In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

  • Jackie Joins Twitter: The Recirculation of “Campaign Wife”
  • Melody Lehn (bio)

To commemorate the anniversary of the 1960 presidential campaign, the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library (henceforth, “the JFK Library”) created, launched, and supervised a pair of Twitter accounts for the former first couple. In 2010, “Kennedy1960”1 and “JBK1960” joined the Twitter universe to recreate Kennedy’s path to the White House. “Kennedy 1960” issued its first “tweet” on January 2, 2010, marking John F. Kennedy’s formal announcement of candidacy exactly 50 years earlier to the day. The profile created for President Kennedy was designed to reconstruct his thousand days in office, drawing “from sources in the Kennedy Library Archives, including campaign schedules, quotes from JFK’s speeches, scanned images of original campaign documents, video of campaign commercials, and more” to do so.2

In conjunction with “Kennedy1960,” the JFK Library created “JBK1960” for Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy.3 For its source material, the Library drew from Mrs. Kennedy’s original seven “Campaign Wife” newspaper columns, which were published, respectively, on September 16, September 29, October 6, October 13, October 19, October 27, and November 1, 1960. The movement on Twitter closely followed these dates 50 years later. A total of 98 tweets limited to 140 characters or less were released from “JBK1960” between September 15 and November 7, 2010. For each column, the JFK [End Page 667] Library provided a hyperlink to the transcript of the column corresponding to the day it was published and relied on that column’s transcript for tweets between its original publication date and the begin date of the next column. In other words, from September 16 to September 29, 2010, each tweet was derived from the first column, from September 29 to October 6, the tweets came from the second column, and so on.

I argue that the creation and employment of “JBK1960” by the JFK Library from the transcripts of the original circulation of “Campaign Wife” revises our understanding of Jacqueline Kennedy’s rhetorical contributions during the 1960 presidential campaign. First, I will account for the original circulation of “Campaign Wife.” Next, I will explain the significance of the text’s recirculation 50 years later by showing how it reveals that Mrs. Kennedy was both contributing to her husband’s candidacy in meaningful ways while absent from the campaign trail and well-informed and concerned about various political issues during the campaign. Finally, I offer some conclusions about the implications of this project.

The Circulation of “Campaign Wife”

“Campaign Wife” came into being when Jacqueline Kennedy, awaiting the birth of son John Jr., was advised by her doctors to travel only when necessary throughout the fall of 1960. Worried the public would misread her absence on the campaign trail, Senator Kennedy’s advisers suggested that Mrs. Kennedy take to her typewriter and appeal directly to voters, particularly women voters.4 The idea for Jacqueline Kennedy to write a syndicated column was fitting, since she was working for the Washington Times-Herald as an “Inquiring Camera Girl” when she first met her husband.5 From September 16 to November 1, 1960, Mrs. Kennedy wrote a total of seven newspaper columns titled “Campaign Wife,” which she composed with the assistance of political aide Joan Braden.6 The seven columns were distributed through the Democratic National Committee’s Publicity Division and carried by an unknown number of national newspapers.7

In a press release announcing the recirculation of the column, the JFK Library explained the threefold purpose that “Campaign Wife” served in its original circulation. First, “Campaign Wife” was intended not only to clarify Mrs. Kennedy’s absence on the campaign trail but also to express her regret for this absence. The first column suggests as much: “For the first time since [End Page 668] Jack and I have been married, I have not been able to be with him while he is campaigning. You can imagine how frustrating it is to be in Hyannis Port reading all that he’s doing and not participating in any way,” she wrote.8 Second, the column was intended to provide a “glimpse into the daily life of the young wife of a presidential candidate.”9 The...

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