“We cannot expect that everyone…..will ‘talk sense to the American people’. But we can hope that fewer people will listen to nonsense”.
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On the eve of Kennedy’s murder,in another cosmic coincidence,the celebrated American historian Richard Hofstadter delivered a lecture at Oxford University in which he spoke of “the paranoid style” in American politics,phraseology that almost prophesied the emergence of Donald Trump.
Speaking of how politics had become “an arena for uncommonly angry minds”,Hofstadter used the word paranoid “because no other word adequately evokes the qualities of heated exaggeration,suspiciousness and conspiratorial fantasy”.
A heavy dose of fantasy,it is also important to remember,has also shaped our thinking about John F Kennedy. “Camelot”,a term never attached to his presidency during his 1000 days in the White House,was the invention of his widow,Jackie,who,less than a week after her husband’s murder,summoned the country’s foremost political chronicler,Theodore H. White ofLife magazine,in the hope of framing his legacy.
The late president,she told White,had loved the hit Broadway musical based on the legend of King Arthur,and,in particular,the lyrics of its signature song which spoke of “one brief shining moment” that became known as “Camelot”.
As a child,it was this myth of Camelot that became my gateway into a lifelong fascination with US politics,a path no doubt shared with many others. Only after studying Kennedy’s record more closely at university,and making his fabled civil rights record the subject of a doctoral thesis,was I exposed to the shadier sides of Camelot.
Far from being a crusading champion of the struggle for black equality,for example,he regarded it more cynically as a political irritation. At a time when the Democratic Party was deeply divided between northern progressives and southern racists,Kennedy,a pragmatic centrist,tried to walk both sides of the street.
For all its shortcomings,Kennedy’s presidency remains an inspiration to many,and his speeches still take flight. The words of his inaugural address – “ask not what your country can do for you,ask what you can do for your country” – sound especially poetic in an age of “American carnage”.
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At a time of such political ugliness,his telegenic presidency shines bright. But in most polls of historians,who tend not to be swayed by the romanticism of Camelot,Kennedy does not even make it into the top 10 list of presidents.
Nowadays,much of the Kennedys’ enduring appeal is because they have become so malleable,and can be moulded into whatever we want them to be.
In Ambassador Caroline Kennedy,we see a good and faithful public servant promoting traditional American values around the world. In Robert Kennedy Jr,there’s an iconoclastic anti-politician. In John Jr,QAnon eyes a ghostly talisman.
Sixty years after Dallas,then,the Kennedys have come to embody the flip sides of American exceptionalism. A country that continues to enthral. A country that continues to bewilder.
Nick Bryant is the author ofThe Bystander:John F. Kennedy and the Struggle for Black Equality.
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