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Reading Rage. Although Kennedy's back prevents him from participating too actively, his ideas about physical fitness have put all official Washington into sweat socks—or at least riding boots. The towpath along the C. & O. canal now has hikers' traffic jams. The Royal Canadian Air Force exercise manual is a hard-to-get item in Washington. Besides touch football, the White House staff has taken to softball—with more zeal than skill. The staff was recently whipped 10-3 by a bunch of newsmen.
On another level, Washington politicians of both parties eagerly collect historical quotations on file cards so they can toss them into their speeches just as Ted Sorensen does for Kennedy. Speed reading is the rage (Kennedy's well-publicized reading rate is 1,200 words per minute). Teddy Kennedy has even started a speed-reading class among his new colleagues in the Senate (the names and number of those participating are a deep dark secret). Bobby runs cram courses for New Frontiersmen on matters sometimes classic, sometimes current, in sporadic seminars in his Hickory Hill home.
Unlike the past two Administrations, in which Bess Truman and Mamie Eisenhower merely tolerated their roles as First Lady, a White House social affair hosted by Jackie obliterates all other party going in the capital. Her redecorations have sent White House tour attendance soaring. She helped preserve historic Lafayette Park from encroachment by glass-and-steel office facades, chased irksome street photographers and tourist guides off Pennsylvania Avenue sidewalks in front of the White House.
Her hairdos and clothing fashions have long been imitated nationwide. Now she is pregnant—and a favorite greeting among the capital's menfolk is: "Is your wife pregnant? Mine is."
In today's Washington, no one really attacks President Kennedy personally. Respect plays a large part in this restraint. So does fear. The word is around that the Kennedys will exert their vast influence against those who buck them. The summary dismissal of Chief of Naval Operations George Anderson, who had publicly expressed his opposition to some of the policies of Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, is still a subject of low-buzzing Washington conversation. It is an open secret that
Commerce Secretary Luther H. Hodges, who at 65 is out of style and step with most of his Cabinet colleagues, will be the next top Administration official to go. Capitol Hill's Democratic liberals often chafe at Kennedy's pragmatic politics, but they do not often express their feelings in public. Neither do Republican legislators, even in private conversations and no matter how strongly they may feel about Kennedy.
Filing the Brandy. It was in such an aura that the President celebrated his 46th birthday. He hurried through an embarrassingly commercial award as Father of the Year, not even permitting photographs of the ceremony. But he did allow some pictures as he chatted with British M.P. Patrick Gordon Walker and quipped to newsmen: "You all look older today."