AMERICA--STRIPPED OF HER INNOCENCE

By Edwin Cooney

Exactly forty-seven years ago today, John Fitzgerald Kennedy sat in the rear right-hand seat of his presidential limousine. His right hand was raised to about the level of his forehead as he began another of the many waves he’d been sending the excited crowd in Dallas, Texas. Suddenly, his smile turned to a grimace as the first bullet passed through the right side of the back of his neck and exited near the knot of his tie. “My God, I’m hit!” said America’s thirty-fifth president. Those were his final words. Seconds later he was blown away forever.

Ah! But not quite. Instantaneously, he became America’s greatest martyr since Abraham Lincoln. His shocked widow Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy, who had been caked in her husband’s blood on that traumatic day, urged the public to think of Jack Kennedy’s presidency as Camelot, a time and a domain of grace and nobility. For over a decade following that heart wrenching weekend, John F. Kennedy was for most Americans the ideal president. He was young, vigorous, intelligent, brave, and handsome. His legacy included the Peace Corps, the Alliance for Progress (the aid program for Latin America) and victory over Nikita Khrushchev in the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962. His signature on the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty with Great Britain and the Soviet Union in October 1963 made him a champion of peace. Finally, he was, along with Dr. Martin Luther King, a gallant leader for civil rights.

To listen to his spontaneous responses to reporters’ questions during news conferences is both informative and entertaining. His combination Boston/Harvard accent suggested essential learnedness and polished eloquence; more significantly, however, the manner and tone of his responses clarified the issues and humanized the presidency.

Up until the 1930s and the extensive use of radio and newsreel film by Franklin Roosevelt, the personality of the President of the United States was largely unknown to most Americans. Even then, most Americans were totally unaware of the effect of FDR’s 1921 attack of polio, which was undoubtedly a significant factor affecting FDR’s outlook on life—-public and private. What they did learn, however, was what they needed to know. They learned that he was knowledgeable and that he knew where he wanted to take the nation. His rich, warm, cultured radio voice made him a national lodestar guiding America through the depression. Although obviously a politician, he was the people’s politician and most of them grew to love him.

FDR was followed by “give ‘em hell Harry” Truman: plain looking, plainspoken and a feisty politician. He was a proud father who once wrote to music critic Paul Hume (who was critical of daughter Margaret’s on-stage singing performance) that if he ever met him he’d “need a new nose and plenty of beefsteak.”

Next came Dwight Eisenhower — affable, devoted to the golf course, and a lover of westerns. Ike, America’s most celebrated World War II hero, could be your grandfather as easily as he could be your president and leader of the free world.

Then came Jack Kennedy: young, “vigorous,” glamorous, with a very attractive family who were fun to watch, listen to and even poke fun at. Most everyone who wanted to know the personable chief executive was sure they knew him. After all, like many others he’d gone to war, married a lovely lady, fathered children, loved sports and good cigars. He was a patriot who appeared not to take himself too seriously. Although his performance during the Cuban Bay of Pigs fiasco showed he wasn’t perfect, all of us understood that nobody’s perfect. So, without quarreling with him, we let him lead us into outer space and through the Berlin Crisis of late 1961. We went to the Berlin Wall and to Ireland with him in 1963. Then, we were in Dallas, Texas with him when so suddenly and irrevocably -- he was gone!

Someone once observed that America awakened on the morning of Saturday, November 23rd, 1963 “stripped of her innocence!” Hence, America and its leaders became real rather than innocent. First up was LBJ and the turmoil of Vietnam. Next came the resentful and deceptive Nixon administration. Then, Jerry Ford pardoned the “chief deceiver.” After that, Jimmy Carter gave away our Panama Canal. Ronald Reagan, who could smell the mistakes of others a mile away, couldn’t recognize his own when he aided the Contras in Nicaragua and broke the very law he signed, George H. W. Bush broke his promise not to raise taxes. Bill Clinton was too self-centered to realize when he was misusing the Oval Office. George W. Bush deceived himself and his fellow citizens with a war to prevent the use of nonexistent weapons of mass destruction. Finally, President Barack Obama apologized to the “Third World” for mistakes most Americans don’t believe America really made.

If America, stripped of her innocence, is now living more realistically… pardon me, but I’m headed straight back to Camelot!

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,
EDWIN COONEY