Kennedy: The Classic Biography by Ted Sorensen Read Free Book Online

ways—and that he was more than eleven years older.
    Least important were the outward changes. He became handsomer as he grew grayer, the full face and broad shoulders of maturity providing a more striking and appealing presence than the earlier, more slender boyishness. He looked much older in person than he did on television or in photographs, but that was always true. He still looked younger than his years. His face became more lined, but the ready smile, the thoughtful eyes and the lack of affectation all remained. He had his hair cut (by the same House Office Building barber, whatever his office) a little less fully in later years, but it was always thicker than anyone else’s. In fact, when chided by staff members on the regular scalp massages a succession of secretaries were trained to give him—a habit acquired from his father—he observed that he was the only one in the room who received such special hair treatment “and the only one with all his hair.”
    His clothes continued to be expensive but always conservative and—once he became a Senator and a married man—always neat. In his office he rarely worked in his shirt sleeves and never with his tie loosened, though he would sometimes jerk out the tail of his monogrammed shirt to clean the glasses he occasionally wore for reading. From time to time he would try wearing a hat or a vest to lessen talk about his youth, but it never lasted. And he never tried to appear more “folksy” by wearing, in either work or play, an informal bow tie, a gaudy shirt, a light-colored or odd-colored suit or a multicolored handkerchief in his breast pocket. He changed clothes frequently and knew his large wardrobe intimately. When I needed a necktie in the midst of the campaign, Dave Powers handed me one he was sure the Senator never wore. But the candidate’s first words on entering the room were: “Is that my tie you’re wearing?”
    His speaking changed. Except for an occasional “Cubar” and “vigah,” his Boston-Harvard accent became less pronounced, though still noticeable. His self-confidence on the platform grew, and his ability to read—and, at the right time, to discard—a prepared text increased. The Congressman and freshman Senator whose private conversations were always informed and articulate but whose public speeches were rarely inspired or inspiring became the candidate and President whose addresses stirred the hearts of the world. While his spelling also improved, his handwriting became even worse.
    These outward changes over the years were pale in comparison to the more profound changes in his personality and philosophy.
    He became less shy and more poised in his public appearances. The youthful aspirant for Congress who had reluctantly toured taverns and textile mills in search of Massachusetts voters—who even as a Presidential hopeful felt he might impose upon, or be rejected by, each new group of voters—became in time the President who welcomed every opportunity to get away from his desk and get back to the people. While most of the shyness in public disappeared, a well-bred deference in private did not. No one was ever addressed as “fellow,” “son,” “old man” or “old boy.” The wives of his associates were always addressed as “Mrs.,” and most office-holders, particularly his elders, by their titles, or as “Mr.” He became, if not less demanding of his staff, at least more apologetic about disrupting their lives and schedules, and the same was true of the general public. In 1953, as he parked his car in front of a “No Parking” sign in downtown Washington, he smilingly told me, “This is what Hamlet means by‘the insolence of office.’” But little more than ten years later, in November, 1963, he insisted in New York on dismissing the usual Presidential police escort on his ride from the airport to the city, accepting the delays of traffic and traffic lights because of the inconvenience his rush-hour arrival would