Why We Still Love JFK

Grandiloquence, perhaps, coming from a commander in chief who approved of the CIA’s ill-fated Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba, presided over a growing U.S. presence in Vietnam and all but ordered a military coup in Saigon to preserve his options. (Though in fairness, it was his his predecessor, Dwight D. Eisenhower, who first sent American military advisors to Vietnam.) But his skill at managing his immense power in the service of peace compels our admiration, despite his flaws.

Kennedy’s resolution of the Cuban missile crisis in October 1962 was political leadership of the highest order, saving the planet from an imminent nuclear war and setting a course for the rest of his presidency.

And throughout 1963, JFK held the line against a hawkish Joint Chiefs of Staff. Indeed, he marshaled his prestige as a peacemaker to impose on the generals a measure they hated: a limited nuclear test ban treaty with the Soviet Union, which was a modest first step back from the abyss of nuclear war. When the Senate ratified the treaty in September 1963, Kennedy is said to have called it the greatest accomplishment of his presidency.

Kennedy’s sense of justice is another reason we still love Kennedy, as captured in a televised address from the Oval Office, barely more than 24 hours after his American University speech.

“We are confronted primarily with a moral issue,” Kennedy said to the nation on the evening of June 11, 1963. “It is as old as the scriptures and is as clear as the American Constitution. The heart of the question is whether all Americans are to be afforded equal rights and equal opportunities, whether we are going to treat our fellow Americans as we want to be treated.”

The president was changing course on civil rights. In his first 30 months in office, Kennedy had tried accommodation with the forces of racism, and it hadn’t worked. Kennedy wouldn’t even sign an executive order banning discrimination in housing for fear of offending Southern congressmen. As nonviolent protesters against Jim Crow laws suffered increasingly brazen brutality from local police, Black leaders implored president to take a forceful public stand. Kennedy mostly deflected them — until June 11.

Then JFK challenged America with words many a white man did not want to hear.

“We preach freedom around the world, and we mean it, and we cherish our freedom here at home,” he said, “but are we to say to the world, and much more importantly, to each other that this is the land of the free except for the Negroes?”

And Kennedy did what he had not done since taking office: He endorsed the legislation banning racial discrimination in public accommodations.

“Now the time has come for this nation to fulfill its promise,” he declared.

Conventional wisdom holds that JFK’s civil rights bill faced an uphill battle and that Lyndon Johnson and Martin Luther King Jr. deserve much of the credit for what became the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which of course, they do. But LBJ’s legislative accomplishment was made possible only by Kennedy’s moral leadership, and in part by JFK’s death, which generated a tsunami of grief and outrage that helped carry the legislation forward.

And in the end, the antidote for the nation’s loss is affectionate memory. We commemorate JFK for his strategy of peace, even if it remains unfulfilled. We are moved by his defense of racial justice, however belated. With the benefit of hindsight, we can see he took great risks on behalf of all Americans in resisting the forces of militarism and racism. We honor his martyrdom as the vindication of his courageous wisdom.