When America Believed in Itself

On Nov. 22, it will have been exactly 50 years since U.S. President John Kennedy was killed in Dallas. There hasn’t been such a popular president since then.

He is surrounded by a myth, which is, at the most, half earned. Let’s take an example: Secret military intervention in Cuba was a total failure of politics and prestige, and the fiasco still hasn’t borne the desired fruit. On the other hand, his policies led to a firm and satisfactory resolution to the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, when the world was standing at the edge of nuclear war and the beginning of the detente era with Soviet Union. Additionally, many historians claim that Kennedy wanted to retreat from the Vietnam War. His successor Lyndon Johnson announced literally two days after Kennedy’s death that he would continue the fight in Vietnam, cancelling his predecessor’s decision about withdrawing 1,000 of the so-called American advisers. Thousands of books were written on the same note: “If Kennedy was alive …”

Why did such a strong myth of JFK emerge? Manipulation can be suspected. A powerful family clan tried to sculpt a great monument, blocked access to the archives, censored its biography. The following presidents talked about the famous Oval Office photos, where the Kennedy’s son John, Jr. is playing under the desk.

But the myth is set in realities. If we look back, the epoch of Kennedy, in spite of tensions, turns out to be a period of innocence. The president’s death — although it is a pure temporal coincidence— falls within a period of great historical dramas, which deeply influenced the American consciousness and culture. The Vietnam War and a wave of protests started in earnest. Soon after that, there were a student rebellion, race riots and political murders of central figures, e.g. Robert Kennedy, the president’s brother, and Martin Luther King. The world looked at the U.S.A. with a different eye.

Finally, we need to quote a sentence known to everybody: “Don’t ask what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.” The beautiful JFK myth is maintained by an authentic nostalgia for the time half a century ago, which America needs in the modern era. As historian Larry Sabato once wrote, we were sure that we would continue moving forward. When Kennedy announced that America would send a man to the moon by the end of the decade, there didn’t yet exist rockets capable of this, nor had the alloys needed to build such rockets been discovered. Therefore, back then the U.S.A. was not so much at the height of power as at the height of hope. This is the very hope we long for; not only Americans, but all of us.