May 31, 2007
Kennedy at 90 Posted by Alexander Burns at 10:15 PM EST Two days ago, on May 29, a few news sources, including the Boston Globe and the New York Sun, noted the ninetieth anniversary of John F. Kennedy’s birth. It’s a meaningless occasion, in some respects. Kennedy’s birthday comes every year, and it isn’t especially significant this time around just because it includes a round number. Just months after Gerald Ford’s death, however, Kennedy’s birthday inspires an unsettling reflection: If the thirty-fifth President were alive today, he would be younger than Ford was when he died last December. And he would have been 87 years old in 2004, when Ronald Reagan died at the age of 93. It reminds one of just how young Kennedy was in 1960 to consider that he was six years younger than Reagan, who would not even hold public office until six years later, and who would not win the presidency for another two decades. Kennedy’s birthday is also a sobering reminder of the role that contingency plays in history. Since his death, more than a few have considered how America might be different, had he not been assassinated. In 2003, for the anniversary of Kennedy’s assassination, the historian Nigel Hamilton responded to this question with an alternative timeline for the last 40 years, published in The New York Times. Hamilton’s piece was pretty far-fetched, including such events as the 1969 appointment of Martin Luther King, Jr., as Vice President, the conviction of O. J. Simpson, and a triumphant visit to Hawaii for the fiftieth anniversary of World War II’s end—by President Colin Powell. Despite its sillier qualities, Hamilton’s alternative history usefully emphasizes the historical influence of chance events like the assassination. And, with a more measured approach, it’s not so hard to imagine a meaningfully different twentieth century, absent the Kennedy assassination. If Kennedy had lived, perhaps he, instead of Jimmy Carter, might have been the globetrotting President to win the Nobel Prize some 20 years after leaving office. It might have been he, rather than Lyndon Johnson, who rammed through the most important civil rights legislation of the century. At the same time, however, Kennedy might be more vigorously indicted for his slow approach to civil rights during his Senate service and first presidential term. It might also have been Kennedy, rather than his successor, who ended up stuck with the responsibility for war in Southeast Asia. It’s hard to pin down exactly how we might think of Kennedy if a bullet hadn’t found him so young. It’s almost certain, though, that a good part of his golden memory comes from his early death. In 1996, Professor Michael Nelson of Rhodes College published an article comparing Kennedy with the classical hero Achilles. “Achilles’ appeal,” Nelson wrote, “may be traced to his beauty, valor, might, striving, and individuality, all overlaid by the early, violent nature of his death.” Bringing his point home, Nelson continued: “The inconvenient presence of a 70-year-old Achilles almost certainly would have dimmed the lustre of his majestic youth.” As Nelson suggests, perhaps the same is true of Kennedy. Still, there’s something unavoidably sad about a President who, as his youngest brother said in 1999, “had every gift but length of years.”
|
