December 8, 1962: President Kennedy tours the Nevada atomic test site, accompanied by Atomic Energy Commission chair Glenn Seaborg and U.S. Sen. Howard Cannon of Nevada
by Dennis Myers
President Kennedy took on powerful myths in June 1963
A
decade ago, around the time of the 40th anniversary of the Dallas assassination, I was watching a discussion on KNPB’s Book Talk. At one point in the program, one of the panelists made a reference that began, “JFK, who didn’t really do great things …” To those who were not alive in 1963 and whose idea of presidents is Bill Clinton or George Bush(es), the public reaction to John Kennedy’s murder in 1963 would probably be a surprise. The nation suffered a terrible emotional shock that wore on for years. But Kennedy’s public image also underwent an evolution. Eventually there was a backlash against the initial sainthood conferred on him, the pendulum then swinging to the other extreme, in which he could do nothing right. There seems to be no middle ground on Kennedy. He was either St. Jack or he “didn’t really do great things.” Both viewpoints are absurd, and two speeches Kennedy made on consecutive days in June 1963 are evidence. Their content and contexts show both his faults and his growth. It is important, always, to make distinctions in commentary, and the John Kennedy who died 50 years ago was very different from the John Kennedy who took office 53 years ago. He had become president as a cold warrior who did a lot of damage to the national security by turning on the tap of military spending full blast, tying the economy to weapons production and helping fuel the military industrial complex of which his predecessor had warned. And although his margin of victory was provided by African-Americans who believed his promise to end housing discrimination “with a stroke of the pen,” he waited two years after taking office to issue that executive order. But Kennedy was also educable. He learned from grotesquerie like blacks being driven into walls by the force of water from fire hoses, from appalling U.S. behavior like the Bay of Pigs, and from the terrifying week in October 1962 when the world nearly ended. After he had ordered missiles installed in Turkey on the border of the Soviet Union, the Soviet installed missiles in Cuba, prompting a terrifying confrontation that ended when both sides agreed to remove their missiles (and the U.S. agreed to stop invading Cuba). He was dismayed by how close he took the nation to nuclear war.
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NOVEMBER 21, 2013
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