Taki: Why JFK wouldn’t have steered clear of Vietnam if he had lived

Everyone’s doing it, so I might as well jump in too. After all, I knew so many of the people involved, including JFK and his widow Jackie, and — sorry for the name-drop — even the actor Rob Lowe who plays the slain president in the film that’s coming out for the 50th anniversary of JFK’s assassination. I met Senator John Kennedy one year before he became president, at a party thrown by Alice Topping, a society dame of the time. The first and lasting impression was of his charisma and good looks. He was 39, the room was full of beautiful women, but he did take a minute or two to ask me about school and my plans for the future. It was not any different from most politicians’ chatter, but with a difference. None of that greasy Bill Clinton stuff, more man-to-man chit-chat with lots of jokes about our wandering eyes. I never saw him in person again.

Like everyone else alive and out of a crib on 22 November 1963, I remember it well. I was going to 21 for lunch, and 52nd Street traffic had stopped while people listened to car radios. We all know the rest. What people were not aware of was the unquestionable sleight of hand worked by Jackie while arranging the details of the funeral, having even rehearsed her little boy’s salute as his father’s cortège passed. Despite her Medea-like rage and grief, she went over the list of those invited to attend and added her personal favourites, including Ari Onassis and J.D. Salinger. The widow quickly put some distance between herself and the rowdy Irish bunch of her husband’s brood. Except for Bobby Kennedy, who was perceived as the realist to JFK’s romantic, but who in reality was the romantic to the realist his elder brother was.