JFK: An Icon of International Politics

Friday, Nov. 22, 1963. 12:30 p.m. The appearance of President John Fitzgerald Kennedy driving through the streets with his wife Jacqueline in a convertible changes the daily routine in Dallas. Suddenly, when the vehicle transporting them takes a turn onto Elm Street at Dealey Plaza, the sound of three gunshots silences what was laughter until then — welcoming waves and shouts.

After the first two shots, Kennedy makes a slight movement. He puts his hands to his neck. The first lady, who is beside him, screams. With a third shot, the president is startled and falls to the side. This is how Pierce Allman, director of WFAA radio programs for the city, who was then 29 years old, remembers the incident and witnessed the motorcade the president took through the city streets.

Phyllis Hall, a nurse at Parkland Hospital, who was then 28 years old, remembers the chaos at the medical center. “A man with a gun in his hand tells me ‘We need you back here.’ When I go into emergency room No. 1, Mrs. Kennedy is standing next to the stretcher. The doctors get there, do a tracheotomy and put in some tubes. There was nothing to be done. A neurosurgeon lifts his hair, sees that several parts of his brain are missing — some on Jackie, and some on the stretcher.”

Patient No. 24740, Kennedy, John F., signed in at 12:38 p.m., is pronounced dead at 1:00 p.m.

John F. Kennedy’s sudden death immediately imprinted the myth of Camelot onto his presidency, an idealization of two and a half years in power that still fascinates the United States but slowly gives way to a more faithful image of the Democratic icon’s true legacy.

His widowed wife Jacqueline invented the notion of Camelot, which links the Kennedy era to the legend of King Arthur. Fifty years after his assassination, Kennedy still symbolizes the illusion of a politics with the promise of limitless aspirations, although they were never fulfilled during his presidency.

“Kennedy’s most significant impact is the hope that American politics can be better. There is a romance with him and with that which could have happened,” declares Julian E. Zelizer, presidential history expert at Princeton.*

Kennedy’s entire agenda, which had stalled in Congress, was practically approved as a tribute to the late president. During his brief presidency, Kennedy was unable to get Congress to support many of his bills.

One achievement that is frequently attributed to JFK is legislation for civil rights, approved in 1964 during the presidency of his successor, Lyndon B. Johnson (1963-1969). However, the documents of his presidency reveal that Kennedy had “many doubts” at the time about embracing the movement and even opposed the celebration of the March on Washington, headed up by Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. in August of 1963.

“He supported the idea but had doubts that it would been approved by Congress and feared that pushing for it would cost him his re-election in 1964,” Zelizer explained.*

If in 1961 Kennedy considered the legislation to be “politically impossible,” in 1963, he accepted that the movement could no longer be ignored.

“He did not lead the fight, but he responded to it,” the expert emphasized.*

What truly defined Kennedy’s presidency, according to Zelizer, was “his call for public service,” made during his inauguration speech in 1961 with his famous quote, “Ask not what your country can do for you — ask what can you do for your country.” This was the philosophy that motivated the creation of the Peace Corps in 1961, a network of volunteers that has since traveled to 130 countries, Ecuador among them, through education, health and environmental projects.

The same idea was behind Kennedy’s ambitious call to put man on the moon before the end of the decade, a goal that generated huge expectations for the American space exploration program, while in a tight race with the Soviet Union.

Kennedy’s foreign policy also evolved during his presidency, from a hard-line, anti-Communist mentality to an “interest in possibilities of peace” during the Cold War, as demonstrated by his signing a 1963 treaty prohibiting most nuclear weapons test detonations.

But the key moment of his presidency was the missile crisis that brought the world to the brink of nuclear war, when Russia moved 42 of these weapons to San Cristobal in Cuba.

Fifty years after his death, many Americans still see that incident as the “defining moment,” expressed Timothy McKeown from the University of North Carolina.*

“[Nikita] Khrushchev, the Russian leader at the time, and Kennedy could have flown the world yet never did. It may sound simplistic, but it was the most important thing that happened during his presidency,” agrees Professor Leo Ribuffo of George Washington University.*

At the time JFK was killed by Lee Harvey Oswald — who was arrested immediately but then assassinated two days later at the police station — a military junta, which had overthrown President Carlos Julio Arosemena Monroy on July 11, 1963 and thrown him out to Panama, ruled Ecuador.

“The U.S. government exploits Latin America and Ecuador,” he expressed before leaving his presidency.

Years later, Arosemena said in an interview with Revista Diners that the coup leaders “responded to the orders of a foreign power, mainly those of U.S. Ambassador Maurice Bernbaum.”

JFK’s life was also marked by scandals and women: his wife Jackie, who encouraged him to write a Pulitzer Prize-winning book “Profiles in Courage,” which chronicles the political courage of eight senators; his mother Rose, who fed his presidential ambitions; a movie star; and an intern, a mistress linked to the mafia and numerous prostitutes he brought to the White House.

This attitude had always worried the Secret Service. No one knew how many prostitutes Kennedy invited to the presidential palace, but it is known that there were enough to make the Secret Service cringe: Its agents feared that in the middle of the Cold War the president might become a spying or blackmail target.

The anniversary of JFK’s assassination has dusted off the old stories that give an unofficial explanation for the famous assassination and fill in the gaps left by the official version, which is not convincing to many people in a country fond of conspiracy theories.

*Editor’s note: The original quotation, accurately translated, could not be verified.