At this moment all across America, people are reflecting on one single event, the assassination of John F. Kennedy. There are millions of people of a certain age who can tell you just where they were, what they were doing and what everyone else was doing at the moment it was announced that he’d been shot. Undoubtedly, his assassination, like the bombing of Pearl Harbor a generation before or the September 11, 2001 attack two generations hence, became the defining moment of the baby boomer generation. Books upon books upon books have been and still are written about every detail of the assassination, and the theories range from radical conspiracy theories of every color to the notion that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone. Today, I’m finally asking a question that’s been plaguing me for years. Why? Not, “why was he killed,” or “why didn’t the Secret Service prevent it,” but why is Kennedy so venerated by our culture, and veneration is just what we do, make no mistake about it.
How many people in the year 1930, let us say, still held candlelight vigils and could tell you just where they were on these two dates: July 2, 1881 and September 14, 1901? If you didn’t recognize them, you’re not alone. I wouldn’t have if I hadn’t looked them up. The first is the day President James Garfield was shot and killed by Charles Guiteau in the 6th Street station of the Baltimore and Potomac Railroad. The second date is the day President William McKinley died of his wounds after Leon Czolgosz shot him eight days before on the 6th. In fact, I guarantee you that most Americans wouldn’t recognize the names Garfield or McKinley as the names of presidents. No, the president that Kennedy is most often compared with is Lincoln, Honest Abe as he’s often called.
“But wait a minute,” you might be saying, “Kennedy was much more accomplished than either of those two guys, and the technology available to the media was light years beyond what was around in 1901.” I grant the second point readily enough. But as to the first, let me advance what’s going to prove to be an unpopular hypothesis, but one I find defensible. Kennedy wasn’t that remarkable a president. I don’t mean he was a bad president, just a slightly better than average one. So why the idolizing?
Kennedy’s presidency is known mainly for four things: his handling of the Russians during the Cuban Missile Crisis, his green lighting of the Bay of Pigs fiasco, his push for civil rights legislation, and his death. His handling of Russia during October of 1962 was shrewd and effective, no doubt. Still, it’s not as though Kennedy thought of some brilliant way to end the situation. Back channel negotiations by both diplomats and spies was necessary to guide both sides, which wanted out, towards a workable and face-saving solution. The Cuban Missile Crisis is, to my way of thinking, the only truly exceptional event in Kennedy’s administration, and now most high school kids would probably give you a blank look if you asked them what they knew about it. As for the other events, the Bay of Pigs is an unmitigated disaster, a point even the most ardent Kennedy fans would agree with me about.
What about civil rights? It is true that Kennedy was in favor of and issued calls for sweeping civil rights legislation. It’s possible that without his call for civil rights legislation in his speech of June 20, 1963, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 wouldn’t have happened. but it was Johnson’s administration that made it happen. Johnson’s particular brand of power politicking as president, plus his playing on the fact of Kennedy’s recent death, got the Civil Rights Act of 1964 through its many congressional hurdles, and we’re all the better for it and the laws that followed. Who can say, however, whether Kennedy would, with Johnson stuck as his vice president, have been able to muster the votes and the force of persuasion needed to get Congress to pass the bill? That remains a question mark.
Even if we grant that Kennedy’s conduct during the latter half of October 1962 was most commendable and that he at least started the process of broad-based civil rights reform, does that fully explain our cultural idolizing of the man? I don’t think it does. Kennedy’s time in the Whitehouse is popularly referred to as the Age of Camelot, with all the associations of knighthood and chivalry that that term carries with it. Again, why? Was it because Kennedy, like Lincoln, the president with whom he is most often compared, is a rags to riches hero, a poor boy who made it big, who got his American Dream? Well, not exactly. To say that Kennedy came from a background of extensive wealth and power would be rather like saying that Bill Gates is financially rather well off. His father, Joseph P. Kennedy SR., was both extremely well connected and extremely determined that his son, Joe JR. become president. The death of the younger Joseph Kennedy during World War II caused the pater familias' ambitions to fall on John. His power brokering during JFK’s senatorial and presidential bids was indispensable to John’s winning both his senate seat and the Whitehouse. In an often repeated anecdote, JFK was once asked how much his father had helped him during his presidential election. The president is reported to have said that his father called him up on the eve of the election and asked how many votes he needed to win, because he, Joseph, wasn’t paying for a landslide victory. Still, no one should hold this against JFK. Family connections and money, lots of money, are at the heart of almost every presidential election since about 1800. But it is a sharp contrast between the two iconic presidents, Lincoln and Kennedy.
Do we call Kennedy’s time in office the Age of Camelot because Kennedy was a man of strong moral character, an example to the people and a role model for how people should live their lives? Not really. In fact, the number of sexual dalliances Kennedy conducted in the Whitehouse, not to mention anywhere else he could manage, is staggering and possibly unknown. It makes the Lewinsky affair look like peanuts, actually. One interesting illustration of the cultural differences between now and then is the media’s behavior concerning Kennedy’s private life. No president today could get away with the things he did, Franklin D. Roosevelt either for that matter. Presidential dalliances didn’t start with Kennedy, to be sure, and they didn’t end with him either.
The designation of the time of Kennedy’s administration as the Age of Camelot dates back, so far as I can tell, to a November 29, 1963 interview with the recently widowed Jacqueline. More important than the origins of the term, however, is its continued use. In answer to my own question, I submit that we venerate JFK not necessarily for anything he did as president, but because as the youngest ever president, he exemplifies the culture of youth and perceived youthful immortality that America thrives on. Having died young, his representation of that aspect of our culture is immortalized. He represents the glamorizing and glorification of the young in America and all the associations with ideas of freshness, boldness and adventure that the term ‘young’ has acquired in our culture. Even today, companies often use phrases like, “a young and innovative team,” when characterizing themselves and their staff. Yet, our obsession with the young and with youth culture is unhealthy to say the least. That obsession, however, is a subject for another day.
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