When he assumed the presidency, John F. Kennedy hoped to tamp down the Cold War rhetoric between the United States and the Soviet Union. He quickly learned how difficult this would be after a summit with his Soviet counterpart, Nikita Khrushchev. JFK sought common ground by stating the obvious, that “a nuclear exchange would kill seventy million people in ten minutes.” Khrushchev just looked at him blankly “as if to say, ‘So what?’ … as if he didn’t give a damn if it came to that.” Lamented JFK, “I never met a man like this.”

​According to Gore Vidal in Palimpsest, A Memoir, Kennedy did know someone like this, someone much closer to home. Per Vidal, “during Jack’s thousand days as president, he discussed” this person “almost as much as he did Khrushchev, and in much the same manner.” Whom did Kennedy believe to be the moral equivalent of Nikita Khrushchev?

• His wife’s official couturier, Oleg Cassini.
• His wife’s decorator, Sister Parish.
• His wife’s hairdresser, Kenneth.
• His wife’s mother, Janet Auchincloss.

​Hint: The answer is not the person banned from the White House for kicking JFK’s daughter Caroline (according to Michael Smith).
 
The answer is after the JUMP.

​In the 1950s, a Washington, D.C./Newport, Rhode Island socialite expressed doubts about her daughter’s upcoming marriage to one of America’s most eligible bachelors, complaining, “The wedding will be just awful — quite dreadful. There will be one hundred Irish politicians!”

Who was this unenthusiastic mother-of-the-bride?
 
Hint: Despite her claims to the contrary, this socialite mother was unrelated to General Robert E. Lee.
 
The answer is after the JUMP.