BOSTON — Had Twitter been an option in 1960, a pregnant Jacqueline Kennedy might well have used it to communicate with voters while largely confined to her Massachusetts home and notably absent from her husband’s presidential campaign.
Instead, she penned a newspaper column called “Campaign Wife,” mixing discussion of policies and issues with personal stories and advice on everyday matters.
A half-century later, the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library is using Twitter to re-create Jackie’s weekly glimpses into the life of a presidential candidate’s spouse. The first tweets, expressing her dismay at not being able to campaign in person, were posted Friday — 50 years to the day that her first syndicated column was published.
“For the first time since Jack and I have been married, I have not been able to be with him while he is campaigning,” she wrote. The seven columns were distributed by the Democratic National Committee and released from Sept. 17 to Nov. 1, 1960.
