Skip to main content

The Death and Transfiguration of JFK

By


It seems we will have another Kennedy Love-In this Fall as this November will mark 50 years since his assassination.  It is really remarkable how the legacy of Kennedy lives on.  My feeling it is more about the promise that his presidency held than it is any policies he set, but Larry Sabato, the director of UVA's Center of Politics believes fully that Kennedy was a transformative figure in American politics.

I suppose a lot of it has to do with the way LBJ literally carried his predecessor's torch as he pushed through Civil Rights legislation that had been first put forward by the Kennedy administration.  But, in reading Caro's recent book on LBJ and other accounts it is highly unlikely Kennedy would have ever gotten that legislation through Congress on his own, as it took someone with the determination and means of LBJ to get the bill passed by a very conservative Congress.  However, Kennedy is still given much of the credit for this and other legislation that was passed during the Johnson years.

The myth of Camelot has been nurtured by many others.  It was a time when the Presidency almost felt like nobility and Kennedy certainly surrounded himself with some of the best and brightest of cabinet members that offered a bold new agenda for a modern era.  However, America still seemed mired in a Cold War mentality that neither the Kennedy nor the Johnson administrations were able to shake.

Kennedy is probably best remembered for facing down Khrushchev over the Cuban Missile Crisis, which cost Nikita his premiership.  Even Caro contrasted a cool, level-headed Kennedy to a hot-tempered Johnson, as he portrays reason trumping emotion in this highly-charged episode.  But, there is little to suggest that Kennedy would have handled Vietnam any differently than Johnson, which LBJ became saddled with.

In many ways Kennedy was as conservative as his predecessors, but what set him apart was the vigor he was able to project in the Presidency and a bold spirit that captivated the world.  He embraced novel ideas like Peace Corps, but at the same time plotted third world coups as Eisenhower and Truman had done.  His untimely death elevated him above the more sordid aspects of his administration, and he became projected as the liberal ideal, especially with Johnson's administration bogged down with the Vietnam War in his second term.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

O Pioneers!

By
It is hard not to think of Nebraska without thinking of its greatest writer.  Here is a marvelous piece by Capote, Remembering Willa Cather . I remember seeing a stage production of O Pioneers! and being deeply moved by its raw emotions.  I had read My Antonia before, and soon found myself hooked, like Capote was by the simple elegance of her prose and the way she was able to evoke so many feelings through her characters.  Much of it came from the fact that she had lived those experiences herself. Her father dragged the family from Virginia to Nebraska in 1883, when it was still a young state, settling in the town of Red Cloud. named after one of the great Oglala chiefs.  Red Cloud was still alive at the time, living on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, in the aftermath of the "Great Sioux Wars" of 1876-77.  I don't know whether Cather took any interest in the famous chief, although it is hard to imagine not.  Upon his death in 1909, he was eulogi
12 comments
Read more

The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire

By
  Welcome to this month's reading group selection.  David Von Drehle mentions The Melting Pot , a play by Israel Zangwill, that premiered on Broadway in 1908.  At that time theater was accessible to a broad section of the public, not the exclusive domain it has become over the decades.  Zangwill carried a hopeful message that America was a place where old hatreds and prejudices were pointless, and that in this new country immigrants would find a more open society.  I suppose the reference was more an ironic one for Von Drehle, as he notes the racial and ethnic hatreds were on display everywhere, and at best Zangwill's play helped persons forget for a moment how deep these divides ran.  Nevertheless, "the melting pot" made its way into the American lexicon, even if New York could best be describing as a boiling cauldron in the early twentieth century. Triangle: The Fire That Changed America takes a broad view of events that led up the notorious fire, noting the gro
228 comments
Read more

Colonel

By
Now with Colonel Roosevelt , the magnum opus is complete. And it deserves to stand as the definitive study of its restless, mutable, ever-boyish, erudite and tirelessly energetic subject. Mr. Morris has addressed the toughest and most frustrating part of Roosevelt’s life with the same care and precision that he brought to the two earlier installments. And if this story of a lifetime is his own life’s work, he has reason to be immensely proud.  -- Janet Maslin -- NY Times . Let the discussion begin!
240 comments
Read more