John Kennedy's and Barack Obama's path to the White House converged in five ways. They successfully sought a Senate seat at an early age (thirty-five for JFK and forty-three for Obama) but had no intention of becoming a Senate fixture; both were planning a glide path to the presidency, with the Senate as brief a stop as they could make it. They each drew a following of journalists, elites, and policy wonks who were impressed with their intellect and rhetorical ability. The publication of bestselling books (Why England Slept and Profiles in Courage for Kennedy, and Dreams from My Father and The Audacity of Hope for Obama) underlined the candidates' appeal. They both made a splash at the national party convention preceding their presidential nomination; JFK ran for vice president in 1956 and in 2004 Obama delivered a gripping keynote address prior to John Kerry's nomination, saying in part, "There's not a liberal America and a conservative America; there's the United States of America."3 While they lacked executive experience for the presidency, they tried to compensate by projecting hope, promise, vigor, and sharp change from the status quo. Finally, they each had a political handicap, religion for Kennedy and race for Obama, that caused some to say they could not win but many others to flock to their banner. Their potential "firsts" became causes celebres, making their candidacies larger than themselves and fueling the massive grassroots activism that got them elected. Volunteers and voters want to believe they are participating in a movement or a grand idea that transcends one moment and personality.

These parallels proved alluring to Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg and Ted Kennedy in 2008. Of course, the ground had been carefully prepared. Obama had made favorable references to JFK in The Audacity of Hope, and as a new senator, he had sought out his colleague from Massachusetts for frequent counsel.4 The celebrated wordsmith Ted Sorensen was one of the first JFK associates on the Obama bandwagon, actively campaigning for him and making New Frontier allusions whenever possible. To the charge that Obama was lacking in foreign policy training, Sorensen attacked presidential candidate Hillary Clinton for siding with George W. Bush on the Iraq War. Critics had called JFK out of his depth, too, until the Cuban Missile Crisis, asserted Sorensen, who added: "Judgment is the single most important quality in a president of the United States. Kennedy had judgment. Obama has judgment."5 Caroline Kennedy also reported that her children were taken with Obama and pushed her in his direction.6 In order to endorse Obama, though, the Kennedys had to move away from the Clintons, a presidential family they had once wholeheartedly embraced. This abandonment was made easier by some Clinton missteps. In Ted's view, Hillary Clinton had slighted his brother during the primaries by praising LBJ for the 1964 Civil Rights Act without mentioning that it had been proposed by John Kennedy and passed in part as a tribute to the late president. Clinton also did not correct a supporter who introduced her and suggested that Obama was another JFK, who merely talked about civil rights, while Clinton was an LBJ, who would actually get things done.7 Ted and Bill Clinton also had a heated argument by telephone about some of the former president's tactics in trying to get his wife nominated-ploys that in Kennedy's view included the unfortunate injection of race into the campaign.8 The fraternal keeper of the Kennedy flame had long been sensitive about insults to the memory of his brothers, and this miscalculation by the Clintons proved costly.

Barack Obama had won the Iowa caucus in early January, but Hillary Clinton had roared back to win the New Hampshire primary. The giant "Super Tuesday" contest in twenty-two states was to be held in early February. Just before this critical juncture, on January 28, Ted Kennedy and Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg stepped onto the national stage to crown Obama as JFK's natural successor. Carried live by the cable networks and covered extensively by all media outlets, the endorsement rally was a dramatic turning point that would enable Obama to build a small delegate lead he never relinquished in a nip-and-tuck battle with Clinton that lasted all the way until June. Caroline's blessing was heartfelt and an explicit straight-line linking of her father and Obama. The Obama campaign ran an ad throughout the primaries featuring images of JFK and the moon landing, and using these words from Caroline: Once we had a president who made people feel hopeful about America and brought us together to do great things. Today Barack Obama gives us that same chance. He makes us believe in ourselves again, that when we act as one nation we can overcome any challenge. People always tell me how my father inspired them. I feel that same excitement now.9 At the endorsement rally, Obama gave an uplifting address that reached across generations and divisions, perhaps especially affecting those who lived in the early 1960s and remembered President Kennedy. On a very political day, Obama insisted, "Today isn't just about politics for me. It's personal. I was too young to remember John Kennedy and I was just a child when Robert Kennedy ran for president. But in the stories I heard growing up [from] my grandparents and mother ... I think my own sense of what's possible in this country comes in part from what they said America was like in the days of John and Robert Kennedy."10 Obama also asserted that his father, Barack Obama, Sr., had been able to travel from Kenya to the United States for study because of an effort by Senator John F. Kennedy and the Kennedy Foundation to pay for his travel expenses.11 Thus, Obama claimed, JFK enabled his parents to meet and, quite literally, the thirty-fifth president had been partially responsible for young Obama's very existence. This story was almost too good to check, and the candidate clearly did not. But when the Washington Post did, they found that the Kennedy Foundation donation had been made too late to help Obama Sr. The Obama campaign admitted the error.12 The Clintons were aghast at this turn of the Kennedy wheel of fortune. According to close associates, the former president suffered a kind of betrayal, given his lifetime devotion to JFK and good working relationship with Ted during his White House years. Yet there was little the Clintons could do. Any attack on the Kennedys would backfire in the Democratic race. Hillary's campaign trotted out the backing of a couple of RFK's children, but even this was negated by the support for Obama expressed by RFK's widow, Ethel.13 Obama was the big winner in the 2008 primary for Kennedy family blessings.

Kennedy clan appearances on behalf of Obama continued for the rest of the campaign, though Ted Kennedy's stumping was essentially eliminated after the May 2008 diagnosis of the brain tumor that would take his life thirteen months later. A very ill Teddy did manage to appear at the late summer Democratic National Convention in Denver, where he delivered a farewell that echoed his 1980 convention address after his loss to Jimmy Carter: "This November the torch will be passed again to a new generation of Americans ... The work begins anew. The hope rises again. And the dream lives on."14ai Unlike the Kennedy-Nixon squeaker of 1960, there was relatively little doubt that Obama would win the election after the economic collapse of September 2008. Obama's Republican opponent, Senator John McCain of Arizona, was hugely burdened by his GOP ties to a deeply unpopular President Bush, whose support had fallen into the twenties because of economic collapse and the lingering Iraq War. Perhaps hoping to establish a link to a better-regarded presidency, McCain referred to JFK from time to time, invoking Kennedy's willingness to engage opponents in urging more debates with Obama, for example.15 But his most effective use of Kennedy was in tying JFK's wartime preparation for the Oval Office to his own. Like Kennedy in World War II, McCain had been pushed to his limits during the Vietnam War, but unlike JFK, McCain had been captured and interned in a brutal POW camp nicknamed the Hanoi Hilton. Beyond heroics, McCain found another connection to Kennedy that prepared him for the White House's life-or-death decision making: "I was on board the USS Enterprise [during the Cuban Missile Crisis], and I sat in a cockpit on the flight deck waiting to take off. We had a target. I know how close we came to a nuclear war and I will not be a president who needs to be tested."16 It wasn't nearly enough for McCain. Obama ended up with 53 percent of the popular vote and 365 electoral votes. Remarkably, the first African American ever elected to the nation's highest office had won a larger percentage of the popular vote than all the other Democratic nominees since the Civil War, save only for FDR and LBJ. Race had proved to be less of a determining factor in 2008 than religion had in 1960.17 After the election, occasional Kennedy references were sprinkled into President Obama's speeches, and Kennedy symbolism extended even into his choice of White House decor. Once again, JFK's Resolute desk was chosen for the new president's use and, as mentioned earlier, among the five quotations woven into the Oval Office carpet that each new president gets is one from John Kennedy: "No problem of human destiny is beyond human beings."18 Yet as Americans got to know Obama better, it became obvious that the new president was not a clone of the one lost in 1963. Strong backers such as Ted Sorensen certainly noticed key differences: "Kennedy, unlike Obama, continued his oratorical skills into his inauguration and presidency [and] was a wittier speaker who enjoyed laughing and making other people laugh."19 Obama's first inaugural speech was surprisingly flat and unmemorable,20 though his second, focused squarely on liberal themes such as minority and gay rights, had more historic luster to it.

With some exceptions, Obama's presidential addresses have often been wonky and uninspiring.21 As Sorensen suggested, one missing element for Obama is off-the-cuff humor, which JFK frequently employed in press conferences and one-on-one media interviews. The professorial Obama sometimes appears more akin to Woodrow Wilson than John Kennedy in style.

Nor has President Obama cited JFK all that much during his time in office. During his first term, Obama referred to Kennedy 99 times-a fraction of the 327 citations by President Clinton in his first term and even less than President Carter's low total (for a Democrat) of 165. Perhaps Obama, having been an infant during the Kennedy administration, simply does not relate much to the events of the early 1960s.22 This is true even when the parallels are obvious to older generations. For example, one of Obama's signal achievements has been the elimination of 9/11 mastermind Osama bin Laden on May 2, 2011. The president's instrument to achieve his goal was an exceptional group of service personnel, the Navy SEALs, established by President Kennedy in January 1962. JFK's objective then-to develop unconventional capabilities, including clandestine operations to counter guerilla warfare-describes precisely the SEALs' mission to Pakistan to deal with bin Laden.

Obama has certainly not ignored JFK or the Kennedys. In May 2011, while Caroline Kennedy was visiting, the president renamed the famous White House Situation Room, established in May 1961 shortly after the Bay of Pigs, for President Kennedy. (Fifty years ago, it was called the "Cold War Control Room.")23 Two years later, Obama tapped Caroline to serve as U.S. ambassador to Japan.24 Famous JFK phrases and sentences certainly show up from time to time in Obama speeches. As he advocated for action on climate change, Obama mentioned Kennedy's well-known formulation that "our problems are man-made; therefore they may be solved by man."25 References to JFK's efforts to establish the Peace Corps, the Alliance for Progress, and Medicare are sprinkled in appropriate Obama pronouncements about foreign policy and health care.26 Obama has invoked the Kennedy wit on some occasions, such as at a fund-raiser for his 2012 campaign: "You know, President Kennedy used to say after he took office what surprised him most about Washington was that things were just as bad as he had been saying they were."27 Still, the encomia for Kennedy from the "new JFK" seem sparse.

Obama critics have employed John Kennedy's record in a few policy areas to poke at the president. For example, Obama's severe cutbacks at NASA provoked the ire of three pioneering astronauts, including the reclusive first man to set foot on the moon, Neil Armstrong.28 In a widely discussed column coauthored by astronauts Jim Lovell and Gene Cernan, Armstrong (who died in 2012) blasted what he saw as Obama's timidity, contrasting it with Kennedy's boldness. JFK had called the space race "the new ocean, and I believe that the United States must sail on it and be in a position second to none." The retired astronauts concluded, "For fifty years we explored the waters to become the leader in space exploration. Today ... the voyage is over. John F. Kennedy would have been sorely disappointed."29 The reproach must have stung a president who recalled "sitting on my grandfather's shoulders in Hawaii, watching the Apollo astronauts return from a journey President Kennedy set in motion. Looking back, I think my own sense that America is a place of boundless possibility comes, in part, from moments like these."30 Adding to the astronauts' insult, a conservative group aired a tough TV spot against Obama in 2012, contrasting his NASA cutbacks to film clips of JFK asserting, "We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard ... And the moon and the planets are there, and new hopes for knowledge and peace are there." Alluding to JFK's 1960 campaign pledge to "get this country moving," a man on the street comments in the advertisement, "We need a leader that is not scared to get this country moving in the right direction again."31 While President Obama had the lion's share of JFK associations to himself in 2008, he got a bit more competition in 2012. The first Mormon candidate for the presidency, Republican Mitt Romney, alluded to JFK's barrier-breaking religious affiliation occasionally, and the press stressed this particular Kennedy-Romney connection. As Romney put it when he first ran for the White House in 2007, "Almost fifty years ago, another candidate from Massachusetts explained that he was an American running for president, not a Catholic running for president. Like him, I am an American running for president. I do not define my candidacy by my religion."32 By 2012, religious prejudice certainly wasn't as widespread as it had been in 1960. Nonetheless, Romney's task was tougher than Kennedy's in a crucial respect. While both JFK and Romney could rely on overwhelming backing from their coreligionists, Roman Catholics comprised 26 percent of the U.S. population in Kennedy's time, while Mormons were just 2 percent of the population during the 2012 election.33 Romney chose one of JFK's coreligionists for his ticket, Wisconsin Republican Paul Ryan, who was an Irish Catholic and the same age (forty-two) as John Kennedy had been when he declared for the presidency in January 1960. Ryan was the second Roman Catholic to be nominated by the GOP for either spot on its national ticket (in 1964, Barry Goldwater picked a Catholic, Congressman Bill Miller of New York, for vice president). The 2012 major party nominees were a measure of how much America had changed since JFK's presidential contest. A Mormon-Catholic duo faced off against the nation's first African American president and his Catholic running mate, Vice President Joe Biden.

JFK's name came up in the foreign policy presidential debate (Cuba and how a White House should handle the inevitable unexpected crisis) and in the vice presidential debate (Kennedy's tax cut, raised by Ryan and dismissed by Biden: "Now you're Jack Kennedy?"). But the 2012 script was different from 1960's. Romney, the most recent nominee from Massachusetts, like Kennedy, won the first debate by a wide margin, but unlike JFK, he lost the election decisively. As with Michael Dukakis and John Kerry, Romney found that the era of Massachusetts miracles ended with JFK.

The Latino vote was a major reason why. Obama in 2012, like Kennedy in 1960, was able to win over this increasingly important voting bloc with a message of inclusivity. Mitt Romney, on the other hand, alienated many Latino voters by opposing immigration reform and endorsing a "self-deportation" policy for undocumented workers. Obama crushed Romney with Hispanics, winning 71 percent of this tenth of the electorate (a gain even over Obama's sizable 67 percent in 2008). The seeds of Democratic victory were sown more than a half century earlier. President Kennedy's last night on earth was spent with a Latino group in Texas in what has been described as a watershed event. The president and First Lady electrified a crowd attending a Hispanic political gathering in Houston when they showed up unannounced and gave impromptu remarks. Mrs. Kennedy spoke to the crowd in fluent Spanish. The Kennedy campaign realized that Hispanics had helped make the difference in 1960 and might be needed again if Texas turned out to be close in 1964.34 The Obama presidency coincided with the half-century mark since the Kennedy presidential campaign and term of office. Commemorations abounded from 2010 to 2013.35 One of the most remarkable occurred at the University of Michigan, fifty years to the night when John Kennedy, after a long day of campaigning, showed up at the campus well behind schedule-in the wee hours of the morning, in fact. He gave a speech proposing the Peace Corps to thousands of excited students and faculty at 2:00 A.M., and on October 14, 2010, despite a cold rain, roughly fifteen hundred people showed up yet again from one to three in the morning to see a new documentary on the Peace Corps and a ceremony marking JFK's visit.36 The fiftieth anniversary of Kennedy's inauguration became a major Washington event. A three-week series of performances at the Kennedy Center began on the evening of January 20, 2011, with over a hundred members of the Kennedy clan assembling to hear Morgan Freeman recite excerpts from JFK's speeches and President Obama pay tribute to his predecessor.37 But more poignant was a gathering earlier that day in the grand rotunda of the Capitol. The powerful listened in silence as Kennedy's fourteen-minute inaugural address was replayed near where it was delivered exactly five decades before. A few months later, on what would have been JFK's ninety-fourth birthday, the U.S. Navy announced that a second aircraft carrier would be named for the late president, the first having been decommissioned in 2007.38 Since JFK would have been in his nineties during the Obama administration, the same clock had affected other members of the Kennedy clan, and slowly the older generation of the family America remembered for its vitality departed this earthly realm. Though there had been plenty of advance notice, Edward Kennedy's death from a brain tumor was still a shock to most. Kennedy was seventy-seven years old, but most Americans born before 1960 had a fixed view of him as the youngest of President Kennedy's siblings. His Senate career of about forty-seven years was highly influential by anyone's yardstick, and he had fully earned the title of the Senate's "liberal lion." Most Americans, whatever their politics, probably could agree with the perspective offered by President Obama upon Kennedy's death: "His fight has given us the opportunity we were denied when his brothers John and Robert were taken from us: the blessing of time to say thank you and good-bye ... For his family he was a guardian. For America he was the defender of a dream."39 Just weeks before Ted Kennedy's death, his and JFK's sister Eunice Kennedy Shriver, the founder of the Special Olympics, passed away. JFK brother-in-law Sargent Shriver followed in early 2011. Later that year, Kara Kennedy, the only daughter of Ted Kennedy, would die of a heart attack at age fifty-one. RFK Jr.'s estranged wife, Mary, committed suicide in May 2012, reviving for the umpteenth time the age-old discussion about the family curse.40 Of course, the Kennedys are a sprawling, burgeoning tribe; most families of that size have loads of tragedies over time, but they are out of the public eye.

If there was a sign of waning Kennedy influence in politics, even in Massachusetts, it was the failure of the Kennedy family to put forth one of their own in the special election to succeed Ted Kennedy.41 After all, this was a Senate seat that had been filled by a Kennedy almost continuously since early 1953.42 Moreover, a Republican state senator, Scott Brown, was elected to the Kennedy seat in early 2010 as a "Tea Party" favorite, having aired a TV spot featuring President Kennedy and his advocacy of the income tax cut; this invocation of Massachusetts's political patron saint may have eased the blow to the Kennedys a bit.43 Not surprisingly, Brown's career was a short one in the heavily Democratic Bay State, and he was defeated for reelection in 2012 by Elizabeth Warren, who benefited from an Obama landslide in Massachusetts.

Accentuating the lack of Kennedys in public office, for the second half of President Obama's first term, there was no Kennedy presence in Congress. The last family representative, Congressman Patrick Kennedy of Rhode Island, left in early 2011. Briefly, Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg had been the New York governor's choice to fill Hillary Clinton's U.S. Senate seat once Clinton became secretary of state, but Caroline's selection fell flat as her lack of preparation and knowledge about the intricacies of Empire State politics became apparent.44 However, the Kennedy interregnum was brief. In November 2012, RFK's grandson, Joseph P. Kennedy III, was elected to represent the liberal Massachusetts district of retiring Democratic congressman Barney Frank. Given the number of adult Kennedy children and grandchildren-numbering in the dozens-it is remarkable that young Joseph Kennedy is currently the only one in any significant elective office at the state or national level.45 Either the newest generations of Kennedys have moved in nonelective directions or the voters have. It is always possible that, in time, either half of this equation could change; more Kennedys could take up politics, and the electorate may look favorably upon them. Many Massachusetts observers believe that Joe Kennedy III may have the right stuff to move up.

Whatever the family's political prospects, public interest in John Kennedy appears unquenchable. The books, articles, TV documentaries, mini-series, and even music videos and video games continue to multiply.46 Caroline published a memoir about her mother, containing hours of unreleased tapes of Jackie discussing her late husband.47 Secret Service agents from the Dallas trip made their case about the assassination in The Kennedy Detail.48 Former CIA operative Brian Latell leveled a j'accuse at Fidel Castro concerning Dallas.49 Stephen King wrote a novel entitled 11/22/63.50 Yet another JFK mistress, Mimi Alford, came forward in Once Upon a Secret.51 FOX News commentator Bill O'Reilly published a runaway bestseller, Killing Kennedy.52 Stephen Hunter, author of the Bob Lee Swagger series, released The Third Bullet, another fictional assassination whodunit, to critical acclaim.53 One of the least circulated books with a Kennedy flavor contained one of the most fascinating tidbits. Archbishop Philip Hannan, in his memoir The Archbishop Wore Combat Boots, included a previously undisclosed December 20, 1963, letter he had received from Jackie Kennedy. Devout Catholic though she was, Mrs. Kennedy expressed a sentiment that most people who have lost loved ones have probably felt: If only I could believe that [Jack] could look down and see how he is missed and how nobody will ever be the same without him. But I haven't believed in the child's vision of heaven for a long time. There is no way to commune with him. It will be so long before I am dead and even then I don't know if I will be reunited with him ... Please forgive all this-and please don't try to convince me just yet-I shouldn't be writing this way.54 One's faith is understandably tested in circumstances similar to Mrs. Kennedy's. And the heartfelt passion she expressed appears to contradict the view that JFK's flagrant adulteries had created an empty, loveless union.55 Because of its deep wound to the national psyche, November 22, 1963, was the focus of more books and TV shows than any other aspect of John Kennedy's story. Just in the past several years, the History Channel, the Discovery Channel, and the National Geographic Channel have aired at least six specials on what they claim are new aspects of the assassination.56 The fascination with the assassination has led to some unfortunate by-products. A British video game called "JFK Reloaded" re-created the assassination scene and permitted players to carry out the assault from different vantage points.57 Souvenirs of the tragedy are also now selling for incredible prices. The fedora worn by Jack Ruby when he shot Lee Oswald fetched $45,000 at auction, and Ruby's shoes went for $15,000. The toe tag attached to Oswald's corpse generated an obscene $83,000.58 Even more morbidly, the funeral director who embalmed Oswald sold Oswald's first, discarded coffin, his death certificate, and the instruments and table he used to prepare Oswald's body for $160,000.59 The old ambulance that carried JFK's body after Air Force One landed in Washington was purchased for $120,000.60 The owner of the boarding house where Oswald lived in November 1963 decided to put her property on the market to capitalize on the fiftieth anniversary of the assassination.61 The reason these items are trading for substantial monies is not simply because people want to own a piece of history, however perverse, but also because the Kennedy assassination is a wound that never healed for many Americans; they are still trying to come to terms with it. Souvenirs of the Lincoln assassination were highly sought after for generations, too, for much the same reasons. In fact, the opera glasses Lincoln was using in Ford Theater were recently put on the auction block with a minimum asking price of half a million dollars.62 The combination of a senseless act of violence plus historic change of a high order of magnitude-present in both the Lincoln and Kennedy assassinations-traumatized society for years.

aiI searched through the records of every Democratic National Convention from 1964 to 2012 and found 96 substantial segments about, or references to, JFK and his family. There was not one Democratic convention without at least several Kennedy invocations and representations. Other historic Democratic figures, from Jefferson and Jackson to Wilson and FDR, were given short shrift by comparison.

21.

The People's President.

It seems more than a little strange to apply any populist label to John F. Kennedy. He was a child of privilege, a young man sent to the best schools, a politician with a charmed life fueled by his father's vast wealth and influence, and a refined individual blessed with looks, talents, and worldly goods beyond the hope of most mortals. What real connection did he ever have to the struggles and challenges faced by average citizens? Nonetheless, Kennedy's life, presidency, and death combined to cast a powerful spell that has worked its magic on generations of Americans, and continues to this day.

What elements make up the Kennedy enchantment? As described in this book's introduction, we undertook a detailed public opinion study to determine how and why JFK has maintained his position at the top of the presidential pile over the past half century.

The 2,009 American adults participating in the opinion poll supervised by Peter Hart and Geoff Garin were asked to rate all the presidents from Dwight Eisenhower to Bill Clinton on a scale from 0 to 10, with 10 being the best possible grade. (The two most recent presidents, George W. Bush and Barack Obama, were not included since not enough time has passed for fair, less partisan evaluations.) John F. Kennedy was the most highly rated by a considerable margin: Finishing immediately behind Kennedy were Ronald Reagan, Dwight Eisenhower, and Bill Clinton. The latter trio served eight full years each, compared to JFK's less than three years. Few historians would claim that Kennedy's actual achievements during his short term compared to those who were given the maximum tenure. Other than JFK, the less-than-two-term presidents all ranked lower: Gerald Ford, George H. W. Bush, Lyndon Johnson, Jimmy Carter, and, in the cellar, Richard Nixon.1 In most cases, the evaluations of those age fifty-five and over and those under fifty-five were not much different, although Carter was better liked by younger adults who perhaps knew him more from his popular postpresidential activities than from his generally unsuccessful White House term.

Naturally, partisanship was a significant factor in people's evaluations of presidents, though much less so in the case of JFK than most others. Democrats gave Kennedy his highest grades, with 79 percent calling him one of the country's best presidents2 while 52 percent of Republicans offered the same superlative. While a considerable difference, the Kennedy results are much more balanced than the partisan findings for Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton. Fully 87 percent of Republicans hail Reagan as one of the best, but only 31 percent of Democrats do so; 85 percent of Democrats figuratively see Clinton on Mount Rushmore, but a mere 28 percent of Republicans do.

Kennedy received especially high rankings from older voters; 72 percent gave Kennedy a rating of 7 to 10, far more than any other modern president. What is equally remarkable is that all but 16 percent of younger voters knew enough about Kennedy to rate him. Compare this to Kennedy's predecessor and successor in the White House. Fully 42 percent of those under age fifty-five couldn't rate Eisenhower, and 45 percent knew too little about Johnson to judge him. Of course, Kennedy has received far more media attention than less photogenic presidents-but JFK is also intrinsically more interesting and memorable in many ways.

In a separate question, participants were asked how much they knew about different presidents in terms of their personal history and background before becoming and while serving as president. George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, and Franklin Roosevelt were included along with JFK and other modern presidents. Somewhat surprisingly, 62 percent knew a great deal or a fair amount about Kennedy, compared to 56 percent for Lincoln, 49 for Washington, and a mere 36 for Roosevelt. All age groups were equally uninformed concerning long-ago great presidents.

However, Kennedy did not sweep every measure of presidential stature. In an open-ended question, respondents were asked which president, living or dead, they would want to be the next president. Reagan was picked by 24 percent, Clinton by 21, and Kennedy by 13, with Lincoln in fourth place at 9 percent.3 In a revealing section of the survey, respondents were asked to specify President Kennedy's most significant attributes and what they most closely associated with him. While some events such as the civil rights struggle were mentioned prominently, most people focused on personal characteristics: decisiveness, strength, youth, family, optimism, idealism, and energy. Participants were then queried about the most profound change JFK made on the country as president. Racial integration, standing up to the Soviet Union, and the space program were the top three choices. Once again, older voters offered more specifics. When asked how much they admired JFK, two thirds of those fifty-five and over replied "a great deal" or "a fair amount" compared to 55 percent of those under age fifty-five. The response was even more robust when people were asked to rate the impact JFK and his policies had on the United States. Two thirds of younger adults said a great deal or a fair amount; among older adults, 78 percent rated JFK's impact highly.

Even more interesting, many of the standard divisions in American society-based on gender, race, religion, and the like-were much less pronounced for President Kennedy than for most political figures, past or present. There was almost no gender gap regarding the degree to which people admire JFK. Roughly three out of five men (57 percent) and women (60 percent) registered a great deal or fair amount of admiration. Not surprisingly, African Americans were high up on the admiration scale (71 percent), but so were Hispanics (63) and whites (58). The affection for Kennedy was naturally substantial among Catholics (62 percent), but Protestants were not far behind (55). Liberals were JFK's biggest admirers (69 percent), yet moderates were close (62), and almost half of conservatives (49 percent) thought positively of him.

In the focus groups, participants repeatedly used certain words and phrases to describe JFK, which were then included in the broader poll: Kennedy was most strongly associated with the terms "charismatic," "patriotic," "a strong leader," "courageous," "inspirational," and "optimistic." The poll's respondents also saw Kennedy as "wealthy and privileged"-though it was more descriptive than undesirable-and "concerned about the average person." Negative words and phrases, such as "immoral," "bad role model," "arrogant," "reckless," and "did not accomplish much," were rarely used, even among Republicans. Realistically, anyone could fairly attribute each of these criticisms to aspects of the life and presidency of John Kennedy. Clearly then, JFK is not seen as just another politician, whatever the truth of the matter.

Respondents were also asked to select which two among seven of Kennedy's best-known statements (four of them from his inaugural address) best represent what America would most benefit from today in focusing our approach to government and citizenship: 63%-"Let us not seek the Republican answer or the Democratic answer but the right answer. Let us not seek to fix the blame for the past-let us accept our own responsibility for the future."4 49%-"Ask not what your country can do for you-ask what you can do for your country."5 28%-"Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty."6 26%-"If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich."7 14%-"We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills ..."8 12%-"It is an unfortunate fact that we can secure peace only by preparing for war."9 9%-"Let the word go forth from this time and place, to friend and foe alike, that the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans-born in this century, tempered by war, disciplined by a hard and bitter peace ..."10 In our era of intense partisan strife and polarization, Americans seek relief from the blame game, perhaps the reason that the highest rated statement was Kennedy's statesmanlike assertion that the "right answer" should be preferred to the Democratic or Republican answer. Older and younger adults liked this sentiment equally well, as did Democrats, Republicans, and Independents. JFK's most famous declaration, "Ask not what your country can do for you-ask what you can do for your country," was chosen by 49 percent-although Republicans were especially enamored of this combination of patriotism and self-reliance.11 Those over age fifty-five were somewhat more likely to pick this statement, compared to younger adults, perhaps because it was the single most quoted line of JFK's inaugural address, and those alive and aware in 1961 recalled the attention it received. The only Cold War proclamation to draw much backing was Kennedy's "pay any price, bear any burden" litany from the inaugural. Younger respondents were more inclined to pick Kennedy's rationale for helping the poor; 30 percent of those fifty-four and under selected that line from the inaugural, compared with just 20 percent of those fifty-five and older.

Later in the survey, respondents watched short film clips of President Kennedy giving parts of five speeches: the inaugural address on January 20, 1961 (the "ask not" excerpt), a September 12, 1962, address that included a recapitulation of the moon landing goal, the Cuban Missile Crisis address to the nation on October 22, 1962, Kennedy's "peace speech" to American University's graduating class on June 10, 1963, and the following day's television address on civil rights.12 "Ask not" was the most remembered excerpt: a startling 83 percent of those age fifty-five and over "definitely" recalled having seen or heard it, with 60 percent of those under age fifty-five having also come across it. Of older Americans, 55 percent remembered the Cuban Missile Crisis speech, compared to only 26 percent of younger Americans. The least recognized excerpt was the peace speech, with a mere 5 percent of adults recalling it.

Respondents were then asked to "write a few words or phrases describing how you felt as you watched this video." The inaugural excerpt encouraged people to get involved and make a difference. The Cuban Missile Crisis address evoked many comments about JFK's "firm, strong leadership." Civil rights elicited remarks about Kennedy's boldness and courage in calling for equality (though civil rights leaders in the first couple of Kennedy years would have had a less positive view about JFK's "boldness"). The moon speech produced observations about Kennedy's "good ideas and great, worthy goals." Many saw the peace speech as both a call for national unity and an attempt to avoid war.

The responses to this question were not dramatically different by age, save for the Missile Crisis address. Americans alive and aware in 1962 were almost three times as likely to say they were "scared" or "frightened" while watching the speech as those too young to recall the event. Emotions generated by the very real prospect of nuclear annihilation easily survived a half century.aj Ten concrete goals and achievements of the Kennedy administration were featured in order to test respondents' knowledge of them. These "things that John F. Kennedy did as president" ranged from setting a course for the moon landing to pushing for a major tax cut. Seventy-seven percent of respondents aged fifty-five and older were familiar with JFK's goal of landing a man on the moon, while only 59 percent of younger respondents remembered it. Older participants also demonstrated a greater awareness of the Cold War; 82 percent said that they knew JFK had resisted the Soviet Union's attempt to place missiles in Cuba even as 44 percent of younger respondents admitted to knowing nothing, or next to nothing, about this pivotal event. Few of the younger respondents can recall the crisis in Germany either, while 55 percent of the older group remembered that Kennedy had supported West Berliners in their fight against Communism. JFK's lesser-known accomplishments appear to be fading fast from public memory. Only 32 percent of the people in both groups knew that Kennedy signed a Nuclear Test Ban Treaty with the USSR, and only 21 percent were aware that he endorsed a major tax cut.13 Even so, in every case, those who lived through the Kennedy years were more familiar with these achievements than younger Americans. More interesting is the consistency of the Kennedy legacy for generations born since his time. Younger people focused on the accomplishments still relevant to modern life, such as space exploration and civil rights. The most remembered event for Americans alive and aware in the early 1960s was the life-or-death Missile Crisis. For the young, though, the Soviet Union is merely a failed piece of discarded history, and the Berlin confrontation with the Soviets an even more obscure episode in the Cold War against Communism. Unexpectedly perhaps, young people appear unaware that JFK established the Peace Corps. Compared with older Americans, the young are also less conscious that JFK's election was a watershed event in the separation of church and state-possibly because the once-palpable prejudice against Roman Catholics in the political arena is almost nonexistent today.

When asked to pick the top three accomplishments of Kennedy's presidency, the poll's entire group of respondents chose (1) standing up to the Soviet Union in Cuba, (2) proposing the legislation that became the Civil Rights Act, and (3) desegregating schools in Alabama and Mississippi, with the moon landing goal a close fourth.14 Democrats rated JFK's civil rights record highly, while Republicans were more inclined to credit Kennedy's staunch anticommunism and desire to explore space.

In part because of John Kennedy's assassination, Americans are not inclined to focus on his shortcomings. The natural human reaction is to say "He and his family have suffered enough," or "If he had been given additional time, he might have reversed course, changed destructive behaviors, or accomplished more." While understandable and kind, these reactions do not contribute much to a balanced view of JFK's presidency. In the poll, five specific criticisms of Kennedy in the White House were tested, and respondents were asked whether they were matters of concern: the escalation in Vietnam, wiretapping of civil rights leaders, JFK's extramarital affairs, CIA coups and assassinations abroad, and Kennedy's inability to get civil rights legislation passed in his lifetime.15 The Vietnam question hovers over Kennedy. Among all adults in the survey, 53 percent had major concerns, and of only those old enough to have clear memories of the Vietnam War's course during the 1960s, 60 percent had major concerns. Younger adults were more uneasy about the wiretapping of civil rights leaders (48 percent) than older adults (42 percent). Remarkably, neither age group was overly alarmed about JFK's role in CIA coups over-throwing foreign leaders. Few held JFK responsible for failing to power the civil rights bill into law; this may be the clearest example of Americans making allowances for the short time that JFK held the White House.

The public's tolerant view of Kennedy's extramarital affairs while president is noteworthy. Just a third of the respondents had major concerns about Kennedy's behavior, and there was essentially no difference based on age. Forty-five percent had "only minor" or "no concerns" about JFK's womanizing. As a follow-up, respondents were asked to assess how Kennedy's many extramarital affairs affected their view of him, and many drew a clear distinction between JFK the president and JFK the person. Only 17 percent said, "This makes me feel more unfavorable to JFK both as a person and as president" while 44 percent replied, "This makes me feel more unfavorable to JFK as a person, but does not affect my view of him as a president." And another 36 percent indicated that their view of Kennedy as both a president and a person was completely unaffected by the affairs.16 On this topic, though, a large partisan gap emerged about JFK. Only 19 percent of Democrats had major concerns about the extramarital affairs, but 56 percent of Republicans did. And while only 4 percent of Democrats felt more unfavorable to Kennedy as a person and a president on account of his affairs, 34 percent of Republicans rated Kennedy lower as a result.

There may be another psychological factor in the public's tendency to give Kennedy a pass on his unsavory behavior: the expectations human beings have of a powerful, good-looking politician. With great frequency, participants in both the focus groups and the poll cited JFK's charisma, handsomeness, and physical attractiveness (his hair, voice, bearing, and other attributes). Some men said they simply assumed an "alpha male" like Kennedy would assert his supremacy and use his charms to attract members of the opposite sex, while some women openly commented on Kennedy's sex appeal. As a retired Chicago waitress revealingly put it, "This might be too personal ... but he's the first president I ever had a sex dream about ... I was young [and] there was an underlying sexual attraction about him." Other women around the focus group table nodded in agreement. Human nature is full of such subconscious realities and the contradictions they encourage. We condemn immoral actions but presuppose and anticipate them in certain "entitled" individuals-while simultaneously resenting and censuring the entitlement.

A final question explored today's public sentiment about press exploration of politicians' private lives, especially referring to the fact that members of the press knew about JFK's extramarital affairs during his presidency but adhered to an unspoken agreement to ignore his transgressions. By a 59 to 41 percent margin, respondents believed we were better off in the 1960s when many of the private details of elected officials' personal lives were considered off-limits by the media. Older adults were more inclined to "strongly agree" with the former rules of coverage than younger adults,17 and party differences emerged on private life reporting: Democrats and Independents strongly preferred the old "off-limits" press guidelines, but Republicans were almost evenly divided about which set of journalistic procedures is better.

There has been a sea change in opinion on this subject over the decades. The media may have turned a blind and complicit eye, but public tolerance of extramarital affairs by politicians was quite low in Kennedy's time, and if revelations about JFK's behavior had broken then, he would never have been elected president, or would almost certainly have been forced to resign his office. President Bill Clinton survived such exposure in the 1990s, and judging by Clinton's relatively high ratings in our current survey, there has been little lasting damage from his many brushes with scandal. Similarly, we can find no evidence that Kennedy's often egregious womanizing has had any durable effect on his overall public standing, though for specific subgroups, such as evangelical Christians, JFK's private life revelations have indeed hurt his image. For example, born-again Protestants were far more likely (54 percent) than the general population (33 percent) to say that Kennedy's extramarital affairs were of concern to them.

There is little doubt that Americans evaluate Kennedy's life in the shadow of his tragic death, and the survey underlines that belief. Other than the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, the Kennedy assassination is far and away the defining event for those aged fifty-five and over. Almost two thirds of the older participants chose November 22, 1963, as one of the days having the greatest impact on their generation. Asked to choose a second day, 72 percent also named 9/11.18 Other key events in the lifetimes of those over fifty-five trailed far behind: the attack on Pearl Harbor (30 percent), the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (21), the explosion of the space shuttle Challenger (7), and the Oklahoma City bombing (6).

Naturally, because the shocking events of September 11, 2001, were within the living memory of everyone in the poll, 95 percent reported that they had "a clear and vivid memory" of it. At the same time, 84 percent of those fifty-five and older reported a clear and vivid memory of the assassination, which was defined as remembering exactly where they were, to whom they were talking, or what they were doing when they heard the news. By contrast, among those seventy-six or older, only 41 percent had a clear, vivid memory of Pearl Harbor. Time has dimmed the recall of December 7, 1941, but not of November 22, 1963.19 Media historians have often commented that television news "came of age" with the Kennedy assassination. Whether that is true, or too generous, it is undeniable that television brought Americans together by sharing the same sights and sounds with everyone, live and unfiltered. We watched TV almost nonstop for four days, in a way that had never happened before. Even after five decades, solid majorities of people fifty-five and older can remember seeing many critical events of the long assassination weekend. A whopping 81 percent recall seeing JFK's funeral procession on live television, with 73 percent reporting that they saw John F. Kennedy Jr.'s heart-wrenching salute to his father happen in real time. Half of the older respondents said they tuned in to Walter Cronkite's coverage of the assassination, and 43 percent watched live footage of Jack Ruby shooting Lee Harvey Oswald. More than half remember seeing other notable events in real time, including the lighting of the eternal flame, Air Force One's arrival at Andrews Air Force Base, and pictures of JFK's flag-draped casket when it was briefly on display in the East Room of the White House.20 All these elements had a pronounced emotional effect on most individuals, but respondents were asked to name "the two events that had the greatest impact on you." The top choice was the moment on November 25, 1963, when young John F. Kennedy, Jr., on his third birthday, stepped forward and saluted his father's flag-draped coffin as it passed on its way to burial. Nearly six in ten poll respondents picked the JFK Jr. salute, with 38 percent each choosing President Kennedy's funeral procession and Walter Cronkite's Friday afternoon CBS reports on the assassination. About a quarter selected the shooting of Lee Harvey Oswald, with 15 percent or less for all other events.

Kennedy's fellow Catholics were especially traumatized by those four days in November, and the loss of the first Catholic president weighed heavily on them. In almost every category in the poll, Catholics reported intense memories and robust reactions. The funeral ceremonies centered on Roman Catholic rites and leaders, of course, so JFK's coreligionists could relate closely to ritualistic aspects that may have been less familiar to others.

Large proportions of younger respondents indicated they had seen many of the signal moments of the assassination and its aftermath in subsequent televised replaying over the years. Fully 85 percent have seen images of JFK in the convertible on the Dallas streets and 69 percent have come across the JFK Jr. salute, for instance. There have been dozens of TV shows and movies about the assassination, so it would be unusual if those under fifty-five had not caught glimpses of these images. "Unusual" does not mean impossible. Of those under age fifty-five in the poll, 8 percent said they had never even heard of "the assassination of President Kennedy in a convertible in Texas."

The participants all watched the Zapruder film of the assassination. Nearly seven in ten remembered having viewed it before-83 percent of those aged fifty-five and up had seen it-and it was recalled as much as or more than all the other JFK film clips. When asked to describe their reactions in writing, respondents recorded these words and phrases most often: "sad, devastated, heartbroken, sickened, I cried; shocked, stunned, horrified, couldn't believe this happened; a terrible low point in U.S. history, a sad dark day for our country; I felt angry, disgusted, outraged; disturbing to watch, brutal footage."

Adults of all ages agreed that the assassination "changed America." Fully 91 percent said JFK's murder changed the nation "a great deal" (61 percent) or "somewhat" (30 percent). More than anything else, November 22, 1963, took away America's innocence, according to 57 percent of the poll's respondents and two-thirds of those aged fifty-five and over. Despite a long history of violent acts against presidents, people living in a prosperous, peaceful country in the early 1960s simply did not believe that the madness of Dallas was possible. Respondents frequently used the word "unthinkable" to describe the assassination. Those alive at the time can attest to the deep depression that set in across the country, as the optimism that had mainly prevailed since the end of World War II seemed to evaporate. In a real sense, the Kennedy assassination presaged and psychologically prepared America for numerous devastating events to follow during the decade.

Older Americans are perhaps the best judges of the assassination's effects on the country. Beyond taking away the nation's innocence, those fifty-five and over said Kennedy's murder "marked the end of an era of peace and prosperity" (34 percent), "made Americans more cynical and divided" (27), "contributed to the escalation of the Vietnam War" (25), and "caused Americans to have less trust in government" (20).21 On the other hand, 18 percent of older adults-and 31 percent of younger ones-believed that the assassination "delayed progress on the civil rights movement." In fact, it had the opposite result, enabling LBJ to use the tragedy to propel the civil rights bill into law.

The last finding of the survey confirms a staple of public opinion since the assassination. An overwhelming majority of respondents-fully three-fourths-rejected the Warren Commission's conclusion that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone.22 While the proportions are almost identical for all ages, Americans who lived through the assassination have especially strong feelings about who was responsible. Among those fifty-five and older, 20 percent strongly agree that Oswald acted alone, but almost two and a half times that number, 49 percent, strongly believe that we cannot yet close the case on JFK's killing.23 While people of all races were inclined to think that too many questions remain unanswered, 87 percent of all African Americans and an astounding 91 percent of blacks aged fifty-five and above were conspiracy-inclined.24 Clearly, most Americans remain unconvinced that John Kennedy's murder has been solved.ak Our wide-ranging study of the public's view of John F. Kennedy leads to several overarching impressions and conclusions. Even after the passage of fifty years and in a fast-paced society that appears to shift its focus by the hour, "Kennedy remains a vivid presence ... particularly for those [who have] a living memory of him. Even many younger [people] talk about Kennedy in personal terms and treat him as a modern and contemporary figure, rather than as someone out of history."25 Younger participants in the survey who could not even identify President Eisenhower spoke about the Kennedy presidency in rich detail-a result of the unrelenting focus on JFK in the news media but also the fact that their older relatives have discussed Kennedy often.

Considering the contempt in which we hold many modern politicians and even some past presidents, it is eye-popping to see and hear the terms of endearment lavished upon John Kennedy. Perhaps selective memory is at work, but people identify JFK as "the polar opposite of the very unhappy views they have of the country today. Whereas [contemporary] America is polarized and divided, Kennedy represents unity and common purpose in the public's mind, as well as a sense of hope, possibility, and optimism."26 Unlike many former presidents, and almost all current top politicians, Kennedy is not seen as a particularly partisan or ideological figure; he has transcended the liberal label applied to most Democrats, not least because his policies were defined by the Cold War and conservative economics. Moreover, Kennedy's popularity has a bonus for his public evaluation: his faults are usually minimized and his extramarital affairs excused as "the way things were back then." Criticism was voiced about other members of the Kennedy family, including Ted Kennedy, a much more ideologically divisive figure, and some younger Kennedys whose hijinks and troubles have challenged the family legacy. "There is resentment of the treatment of the Kennedys as 'America's royal family,' and the sense of entitlement that some Kennedys are perceived to have had."27 Yet this postdates JFK's life, and he is not held responsible.

Certain aspects of the Kennedy legacy have come to dominate our collective memory. Even though some historians of the civil rights movement would question the conclusion, Americans strongly associate JFK with the struggle for civil rights-a cause to which he came late and not always wholeheartedly-and credit is given to him posthumously for the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Similarly, Kennedy was not around for the moon landing in 1969, but he is fixed in the people's imagination as the one who set that adventurous aim and provided the inspiration to achieve it. Certainly, the astronaut corps from the 1960s appears to agree: They cite JFK, not Johnson or Nixon, in recounting their feats.

Many specifics will fade as the generations alive during Kennedy's time pass on. While the crisis management lessons are durable, the Cuban Missile Crisis already seems as dated as the Soviet Union to younger Americans. The Peace Corps does not define the New Frontier the way it did in the 1960s, and JFK's tax cuts have long since been eclipsed by those of other presidents. The truly enduring legacy for the public is the stirring idealism and the call to public service that Kennedy and his New Frontiersmen embodied. As long as JFK's "ask not" invocation is aired and the images of an enterprising young president stream across television and computer screens, powerful optics will endure.

ajI vividly recall the anxiety at age ten when my father packed up the car so that my mother and I could escape death from the nuclear bomb that would certainly be dropped within a couple miles of our home. We lived near the giant naval base in Norfolk, Virginia, where my father worked and would have to stay; some of our relatives resided in a relatively safe, sparsely populated area in the Appalachian Mountains, which would have been our destination had the crisis moved in the direction of imminent danger.

akIf you doubt the stability of public opinion about the Kennedy assassination, consider the Gallup poll study conducted at the fortieth anniversary of November 22 in 2003. Gallup asked a more pointed question than we did about Dallas: "Turning now to the assassination of John F. Kennedy in 1963, do you think that one man was responsible for the assassination of President Kennedy, or do you think that others were involved in a conspiracy?" The public's answer was nearly identical to the one in our survey: 75% said "conspiracy" and 19% said "one man." And for the three-quarters who believed in a conspiracy, the guesses about the guilty parties were divided five ways: the Mafia (37%), the CIA (34%), LBJ (18%), Cuba/Castro (15%), and the Soviet Union (15%). See Lydia Saad, "Americans: Kennedy Assassination a Conspiracy," Gallup, November 21, 2003.

http://www.gallup.com/poll/9751/americans-kennedy-assassination-conspiracy.aspx.

[accessed August 13, 2012].

Conclusion: A Flame Eternal?.

Hello darkness, my old friend, I've come to talk with you again.

- PAUL SIMON, "THE SOUND OF SILENCE," WRITTEN IN THE MONTHS FOLLOWING JFK'S ASSASSINATION1 Those who remember November 22, 1963, cannot escape the darkness of a moment that has haunted us for fifty years. Most recall every second of the frequently replayed, silent home movies that recorded John Kennedy's last living ride through Dallas. "In the naked light" of a bright Texas sun at noontime we forever see, as Paul Simon did in his assassination-inspired song, the motorcade passing on Dallas streets, "ten thousand people, maybe more-people talking without speaking." It is a nightmare that will never be erased from our national consciousness. The lingering, gnawing questions about the assassination reinforce our inability to forget. The seeds of modern cynicism were planted that day, and their bitter fruit has left us unwilling to trust much of what we are told by the powerful in and out of government.

But a leader's legacy-a kind of life after death-is shaped by a career's beginning and middle, not just an awful ending. Enough time has passed for Americans to put John F. Kennedy, the whole man and his entire career, in perspective.

No president, before or since, has been savvier in his use of mass media to promote his career or agenda. Early on, Kennedy's books projected a substantive, intellectual image that balanced his playboy reputation. Then the dawning of the age of television created a perfect political marriage between candidate and medium. JFK's visage, energy, picture-postcard family, and soaring rhetoric filled the small screen as perfectly as any Hollywood star has ever been able to do on the big screen. He was the first president to hold nationally televised presidential press conferences in real time, with each broadcast drawing an average of 18 million viewers.2 From his winning 1960 debates to his witty presidential press conferences to the riveting speeches and famous lines that have become part of the tapestry of American history, John Kennedy was a stellar visual and vocal artist. The talented staff of speechwriters and image makers in his entourage enhanced his natural gifts. As a group, they were a public relations firm that could have put the one depicted in Mad Men out of business. The true test of Kennedy's success is passed daily: When a critic of JFK's policies or personal behavior sees the young president again on film, he is drawn in anew, wrapped up in the action and eloquence, separating and subordinating his dim view of the low morals and poor judgment of the lesser, hidden John Kennedy.

Thus, it is easy to comprehend why almost every Democratic candidate for president since JFK has been analyzed through the lens of Kennedy. The more fluent contenders try to be Kennedy, and the press often confers the title of pretender for a few months. Reality eventually sets in, however. No flesh-and-blood politician can compete with the larger-than-life monument that is John Kennedy. For Democrats, he was long ago elevated to Mount Rushmore. For Democratic and Republican presidents, Kennedy has presented a different challenge. They cannot vie with an apparition. Yet JFK's more clever White House successors have been able to create opportunities for themselves using Kennedy's record. Lyndon Johnson showed the way, but Ronald Reagan was just as skillful and successful, all the more because he had to wave the Kennedy standard to win Democratic support without alienating his own Republicans. Bill Clinton and Barack Obama each ran for the White House as the semiofficial New Kennedy; it worked well on the campaign trail but less well in office, since the press and public eventually discovered that Clinton and Obama were not Kennedy. Jimmy Carter became the un-Kennedy, a precarious posture for a Democrat, and his fate in 1980 proved it. All of Kennedy's successors learned to selectively employ, or at least tread carefully around, JFK's legacy. As our public poll demonstrated, Kennedy has remained an idol unequaled by any of them, save perhaps Reagan. In many ways, Kennedy's cult of personality is as strong today as in the 1960s, when the memory of his presidency was fresh and universal.

Only the terminally starry-eyed still see John F. Kennedy as an ideological crusader, drawn to politics by idealistic fervor about the great issues of the day. Unlike his brother Bobby in the last years of his life, or youngest brother Ted during many of his decades in the Senate, liberalism had little to do with John Kennedy's motives. The long view of JFK's career reveals that he was eager to define himself as more anticommunist, pro-defense, anticrime, probusiness, and cautious on civil rights than many of his contemporaries in both parties. John Kennedy was no leftist; he placed himself squarely in the mainstream of the Democratic Party and the country during his seventeen-year political sojourn.

Burning ambition, transferred by his father's desires from his deceased older brother Joe, was at JFK's core. The Democratic Party and its constituencies were mere instruments in the march to power. Platform planks were walking sticks used to climb the mountain. The New Frontier was no grand governing philosophy, but a piecemeal accumulation of ideas and opportunities that gradually evolved during Kennedy's campaign and presidency. Interestingly, that pragmatism has permitted John Kennedy to become an icon for modern-day Democrats and Republicans alike. His bifurcated philosophy, partly left and partly right (in today's ideological terms), enables Democrats to make civil rights and peace his monument while Republicans herald his tax cuts, muscular foreign policy, and space program.

Kennedy could not have foreseen this, nor was it his motivation. JFK and his entire family were drawn to the exercise of raw power, the perfect accompaniment to their colossal wealth. They were driven by desire for the ultimate clout of the White House, determined to be in the king's castle at the top of that shining city on a hill. Is this really any different from the incentives that have attracted most other men to seek and win the presidency before and after Kennedy? They surfed the waves of public opinion and did what was necessary to grasp the magnificent prize, but always, at the heart of it, they wanted to possess ultimate command and control over others. What sets the Kennedys apart is that never-at least until the Bushes-has a large family acted as one single-minded, unstoppable organism that methodically sought and won the highest office.

For the Kennedys, if there was a subterranean impulse beyond the overriding wish to be in charge, it might have been to achieve domination over the Anglo-Saxon Protestants who had run things for centuries and turned their noses up at Irish Catholic immigrants. It was delicious turnabout that the WASPs would have to come hat in hand to an Irish Catholic clan and beg for favors WASPs had considered their birthright. Anyone who has ever fought an arrogant in-crowd can appreciate it-but sweet revenge is not normally the stuff of heroic legend.

The legend derives instead from sorrow. In the aftermath of JFK's assassination, all things Kennedy were sanctified. Five decades on, that is no longer true, but a transformed Kennedy legacy lives. It certainly is not the one forged in JFK's exciting but vapid 1960 campaign, which in most ways (the new television debates aside) was quite conventional. Like all campaigns it was characterized by exaggerated attacks about minor matters, revolving more around style than substance. Not a sentence from the Kennedy-Nixon debates has lived on, because nothing weighty was uttered in those hours on the air. We recall what Americans watching then perceived. Kennedy looked terrific: movie-star handsome, tanned, and forceful. This is especially remarkable since throughout the campaign his image makers projected youthful vigor in a chronically ill man, not to mention the phony idealization of a secretly dysfunctional marriage. The election of 1960 was not a realigning watershed that set the nation's path going forward, but a narrow tactical victory about little. Regrettably, the Kennedy-Nixon campaign was one of many "Seinfeld elections" in U.S. history-a contest about nothing beyond partisan and tribal loyalties in which the real challenges facing the winner are never much discussed. The 1960 match-up is remembered mainly because it was astonishingly close and JFK managed to break the religious barrier.

Nor is President Kennedy's legacy one of historic achievement in the Oval Office. The seventh-shortest presidency, JFK's time in the White House was too brief for a lengthy list of accomplishments.3 This recalls Kennedy's litany of reasons about why "life isn't fair" at one of his presidential press conferences.4 The general principle JFK cited could well apply to the reality that an assassin's bullet deprived him of five more years at the helm to make his full mark in history. The inequity of this does not reduce its harsh effect on an evaluation of Kennedy's presidency: There is simply much less in Kennedy's White House record than there might have been for us to judge.

In the sweep of history, nothing JFK attained will matter more than his daring bet on NASA and a moon landing, which has permanently expanded man's horizons and led to earthbound breakthroughs in science, technology, communications, medicine, and consumer products of all sorts. Humankind's millennia of space exploration to come will always trace its roots to JFK's bold 1961 declaration of intent.

Kennedy also displayed critical growth in the presidency in two areas that changed the course of America. JFK was not especially sensitive to the plight of African Americans at the outset of his term, and he took far too long to make civil rights a central goal. But once he did so in 1963, Kennedy set the stage for the second Reconstruction that delivered the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and a far more just society.

Just as important, the bellicose Kennedy of the inauguration gave way to a serious search for peace and common ground with the Communist world. Some say that Kennedy's ineffective failures at the Bay of Pigs, in Berlin, and in early negotiations with the Soviet Union contributed to the near-fatal superpower encounter over Cuba in 1962. However, as Ted Sorensen insisted, "Every generation needs to know that without JFK the world might no longer exist as a result of a nuclear holocaust stemming from the Cuban Missile Crisis."5 That searing experience turned Kennedy, and probably the Russians, away from sole reliance on tough rhetoric and military might and toward treaties, detente, and a lessening of international conflict where it was possible. This is a considerable legacy.

Without question, much of the globe has recognized Kennedy's achievements on the world stage in concrete ways. In the United States and around the world, some thirteen hundred JFK memorials have been erected. While this is almost certainly a partial list, this too is the Kennedy legacy accumulated over a half century.

Kennedy's place in the pantheon of presidencies should not be exaggerated. The great conflicts of his time were critically important, but many have faded in relevance and have as little connection to modern existence as the debate about tariffs in the nineteenth century. The Soviet Union no longer exists. The Cold War and its relatively tidy bipolar system have dissolved into a shadowy world of terrorist threats and transnational forces. The United States is no longer the undisputed economic giant of the 1960s that can dictate to other nations; the American century may well be ebbing as China, India, and other countries outstrip the United States in critical ways. The Democratic Party of Kennedy's time was overwhelmingly male, very substantially white, and dependent upon a segregationist South. That monochromatic status quo is a dinosaur in our century's rainbow reality.

Just as outdated is Kennedy's predatory personal behavior. It was as unrestrained and irresponsible as any ever engaged in by an occupant of the White House. The potential for extortion by Kennedy's domestic and foreign enemies was huge, as was the risk of exposure, which would have destroyed his presidency as well as the dreams of his family and supporters.6 His jawdropping escapades and libertine practices were in complete contradiction to the image he and his handlers projected of the devout Catholic and consummate family man. Had a single one of his dalliances become public, history would have recorded that John Kennedy and not Richard Nixon was the first president to resign in disgrace. In sexual matters, Kennedy's self-control was nonexistent, and virtually on a daily basis, he risked everything. In addition, Kennedy's successful attempt to hide the fragile state of his health and his use of potent, mind-distorting drugs on a regular basis, with the help of accommodating medical personnel, was an equal deception of the public. We ought to remember this because it is a cautionary tale. Americans in any century can be too inclined to accept consultant-crafted images of flesh-and-blood people. Just as important, the courtiers of the powerful, including many in journalism, can conspire to deceive us, or acquiesce in the deception, as they did with JFK.

This is the underbelly of JFK's legacy. Standards for personal behavior and disclosure were far different in the 1960s than today. That fact does not absolve John Kennedy, but it does explain the mental process that enabled him to justify his conduct to himself and others.

Why, then, do so many Americans pine for the Kennedy era? Why is John Kennedy consistently rated one of the nation's best presidents? Why have JFK's successors so often sought to wear his mantle? Style and tragedy are the answers.

There will probably never be a more attractive couple in the White House than Jack and Jackie Kennedy. Their good looks and fashion sense transcended time; they could walk down the street today and not just fit in but command notice. JFK's oratory was often so powerful that it was hypnotic. Compared to most politicians of his time and ours, Kennedy could have read the telephone directory and held our attention. Even to their political opponents, President and Mrs. Kennedy were the precise image America wanted to project to the world: youth, vitality, charm, wit, optimism, confidence, fearlessness about the future. Kennedy benefited from serving at a time when citizens still trusted their government, and his infectious enthusiasm and big-picture worldview made people, especially the young, want to participate in remaking the world. The Peace Corps is only the most obvious example.

JFK's apparent personification of the nation's best qualities made November 22 all the more incomprehensible. At least during the lifetime of Americans who personally remember the assassination, the Kennedy legacy will remain vivid and indestructible. Mrs. Kennedy's postassassination creation of Camelot was a brilliant fiction, but we were ready to believe it. We wanted a larger-than-life myth, and Camelot gave us a happier story to summon up and heroic possibilities to realize. Those who loved John Kennedy-his powerful family and influential supporters such as Arthur Schlesinger and Ted Sorensen-were determined that his life's work would continue so his death would not be in vain, and they nurtured and extended the legend that Jackie built.

These efforts mattered because Kennedy's death gave life to all the promises that might have remained unfulfilled had Kennedy served a second term. Even with a solid 1964 reelection victory, JFK would probably not have swept into power a Congress willing to enact the kind of controversial civil rights, antipoverty, and health care policies that were irresistible only as a tribute to an assassinated president. Had Kennedy been on the ballot in 1964, his margin over Barry Goldwater probably would not have been as great as that achieved by his successor, who capitalized on the nation's remorse and grief over JFK's murder. For Kennedy, Democratic legislative majorities would have been less swollen, and the public's eagerness to erect legal monuments to a fallen leader would not have been a factor.

Kennedy's assassination created the big picture, the full Kennedy legacy, both in the statute books and in the hearts of his countrymen. November 22, 1963-its mysteries and tragedies-will continue to be the focal point that defines John F. Kennedy for the ages. Had this president not been assassinated, it is doubtful that the Kennedy years-however they played out-would have been able to sustain a dominating presence for half a century. The bullets in Dallas have made Kennedy's image bulletproof. His Shakespearean end transformed Kennedy into a Lincolnesque martyr-saint whose casual observations have become profound additions to politicians' speeches and students' term papers. JFK is frozen not just in time, but at a moment of peace, prosperity, and surging American power. Given all that has happened since, that Americans look back to the early 1960s as idyllic and associate the loss of Kennedy with the country's long "decline" is not surprising.

The likelihood that most people will remain unsatisfied with the official explanations of JFK's murder extends the shelf life of an increasingly distant presidency. The continued efforts of the CIA and others to conceal or redact relevant documents about the Kennedy assassination a half century after the event helps neither the agency's credibility nor public trust in government. The Kennedy family, for its part, has often been less than cooperative with researchers and scholars, too. The people of the United States own their country's history, and the public's money has paid for most of the materials that remain under lock and key.7 Even without the assassination documentation, though, the perspective of time can resolve a second cold war-not the one waged between the United States and the Soviet Union, but the more enduring battle between the defenders of JFK's legacy and the guardians of Lyndon Johnson's. The two Democratic ticketmates and presidents could not have been more different in personal history, style, and symbolism. The transfer of power from Kennedy to Johnson is a line of demarcation in history, symbolizing the end of Frostbelt dominance in American politics. Since Kennedy, seven of eight elected presidents have been from the South or West-the Sunbelt-where an ever-increasing share of voters is living.8 Kennedy personified the old Frostbelt culture, while Johnson was the epitome of Sunbelt swagger. Still, their relationship in history is symbiotic, not parasitic. Most of the big achievements of Johnson's first two years, from civil rights to Medicare, and even the war on poverty, became law because they could be sold as tributes to a slain president. Johnson did what Kennedy could not because Kennedy's murder enabled it. JFK and LBJ should rightfully share credit, fairly equally, for the signal legislative accomplishments in 1964 and 1965. At the same time, while Johnson bears the lion's share of responsibility for the massive escalation of the Vietnam War, and for its subsequent shattering failure, Kennedy must shoulder culpability, too. JFK's acolytes have been too eager to absolve him of all blame. The thirty-fifth president may or may not have followed through on plans to scale down or end American involvement in Southeast Asia if he had lived, but his assertive anticommunism in that region set the stage for Johnson's calamitous policy. LBJ could plausibly claim yet another faithful attempt to continue the Kennedy program as it existed on November 22, 1963.

This struggle for credit and stature is cyclically waged by historians, and also by the surrogates and descendants of presidents. Over time it becomes less relevant than other, more impressionistic aspects of a president's image and his bequest to the nation. Ultimately, public opinion resolves any disputes-and public opinion can shift.

Younger Americans do not have rich recollections that give full life to the Kennedy legacy. As the nation adds decades and presidents, and the millions of baby boomers with firsthand memories pass on, Kennedy will not loom as large on the horizon as he has for the first fifty years since his death. The flame at JFK's grave site has a flashing electric spark near the tip of a gas nozzle that reignites the fire whenever rain and wind extinguish it; no passing storm can ever snuff it out. But the symbolic flame that has glowed so brightly since the one at Arlington Cemetery was lit will not prove as lasting. The Kennedy magic, which has entranced people for a half-century, will lose potency as his brief presidency ceases to have an outsized effect on personal memory and a nation's history.

The American people's idealization of John Kennedy, their determination to overlook his obvious flaws, and successive presidents' use of the Kennedy record for their own ends have been the sparks that have repeatedly reignited JFK's influence. Some of this effect will linger. Inspiring rhetoric and a charismatic leader captured forever on film will continue to fire the imagination of Americans yet unborn, and a young president's torch of possibilities and public service will be passed again and again to new generations. Yet time and distance will at last enable a country to put Kennedy's legacy in perspective. What endures will be what matters-not just the stark reminder that even the most charmed life can be defined by brutal tragedy, but genuine inspiration from John Fitzgerald Kennedy's public words and deeds, the things that moved history and people's minds and hearts.

Plate Section

1935. Young Jack Kennedy led an exceptionally privileged and worldly life, born of money and position. Here, JFK and his sisters Patricia (left) and Eunice (right) were photographed in the hills above Cannes, France, on vacation with their parents.

1944. John Kennedy's service in World War II was a central part of his biography in running for political office. Here, he shakes hands with Captain Conklin, Commandant, Chelsea Naval Hospital in Boston, after being presented with a medal for heroism, June 12, 1944.

1948. Some of the Kennedy family at Thanksgiving in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts. From left: John F. Kennedy, sister Jean Ann, mother Rose , father Joseph, Sr., sister Patricia, brother Robert, sister Eunice, and brother Edward Kennedy (squatting).

1951. Television quickly recognized the potential star power of young John F. Kennedy. Here, JFK appears on an early edition of NBC's Meet the Press, December 2, 1951. Left to right are interviewers Ernest K. Lindley, May Craig, James Reston, Lawrence Spivak, moderator Martha Rountree, and Congressman Kennedy in his third House term.

1954. During the 1950s, Kennedy was operated on twice for spinal problems and came close to death once during the recovery. Here, Senator Kennedy is being lifted into an ambulance after surgery in a New York hospital, accompanied by Mrs. Kennedy and brother Robert, to begin convalescing at his family's Palm Beach home for several months.

1957. Robert Kennedy was a close adviser to his brother throughout JFK's political career. Here, RFK, counsel for the Senate Permanent Subcommittee investigating labor racketeering, huddles with Senator Kennedy, a member of the committee, on February 26, 1957.

1959. John Kennedy and Richard Nixon, young World War II veterans in Congress, had been genuine friends early in their political careers. In this photo from June 19, 1959, Vice President Nixon shakes hands with Senator and Mrs. Kennedy as they each change planes at Chicago's Midway airport. By this time, both men realized they might be running against one another the following year.

1960. William C. Battle, son of Virginia governor John Battle, served with JFK in the Pacific during World War II and later helped manage his campaign in West Virginia. Here Battle and Kennedy are shown disembarking from the senator's private plane during the crucial Mountain State primary.

1960. Now the official Democratic nominee for president, Senator Kennedy rides in an open convertible into the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum on the last day of the party's national convention, July 15, 1960. He delivered his acceptance address before a crowd estimated to be as many as eighty thousand.