Sat Nov 22, 8:01 PM ET
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Add Op/Ed - William F. Buckley to My Yahoo! |
Posted on 11/25/2003 7:22:18 PM PST by AgThorn
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Sat Nov 22, 8:01 PM ET
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By William F. Buckley Jr.
I was asked by a television network to comment on the career of President Kennedy. I agreed to do so and do not know how many other views were solicited, or when the program was aired. I have to assume that it went out because the 40th anniversary of the assassination seemed to wipe out all unrelated television fare with the exception of Michael Jackson, who got if not equal time, very nearly that.
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Curiosity just goes on and on about Mr. Kennedy, and I subscribe to it, having recorded (but not yet seen) the two-hour show presided over by Peter Jennings at which we shall have one more chapter of the Grassy Knoll. The advertisements promise a computer re-creation of the assassination. I think it's about as clearly established that Lee Harvey Oswald killed Kennedy as that John Wilkes Booth killed Lincoln, but seeing it all again, you can use up a little agnostic curiosity on that morbid episode, draining it for a year or two. It is always exciting to read about the assassination of Julius Caesar, particularly when the tale is told by the greatest tale-teller in dramatic literature, never mind that we know that Brutus did it. It goes that way, also, for JFK.
But the question I was asked didn't have to do with who killed JFK, but with what was his legacy. It was, said I, entirely personal. Nothing that Mr. Kennedy did in the way of public policy was either singular or enduring in effect. In foreign policy, he lost out on Berlin, presiding over the death of the Four Power Agreement over that city.
Kennedy did not consummate his war against Castro at any level. At the military level, he failed at the Bay of Pigs. At the dirty-dog level, he failed in four or five attempts to assassinate Castro; failed with toxic cigars, impregnated wet suits and poison pills. At the diplomatic level, we focus more appropriately on the arrival of Soviet nuclear missiles in Cuba than on their withdrawal. It is acknowledged by everyone that we very nearly had a nuclear exchange in October 1962, and historical adjudications correctly deal with the fact of the missiles being deployed there, rather than of the fact that they were finally shooed away.
It is pointed out, even by the school of political thought least eager to associate itself with low taxes, that JFK called for tax reduction -- which he did, though it was left to Lyndon Johnson to consummate the proposal. Civil rights is adduced, and it is true that Mr. Kennedy came eloquently to the cause after hearing Martin Luther King give his great speech and weighing the implications of it. He arrived finally (sooner than I did) to the cause of equality under the law, but was a recruit to it, spurred by others. It was only in the summer of his last year that he turned to the subject of a civil rights bill.
In Vietnam, he engaged the communist aggressors intending two things: the first, to abide by George Kennan's long-standing doctrine of containment; the second, to challenge the evaluation of him by Khrushchev as a "pygmy." That was the character reading by Khrushchev, who proceeded, after their personal encounter in Vienna, to build the Berlin Wall and to send missiles to Cuba.
Maybe, if Kennedy had lived, he'd have reversed the course he took in Vietnam, adopted by his successor, Lyndon Johnson, who continued to press the doctrine of containment. But it is asking too much, at eulogy time, to compliment a dead man on the grounds that you feel certain he'd have proceeded, if he had lived, to undo what he did when alive. I can think of any number of reforms I would myself undertake after I am dead.
What I said to the interviewer was that the legacy of John F. Kennedy is his sheer ... beauty. I have visited yurts in Mongolia, adobe huts in Mexico and rural redoubts in Turkey and seen framed pictures of John F. Kennedy. He was all-American, splendid to look at, his expression of confident joy in life and work transfiguring. Add to this that he was slaughtered, almost always a mythogenic act, and what we came to know about the awful physical afflictions he suffered, making his appearances as a whole, vigorous man the equivalent of seeing FDR rise from his wheelchair and play touch football.
That is why JFK is worshipped, which word exactly describes the attitude we have toward him.
Agreed....Kennedy had charm and great wit.
Plus....you've got to hand it to a guy who says to a gathering of Nobel Prize winners at the White House,
"This is the most extraordinary collection of talent, of human knowledge, that has ever been gathered together at the White House with the possible exception of when Thomas Jefferson dined alone."
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It's been called that. Supermodel Cindy Wazzername has it. She gets $9,000,000 per year to have her photograph on the cover of magazines. People go ape over it. However it's more a characteristic of the people viewing the photographs rater than substance on her part. It's not a refendum on her IQ.
Jimmy Carter made a similar statement while visiting the city of Hamburg.
JFK did not do this for any grand noble purpose. He did it mainly for pure political purposes: To beat the Soviets into space.
Speaking as a member of Generation X, I view the sixties as a time when this great nation had a bad case of the runs.
Arrogance and ambition: The quintessential attributes of the liberal democrat elite.
It's a good thing the Founding Fathers insisted on those checks and balances, or else this power-hungry kennedy family would be running roughshold over us all.
Yes, it is. Sad, and it happens all too often. Barry Goldwater comes to mind.
I was very unenthusiastic about the outcome.
I felt Kennedy was pompous, shallow and dull.
But maybe I am abnormal.
Here in Mr. Buckley's article is the way it really was. Legacy? What legacy? Cover your eyes and ears, Kennedy dupes! Incoming truth! Take cover!
Had there been no television Nixon would have won -- actually, he did win. So let me rephrase that. Nixon would have collected enough votes that the mob's Chicago would not have mattered. "Richard Nixon winning?!" some ask shocked. He won 570 to 17 electoral votes in 1972.
Kennedy was the first television president. He was telegenic. To wit, telegenic: "Having a physical appearance and exhibiting personal qualities that are deemed highly appealing to television viewers: 'Do we insist on a telegenic President?' (William F. Buckley, Jr.)" From an online dictionary.
It was known at the time. In fact, those who heard the debates on radio knew Nixon cleaned Kennedy's clock. But Kennedy "won" the TV debates against Nixon, his perspiration and his awkward moves.
So many of our problems began in Vienna in 1961 as a result of the disgraceful performance of the telegenic president's face-to-face with Khrushchev. NYT editor Scotty Reston was the first to know, besides Kennedy, yet he kept quiet for five years, I believe. I think it's fair to ask, Did Kennedy's addictions affect his duties?
Though it was kind of cute of Kennedy when he told Berliners, in German, that he was a doughnut.
The biggest problem I have with the father and the son is that, because I never felt the magic and always considered both to be average people, the worship and adulation were annoying. If I had known them personally, I probably would have liked them. In fact, both seemed like nice, good, likeable people, and John Kennedy was not a bad president. However the adulation and worship exaggerated their positive qualities to the point of the ridiculous, and it became very irritating.
More importantly, it revealed a highly ridiculous quality about the adulators--a propensity for distorted perception that would prove dangerous for the entire United States, since the Kennedy magic, i.e. distorted perception, affected millions of Americans and this tendency to distort reality would cause millions of Americans to loose sight of some extremely important realities and thus make the world a much more dangerous place.
The Kennedy/Camelot "myth" was an early sign of a delusional system that would develop into something very dangerous.
Many people could see the danger even during the Kennedy administration, and their warnings fell on many deaf ears, ears that were deafened by the adulators' shouts of hosannahs.
The delusional system grew until the Kennedy "myth" had become only a small part of it, and it developed into the "Liberal" side of today's "culture war", something that probably would horrify President Kennedy if he suddenly returned to the world today.
It did no good to shout warnings. The adulators were drunk with fantasies and had no desire to be reminded of reality.
They're still drunk with the same delusion, and, if they had their way, the United States would essentially be piloted by a bunch of drunk drivers.
This is the Kennedy legacy, and this is why the Kennedy/Camelot "myth"--or more precisely fiction--is abhorrant.
It's not that Kennedy was an unlikeable man or a bad president.
It's the delusion that is his legacy.
Unfortunately, they too, like us, have their good and bad days. When they're good, they're great. When they're bad...well.
So I can never abandon my critical faculties, never take them as gospel. Work, work, work...it never stops.
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