solo trip to India and Pakistan set the stage for Jackie's best performances yet, when she played first the "little girl," terrified of a snake, with Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, then the bold horsewoman with Pakistan's leader, Ayub Khan, leaving both men charmed. Back in the U.S., her elegant parties, renovation of the White House and patronage of the arts all helped "lend prestige to her husband's presidency." Once Kennedy regained his footing after the Cuban missile crisis of 1962, however, Jackie was again sidelined.

Working mostly from source material, including some never-before-available letters from Jackie to Macmillan, Leaming argues that Jackie was "one of the most public and political First Ladies yet," despite the fact that her efforts needed to be veiled as "social rather than political." But Leaming doesn't bolster her claims by referring to the commonplace notion that the Kennedy presidency was the first shaped by television, an idea that would have underscored the importance of his wife's mastery of the language of images. Instead, Leaming's focus on detailed accounts of the various (mostly foreign policy) challenges Kennedy faced tends to emphasize how remote Jackie was from the brass-tacks process of decision making. However gracefully she intervened in shaping the public face of his Administration, her efforts, even by Leaming's highly sympathetic account, were intermittent at best.

--By Laura Miller