"Jacqueline Kennedy’s White House Tour:
Abstract
The office of the First Lady of the United States is not inscribed in the Constitution. Nevertheless, as an institution it plays a significant role for the President of the United States (Stooksbury and Edgemon 97). This article examines A Tour of the White House with Mrs. John F. Kennedy (1962), the documentary about First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy’s restoration project, analyzing it as a cultural text. It seems controversial that—despite her major appearances in national media—Jacqueline Kennedy lacked political action during her first ladyship (Caroli 226; cf. Frey 179). The analysis exposes direct as well as indirect allusions that can be related to her husband’s administration’s domestic political agenda. Therefore, the CBS program about First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy’s supposedly apolitical cultural project of restoring the White House appears to be a platform for subtle social, cultural, and historical argumentation, supporting the president’s domestic policies and reinforcing the political importance of the first ladyship in the United States.