A remembrance of John F. Kennedy
John F. Kennedy was born 100 years ago Monday.
John F. Kennedy at 100? The whole notion is impossible to fathom. Even if fate had not intervened in Dallas Nov. 22, 1963, the likelihood that Kennedy would have ever been a centenarian gazing over a cake of 100 candles is remote.
Historians have since revealed Kennedy was bedeviled by health issues beneath the veneer of “vigah,” including Addison’s disease, colitis and chronic back pain. It’s not out of the question that Kennedy might never have lived to see a President Reagan, never mind a President Trump.
But, then again, if Kennedy had lived, there’s no telling what twists and turns history would have taken. Would Reagan and Trump have ever found themselves in the White House if Kennedy had served two full terms, rather than just 1,000 days? Would Kennedy have been reluctant to plunge into Vietnam? Would he have become less tentative and more aggressive in his support for civil rights? Would he have summoned the legislative wiles to get Medicare and Medicaid through Congress? Would the 1960s have been less packed full of strife if Kennedy had stayed at the helm until January 1969? We’ll never know. From the remove of a half-century, Kennedy’s assassination appeared to rip the lid off America’s id, bringing an end to the calm of the immediate postwar years and ushering in an epoch of unrest. After Kennedy, we had urban riots, more assassinations and, by the 1970s, gas lines, stagflation and Watergate.
When pollsters ask Americans who the best presidents have been, Kennedy always places near the top, and some of that surely has to do with the aura of martyrdom that surrounds him. The fact that Kennedy was movie-star charismatic and of relatively recent vintage almost certainly helps. The number of Americans who can remember even Franklin Roosevelt is getting vanishingly small, and it’s an even tinier number who would be able to offer firm opinions on the merits or demerits of James Monroe, James Polk or James Buchanan. Professional historians have generally given Kennedy solid marks. The American Political Science Association placed Kennedy at No. 14 on a 2015 ranking of the presidents, between James Madison and John Adams. Other organizations have placed Kennedy in the top 10. Because he was in office a little less than three years, his accomplishments were fairly limited. But the extent of those accomplishments should not be discounted.
As the first Catholic president, he broke down a crucial barrier, though just barely – he won the popular vote in the 1960 presidential election by just 118,000 votes. The Peace Corps came into being under Kennedy’s watch, putting American ingenuity to work in some of the world’s most underdeveloped places. Kennedy had the insight to realize that America could make friends through means other than military muscle. He also quickened the country’s pulse, elevating public service as a worthy endeavor (“Ask not what your country can do for you – ask what you can do for your country”), and set the goal for the United States to put a man on the moon by the end of the decade – a goal that was, in fact, reached July 20, 1969.
Perhaps most importantly, Kennedy was a savvy chess player in the confrontation with the Soviet Union during the October 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. A commander in chief less shrewd and more reckless could have pushed the world into a nuclear inferno.
Kennedy was no saint, and his presidency was not perfect. But we’re still here to remember him and his moment. For that fact alone, the country still owes Kennedy a debt of gratitude.