What is it about John Fitzgerald Kennedy that makes old-time pols and pundits and even average Americans become teary-eyed, 50 years later, at the memory of his tragic death on “that dark day in Dallas?”
After a half century, people still ask each other: Where were you? What do you remember about the moment when you heard the news? For anyone over about 55 years of age, the answer comes forth quickly, in detail.
In 2013, two-thirds of Americans were not born when the young president’s life was snuffed out by an assassin’s bullet. Yet, those subsequent generations have come to appreciate or admire JFK, to the extent that today’s 50thanniversary of Kennedy’s death brings special reports on TV and in print and photo collages and video clips, all reliving the legacy of Jack and Jackie.
It wasn’t Camelot – that was a rewrite of history created by the first lady shortly after the tragedy. But the handsome, vigorous president and his beautiful, regal wife may have been the closest we’ve come to American royalty.
Yet, five decades later, JFK’s endless iconic status is about much more than dreamy magazine cover photos.
I think Kennedy was our last true American president.
Once upon a time in America, the citizenry envisioned an elected leader who was dynamic and inspirational, a president derived from “the best and the brightest” – a phrase long associated with the Kennedy administration.
The occupant of the White House was supposed to be a standout, perhaps a high school valedictorian, and a leader on his college campus, and a quick success in the world of politics or business. You didn’t have to be a former choir boy or Boy Scout, but it helped if that was part of your life story.
JFK fit the bill. In that innocent age, he was what a president should be.
The Massachusetts Democrat was the product of a prominent family that exuded vitality and success. He was a war hero, a Nobel Prize-winning author, a congressman and senator (titles that earned respect in the mid-20th Century).
Perhaps more importantly, JFK was charismatic, witty and inspiring. His soaring, aspirational oratory – “the torch has been passed,” “ask not …” – led to the portrayal of a leader with vision.
Fortunate timing was probably JFK’s greatest gift. On the political stage of 1960-61, he stood as a sharp departure from the aging President Dwight Eisenhower. He arrived on the national scene at the dawn of the TV age and famously used that big smile and his ingratiating charm to maximum effect in televised presidential debates and press conferences.
At 43, he was one of the nation’s youngest presidents ever, a man in the prime of life. Kennedy spoke for a generation that was restless, eager to take on new challenges after the bucolic 1950s.
One Kennedy admirer, William Manchester, titled his book about the JFK presidency, “One Brief Shining Moment.” Though he was in office for less than three years, Kennedy tackled an ambitious agenda – tax cuts, a dominant U.S. defense posture, sending a man to the moon, creating the Peace Corps, and initial movements toward civil rights legislation and new programs to help the poor.
JFK used the lessons learned about internal U.S. national security politics during the disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba to stare down Soviet leader Nikita Kruschev when confronted with the Cuban missile crisis, avoiding a nuclear war in the process.
Timing is such an overriding factor in assessing Kennedy after his untimely death. In retrospect, the former president was all about unfulfilled promise. The debates over what a JFK second term would have produced, given his limited effectiveness in swaying Congress, continue to this day.
Much of Kennedy’s agenda was tackled after his death by his successor, the master legislator, Lyndon Johnson. And nothing sparks more discussion among those who have studied the former president than what path he would have taken in Vietnam.
Because he was conservative on some issues and somewhat progressive on others, in subsequent decades his politics could be portrayed in numerous ways, depending on the story-teller’s motivations.
Filling in the colors of the Kennedy portrait has led to wildly speculative conspiracy theories about the assassination that cut short his presidency. It is a testament to JFK’s legacy that many Americans still believe that the president must have been the target of a spectacular plot, not the victim of a single, lowly communist wannabe.
A poll taken some years after Kennedy’s death found that 75 percent of respondents said they had voted for JFK. Yet, he won in 1960 (under allegedly questionable circumstances) with about 50 percent of the vote. Revisionism brings comfort when reflecting on loss.
Today is the 50-year mark, and I suspect Jack Kennedy would be dismayed at all the attention paid to a tragedy that occurred half a century ago. Before his death in ’63, he never would have spent time dwelling on events in 1913.
His eyes were always focused on the future – a future he never realized, a potential future now shaped by others.
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