John Fitzgerald Kennedy was killed 46 years ago this morning.
I was at the Naval Air Station near Memphis. I well remember the shock and outrage that someone would dare kill our President. By then he wasn't well liked but he was family. The successful cousin who fought and survived in the war that had killed other cousins, brothers, uncles and fathers and if he had screwed up in Cuba we forgave him for that. What he started in Vietnam was still to come.
He was ours to grouse and complain about but damn anyone's very soul if they should harm as much as a hair on his head. Jack Ruby's actions were perfectly understandable, regretted only by the thought that a slow hanging would have caused the assassin more pain.
We were tired of Eisenhower's patience and stability opting instead for change. If the Soviets had a Sputnik we wanted a Sputnik and if the Soviets had shot down our spy plane then we wanted a bigger faster better spy plane and if they had more missiles... we now know they didn't, Kennedy's campaign lied about that...we wanted more missiles.
Hard to believe in today's world, but we found the Democrats more defense minded than the Republicans. How incredibly stupid of us.
But we believed it then and elected Kennedy instead of "wumpie Jaws," as my father in law called Nixon. The election caused no discomfort. A brief mention was made of "irregularities in Illinois and Texas" but that was buried under the obvious relief of the media that the long night of Eisenhower leadership was over and that our new demi-gods would play touch football on lawns of such sized homes few of us had ever had, or seen, while their perfect marriages produced perfect children and it was our duty to bow before our new leaders.
It was the Camelot motif that started the fall of Kennedy and the press. We were a country that had just fought a war over a challenge to democracy and our Scot Irish heritage would brook no kings and queens in place of the dictators we had defeated. The similarities were just too many to be acceptable.
We didn't know the weakness of the man. We didn't know that he would think he could talk with the Soviets and all would be well. We didn't know that the Soviets would see this and understand they could bluff us out of Turkey and how Kennedy would feel that he must assert himself by opposing them in Vietnam.
No, we didn't know the cost of having a weak President.
Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears;
I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him;
The evil that men do lives after them,
The good is oft interred with their bones,
Or so said Shakespeare's Antony of Caesar. And correctly he did speak.
On Twitter I am Lesabre1
No comments:
Post a Comment