MISSOURI COMMENTARY: JACKIE O'S LAST, GREAT AUCTION

When Jackie Kennedy proposed her will, she declared that her personal papers were to be kept private. She instructed her children, John and Caroline, to "take whatever action is warranted to prevent the display, publication or the distribution" of her correspondence and files.

Mrs. Kennedy was by upbringing and nature a private person. She didn't much care for the intrusive press, especially photographers who would pop out of doorways and thrust cameras into her face as she attempted to walk down Fifth Avenue. She knew that she was something of an icon, but as a widow with two children she believed she had a fundamental right to be left alone.

For a private person, Mrs. Kennedy had a tumultuous and very public remembrance in the Sotheby auction rooms two years after her death. Massive electronic and print press coverage focused on the sale of her leftovers for prices as astronomical as the sale of the Duchess of Windsor's jewels and Andy Warhol's odds and ends. Mrs. Kennedy, the Duchess and Warhol are all icons of one sort or another.

When Mrs. Kennedy died she left an estate of "more than $100 million," in the opinion of the New York wise men.

To her two children she left her Fifth Avenue apartment (worth $9 million), her Martha's Vineyard property, the principal of a trust fund left her by President Kennedy, and assorted items of her art, furniture, china and jewelry. They also got $250,000 in cash each.

The bulk of her estate will go to her grandchildren in 2018. In the intervening years the assets will sit in a "charitable lead trust." From this trust her two children may make gifts, presumably out of trust income, to charities "making a significant difference in the cultural or social betterment of mankind or the relief of human suffering."

Her sister, Lee Radziwill, didn't get a footstool.

Trust or no trust, there were estate taxes to be paid. So the hullabaloo about Mrs. Kennedy's quotidian bric-a-brac was, in part, a way to pay Uncle Sam his rightful due. The sale prices were so explosive that the IRS will have to decide whether it should be considered as a simple inheritance matter (55 percent tax) or a capital gain (28 percent).

Would the private Mrs. Kennedy have countenanced this fuss? You bet. She was no more prone to paying taxes than most people on Fifth Avenue. She would have been bemused to see so many ordinary things fetch such extraordinary prices. She would have smiled or perhaps even be stunned when three pillows worth $50 sold for $23,500.

The Kennedys, for some, are America's last royal family. They had style, grace and charm. They reigned in the trouble-free era before the old cities exploded, before Vietnam, before Watergate. They presided over the country when people trusted their government and, believe it or not, members of Congress were admired. Especially after his martyr death in Dallas, President Kennedy became the icon king and his wife the icon queen.

For those bidding in the Sotheby auction houses in New York, Chicago and Los Angeles it was a demonstration of some of the incredible wealth stored away in America.

Listen to the conservative economists who says that "income tax rates in America are so high as to stifle incentive." Listen to those who assert that the capital gain tax must be eliminated and the minimum wage not increased in order for American business to flourish. Listen to those in Congress who say we must do away with the earned income tax credit for the working poor to get our fiscal house in order.

Listen to all the gibberish and tell them that during the same week as the Sotheby auctions, Donald Trump announced he has sold more than half of the 168 condominiums in his new 52-story Columbus Circle building, sight unseen, with the penthouse still available for $8.4 million. Tell them to buy a Sotheby catalog where the posted prices aggregate $34.5 million for mostly less than memorable items.

Taxes cannot be all that oppressive if people buy multi-million dollar condos sight unseen and if there are standing room only crowds hectically bidding to the moon. There's a lot of incentive left in America -- enough to buy some old golf clubs for $1.16 million.

~Tom Eagleton of St. Louis is a former U.S. senator from Missouri.