Any assessment must begin with a deeper understanding of the Kennedy era. It wasn’t entirely Camelot. The early ’60s were a jittery place in time, as any fan of the early seasons of “Mad Men” can explain. Backyard fallout shelters attested to the ever-present threat of nuclear destruction. In offices, a crisp, mannered sense of poise, fortified by alcohol and soothed by cigarettes, held sway. Traumatic memories of World War II weren’t discussed. At home, the pressures that would propel revolutions to come were mounting, and uneasiness lurked behind the perfect smiles of baby boomer children and their parents.
Politics reflected these underlying tensions. Fear of war was rampant; the Pearl Harbor generation knew, in its bones, that the worst could happen, and the worst, in 1961, was far worse than in 1941. But how to apply the lessons? Root out traitors at home? Seek a first-strike advantage abroad?
Into this world strode John F. Kennedy — confident, erudite, reckless. He was blissfully unbeholden to any of the forces causing the tremors in American life. Now, 50 years after Kennedy’s death, Americans can see him even more clearly. They know that he was often in ill health and took an array of medications. They know that he was engaging in careless sexual encounters. But they also know that he could be a force for calm, as revealed on the tapes of meetings about the Cuban missile crisis.
Indeed, he was often the voice of reason to his uncomprehending elders in the national-security bureaucracy. Among the recent articles is an eye-popping excerpt from an upcoming book by historian Robert Dallek about Kennedy’s battles with his hawkish military chiefs: Kennedy personally reined in a brass that gave field commanders the power to order nuclear strikes. He sat in horror while the chiefs outlined plans for a possible nuclear war, including dropping 170 atomic and hydrogen bombs on Moscow alone. “And we call ourselves the human race,” Kennedy said afterwards.
Socially, Kennedy wasn’t that much of a progressive, but he saw the need to be on the right side of change. He was also notably skeptical of the country’s corporate leadership, erupting against steel executives who violated a tacit agreement to hold the line on prices: “My father always told me that all businessmen were sons of bitches, but I never believed it until now.”
In his own time and, increasingly, after his death, commentators took exception to his charismatic style of leadership, with a few, including Garry Wills, arguing that the Kennedy style itself played a role in discrediting established sources of authority. But it seems likelier that Kennedy’s breezy independence, the byproduct of a privileged upbringing, was a force for stability. He was respected across most of the divisions in American life; he represented neither the old order nor the new.
At the time of his death, the younger generation was questioning its received wisdom. The civil rights movement was in full gear. “The Feminine Mystique” had been published nine months earlier. The John Birch Society, dedicated to fighting communism by any means, was at its shadowy peak.
These cross-currents would come together traumatically in the years to come, with the Vietnam War imposing grim lessons; families torn apart by the draft; and protests, violence, and civic discord at home. Kennedy’s immediate successors, Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon, fell prey to these forces. Johnson’s fear of the anticommunist right fueled his disastrous escalation of the Vietnam War, while Nixon’s aversion to social change furthered his isolation and bitterness.
Would Kennedy have fared better? He, too, spoke of Vietnam as a test of anticommunist resolve. But against all that was his ability to brush off the pushes and pulls of politics; unlike Johnson and Nixon, he was a leader who cut his own swath. He wasn’t the type to get pinned down. Nor was he likely to resist the calls for change from young people, blacks, or women — however much his James Bond-era persona was at odds with feminism. In the dark days that followed, his was the face that America saw when it yearned for someone to calm the country’s furies. But he was gone. That’s why his assassination, after 50 years, remains an open wound.