Home
Search transcripts:    Advanced Search
Notable New     Yorkers
Select     Notable New Yorker

Mary LaskerMary Lasker
Photo Gallery
Transcript

Part:         Session:         Page of 1143

choice to tangle with the AMA,” and handed him some clippings on the dispute between Magnuson and the AMA. The President said he had missed the story in the Times, which I had given him, and that it was hard to read everything, although he tried to read the Times and five or six other papers everyday. He then picked up a paper with a cartoon of Senator Kefauver in a coonskin cap looking out of a television set, which had a caption: “Making a whistle-stop campaign in your own parlor?” which amused the President.

We then said to him, “You can't let this happen. You must run.” He replied with feeling, “Oh, I have only one thing that I really care about and that is my child. She is at a great disadvantage by my being President. The White House and Blair House are no place for her. My wife is worn out by all her duties. She has shaken 50,000 hands in a year, has all kinds of teas and things daily. I don't know that she can last four years more and I haven't done what I've wanted in 20 years. I've just finished 30 continuous years in elective office and none of it was because of my seeking. I was saying this to the Minister of Pakistan and he said to me and he said to me, ‘Someone arranges these things.’ Why, the night before I was nominated in the '44 Convention, I was in a room with Bob Hannegan when President Roosevelt phoned and asked him, ‘Have you persuaded that fellow to run?' I could hear both





© 2006 Columbia University Libraries | Oral History Research Office | Rights and Permissions | Help