Of all the U.S. presidents to mythologize, why pick JFK?

The Globe and Mail ^ | Jeet Heer

[mairdie]

As the books' sales show, a large and receptive public likewise continues to worship at the shrine of JFK. Polls show that the U.S. public ranks Mr. Kennedy as among the greatest of American presidents, often in the same league as Abraham Lincoln and Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Rarely is popular mythology so completely disengaged from historical reality.

To place Mr. Kennedy in the same pantheon as Lincoln and Roosevelt is absurd. Lincoln presided over the Civil War and freed the slaves, Roosevelt laid the foundations for the American welfare state and led a reluctant nation into the Second World War.

Mr. Kennedy had no comparable achievements. Save for the assassin's bullet that gave him a martyr's halo, he was a mediocre president, distinguished mainly by his combination of eloquent rhetoric and often-reckless foreign policy.

Curiously, the cult of Kennedy is particularly strong in liberal circles, even though he was among the most conservative Democrats ever to be president. One character in 11/22/63 says that stopping Lee Harvey Oswald's great crime is a chance to "save Kennedy, save his brother. Save Martin Luther King. Stop the race riots. Stop Vietnam, maybe."

Not likely, actually: The son of an isolationist, Mr. Kennedy came of age politically in the late 1940s, when the tide of Cold War sentiment was at its highest. His father was close friends with Joseph McCarthy, and unlike other Democrats JFK never turned against the blacklisting senator. Indeed, like that famed demagogue, he consistently derided any attempts to negotiate with the Soviet Union or China as evidence of appeasement and unmanliness. ...

[Sam_Damon]

Perhaps that’s why JFK retains such a powerful influence even today.

He seems to represent some sort of point after which “everything went to hell” in the US.

JMO, but too many people view life in the US as the glass half empty rather than the glass half full.

[uncbob]

JFK was a complete loser PERIOD

And I swallowed all the BS about the remarkable Kennedys and voted for him in my first presidential election

A whole damn family of LOSERS

[Obadiah]

Excellent summary of the sociological contours of the historical moment.

I was a small child at the time of the assassination, but somehow I really remember how that episode shook my parents. Even as a child I could intuitively sense the deeply traumatic impact the event had on society. I think you make a very insightful summary of the psychology of that period.

[Savage Beast]

I was appalled by the glitz that surrounded the Kennedy Administration because it was illusion that dangerously obscured truth.

I was not impressed with the distracting irrelevancies, e.g. Jackie-O's glamor, John John's darlingness, Jack Kennedy's sexy philandering. On the contrary, I found them irritating at best, dangerous at worst.

Of course the assassination was horrifying, but the glitz dazzled and blinded millions enough to allow some appalling things to occur, such as Teddy Kennedy's long stint in Congress despite the horrifying Mary Jo Kopechne incident, ignored successfully because of the glitz, and other things as well.

Kennedy was a mediocre President, certainly not as bad as the Democrat Presidents who came after him.

In the past few years I have read a number of books about the Kennedys. Generally, they had good points and bad. I do find things to admire about Joe the patriarch, Jackie, and Jack, along with things that are not admirable.

If they were the people living next door, I'm sure I would like them very well, recognizing their good and bad points.

But the glitz and "glamor" were an appalling and dangerous illusion and a glaring example of why we must never allow irrelevancies--or fantasies--or illusions--to distract us from the truth.

This is a big problem. Today, self-serving politicians et al. invent and encourage such illusions to serve their purposes, and many in the public accept and encourage them for various reasons, some because they don't want the bother of thinking.

For example, the fantasies about Obama have prevented an honest examination of his birth and background.

There are many other examples.

Glitz, fantasies, and this sort of "mythology" are illusions, and illusions are very dangerous, especially when they interfere with truth, and this is the real criticism of the illusion known as "Camelot."

[Verginius Rufus]

1960 was the first election I was old enough to follow and read about--I remember listening to the debates on the radio (we didn't have a TV). I was in high school when Kennedy was assassinated.

He is definitely the most overrated President. He had some good speeches (thanks to his speechwriter) and had a good sense of humor ("Washington, DC, is a city of Southern efficiency and Northern charm"), but accomplished very little. He avoided WWIII at the time of the Cuban missile crisis, but perhaps greater vigilance would have kept the Russians from putting the missiles there to begin with.

William Doyle's An American Insurrection is worth reading--about the integration of Ole Miss. JFK may have had good intentions but was clueless on how to handle the situation.

The one really consequential assassination was that of Lincoln. The war was virtually over at the time of his death, but he certainly would have handled Reconstruction much more skillfully than Andrew Johnson did.

[Fiji Hill]

For a story of how Kennedy, a victim of Communism, was transformed into and then lionized as a champion and martyr for the cause of civil rights, read Camelot and the Cultural Revolution: How the Asassination of John F. Kennedy shattered American liberalism (New York: Encounter, 2013)

[central_va]

The President that has been deified beyond all rational explanation is Lincoln. No other President comes close.

[Obadiah]

I was not impressed with the distracting irrelevancies, e.g. Jackie-O's glamor, John John's darlingness, Jack Kennedy's sexy philandering. On the contrary, I found them irritating at best, dangerous at worst.

While I agree with much of what you have said, think about American society at the time and from a historical perspective. Post WWII Eisenhower, a grandfatherly figure, was a remnant of a grateful America who rewarded him with two terms. Kennedy was the optimistic transition kid with the glamorous wife.

Kennedy was on the leading edge of a societal revolution. He was young, good looking. He had a hot wife and he was a known philanderer. Think of what came directly out of this. I'll give you a hint, Hugh Hefner.

Right at this exact moment the whole Playboy persona exploded in American culture. In large measure because American society wanted to emulate the young, suave, powerful guy who sexually attracted all the girls. That was the Kennedy persona, or myth, constructed or not. This is exactly why Hugh Hefner was exactly in the right place at the exact right historical moment. At that time every guy, and I mean every one, fancied himself a Kennedy-esque Playboy.

What else happened culturally that was Kennedy-esque? In 1963 the first James Bond movie was released (Dr. No). Again, the handsome, powerful guy who possessed all the sexual prowess to score any woman.

It's hard to underestimate the deep cultural impact of the sociology at the time that Kennedy had. It was like, after the abject hardships and suffering of WWII America had turned a page. We were becoming very economically powerful and youth and optimism were surging, and Kennedy was that transcendent and iconic symbol of that historical moment.

[mairdie]

>>The one really consequential assassination was that of Lincoln.

Great grandfather's memories of the Lincoln Assassination Trial

The gloom of that journey to Washington and the feeling of vague terror and sorrow with which I traversed its streets, I cannot adequately describe, and shall never forget. To this day, I never visit that City without some shadow of that dark time settling over my spirit. All the public buildings and a large portion of the private houses were heavily draped in black. The people moved about the streets with bowed heads and sorrow-stricken faces, as though some Herod had robbed each home of its first born.

When men spoke to each other in the streets, there were tremulous tones in their voices, and a quivering of the lips, as though tears and violent expression of grief were held back only by great effort. In the faces of those in authority -- Cabinet ministers, officers of the army, -- there was an anxious expression of the eye as though a dagger's gleam in a strange hand was to be expected; and a pale determined expression, a set of the jaw that said: "The truth about this conspiracy shall be made clear and the assassins found and punished: we will stand guard and the Government shall not die."

For no ruler who ever lived, I venture to say, not excepting Washington himself, was the love of the people so strong, so peculiarly personal and tender, as for Abraham Lincoln. Especially was this so among the soldiers; all members of the old army will remember with what devotion and patriotic affection the boys used to shout and sing, "We are coming, Father Abraham!" and will remember what a personal and confiding sort of relation seemed to exist between the soldier boys and "Uncle Abe", and how those brave soldiers -- veterans of four years of terrible war, inured to hardship, to sickness and wounds, familiar with the face of death -- wept like little children when told that "Uncle Abe" was dead.

[mairdie]

See comment 49. He was beloved by the soldiers that fought under him. I’m sure he was despised by the South, thus enough people to form a conspiracy for assassination. I was raised in Chicago, so grew up adoring Lincoln. I’ve never spoken to anyone raised in the south about how he was viewed there.

[mairdie]

>>Kennedy was on the leading edge of a societal revolution.

Fascinating connection that I never made.

[mairdie]

Thank you for the date. I went back into the article to see how I missed it and STILL can’t find a link that takes me to anything. But I live in a VERY restricted computer world and the page shows as text over an image for the start of the article and perhaps it’s actually covering text that is linked. Thanks for the help.

[central_va]

There are not many statues of Lincoln below the Mason-Dixon.

[mairdie]

The terror of that statement is recognizing how today the future historians are trying to destroy President Trump. The thought that THAT might endure is spine chilling.

[mairdie]

>>JFK put a man on the moon

YES! A million times YES!

[mairdie]

Even though he was deified in our Catholic school, there was still so much overt Protestant prejudice in the culture at the time that I more think of him as overcoming his Catholicism than massively profiting by it.

[mairdie]

>>Getting plugged was the best thing that ever happened to him

I’m betting he would have preferred living to resume enhancing. So many women; so little time.

[mairdie]

>>Kennedy was a media created president, maybe the first one

Doubt that. I spent a year, morning till night, reading NY newspapers from 1775 to 1830. They were dense with detailed articles but the candidates were totally familiar to the average citizen.

Where we watch TV to remember the year, they read the New Year’s Carrier Addresses.

1823, Henry Livingston, Poughkeepsie Journal

...
The Atlantic recrossed, I enraptur’d again
Salute these blest shores and my own native plain;
Hail land of my birth! Here Religion and Science,
And each moral feeling, are in closest alliance,
Where Liberty’s banner floats cheeringly high
And accents of happiness rise to the sky;
Hail land of my birth! May thy glories endure
Till the last consummation and time be no more.

In session at Washington, Congress is sitting
In sage consultation on the just and the fitting,
‘Twixt the plough and the keel the true balance to hold,
The mystic arcana of finance to unfold,
Draw banks from their mist to the glare of noon day
And tear from finesse all its cobweb away;
Draw the dagger of death on the buccaneer crew
Whose crimes fill with horror the old world and the new,
To the gibbet and sword throw the ruffian a prey,
And commerce glide on in her old smiling way.
Enlightened sages go on as begun
And millions will hail your return with “Well done”

America happy in Freedom and Peace
Sees her frontiers advancing, Her millions encrease;
Religion delighted sees temples arise
Where prayer and praises ascend to the skies;
The arts and the sciences march hand in hand
And rustic improvements embellish the land;
Cots, hamlets and cities, arising around,
And smiling Contentment is ev’ry where found.
Our canvass too, whitens each river and sea,
For our commerce is open, unshackled and free,
The wants of all nations we wish to supply,
And meet their reciprocal feelings with joy.

O’er our national barques see the spangled flag flying
Our anchor of hope on occasions most trying;
In peace unobtrusive, but in war’s fearful rage,
Hurling ruin and death on the foes they engage.

Our favorite hero, our ALLEN has bled,
When in combat unequal he fearlessly led,
In a frail open pinnance, his slender array
To seize on the pirate or fall in the fray,
He sunk - But his name will be dear to us ever,
Can his country forget to deplore him? Oh never;
May a similar flame in our heroes still burn,
When they crowd to his statue and weep o’er his urn.

[mairdie]

>>There are not many statues of Lincoln below the Mason-Dixon.

And there my world view just expanded. Thank you.

[mairdie]

I had just posted Henry Livingston’s 1823 Carrier Address at comment 58 when I reread your comment. The gulf between his joy in the present peace and prosperity after the war in which he fought and your summary of where we are today - when hero is a word that has been diminished - is heartbreaking. I never thought of that gulf when I read his optimistic view of what America would become. Now I fear I will.