Robert Samuelson November 10, 2013

It’s not about him. It’s about us.

As the 50th anniversary of John F. Kennedy’s assassinationapproaches, we’ve been deluged with essays, books, Web sites, videos and a new movie marking the event. The fascination with the Kennedysendures, though it’s probably on its last lap. After all, aboutthree-quarters of Americans either weren’t born when Kennedy was shot or were too young (under 5) to grasp what happened. It’s a distant anddisconnected event to them.

There is a coyness to someretrospectives. In a long essay in a recent New York Times Book Review,Executive Editor Jill Abramson wonders “Was Kennedy a great president?” — a question she never answers — and opines that he “remains all butimpossible to pin down,” whatever that means. The question is actuallyeasy to answer. He was not a great president. He was somewhere betweenmiddling and mediocre.

At his death, he had no major legislativeaccomplishments. His two major proposals — a tax cut to spur the economy and civil rights legislation — languished in Congress. He expanded theVietnam War, and though some supporters argue he would have reversedthat in a second term, presidents are judged on what they did, not whatthey might have done. His economic policies, symbolized by the proposedtax cut and called the “new economics” (an American Keynesianism), haddamaging long-term consequences. They unleashed inflation in the late1960s and 1970s; and they effectively abolished the commitment tobalanced budgets — a loss that still haunts us.

Beyond Vietnam, his foreign-policy track record was lackluster. The Bay of Pigs was a disaster. At a 1961 summit in Vienna with Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, Kennedy was — by his own admission — cowed. Later, the Berlin Wall went up. He did defuse the Cuban missile crisis in 1962, but the crisis mayhave resulted partly from Khrushchev’s sense that Kennedy could beintimidated.

It is cruel but true that the most consequential moment of Kennedy’s presidency was his assassination: It so filled the country with grief and guilt that, pushed by amasterful legislator, Lyndon Johnson, Congress passed the tax cut andcivil rights legislation. Moreover, the shift in public opinion enabledJohnson, after his 1964 landslide election, to advance his Great Society agenda: Medicare, Medicaid, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and more.

None of this sustains the Kennedy fascination. It’s too wonky and nuanced.The fixation has other sources. For starters, it’s history as soapopera. Vigorous president gunned down in his prime. Beautiful wife.Young children. But this appeal is superficial. Its real power is thatfor many Americans — baby boomers, members of the World War IIgeneration — Kennedy’s life and death represent a larger personal andhistoric metaphor.

I was a college freshman when Kennedy was shot. The Camelot illusion was that he and we were in control of events. His approval rating averaged 70 percent, the highest of modern presidents. Partly, this reflected a less critical public climate. Eisenhower, with eight years in office and more opportunities to disappoint and anger,had ratings nearly as high (65 percent). But it was also Kennedy’spersonality. He inspired confidence and oozed charm. He certainlymesmerized me.

As it happened, my wife and I visited the Kennedy Library last summer. Going through the exhibits, I sensed being transportedback to the early 1960s and, despite knowing what’s occurred in the five decades since, feeling invigorated and hopeful. The Kennedys were whatwe all wanted to be. No, we wouldn’t end up in the White House. But just as they had achieved their ambition, we could achieve ours. And wewould make the United States and the world a better place.

Kennedy’s assassination shattered the illusion of control. Who could imagine anAmerican president being shot? But many unimagined events followed: race riots in Los Angeles, Detroit and other cities; a powerful antiwar movement; the assassinations of Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King; a president’s resignation (Watergate).

Camelot was that brief interlude when we thought we could impose our will. That is its magnetism. It was less an innocent time than a simplistic one.We thought we could engineer the future and discovered that the futurewouldn’t cooperate. Our continuing seduction by the Kennedy narrativepresumes that had he lived, the future would have been better. He wouldhave grasped the folly of Vietnam, embraced the new youth culture andadvanced civil rights. This subtext sustains the Kennedy fascination.

It requires us to suspend disbelief, for there was a greatcontradiction at the core of Kennedy’s brief presidency. Though heprojected mastery, he followed events more than he led them. It takes ahuge leap of faith to think a second term would have been muchdifferent.