The Kennedy Half-Century (83 page)

Naturally, because the shocking events of September 11, 2001, were within the living memory of everyone in the poll, 95 percent reported that they had “a clear and vivid memory” of it. At the same time, 84 percent of those fifty-five and older reported a clear and vivid memory of the assassination, which was defined as remembering exactly where they were, to whom they were talking, or what they were doing when they heard the news. By contrast, among those seventy-six or older, only 41 percent had a clear, vivid memory of Pearl Harbor. Time has dimmed the recall of December 7, 1941, but not of November 22, 1963.
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Media historians have often commented that television news “came of age” with the Kennedy assassination. Whether that is true, or too generous, it
is undeniable that television brought Americans together by sharing the same sights and sounds with everyone, live and unfiltered. We watched TV almost nonstop for four days, in a way that had never happened before. Even after five decades, solid majorities of people fifty-five and older can remember seeing many critical events of the long assassination weekend. A whopping 81 percent recall seeing JFK’s funeral procession on live television, with 73 percent reporting that they saw John F. Kennedy Jr.’s heart-wrenching salute to his father happen in real time. Half of the older respondents said they tuned in to Walter Cronkite’s coverage of the assassination, and 43 percent watched live footage of Jack Ruby shooting Lee Harvey Oswald. More than half remember seeing other notable events in real time, including the lighting of the eternal flame, Air Force One’s arrival at Andrews Air Force Base, and pictures of JFK’s flag-draped casket when it was briefly on display in the East Room of the White House.
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All these elements had a pronounced emotional effect on most individuals, but respondents were asked to name “the two events that had the greatest impact on you.” The top choice was the moment on November 25, 1963, when young John F. Kennedy, Jr., on his third birthday, stepped forward and saluted his father’s flag-draped coffin as it passed on its way to burial. Nearly six in ten poll respondents picked the JFK Jr. salute, with 38 percent each choosing President Kennedy’s funeral procession and Walter Cronkite’s Friday afternoon CBS reports on the assassination. About a quarter selected the shooting of Lee Harvey Oswald, with 15 percent or less for all other events.

Kennedy’s fellow Catholics were especially traumatized by those four days in November, and the loss of the first Catholic president weighed heavily on them. In almost every category in the poll, Catholics reported intense memories and robust reactions. The funeral ceremonies centered on Roman Catholic rites and leaders, of course, so JFK’s coreligionists could relate closely to ritualistic aspects that may have been less familiar to others.

Large proportions of younger respondents indicated they had seen many of the signal moments of the assassination and its aftermath in subsequent televised replaying over the years. Fully 85 percent have seen images of JFK in the convertible on the Dallas streets and 69 percent have come across the JFK Jr. salute, for instance. There have been dozens of TV shows and movies about the assassination, so it would be unusual if those under fifty-five had not caught glimpses of these images. “Unusual” does not mean impossible. Of those under age fifty-five in the poll, 8 percent said they had never even heard of “the assassination of President Kennedy in a convertible in Texas.”

The participants all watched the Zapruder film of the assassination. Nearly seven in ten remembered having viewed it before—83 percent of those aged
fifty-five and up had seen it—and it was recalled as much as or more than all the other JFK film clips. When asked to describe their reactions in writing, respondents recorded these words and phrases most often: “sad, devastated, heartbroken, sickened, I cried; shocked, stunned, horrified, couldn’t believe this happened; a terrible low point in U.S. history, a sad dark day for our country; I felt angry, disgusted, outraged; disturbing to watch, brutal footage.”

Adults of all ages agreed that the assassination “changed America.” Fully 91 percent said JFK’s murder changed the nation “a great deal” (61 percent) or “somewhat” (30 percent). More than anything else, November 22, 1963, took away America’s innocence, according to 57 percent of the poll’s respondents and two-thirds of those aged fifty-five and over. Despite a long history of violent acts against presidents, people living in a prosperous, peaceful country in the early 1960s simply did not believe that the madness of Dallas was possible. Respondents frequently used the word “unthinkable” to describe the assassination. Those alive at the time can attest to the deep depression that set in across the country, as the optimism that had mainly prevailed since the end of World War II seemed to evaporate. In a real sense, the Kennedy assassination presaged and psychologically prepared America for numerous devastating events to follow during the decade.

Older Americans are perhaps the best judges of the assassination’s effects on the country. Beyond taking away the nation’s innocence, those fifty-five and over said Kennedy’s murder “marked the end of an era of peace and prosperity” (34 percent), “made Americans more cynical and divided” (27), “contributed to the escalation of the Vietnam War” (25), and “caused Americans to have less trust in government” (20).
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On the other hand, 18 percent of older adults—and 31 percent of younger ones—believed that the assassination “delayed progress on the civil rights movement.” In fact, it had the opposite result, enabling LBJ to use the tragedy to propel the civil rights bill into law.

The last finding of the survey confirms a staple of public opinion since the assassination. An overwhelming majority of respondents—fully three-fourths—rejected the Warren Commission’s conclusion that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone.
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While the proportions are almost identical for all ages, Americans who lived through the assassination have especially strong feelings about who was responsible. Among those fifty-five and older, 20 percent strongly agree that Oswald acted alone, but almost two and a half times that number, 49 percent, strongly believe that we cannot yet close the case on JFK’s killing.
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While people of all races were inclined to think that too many questions remain unanswered, 87 percent of all African Americans and an astounding 91 percent of blacks aged fifty-five and above were
conspiracy-inclined.
²⁴
Clearly, most Americans remain unconvinced that John Kennedy’s murder has been solved.
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Our wide-ranging study of the public’s view of John F. Kennedy leads to several overarching impressions and conclusions. Even after the passage of fifty years and in a fast-paced society that appears to shift its focus by the hour, “Kennedy remains a vivid presence … particularly for those [who have] a living memory of him. Even many younger [people] talk about Kennedy in personal terms and treat him as a modern and contemporary figure, rather than as someone out of history.”
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Younger participants in the survey who could not even identify President Eisenhower spoke about the Kennedy presidency in rich detail—a result of the unrelenting focus on JFK in the news media but also the fact that their older relatives have discussed Kennedy often.

Considering the contempt in which we hold many modern politicians and even some past presidents, it is eye-popping to see and hear the terms of endearment lavished upon John Kennedy. Perhaps selective memory is at work, but people identify JFK as “the polar opposite of the very unhappy views they have of the country today. Whereas [contemporary] America is polarized and divided, Kennedy represents unity and common purpose in the public’s mind, as well as a sense of hope, possibility, and optimism.”
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Unlike many former presidents, and almost all current top politicians, Kennedy is not seen as a particularly partisan or ideological figure; he has transcended the liberal label applied to most Democrats, not least because his policies were defined by the Cold War and conservative economics. Moreover, Kennedy’s popularity has a bonus for his public evaluation: his faults are usually minimized and his extramarital affairs excused as “the way things were back then.” Criticism was voiced about other members of the Kennedy family, including Ted Kennedy, a much more ideologically divisive figure, and some younger Kennedys
whose hijinks and troubles have challenged the family legacy. “There is resentment of the treatment of the Kennedys as ‘America’s royal family,’ and the sense of entitlement that some Kennedys are perceived to have had.”
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Yet this postdates JFK’s life, and he is not held responsible.

Certain aspects of the Kennedy legacy have come to dominate our collective memory. Even though some historians of the civil rights movement would question the conclusion, Americans strongly associate JFK with the struggle for civil rights—a cause to which he came late and not always wholeheartedly—and credit is given to him posthumously for the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Similarly, Kennedy was not around for the moon landing in 1969, but he is fixed in the people’s imagination as the one who set that adventurous aim and provided the inspiration to achieve it. Certainly, the astronaut corps from the 1960s appears to agree: They cite JFK, not Johnson or Nixon, in recounting their feats.

Many specifics will fade as the generations alive during Kennedy’s time pass on. While the crisis management lessons are durable, the Cuban Missile Crisis already seems as dated as the Soviet Union to younger Americans. The Peace Corps does not define the New Frontier the way it did in the 1960s, and JFK’s tax cuts have long since been eclipsed by those of other presidents. The truly enduring legacy for the public is the stirring idealism and the call to public service that Kennedy and his New Frontiersmen embodied. As long as JFK’s “ask not” invocation is aired and the images of an enterprising young president stream across television and computer screens, powerful optics will endure.

^aj
I vividly recall the anxiety at age ten when my father packed up the car so that my mother and I could escape death from the nuclear bomb that would certainly be dropped within a couple miles of our home. We lived near the giant naval base in Norfolk, Virginia, where my father worked and would have to stay; some of our relatives resided in a relatively safe, sparsely populated area in the Appalachian Mountains, which would have been our destination had the crisis moved in the direction of imminent danger.

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If you doubt the stability of public opinion about the Kennedy assassination, consider the Gallup poll study conducted at the fortieth anniversary of November 22 in 2003. Gallup asked a more pointed question than we did about Dallas: “Turning now to the assassination of John F. Kennedy in 1963, do you think that one man was responsible for the assassination of President Kennedy, or do you think that others were involved in a conspiracy?” The public’s answer was nearly identical to the one in our survey: 75% said “conspiracy” and 19% said “one man.” And for the three-quarters who believed in a conspiracy, the guesses about the guilty parties were divided five ways: the Mafia (37%), the CIA (34%), LBJ (18%), Cuba/Castro (15%), and the Soviet Union (15%). See Lydia Saad, “Americans: Kennedy Assassination a Conspiracy,”
Gallup
, November 21, 2003,
http://www.gallup.com/poll/9751/americans-kennedy-assassination-conspiracy.aspx
 [accessed August 13, 2012].

Conclusion: A Flame Eternal?

Hello darkness, my old friend
,

I’ve come to talk with you again
.

— PAUL SIMON, “THE SOUND OF SILENCE,” WRITTEN IN THE MONTHS FOLLOWING JFK’S ASSASSINATION
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Those who remember November 22, 1963, cannot escape the darkness of a moment that has haunted us for fifty years. Most recall every second of the frequently replayed, silent home movies that recorded John Kennedy’s last living ride through Dallas. “In the naked light” of a bright Texas sun at noontime we forever see, as Paul Simon did in his assassination-inspired song, the motorcade passing on Dallas streets, “ten thousand people, maybe more—people talking without speaking.” It is a nightmare that will never be erased from our national consciousness. The lingering, gnawing questions about the assassination reinforce our inability to forget. The seeds of modern cynicism were planted that day, and their bitter fruit has left us unwilling to trust much of what we are told by the powerful in and out of government.

But a leader’s legacy—a kind of life after death—is shaped by a career’s beginning and middle, not just an awful ending. Enough time has passed for Americans to put John F. Kennedy, the whole man and his entire career, in perspective.

No president, before or since, has been savvier in his use of mass media to promote his career or agenda. Early on, Kennedy’s books projected a substantive, intellectual image that balanced his playboy reputation. Then the dawning of the age of television created a perfect political marriage between candidate and medium. JFK’s visage, energy, picture-postcard family, and soaring rhetoric filled the small screen as perfectly as any Hollywood star has ever been able to do on the big screen. He was the first president to hold
nationally televised presidential press conferences in real time, with each broadcast drawing an average of 18 million viewers.
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From his winning 1960 debates to his witty presidential press conferences to the riveting speeches and famous lines that have become part of the tapestry of American history, John Kennedy was a stellar visual and vocal artist. The talented staff of speechwriters and image makers in his entourage enhanced his natural gifts. As a group, they were a public relations firm that could have put the one depicted in
Mad Men
out of business. The true test of Kennedy’s success is passed daily: When a critic of JFK’s policies or personal behavior sees the young president again on film, he is drawn in anew, wrapped up in the action and eloquence, separating and subordinating his dim view of the low morals and poor judgment of the lesser, hidden John Kennedy.