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American leaders seem to have a schizophrenic approach toward each other. They want to expose their human frailties at the same time that they do not want to remove them from their pedestals. Bobby Kennedy privately abhors Lyndon Johnson, but publicly calls him “great, and I mean that in every sense of the word.” Johnson has referred to Bobby as “that little shit” in private, but continues to laud him for the media. Gore Vidal has no such restraint. On a television program in London, he explained why Jacqueline Kennedy would never relate to Lyndon Johnson. During that tense flight from Dallas to Washington after the assassination, she inadvertently walked in on him as he was standing over the casket of his predecessor and chuckling. This disclosure was the talk of London, but did not reach these shores.

Of course, President Johnson is often given to inappropriate response--witness the puzzled timing of his smiles when he speaks of grave matters--but we must also assume that Mrs. Kennedy had been traumatized that day and her perception was likely to have been tainted by the tragedy. This state of shock must have underlain an incident on Air Force One which this writer conceives to be delirium, but which Mrs. Kennedy insists she actually saw. “I’m telling you this for the historical

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