傑奎琳·肯尼迪的五個不解之謎

Michael Beschloss’s most recent book is “Jacqueline Kennedy: Historic Conversations on Life with John F. Kennedy.”

Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis, the glamorous wife who was beside John F. Kennedy during his presidency and when he was shot, was for 33 years the most famous woman on Earth. Yet after 1964, she never wrote or spoke publicly about her 10-year marriage to JFK, let alone the rest of her life. An avalanche of books, written without her cooperation or access to her papers, have reduced some of the mystery surrounding her but have inevitably left us with myths about Jackie Kennedy that are widely believed to this day.

1. She grew up an heiress.

Certainly she was born to a wealthy family and had a privileged upbringing. Her father, John V. Bouvier III, was an investment banking scion, and her mother, Janet Lee, was the daughter of a construction tycoon who built some of the most distinguished apartment houses on Park Avenue in New York. But her father lost most of his money in the Great Depression, her parents divorced bitterly, and she later said that when she was in boarding school, she was sometimes nervous that her father would not be able to pay her tuition bills.

When her mother married the Standard Oil heir Hugh D. Auchincloss Jr., his largesse did not extend to Jacqueline and her sister. So when, after graduating from George Washington University in 1951, Jackie took a job as the “Inquiring Camera Girl” for the Washington Times-Herald, she did it because she needed the salary.

2. As first lady, she was a stranger to hard work.

As Lady Bird Johnson, the wife of JFK’s vice president, said: Jackie “was a worker, which I don’t think was always quite recognized.” Her restoration of the White House was not some minor exercise in redecoration. When she toured the mansion after JFK’s election in 1960, she was astonished to find that the state rooms looked like the lobby of a prosaic Statler Hotel, which to her meant dreariness. That was not an accident; after the White House was gutted and rebuilt with an interior steel frame during Harry Truman’s second term, Truman had saved money by having the New York department store B. Altman furnish the mansion’s main floor.

Jackie was appalled that there were so few artifacts, paintings or pieces of furniture rooted in American history. She took it upon herself to raise private money, recruit scholars and search for such objects that would constitute a permanent White House collection. Within a year, this was sufficiently underway, so that in February 1962, she was able to stage her famous televised tour of the state floor of the mansion in its new incarnation, which, for the most part, was similar to how it looks today. During that TV show, she said she was trying to improve the way “the presidency is presented to the world.”

At the same time, she had Air Force One’s exterior redesigned, turned the Oval Office into something more resembling a living room and transformed the rituals for South Lawn arrival ceremonies and state dinners, all of which survive almost intact 50 years later. As a young woman, Jackie once puckishly wrote that her aim was to be the “art director of the twentieth century.” She succeeded in performing that role for her husband’s presidency.

3. She had little interest in JFK’s political life.

Jacqueline Kennedy was no Eleanor Roosevelt or Hillary Rodham Clinton in terms of advising her husband on policy. Before JFK’s election, she startled reporters by confessing that she did not know the date of the presidential inauguration, and when asked what might be a suitable venue for the next Democratic convention, she said, “Acapulco.” But she wasn’t clueless about her husband’s line of work.

She was first lady in a time — which has not quite ended — when many Americans were put off if a president’s wife seemed too involved in his political career. In almost every presidential marriage you will find a first lady who, while she serves, insists that all politics is left to the president — but when viewed in history, she turns out to have been a significant influence on that presidency. Jackie is no exception.

The first lady’s oral history for the Kennedy Library, sealed until 2011, reveals her opinions on virtually every major figure of JFK’s administration and makes it quite clear that she shared them with her husband. Although she does not say that explicitly, the historian who reads these comments closely will note that the men and women Jackie praises, such as Defense Secretary Robert McNamara and national security adviser McGeorge Bundy, tended to be promoted or given more power by President Kennedy. And those she disdains, such as Secretary of State Dean Rusk, tended to languish. Had someone else been JFK’s first lady, some of the most important personnel decisions during that presidency might have been different.

4. In the three decades after November 1963, she managed to get beyond the Dallas tragedy.

Alas, it’s more likely that she never did. After she left the White House, a fortnight after the assassination, she asked her Secret Service drivers to avoid routes that might cause her to glimpse the mansion, even at a distance. She visited again only once after 1963: She agreed to a secret, unphotographed trip with her children in 1971 to what was by then Richard Nixon’s White House to view Aaron Shikler’s portraits of her and her husband. She later wrote Nixon with thanks, saying, “A day I had always dreaded turned out to be one of the most precious ones I have spent with my children.”

When Hillary Rodham Clinton became first lady in 1993, she and Jackie were friends, and she urged JFK’s widow to revisit the White House. Jackie declined but appreciated the gesture. After she died, her son John wrote to Clinton: “Since she left Washington I believe she resisted ever connecting with it emotionally — or the institutional demands of being a former First Lady. It had much to do with the memories stirred and her desires to resist being cast in a lifelong role that didn’t quite fit.”

5. She remained a woman of the early-1960s, pre-feminist era.

Sure, in the oral history she gave in 1964, Jackie Kennedy said that women should not go into politics because they are “too emotional” and that in the “best” marriages, wives are subordinate to husbands. But, like millions of American women, she changed emphatically.

After the death of her second husband, Aristotle Onassis, in 1975, she got a job as a New York editor at Viking and then Doubleday, publishing art books, histories and memoirs, and was known to most of her authors as a genuine, hands-on colleague who performed the kind of assiduous line-editing that, even in the 1990s, was growing scarce.

She lived through and reflected a crucial period in US history in which women moved into the mainstream of American professional life and redefined their roles.邁克爾•貝斯羅斯的新書《傑奎琳•肯尼迪：與J.F.肯尼迪歷史性地談論生活》。

傑奎琳•布維爾•肯尼迪•奧納西斯是美國美豔迷人、富有魅力的第一夫人，從肯尼迪執政到遇刺，她都陪伴左右。在33年間，她是世界上最有名的女人。然而1964年之後，她再也沒有寫過或說過任何與JFK十年婚姻有關的事，更別說她的餘生了。後來出版了許多有關她的書，沒有她的參與，也沒有查尋過她的檔案，只揭開了一些圍繞傑奎琳•肯尼迪的神祕面紗，卻不可避免地保留着我們至今相信的有關傑奎琳•肯尼迪的傳奇事蹟。

1．她生來就是繼承人。

衆所周知，她生在一個富豪之家，從小享受十分優異的生活環境。她的父親約翰•V•布維爾三世是投資銀行世家的後代，她的媽媽簡妮特•李是一位建築大亨的女兒。紐約派克大街上大多數獨特的公寓建築都是出自這位建築大亨之手。但在大蕭條時期，傑奎琳的父親賠掉了大部分資產，父母悲慘地離異。她後來回憶說，當時傑奎琳在寄宿學校上學，有時甚至會害怕父親付不起自己的學費。

後來她的母親嫁給了標準石油公司的繼承人小休•奧金克洛斯，可繼父休並沒有接濟傑奎琳和她的姐妹。因此，1951年在喬治華盛頓大學畢業後，傑奎琳在《華盛頓時報先驅報》做起了出“出鏡調查員”，只爲賺錢維生。

2.做第一夫人，她與辛勤勞作無緣。

正如約翰•菲茨傑拉德•肯尼迪的副總統夫人伯德•約翰遜所說，傑奎琳“曾有過工作，但我認爲有時人們似乎並沒有意識到這一點。”她對白宮的裝修，可不是個小動作。當肯尼迪1960年當選總統後，她吃驚地發現政府白宮就像是個平凡的斯塔特勒賓館，讓她感到淒涼沉寂。這種感覺也並不奇怪：哈里•杜魯門第二任期時重建白宮，使用了內部鋼筋骨架，而且在裝修主要樓層時，爲節省經費，原材料購自紐約的一家奧特曼百貨公司。

傑奎琳驚訝地發現，白宮裏竟然幾乎沒有手工製品、畫作，也沒有哪個傢俱是美國曆史上的古董。她自己擔起了責任，籌集私人資金，招聘學者，蒐集一些物品，能成爲白宮永久的藏品。一年以內，這個計劃就全面有序地進行開來，到1962年2月，她終於可以讓煥然一新的政府辦公樓層在電視上公之於衆，直到今天這裏的大部分設計都保持原樣。在那場電視節目中，傑奎琳稱希望藉此改善“總統呈現在世界面前”的樣子。

同時，她也重新設計了空軍一號的外觀，把美國總統辦公室改造成一個更像是起居室的房間，她還改變了白宮南草坪上舉辦的慶典儀式、政府晚宴的形式，這些改變在之後的五十年內都原封不動地保存了下來。作爲一個年輕太太，傑奎琳曾調皮地寫下，她的目標是做“二十世紀的藝術導演”。在她丈夫的總統任何期間，她完美地實現了這個夢想。

3.她並不關心肯尼迪的政治生活。

傑奎琳並沒有像埃莉諾•羅斯福或希拉里•克林頓那樣爲丈夫做政治廣告。在肯尼迪選舉前，她承認自己不知道總統就職典禮的日期，讓記者們感到驚訝。當問到她認爲哪裏適合做下一次民主黨政黨大會的會議地點，她回答道：“阿卡普爾科。”但她對丈夫的工作並不是一無所知。

傑奎琳那個時代的第一夫人——直到現在都是——當美國總統夫人太多參與丈夫政治生涯的時候，許多美國人都會表示阻止。幾乎在每一段總統婚姻中你都會發現，第一夫人堅稱政治是總統丈夫一個人的事——但縱觀歷史，第一夫人們總要在丈夫的總統生涯中產生很深的影響。傑奎琳也不例外。

第一夫人傑奎琳曾爲肯尼迪藏書館口述歷史，但直到2011年才公之於世。她表達了對肯尼迪政府的每一位核心成員的看法，並直接表示會向肯尼迪表達她的這些想法。雖然她沒有明確地那樣說，仔細讀過這些言語的歷史學家都會認爲傑奎琳表揚的男士和女士都受到肯尼迪的提拔重用，比如國防部長羅伯特•麥克納馬拉和國家安全顧問喬治•邦迪。而那些她鄙視的，則並不受重視，比如國務卿迪安•臘斯克。如果是別人做了第一夫人，或許肯尼迪一些重大的私人決定就會大不一樣了。

4.1963年11月後的30年，她終於對這悲劇釋懷。

唉！好像她並沒能釋懷。她離開白宮後，在肯尼迪遇刺後的兩個星期，她讓特勤局的司機避開那些能看到白宮大廈的路，甚至遠遠地看見也不行。1963年後，她只回去過一次：1971年她答應與孩子一起拜訪尼克松總統入駐的白宮，那裏有她和丈夫肯尼迪的雕像，此行嚴格保密，不許拍照。後來，她給尼克松寫信表示感謝，說道：“我一直恐懼的一天終於到來，可我卻發現那是我和孩子度過的一個最珍貴的日子”。

希拉里•羅德海姆•克林頓在1993年成爲新第一夫人時，她和傑奎琳成爲好朋友，希拉里盛情邀請她再次拜訪白宮。傑奎琳十分感激，但拒絕了。傑奎琳去世後，她的兒子約翰給克林頓寫信說：“母親離開華盛頓後，我以爲她再不會和這兒有任何情感交集——她也不想當政治上的第一夫人。那些記憶糾纏着她，她本不屬於那個角色，她不想一生都被其纏繞。”

5.在我們心中她永遠是20世紀60年代，女權主義運動發生前的一位傑出女性。

當然了，在她1964年所做的口述歷史中，傑奎琳稱女人不該參與政治，因爲她們“太感性”，在“最美好的”婚姻中，妻子應從屬於自己的丈夫。但是，就像成千上萬的美國女性一樣，她徹底地改變了。

傑奎琳第二任丈夫亞里士多德•奧納西斯1975年去世後，她在維京公司擔任駐紐約的編輯，之後去了雙日出版社，負責出版藝術、歷史和回憶類書籍，在她接手的作者們眼中，她就是一個天才，什麼事都親力親爲，她勤奮刻苦地做生產線式的編輯，這種編輯方式即便在上世紀90年代都還很少見。

她生在美國曆史上一個至關重要的時代，那時女人們漸漸顛覆了原本的角色成爲美國職場的主流，她的一生，恰恰是這個時代的體現。