These days, it is only the world's grandparents who can tell you where they were when they heard
John F Kennedy
was dead. For decades that was a staple of the global collective
memory, a question that could be asked in Berlin or London as readily as
New York or Los Angeles. Today that memory becomes exactly 50 years
old.
Despite its age, it's going strong. While some presidents,
including those who occupied the White House for a full eight years,
have struggled to be remembered at all 50 years after their deaths,
Kennedy continues to loom large. His 1,036 days as president have been
the subject of an unending stream of words –
filling 40,000 different books by one estimate
– as well as countless documentaries, TV dramas and Hollywood movies.
Like much else of this vast output, the latest film, Parkland, focuses
on the very last of those thousand-odd days: 22 November 1963.
Interest
in JFK peaks for an anniversary, especially a big one. But the truth
is, it hardly ever wanes. The Kennedy aura remains a factor in US
politics, even when there is no Kennedy on the ballot paper. The
standout moment of the 1988 campaign? When Lloyd Bentsen squashed a
callow Dan Quayle by telling him: "Senator, you're no Jack Kennedy." One
of the lasting images of the 1992 race?
Archive footage
of JFK shaking the hand of a 16-year-old Bill Clinton at the White
House, cherished as if Camelot had witnessed King Arthur anointing a new
prince. There was similar symbolism – the passing of the torch – when
in early 2008 Barack Obama won the endorsement of Kennedy's brother,
Teddy, and daughter, Caroline: once he had their blessing, Obama looked
unbeatable.
What explains this enduring grip on both the public
and political imagination? The manner of Kennedy's death is central to
any answer. The story of the 1963 assassination is so compelling, so
full of human drama and pathos and, to this day, mystery – even those
who accept that Lee Harvey Oswald was the sole killer cannot agree on
his true motive – that it refuses to rest.
Visitors at Kennedy's grave at the Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia. Photograph: UPI/Landov/Barcroft Media
But the greater significance of that day in Dallas – beyond the
arguments about the grassy knoll and the Zapruder film – is the effect
the killing had on how the Kennedy presidency would be viewed
thereafter. It would, forever, be a story of what might have been, of
potential snuffed out before its time. As David Ormsby-Gore, then
Britain's ambassador to Washington, wrote to Jackie Kennedy: "He had
great things to do and he would have done them."
The result is
that historians do something unusual when confronted with the 35th
American president: they debate his actual record less than his
potential record. Take the Vietnam war, the shadow that would hang over
the 1960s, thwarting its attempts to be the decade of peace and love. US
involvement in that war escalated on JFK's watch; by November 1963, the
number of US troops in the country had risen to 16,000. It was Kennedy,
say his critics, who set the course his successor, Lyndon Johnson,
would follow – by increasing the US military presence to 480,000 during
the next four years. After all, Johnson was surrounded by Kennedy's
advisers and always insisted he was merely continuing Kennedy policy. By
contrast, JFK's defenders insist he was, in fact, a sceptic about the
use of ground troops in Vietnam, distrusted gung-ho voices in the
military, and would have found a way to wrench America out of that
quagmire.
On civil rights, that other defining struggle of the
1960s, the argument is equally divided. Admirers cite Kennedy's
televised address to the nation, referring to the battle over racial
segregation as a "moral crisis", and his readiness to use the National
Guard to force the whites-only universities of the south to open up to
black students. Those less enamoured say he was late to the issue and
that he was unlikely to have been willing or able to ram through the
landmark civil rights legislation eventually passed by Johnson. "Kennedy
had no great understanding of the impatience of African Americans or
the intransigence of white southerners, while Johnson – from Texas –
understood both," says Tony Badger, professor of American history at
Cambridge. JFK, says Badger, was more "scared of the south" than LBJ,
adding the reminder that Jackie Kennedy referred to Martin Luther King
as that
"terrible" man.
There's a similar debate over Johnson's "war on poverty", with Kennedy
advocates insisting that everything LBJ did JFK would have done too, if
he only had the chance.
John F Kennedy and the Texas governor John Connally with their wives
in the presidential motorcade moments before the assassination.
Photograph: Reuters
More clear-cut – and usually held up as the unambiguously golden part
of his legacy – is Kennedy's handling of the Cuban missile crisis of
1962. As those over 60 cannot forget, the world held its breath for
those few days, genuinely believing that the stand-off between
Washington and Moscow over the Soviet deployment of nuclear weapons in
Cuba could end in Armageddon. Kennedy was cool-headed, faced down
Washington's hawks and showed great creativity, and even empathy, in his
dealings with Nikita Krushchev. In pulling back from the abyss, JFK
secured his place in history (and laid the ground for the nuclear test
ban treaty signed weeks before his death). Knowing his standing would
never be higher, he turned to Jackie when the crisis was finally
resolved and said: "Well, if anyone's ever going to shoot me, this would
be the day they should do it."
And yet judging Kennedy by this
standard – assessing his policy failures and successes – is slightly to
miss the point. His appeal, and the enduring power of his memory, lies
elsewhere.
For one thing, he was that rare politician able to
inspire. The young especially responded to his call: "Ask not what your
country can do for you … ," while his declaration in a city divided by
the cold war that "Ich bin ein Berliner" resonated throughout eastern
Europe. Less than three years in office, Kennedy nevertheless conjured
up oratory and imagery that retain their hold half a century later.
There's
no use pretending that sex and glamour were not at the heart of this.
JFK looked young, vigorous and handsome with a beautiful wife to match.
Stark was the contrast with both his predecessors in the Oval Office and
his counterparts abroad: how different Kennedy looked from Macmillan,
Adenauer and De Gaulle. He appeared like a new leader for a new era.
Family members including his brother Robert Kennedy, wife Jackie
Kennedy and their children leave for his funeral service. Photograph:
Reuters
That image has endured far beyond the archive footage. Kennedy
established a template for political leadership that is still in place,
in America and around the world. Kennedyesque is still the style, the
demeanour, candidates for high office aspire to: slim, energetic,
accompanied by a supremely elegant spouse. Whether it's Obama in
Ray-Bans or Cameron on the beach with Samantha, JFK remains the model.
Of
course, much of it was fake. Unknown to the voting public, their fit
young president was, in fact, crippled with back pain from Addison's
disease, taking industrial quantities of drugs to get through the day.
Equally concealed were his serial infidelities, his affairs with women
ranging from 19-year-old interns to Marilyn Monroe – a record of
womanising inside the White House that makes Bill Clinton look like a
boy scout.
Yet none of this seems to diminish the Kennedy legend;
it only enhances it. For JFK, the first president of the TV age who
understood and exploited the medium, remains, even in death, a
celebrity. He is the hero of a story that has everything: sex, lies and
8mm film; gossip, intrigue and lust – all set against a background of
peace and war.
What's more, all that is combined with something
that is, perhaps, as powerful as sex: hope. Despite everything, the
Kennedy brand still stands for idealism – for the ambition of the moon
landing and the call to public service enshrined in one of his most
popular programmes, the Peace Corps.
Celebrity and hope: it's a
powerful, quintessentially American combination. Fifty years ago the man
who embodied it was gunned down. But the myth lives on. Not even a
magic bullet can destroy that.
source:
theguardian
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