![]() I realize that it's one thing for me as an academic to urge greater leadership, leadership that rises above interest groups and the practical pressures. So expedient, pragmatic as they like to say. So even though we had even kind of a friendly relationship, it was not a close relationship.īURNS: I think I had a better sense of the pressures on American leaders. He didn't like to talk too much about himself or the family and so on. Whereas people like Jack Kennedy - whom I knew better in a sense, being myself a Massachusetts politician and I ran for Congress the year that he ran for the Senate the second time, and I was always allied with the Kennedys in Massachusetts and I still am for the Kennedys. In any event, he unburdened himself as to his early life and career and so on. I think he also wanted to talk to some academic to try to prove himself. And it was a very tough period during Vietnam and I think he almost needed somebody to talk to. ![]() I should explain, Brian, that this was toward the end of his - it was just before he announced his plan not to run again. ![]() One evening I had with him at the White House up in the family quarters, he simply unburdened himself to me as he did to many, many people, and went through his whole early life and his relationships with his parents. have been an intimate of Presidents but I did have contact and LBJ, I got to know rather well because he was the most revealing person to talk to. ![]()
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