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"We Can't Agree." Jack Kennedy's decision to run for the presidency in 1960 was made a short month after he lost the vice-presidential nomination to Estes Kefauver at the 1956 convention. Jack counted on his father for tactical opinions and financial support. But on the major decisions he was his own man. Old Joe's advice to stay out of the vice-presidential race at the 1956 convention went unheeded, and it went unheeded again early this year when, because of the Catholic issue, he asked Jack to withdraw from the presidential campaign. "Our disagreement on policy is total," says Jack. "We never discuss it. There is no use, because we can't agree." But Joe Kennedy is not so far out of the campaign as Jack would like people to believe. He is in almost daily touch with one or the other of the campaigning Kennedys, talks with an authoritative air to friends. ("Not for chalk, money or marbles will we take second place. Nobody's going to make a deal with us in a back room somewhere for second place on the ticket.")
This week, as the last bunting was being tacked up in Los Angeles, the city braced for a mass movement of convention-bound Kennedys. Bob is already on duty establishing the clan's convention headquarters, getting ready for the all-important, last-minute dickering. Jack headed for Cape Cod for a week's rest before moving on to Los Angeles and his moment of truth. Joe and Rose will pitch camp in a mansion, rented for the duration of the convention. Pat Lawford, a resident Californian, will have a front-row seat on the convention floor as a member of the California delegation, but she may have to cast her first ballot for Governor Pat Brown, the favorite son. From their Chicago and Washington homes, the Shrivers and Smiths will bear down on Los Angeles. The gathering of the clan, with peripheral in-laws, intimate friends, well-wishers and family retainers, should hit Los Angeles like an earthquake.
One member of the clan will not be present. Jack's wife Jackie plans to remain in Hyannisport and watch the convention on television. (If Jack wins the nomination, she will make a quick trip to Los Angeles to join him.) Her contribution to the Kennedy campaign and the dynasty's future will be the newest member of the clan, who, if the luck of the Kennedys holds out, will be born on or about Election Day next November.
* Two people secretly assume the identities of two famous persons and begin a conversation in the manner of their alter egos. From this, the other players try to guess their identities.
* If Kathleen and her husband had lived, she would now be Duchess of Devonshire, first lady in waiting to Queen Elizabeth and a niece by marriage of Prime Minister Harold Macmillan. Her husband, in all likelihood, would have received his father's commission as grand master of the craft of Freemasons, along with his ducal rank, and, says Joe Kennedy, "I'd be father-in-law of the head of all the Masons in the world."