Dr. Michael J. O’Connell, PainCare, New Hampshire noted that prior to the 50th anniversary of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, he endured at least three weeks of a constant barrage of John F. Kennedy stories in the mainstream media. How many times have we seen the abandoned book depository in Dallas, discussions of conspiracy theorists, the video of Jacqueline trying to flee for her life clambering over the trunk of the limousine after her husband was shot, the subsequent shooting of Lee Harvey Oswald – the murderer of Kennedy, the barrage of recitations of the incident that fatal day by teary eyed reporters. We hear of the great hope and optimism inspired by the President, and…and….and what else did President Kennedy accomplish? What beyond great speeches, the vast majority of which were written by others, did this man actually do?
He backed and then prematurely abandoned a gang of thugs in the failed Bay of Pigs ‘invasion’ to oust Fidel Castro; he committed “training troops” to South Vietnam (in a ‘police action’) thus starting the long ten years of futile conflict with North Vietnam; he brought us to the very push-of-a-button brink of nuclear destruction by multiple and massive miscalculations and misjudgments of the USSR; he was the most overt philanderer ever to inhabit the White House (save perhaps Bill Clinton). He expressed the necessity of civil rights for all but it required President Johnson and Bobby Kennedy to actually create that legislation and enact it.
But surely there must be something President Kennedy did that so inspires us today, except for mere dramatic speeches composed by his writers. Ah, the Peace Corps. Yes he can take ownership of this. Difficult to evaluate the effectiveness of the Peace Corps through the decades of history, did it do more for the increasingly dependent recipients of Peace Corp services (many of whom have hated us for our wealth to this day), or more for the young Americans who staff it? Who knows?
At a time when a President’s legacy is apparently more important than actual tangible accomplishments (Obama being a prime regrettable example), it is fact that Kennedy did precious little in his three years in office. Yet, for one solid month this past November, there was a constant gush of anguish over this man’s loss. But articulating his accomplishments? – little is said, conspicuously little.
A tragic event in our history his assassination was, but can we not sober up? Do we commemorate Abraham Lincoln’s assassination? Does anyone even know when he was murdered? This was a truly great man, a great president, a self-made scholar (not a near flunkie from Harvard), a savvy politician, a man who stayed true to his wife, and as much a doer as a sayer. Where is the justice in the homage we pay (or the press pays) to a do-little assassinated president some 50 years ago this past Novermber?
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