Posted on 11/21/2002 7:31:34 AM PST by Valin
Thirty-nine years after JFK's assassination, the chance of another Kennedy achieving the presidency no longer seems inevitable. A promise unfulfilled
It will be 39 years on Friday since President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in a motorcade in Dallas when a rifle bullet shattered his skull. His promise was unfulfilled, his administration unfinished. The pervasive sense of sudden loss was devastating to millions. But the gauzy legend that sprang up around him after his death is now the dusty stuff of history, its magic overcome by the clarity of hindsight. The Kennedy name is now as much a curse as a blessing.
Roughly 102 million Americans alive today were not born when Kennedy moved into the White House in 1961. They know him only from the vast distance of time, his image distorted by slanderous movies, wild-eyed conspiracy theories and other mindless claptrap peddled by hucksters out to make money or earn notoriety. Many of us who actually knew him and were with him in Dallas that fateful Nov. 22 — first lady Jacqueline Kennedy, officials, staffers, Secret Service agents, reporters — are gone now too. Kennedy was 46 years old when he was shot. We who were adults in his era are all older now than he was then.
Time has taken its toll on the once-presumed inevitability of another Kennedy presidency. Sen. Robert Kennedy was assassinated in the midst of his own 1968 presidential campaign. Sen. Edward Kennedy's White House prospects died in 1969 when an aide, Mary Jo Kopechne, drowned in the car he accidentally drove off a bridge on Chappaquiddick Island, Mass. John F. Kennedy Jr., heir to the most famous political name of our era, died childless at the age of 38 in a place crash off Martha's Vineyard in July 1999. Robert Kennedy's children, who make up the bulk of the family's second generation, have not been good dynasty material. A longtime family associate says sadly, "They were so spoiled." Joe Kennedy served six undistinguished terms in Congress but dropped out of a 1997 race for governor of Massachusetts amid scandals about himself, his ex-wife and his brother, Michael. Another brother, Max, declined to run for Congress. Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, Joe's older sister, was beaten this month when she ran for governor of Maryland. Mark Shriver, the son of Eunice Kennedy Shriver, lost a Democratic primary for a Maryland congressional seat this spring.
Camelot, the mythical embodiment of Kennedy glamour, was never real. Jackie made it up. A pleasant but transitory illusion, it could not be sustained in the face of several accounts written since John Kennedy's death exposing his relentless philandering.
The recent release of detailed records showing how expertly Kennedy handled the Cuban missile crisis restored his reputation somewhat. But now comes the discovery by noted historian Robert Dallek that Kennedy suffered from undisclosed maladies that required him to constantly take a shocking array of powerful drugs.
Dallek and a physician, Dr. Jeffery A. Kelman, examined previously sealed medical records of the last eight years of Kennedy's life stored in the Kennedy Library. The pair found that Kennedy had been taking antispasmodics, antibiotics, hydrocortisone, testosterone, salt tablets, antihistamines, an antianxiety drug, antidiarrhea drugs, codeine, Demerol, methadone, Ritalin, meprobamate, librium, barbituates for sleep, thyroid hormone and injections of gamma globulin, apparently to combat infection, and procaine, to kill back pain before public events. He was a walking medicine cabinet.
Throughout his earlier career and during the White House years, Kennedy and his advisers heatedly denied that he had serious health problems. Understandably, he wished to project the illusion of youthful vigor, and he did. But it was a frightening deception. The public had a right to know of the frailties that could have interfered with his ability to function at any moment.
The last man standing in the Kennedy family saga is Ted. The senator from Massachusetts has survived more personal and professional crises than the biblical Job — sex scandals, a divorce and gross weight fluctuations. Kennedy ran for president in the 1980 Democratic primaries but could not overcome the Chappaquiddick tragedy. Furthermore, in a serious lapse of judgment, he ran against the incumbent president of his own party, Jimmy Carter.
Since then, however, Kennedy has worked hard to become a serious legislator, and with Sen. Strom Thurmond's retirement, he is now the third-longest serving senator. A recent biography by Adam Clymer concludes that his influence on the nation after more than a third of a century in the Senate is far greater than that of his brothers John and Robert, whose lives were cut short. His son Patrick, 35, is a four-term congressman from Rhode Island, doing a sound if unspectacular job and apparently content to stay where he is. For Ted Kennedy at 70, there are still things to be done. He successfully spearheaded a recent campaign to bring the 2004 Democratic National Convention to his native Boston. Ironically, the nominee crowned there just could be a Massachusetts senator. But it would be John Kerry, not another Kennedy.
Means (e-mail: means@hearstdc.com) is a Washington columnist for Hearst Newspapers. Distributed by the New York Times News Service.
"It's Nov 22 coming up, let's do a JFK story. Something to tarnish his image a little."
This is a pretty good line in the article.
I was at Dealy Plaza a couple of months ago and plan on going tomorrow to watch the tin hat crowd. One of the shysters there has side by side pictures from the Oliver Stone movie and the Zapruder film. The photos show direct opposite wounds on Kennedy.
The peddlers at Dealy Plaza are no different than shell game operators.
In retrospect, it seems that John and Robert were rather conservative, not the liberals they were portrayed as and as LBJ actually was. However, the rest of the family seems to have bought into the standard liberal, socialist, Democrat mantra of extreme leftwing policies. That was their demise and is now the death knell for the entire Democrat Party.
It seems that you still cannot get over his death. If the family is started, run, and controlled by a lecherous man, a womanizaer with no respect for any oath, a bootlegger dealing with the Mafia to get his fortune, what do you think the children and grandchildren will be like? The Kennedys are and have always been a blight upon this country. The only thing I give JFK, Jr., credit for is that I honestly believe he never planned to run for any political office. I think he realized his vast limitations and decided to live off his riches vice the American taxpayer.
I disagree.
Whoever killed JFK has been able to sustain a decades-long coverup. My understanding of human nature suggests that the inner circle believed then, and still believes today, that they did the right thing.
Why they believe this may hold some clues as to who they are.
I will suggest a motive or two:
LBJ - Power. He was relentless in his quest for power and control and was willing to use any means. JFK would have served eight years and Robert eight after that. By then, it would have been too late for LBJ. He was also a buddy of J. Edgar Hoover with them often sharing whiskey late into the night and regaling each other with seccrets about other politicians, including the Kennedys. Robert, as Attorney General had little respect for Hoover and, as his boss, ordered him around.
The Mafia - After assuring his election by stealing votes in Chicago they felt JFK owed them something. Instead Robert went afer them hammer and tong.
Mafia, LBJ, FBI - The word on the street about Robert was "Kill the head (JFK) and the body (RFK) will die" in concern about Robert's pursuit of the Mafia. Further support for their mutual interests was the death of Robert after he won the Democrat primary in CA in 1954 and said, "Now on to Chicago." He was then a real threat to them all.
Now there is your motive. Did that lead to the deaths of the Kennedys? I report, you decide.
That's appropriate, since Teddy is such a dinosaur, but who's been in there longer than he has? Byrd? Who else?
Why they believe this may hold some clues as to who they are.
When you consider that the left has had control of the Democrat Party and the media since the early 1900s you can get a good handle on this. LBJ, and later Carter and Clinton, were determined to carry Roosevelt's leftist plans for a socialist America through to fruition. Each step along the way they have had the benefit of the leftist media as their propaganda machine and as their cover.
It seems that John and Robert, despite their background, were not actually who the left thought they were. They each had a conservative leaning and a fierce independent streak and were seemingly immune to leftists manipulation. My other posts cover motive.
Afterward, the media were part of the coverup and continue to be so today. They have never shied from rewriting history and their actions during and after the Clinton administration is an excellent example of my point. Any who disagree with the lone gunman scenario in either assasination is immediately labeled a conspiracy kook. Where else do you see such tactics used? Throughout the liberal mantra, that's where. Demonizing the opposition has always been one of their primary tactics. Does VRWC ring a bell?
I don't think either of those things were givens. Both JFK and RFK are viewed much more favorably in the aftermath of their assassinations. JFK's popularity had been steadily declining. The last poll taken before his death put his approval at 58%. Solid, to be sure, but not invincible, and much lower than his career average of 70%. A Presidential campaign in 1964 might have dented that a bit more. A Houston Chronicle poll set to be released during Kennedy's visit in November 1963 showed Goldwater with a 52-48 lead in the state of Texas, with Kennedy's approval at only 50%. Still, I do believe it likely that JFK would have been re-elected in 1964. But I think it's quite a reach to assume RFK would have succeeded him so easily for another two terms. Even at the time of his own death, RFK trailed both Eugene McCarthy and Hubert Humphrey in a Democratic primary poll. Would RFK have been more politically viable had his brother not died and served a full 8 years in office? I doubt it.
A fellow named Posner wrote a book and did a documentary, called Final Evidence I think, that used computer animation to prove the magic bullet theory and settle the issue once and for all. The computer animation was superimposed over the Zeprudder film with the film image rather hazy in the background. The animation slickly proved how the magic bullet did in fact cause all that damage. However, there was a slight problem no one seemd to notice, no one in the media at least. As the drama moved toward the magic moment of the bullet striking, with everyone concentrating on the animation, the position of the bodies in the film no longer corresponded with their position in the animation. What the animation showed was not what actually happened. The film and book only proved a lie.
That by itself, regardless of the other things that cast doubt on the Warren Commisiion Report, should convince most that the report and its conclusion are lies themselves. Why go to all that trouble if Oswald did it?
A very important reminder of yet another thing to be thankful for.
Good timing! :-)
I wouldn't waste my urine even to pi$$ on them and their progeny and I say that as an ex-Cape Codder who lived across Lewis Bay from the compound for thirty years.
They are all scum who are heartily disliked by those who know them best, their neighbors.
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