All Those Hats

The President of the U.S. always wears many hats, but last week he seemed to be changing them with more speed than ever. He was, in turn:

1) COMMANDER IN CHIEF in his 2,400-mile trip, reviewing the servicemen who stood at the ready in the week of the Cuban crisis.

2) CRISIS NEGOTIATOR in his meeting with Russia's Mikoyan.

3) COLD-WAR STRATEGIST, presiding over a meeting of the Executive Committee of the National Security Council to discuss the U.S.'s next moves in Cuba.

4) LABOR EXPERT, reluctantly invoking the Taft-Hartley Act in the Lockheed Aircraft Corp. strike (see U.S. BUSINESS ).

5) CITY PLANNER, issuing a ten-point policy directive asking the heads of federal agencies to cooperate with regional planners on the future development for Washington.

6) PATRON, meeting with a committee to discuss ways and means of carrying on the humanitarian work of the late Eleanor Roosevelt.

7) EDUCATIONAL CONSULTANT, receiving a report asking $400 million of federal aid for vocational education.

8) TRADE ADVISER, conferring with Ambassador to Japan Edwin O. Reischauer on questions of trade with Japan.

9) CHIEF OF PROTOCOL, welcoming Somali's Prime Minister Abdirascid Ali Scermarche, who arrived on a visit and brought a few unusual gifts--an ostrich-egg lamp, a foot-high, bottom-weighted "Devil Doll'' that teeters but never falls over, a monkey-fur rug, and a brass gong mounted between two elephant tusks.

10) SPORTS LOVER, rooting from a box at the Army-Navy football game. Though a theoretically neutral observer (he spent the first half on Navy's side, the second half on Army's), Old Navyman Kennedy cheered Navy home to a 34-14 victory, but at times seemed to lapse into boredom at the lopsided game.

11) PROUD FATHER, who slipped away to spend 15 minutes at the joint birthday party of his two children (Caroline was five; John F. Jr. had become two a few days earlier).

12 ) CULTURAL LEADER, presiding with his wife over a nationwide closed-circuit TV show aimed at raising money to build the National Cultural Center in Washington.

Benefactors paid from $1 to $100 apiece to see the program in 69 theaters, university auditoriums, concert halls and hotel ballrooms in 24 states. Most of the entertainment was produced live from Washington's National Guard Armory for an audience of 5,000--some of whom complained that they had bought tickets only after some arm-twisting from the President himself. The President made a small speech, saying that "art knows no national boundaries," since Jack London, Mark Twain, Ernest Hemingway and John Steinbeck are read in the Soviet Union, while Tolstoy, Dostoevsky and Pasternak are read in the U.S. While the whole affair was a financial success, it was a cultural flop, especially for those in the National Armory. The acoustics were so bad, the atmosphere so close and the program so poor that nearly half of the audience walked out before it was half over.

The President stuck it out to the end, which came with the last notes of Van Cliburn's rendition of a Liszt rhapsody.

So did Jackie, resplendent in her white and black silk satin dress and upswept French twist hairdo. In fact, the President told an aide, he wouldn't mind such a week 52 times a year.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.