MATT PORTER: The JFK 35 Podcast is produced by the JFK Library Foundation and made possible with the help of a generous grant from the Blanche and Irving Laurie Foundation.
JOHN F. KENNEDY: What's much easier to make the speeches than it is to finally make the judgments, because, unfortunately, your advisors are frequently divided. If you take the wrong course, and on occasion I have, the president bears the burden responsibility quite rightly.
JAMIE RICHARDSON: Two years into his presidency, John F. Kennedy sat down with reporters in the Oval Office for an exclusive interview. He was asked about his time in office and what he thought of the presidency. In this episode of JFK35, we'll hear JFK's thoughts on his first two years as president. We'll also talk to historian and presidential scholar Alexis Coe, who is working on a biography focusing on JFK's youth and is now a fellow at New America.
JOHN F. KENNEDY: And so, my fellow Americans, it's not what your country can do for you as what you can do for your country.
[APPLAUSE]
[MUSIC PLAYING]
JAMIE RICHARDSON: I'm Jamie Richardson and welcome to this episode of JFK35. John F. Kennedy's presidency included a number of firsts. He was the first Catholic president elected, the first born in the 20th century, and he was the first to hold live televised press conferences. He was also the first to hold an interview in the Oval Office with White House Correspondents that aired on all three major television networks.
It was called After two years, a conversation with the president. And took place on December 16, 1962. It had been 76 days since segregationists at the University of Mississippi rioted when James Meredith, a Black veteran, enrolled in the school. 49 days since the resolution of the Cuban Missile Crisis and 40 days since the 1962 midterm elections. George Herrmann from CBS, William Lawrence from ABC, and Sander Vanocur from NBC asked the president about these recent events and how they would affect his upcoming plans for his administration.
INTERVIEWER 2: Mr. President, in the light of the election returns, which at the congressional level, at least, were certainly a defeat for the Republican hopes, how do you measure your chances for significant success domestically in the Congress just ahead?
JOHN F. KENNEDY: Well, I think we'll be in about the same position over the last two years. I think that, as I say, what we have that's controversial, will be very closely contested.
INTERVIEWER 2: Did the complexion of the house change a little bit by the shifts--
JOHN F. KENNEDY: I would say, slightly against us more than it was. We're not quite as good shape as [INAUDIBLE] was for the last two years, but we're about where we were the last two years, which means every vote will be three of four votes, either way, winning or losing.
JAMIE RICHARDSON: The interview provided a glimpse into Kennedy's view on the presidency and the power of the United States in world affairs with a candid view of the limitations he felt both had.
JOHN F. KENNEDY: I would say that the problems are more difficult than I imagined them to be. The responsibilities placed in the United States are greater than I imagined them to be. And there are greater limitations upon our ability to bring about a favorable result than I had imagined them to be. And I think that's probably true of anyone who becomes president, because there is such a difference between those who advise or speak, or legislate, and between the man who must make-- select from the various alternatives proposed and say that this shall be the policy of the United States, what's much easier to make the speeches than it is to finally make the judgments.
Because unfortunately, your advisors are frequently divided. If you take the wrong course, and on occasion I have, the president bears the burden of responsibility quite rightly. The advisors may move on to new advice.
JAMIE RICHARDSON: Kennedy had served three terms in the House of Representatives, had been elected twice to the Senate, and became president in 1961. Having served in these three positions, he explained how his view of the relative power of each had changed over time.
JOHN F. KENNEDY: It's a tremendous change to go from being a senator to being president. In the first months, it's very difficult. But I have no reason to believe that a president with the powers of this office and the responsibilities placed on it, if he has a judgment that some things need to be done, I think he can do it just as well the second time as the first, depending, of course, on the makeup of the Congress.
The fact is I think the Congress looks more powerful sitting here than it did when I was there in the Congress, but that's because when you're in Congress, you're one of a 100th in the Senate or one of 435 in the house. So that the power is so divided. But from here I look at a Congress, and I look at the collective power of the Congress, particularly to block action, which if it wants to, and it's a substantial power.
JAMIE RICHARDSON: After the interview aired on December 17, an editorial in the New York Times called it, "absorbing to watch with enormous political and educational possibilities". And it truly is fascinating to hear President Kennedy reflect on the past two years in such an open way. You can listen to the entire interview on our website and hear more of what the correspondents and President Kennedy talked about.
Joining me now is someone who is also spent a lot of time studying presidents. Alexis Coe published her 2020 biography of George Washington, You Never Forget your First. And has written for the New Yorker, New York Times, and Slate, among others. She also is a fellow with New America, where she's currently working on her project How should a president be. And she's currently working on a biography focusing on John F. Kennedy's youth. Alexis, thank you for joining me today.
ALEXIS COE: Thank you. It's so exciting to be here.
JAMIE RICHARDSON: So I kind of just wanted to get right into the beginning. And you're a presidential historian, you've had a previous podcast, by yourself, Presidents are people too, and your book, of course, You Never Forget Your First about George Washington. What made you get into presidential history and go down to this part of the American history?
ALEXIS COE: I've always loved political history since I was a young girl. I've always loved political history since I was a child. And I love the presidents, but they're not particularly fashionable. There are many subjects I love that aren't fashionable in graduate school. You cannot study them and be taken seriously. And so I studied around the presidents for a long time, particularly citizenship between World War I and World War II.
And then I left graduate school to be a curator at the NYPL, where the whole world was just available to me. And then it was just impossible to deny that's where I was going.
JAMIE RICHARDSON: So one thing that I really enjoy about, also your writing, otherwise, on Slate and New Yorker and whatnot, is that you really make these connections between what could be or what even, I think and I'm sitting here working on history from the 1960s, which could be considered old and it kind of is at this point, but things from the 18th century, 19th century, presidents and people that people might not know about or have kind of forgotten about, connections between kind of ne'er do well first sons. Can you talk a little bit about your approach to bringing what might be considered dull history more into the forefront and more relevant to today's topics?
ALEXIS COE: Oh well, thank you. That's the ultimate compliment. If history is boring, it's the historian's fault. I do think that my background in exhibitions taught me crucial lessons in engagement at a very early age because I got to, at the very beginning of my career, watch people walk around an exhibition. And I saw where they stopped, where they lingered, and where they just kept going-- they just kept walking. And what I understood was essential to capturing people's minds and their imaginations were making connections between various materials, time periods, and making sure that you were somehow appealing to them--
To some core values, some shared experience, and it has to be lively. You can be yourself. I mean, I couldn't be any other way, unfortunately. People ask, how do you write in this certain way? What's the dark humor? How do you cultivate it? I can't deny it. I couldn't try to be any different. And so I think it's a blend of authenticity, of true enjoyment. This gives me pure joy. And I assume as well that everyone who is reading my work or listening to it is definitely as smart as me, but they don't know everything that I know.
And my job is not to impress them. It's to keep them interested. And I go about that as critically as I can, but I also make sure that I understand that this is not the complete story, right? I don't like the word "definitive" when it comes to anything. This is an entry point. And if I get them in the door, that's a huge success.
JAMIE RICHARDSON: I think the joy that you mentioned definitely comes through in a lot of your work and your writing, and you're on social media a lot. the JFK Library Foundation follows you on TikTok, and I think your-- that makes a very personal kind of moment of, like, you're telling us this story. And I love having that perspective and opportunity to have that from you. Can you talk a bit about-- like, how do you use social media?
Social media today and the news, things are happening in Congress with TikTok, and what's happening on social media with X and Twitter. Like, can you talk about your role as a historian on these platforms?
ALEXIS COE: For a long time, I was only on Twitter. I was on Instagram. I was on other platforms, but I wasn't really engaging in the same way. And Twitter, of course, changed quite a bit in the last couple of years. I downloaded TikTok at the beginning of the pandemic because I kept getting calls for commentary from different magazines and newspapers, and so I would download it. I'd look at the history. I thought it was really fun, but it was creative.
It was engaging in this way that I certainly felt depleted in the early days of the pandemic, and so to see that it was a way of being energized-- during those days, I was also giving keynotes on a laptop. So it was really-- I was feeling this profound disconnect from my audience, and it's so hard to see what lands, what resonates. But I kept erasing TikTok. I kept thinking, oh, I'm not going to do this. I'm not a kid. This isn't a platform for me.
But as soon as Twitter no longer became a viable place to engage with people in a meaningful way, I tried other platforms that were more familiar-- Instagram Threads, every iteration of "this is the new Twitter." And I just never felt at home. And then Jamelle Bouie, who is a columnist at the New York Times and a friend, kept pushing TikTok. I tried it, and I found that it was sort of like the Wild West, but in a good way.
It reminded me of early Twitter. And so I still-- I'm pretty embarrassed about it, and I don't necessarily think that I am great at it. But I will say that the engagement there feels raw and special in a way that it used to on Twitter, and I learned so much from it.
JAMIE RICHARDSON: That's awesome. Yeah, I think TikTok is such an interesting space. And the way that social has changed in being kind of history-focused-- us at the Foundation, talking about JFK, and you doing your-- as an author, as an historian, your projects and thoughts, it's-- I don't know, it's a fun place to be sometimes.
ALEXIS COE: It's definitely a fun place to be, and there are different groups of people. So on Twitter, I was always with the Kevin Kruse's and TJ Stiles historians like that. And it's a completely different group of historians on Instagram and on TikTok. And also forming these other communities and engaging with people's work that's seemingly disconnected. But as you pointed out earlier, I never think that things are disconnected.
I think everyone and everything is connected. You just have to figure out a way to explain that, but it starts with a feeling and with an inkling. And then I just pursue it boldly. And as I said, I try to pretend that nothing else exists. No one can see me. I'm just trying things out.
JAMIE RICHARDSON: And so in your book about George Washington, can you talk a bit about the research process for that? Because I know-- again, speaking from my experience here, which I'm very fortunate. The JFK Library has an amazing digital archive, on site archives. What is it like doing research for someone who, one, has not been around for over 200 years? Their papers might be in different places or not preserved in the same way. What was that process like?
ALEXIS COE: In some ways, it was the most convenient research I have ever done. The Library of Congress formed a beautiful relationship with all the founding papers, and in particular the papers of George Washington. The archives don't necessarily want you handling those materials anymore. It's actually very hard to get them outside of special tours or exhibitions. Everything has been digitized. So I spent a good deal of time going to symposiums and various historical sites to do with George Washington.
But for the most part, everything could be done at home on a website called Founders Online. And not only was everything digitized, but it was also annotated, and they even had the citations. I always say that archivists, librarians, documentary editors, they're, like, earthbound angels. They give you these gifts, and then you are bound to honor them.
JAMIE RICHARDSON: That's great. I also would not have expected that, but also-- I do also love a good citation, a good footnote so you can go back and find something-- or the annotation seems so helpful. And then one thing that we are, again-- archivists, I think you're right that they are angels. And the ones here, a lot of them can read JFK's handwriting. I think you're probably in that area with your own research. And did you get good at doing George Washington's handwriting-- that kind of 19th century beautiful penmanship?
ALEXIS COE: Here's the thing. George Washington has beautiful, clear penmanship. Even when his aides are pretending to write in his hand, it's still readable, but everything has been-- they have typed out the letters, so you don't need to. And then with JFK, the JFK Library has digitized so much, but his handwriting is a nightmare.
JAMIE RICHARDSON: Absolute nightmare. So you are working on a book about young Jack-- his youth. Can you talk a little bit about what-- what was the cause that prompted that investigation?
ALEXIS COE: Yes. I've had such a good few weeks with Jack. I'm at home-- we're talking-- I'm in my office at home. You see a cover-- a magazine cover of Kennedy in back of me, and I'm really in the thick of things. And I have been thinking about writing this book for a long time. CNN had a Kennedy series, I think, in 2014 or 2015, and I was in that alongside so many great Kennedy biographers. And what I really enjoyed about it was the conversation that was happening between historians.
They did something unusual in which they would show a clip of a historian who said one thing and then another historian who said something totally different and allow that conversation to evolve. And that's when I sort of had started to work out some of the themes in my head, but I was invited to be in that series because I had written articles here and there on Kennedy. And I had done a podcast episode on Kennedy and come to the Library while there was an exhibition on young Kennedy going on.
It's when I first started to work with Stacey Chandler, who is-- there's no way to thank these people. There's no way to even acknowledge them. She's such a big part of my life and such a great resource that I think without her and her encouragement over the years, I would not be able to write the book that I'm writing now. But I didn't know that I would write this right after Washington. That book I worked on for a long time. It came out quickly, and then the pandemic happened while I was still on tour.
So I hadn't quite settled into what would be the next book. And by the time I had, the archives were closed. Everything was closed. And so I had to go with what was online and the notes I had been taking for years. And I tried to write a few different things, and young Jack worked as a proposal from me. But it didn't work in a traditional sense of a proposal because I asked about 30 pages of questions. They were very informed questions and they had great visuals because it's the Kennedys and they gave us the gift of documenting their family in every medium that existed, but I didn't the answers to them.
I had these questions, and they felt-- it felt like the narrative was slightly off to me, but in a very different way than it had with George Washington. And I'm happy to say, a few years later, story checks out. I found a bunch of new things, but three in particular-- three different subjects which, of course, I won't really tell you about yet because I'm still writing it. But it's really good. It's really, really good. There's someone who has not been included in the narrative, who existed.
I'm so excited about her. It's not a girlfriend. It's not anything like that. There's been a lot of interesting scholarship on Profiles in Courage lately, but I have a slightly different interpretation that I have just substantiated in about five different ways. So I'm really thrilled. And the third thing does have to do with a woman, but it's not-- it's just a new episode in that story that hasn't been told. And that was one of the only things that came from outside of any archive that I have known outside of the JFK Library, outside of Princeton, outside of Columbia, and all these places that we all cite.
And that was fun because it was a lark. It was a whim, so it's all very exciting.
JAMIE RICHARDSON: That's it. I can't wait for the book to come out now. I'm so intrigued by these mystery people. And I do love being able to share with people like, OK. You know the Kennedys. You know this and that, but then here's another person, or here's another angle. And being able to get that out there is so gratifying, especially when it's somebody who's not a rich white person with a lot of power. It's a woman or a person of color, Indigenous person, whoever.
It's very exciting to tell those stories, so very happy to hear about this. Have you been finding any differences or similarities as you've been studying George Washington and JFK?
ALEXIS COE: Yes and no. They were both-- Washington and Kennedy were both men who believed in service. They had integrity when it came to intellectual ideas. Let me start over. This is sort of rambling. Kennedy and Washington have certain points of connection, probably more than people would assume. They were both in the military. They were heroic in their own ways-- in really consequential ways, and their service changed them.
It transformed them in ways that were really profound, but then they're different in ways that I think are quite unexpected to people. And I'm just sort of thinking about this as I talk to you, but people love to say that George Washington had an evolution when it came to, for example, slavery. And I have never been convinced that that's true. I think that he was exposed to different people because of the war and because of his two terms as president.
He met people who lived outside of Virginia, who lived outside of America. He became really close with the Marquis de Lafayette, who kept sending him proposals about freeing his enslaved people. And Washington would say things like, bless your heart. That's such a great idea. Let's talk about it when you get here by boat in 15 years. Kennedy-- I have come to the view that Kennedy did have a profound evolution throughout his life-- his short life.
And I have found him to be different the closer I get to him than I thought he was, and now it's been years that we've spent together. It's such a strange relationship. It's really just the two of you. But I think he's far more complex than people understand him to be, and I would say the same is true for George Washington. He's assumed to be a military man who just sort of fell into politics, as if he just had-- and to a certain extent, that's true, but he is also a great political thinker and someone who understood the court of public opinion quite well.
That is something that Kennedy understood as well. It took him more time though. They were both charismatic as well. People were attracted to them. Kennedy was, I think, friendlier and funnier, and more vocal, and comfortable with himself, and certainly gregarious. Women were attracted to him, as were men. I would argue men were more attracted to him than women in many ways, particularly as he got older.
With Washington, women didn't really come near him aside Martha, of course. But before Martha, he really had a hard time. If there was a rich 14 to 26-year-old girl in Virginia, it is most likely that Washington tried to court her. It didn't happen all the time, whereas Kennedy didn't really have to put in much effort. It's always fascinating when he did. I think that they were both athletic, and at times, felled by health issues, but really persevered through them.
And the list goes on and on. It's interesting to think of these two men who existed in very different times if you just consider what technology existed who, at the same time, had shared values and many similarities. And both, of course, have been the subject of such haymaking, of such mythology, and that's certainly what attracts me to both of them.
JAMIE RICHARDSON: And I did want to touch on the mythology behind both of them. They're obviously-- I think as time goes on, myths can kind of solidify or shift slightly. But I know in your book You Never Forget Your First, you just talk plainly about the truth, about slavery, and George Washington and never telling a lie, and all these things were taught in elementary school. What was it like-- did you get any feedback, reaction to-- just be like, no, he was this and this and this, and people don't like those-- the uncomfortable truths coming out?
ALEXIS COE: Absolutely. I think that one of the core values I have as a historian is complexity is not a liability. I refuse to accept that we can't hold two things at once. I don't know a perfect person, and I've never met a perfect president. With Washington, in particular, you have to remember that the book came out in February 2020. The pandemic happened, the summer of George Floyd. Quite a lot of things were brought to a head.
And so the conversation did become intense, but it was already intense. It had been intense for years around monuments and historical memory. And I think the undercurrent is certainly that we're moving towards our 250th in 2026. America will turn 250, and it is a battle for our collective memory. It's nothing short of that. There are quietly projects going on all around, and some of them publicly. I'm working on one.
The interesting thing about Washington is there are a ton of people in the middle of this spectrum. So I don't want to say that this defines everyone, but there are two extremes. And we hear about them in the news and they are, by far, the most vocal in my comments and they write me lots of emails. On one end of the spectrum, you have people who say, "I don't want to study George Washington. He was a slave owner. He was a terrible person. I don't want to know a thing about him," in which I have to then start at the beginning, which is he enslaved people. When you say that people were slaves, you're acting as if it was a permanent state. When you say that people were slaves-- when you describe them in that way, you're describing it as if it's a fixed identity, as if you're born that way, and that's not true. This was something that could have ended had George Washington made the choice.
And I think it's essential to study George Washington, I tell these people who don't want to, not because he is a hero. That's not why we study him. It's because he's historically significant. You cannot tell the story of America without telling the story of George Washington. Best of luck. I can't even tell my own story anymore without talking about George Washington. Everything is-- it's all entwined.
And in order to make our country better, we have to understand its complications. You cannot understand the complications without George Washington. It's impossible. Not just because he was the general and the first president, but because he's the great unifier-- he, in our mind, has been the symbol that we have all worked from and around. And to ignore that is to argue at your own peril. If you don't know about George Washington and you're trying to fight about slavery or about white supremacy, you will lose.
You will be the uninformed person. At the other end of the spectrum, you have people who are terrified, and quite vocal about this, that George Washington is going to be canceled. And to them, I have many of the same arguments. Best of luck. You can't cancel George Washington. You could take down all the monuments-- the ones that look like him, right? Because the Washington Monument itself has no identifying features..
Lincoln, Jefferson, they have limbs. They have faces. They have words. Washington is just a giant obelisk-- the most phallic monument in the land. You can never cancel him because to cancel him is to literally erase our memories. And as far as I know, we don't live in a sci-fi novel. So from the perspective of our capital-- if we talk about our capital, we say Washington. What is Washington named after? George Washington.
It's impossible. He's insidious if you think about him that way. So there's really nothing to be alarmed about. And what I've tried to do and what the book has accomplished, and I'm really proud of this, is it has brought those ends of the spectrum together at times. Not always, but my favorite thing is when I get a really aggressive, insulting email, or tweet or something at me saying, "I hate this" or "I hate your work."
And then I manage to say, well, one of those arguments can't happen either way, and then they give it a chance. And then they come back, and they tell me they liked it. Or they're having a book club with their family members who they haven't been able to sit down with at a Thanksgiving table in years, and they're talking about this. And they're treating complexity as if it is not a liability, as if it's a conversation that we need to be happening.
And to me, that is just the most-- to me, that's the greatest success that I can have.
JAMIE RICHARDSON: That's beautiful. I love-- it's always nice to get-- to actually change somebody's mind. I think it's very hard these days for people to want to have that happen or admit that it will happen, so congratulations on that. As you've talked about Washington being insidious and part of you, do you ever get sick of him?
ALEXIS COE: I don't get sick of George Washington. I must admit that I probably used the phrase "Thigh Men" less than anyone else who has ever heard it. I did not intend for that to be in the final draft, let alone the book itself, or be the most identified phrase alongside my name. But as Tatiana Schlossberg said in her review of the book in the Times, it's effective. People understand what I'm saying, and humor is a way to dismantle a lot of the roadblocks to understanding.
And it does the job, which is why when I sent the manuscript out to my second readers, I had it in brackets, and I had it lowercase. I have this for Kennedy now, too. These things probably won't make it in. I said that the last time too, though. I figured I would come up with a better phrase or I would just take it out and rather explain the concept. Across the board, the five readers-- the same five readers I've depended on my entire career took it out of brackets, and they capitalized the T and the M so that it was an actual concept.
And then I thought, oh, dear. Well, they're all agreeing. I guess I'll have to. And the same with the title. I never intended that to be the title, but the publisher loved it. I gave in one day. Actually, I had just done a talk with Joanne Freeman, the Brooklyn Historical Society, for one of her books, and I was moderating. And I had this moment that had now happened for years-- I think this was 2018-- and our bios were read, and the person introduced me and said, "She's working on a biography of George Washington."
Pause, "You never forget your first." And there was always just about a half second, and then the audience would erupt into laughter. And then they would tell me, I'm so excited. I've never said this, but I'm so excited to read a book about George Washington. I thought, oh, I've got to just commit to this title, and I really haven't thought of anything that can compete with it. So I remember emailing my agent and my editor and the publisher and saying, do you think we should just stick with this?
And Viking wrote back, yes. We knew that the whole time. This has always been the title. It's great. So I guess I was slow to come around to it.
JAMIE RICHARDSON: Awesome. Thank you. So I just want to wrap up with a couple more questions. And you do mention "Thigh Man", and I know you've written about people being obsessed with George Washington's thighs, and then also noticing other historians commenting on Kennedy's legs. So how frequent is this-- are you finding this in past historical-- or biographies or historical nonfiction? I was not aware of this. But now that maybe I am, maybe I'll see it everywhere.
ALEXIS COE: It's true. Once you see it, you can't unsee it. I don't know what happened, if I missed leg day in grad school, but it comes up fairly frequently with Kit Kennedy recently. And I emailed this to Stacey at the JFK Library because I just thought it was funny, and I feel an obligation to treat her to some little bits of candy the way that she has given me so many delights over the years. And I was reading a biography, and Kick Kennedy, who is petite, who is slender, her legs were described in the most unflattering ways-- and also inaccurate.
And I couldn't figure out what-- why would you even bring legs into the situation. What do they add to your description of Kit Kennedy? She's certainly challenging to describe the way Washington and a lot of other figures are because there's something about them that people really like. If you fail, however, to describe charisma, which is almost impossible, then you just leave it alone. You don't bring these things in. Something that exists with Washington that doesn't exist with Kennedy is this obsession with Washington's body in a way that sounds like a romance novel.
It's not just his thighs. Ron Chernow would talk about the muscles in Washington's jaw-- that they rippled. Richard Ellis would talk about how his legs gripped the flanks of a horse, and it would just go on and on. And I kept thinking, every one of these guys started out their biographies saying I'm going to break him out of the mold, and people are going to understand who he is. I'm going to bring him so much closer.
Those things do not do that work. They're not doing the job. So why is it there? I don't understand it. I think it's inappropriate, and I don't engage in it. But I do find it very funny.
JAMIE RICHARDSON: It is. I made a little face when you mentioned "rippling jaw muscles". And I'm also like, how does he know that? Was there other document-- were people writing about that at the time? I'm just curious about-- citation needed, perhaps.
ALEXIS COE: Right. "Citation needed" is sort of-- that's the hashtag, really. There's something similar that I will bring up that this is maybe getting into the weeds, but I think it's sort of fun if we're talking about Kennedy. When Inga Arvad enters the conversation in every biography, except for-- I don't think [INAUDIBLE] did this-- good job, Frederick. Good job. They love to quote-- it looks like they're quoting.
The biographer's quote Inga, seemingly. It's not actually her. And they say, I'm going to teach him about sex. That's basically an iteration of that quote, and they all use it, and it doesn't make any sense. And sometimes three pages later, they'll say, but that doesn't make any sense. So then why did you just spend three pages talking about this education he was getting? It's weird. It makes her sound like she's some sort of professional at this, which she's not.
It makes him sound like he has no experience, and we all know that he does, and he paid for those services early on in his life. He didn't need that education when he was in his early 20s. So what's the point? So I got this-- I spent far too much time on this-- tracking that quote down. She didn't say it. It was in an oral history that the Bellairs did in the 70s that's kept, I believe, at Ohio, and it's from a man named John White.
And the sentence before that, when he's allegedly quoting her-- this is many decades later, right? The sentence before, he talks about how Joe Sr. Was really supportive of this relationship because he thought that Jack needed this information-- this sexual tutelage. This is not true. Joe Sr. had been-- he'd been under Joe Sr.'s tutelage for quite a long time, and Jack was observed to have a very easy time with women since he was about 17 or 18.
Even Schlesinger notes this, that women just seem to be attracted to him. So why are we going out of our way to make it weird? Why are we going out of our way to focus on it? Obviously that's a part of his story, but it's really not a big-- it's not as big of a part of his story as it's been made out to be. I don't think it's that exciting. And I don't understand if the biographer's find it titillating, if they feel like it's obligatory, if they feel like it's the expectation of the reader, but I think it's pretty disingenuous as a scholar.
And also, it doesn't give your audience the respect they deserve. They can handle hearing something that's far more accurate and closer to their own experience, which is, he had an affair. It consumed him. It was really exciting, and then it ended. You can spend just as many pages talking about that with the information we have. We don't have to make it weird.
[LAUGHING]
JAMIE RICHARDSON: Note to historians, "Don't make it weird, please."
ALEXIS COE: Yes.
JAMIE RICHARDSON: Yes. And so before we wrap up, I just wanted to touch quickly on your fellowship at New America. Your project is "How a President Should Be". So having studied many presidents, obviously some-- Washington and Kennedy in depth-- what is your goal or your research bringing you to here?
ALEXIS COE: I'm a fellow at New America where I am working on a project called "How Should a President Be". It's very different than any other project I've done before because it's mostly ephemeral. I hold a series of conversations. There are 13. I'm having the sixth coming up, and I will say that this was a bit of pre-gaming 2024 for me. I have now been in a few presidential cycles, as someone who has called on for commentary, and have not found it to be the most substantial experience, shall we say.
There are times when an anecdote about FDR just simply does not apply to an unprecedented situation, and I can-- as we've talked about, I can make connections to anything, but I think the conversation is limited. And as I have become more successful, a strange thing has happened where I have found myself in a little bit of an echo chamber where I am on the same panels with the same people. The same reporters are calling me.
And I'm not saying anything new. They're not saying anything new, and we're not making each other think. And I really wanted to get out of that. And so I put together this speaking series, with the support of New America, all over the country with people who I rarely speak to on these different platforms, which has been interesting. I did two TikTok Lives, Instagram Lives. There are, then, in-person events. I'm going to Ohio State University to talk about national security issues to launch their 250 celebrations.
I am at the New York Historical Society in the next couple of weeks. I'm really excited about that. It's on historical reckoning. And Kevin Young, the director of the African-American Smithsonian, the former director of the Schomburg for Black Research-- a research branch of the NYPL-- is going to be on the panel.
I'm so excited to cover these topics and to ask the question, which you would think I would have already answered by now with curiosity with true intellectual curiosity and to have the freedom to pursue any answer I want and to investigate it, as if either I'm in college, or grad school, or just a man of letters of a different time, as if I was a Kennedy, right?
I can just go into this, and it's been a really profound experience. And in some ways, my idea of how a president should be hasn't changed. And in other ways, it really has. The goal of this is to, I guess, in my mind, paint a portrait of a 21st century president, which is different.
That's a different thing for a historian to do, but it's based on three themes. No matter what the conversation is, I'm always thinking about three things and reconciling them. Pride in the founding, a reckoning for the ways we've fallen short, and an aspiration towards a better future-- a more inclusive democracy, a stronger country. And those three things are in peril in a lot of ways, no matter who you talk to. And so to try and carry those with me throughout, it's been really good fun, and I think gives my commentary and my contributions this year far more depth.
JAMIE RICHARDSON: That's wonderful. Alexis, I want to thank you so much for being here today. I've really enjoyed our conversation and excited to see your future talks for "How Should a President Be" and, of course, the Kennedy book whenever you finish wrangling all of that evidence and documentary information. Thank you so much.
ALEXIS COE: Thank you.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
JAMIE RICHARDSON: Thank you for listening to today's episode. If you're interested in learning more about what we've discussed today, check out our podcast page at jfklibrary.org/jfk35 for links to the archives and Alexis's work. If you have questions or story ideas, email us at jfk35pod@jfklfoundation.com. Or tweet at us, @JFKLibrary using the hashtag #JFK35. If you liked what you heard today, please consider subscribing to our podcast or leaving us a review wherever you get your podcasts.
Thanks for listening in, and have a great day.