A Belated Kennedy Hagiography

Facing the almost impossible task of writing even a remotely fresh biography of John F. Kennedy, Gretchen Rubin resorts to a gimmicky style – the book has 40 chapters, each on a separate topic, in keeping with our tiresome fascination with lists.“Forty Ways To Look at JFK” (Ballantine Books, 400 pages, $24.95) is mostly recycled material. In fact, because the book has the feel of a Cliffs Notes version of Kennedy’s life, I wouldn’t be surprised if it were used as a high school history text. That’s depressing, because Ms. Rubin’s valentine to the man who “dazzled” her with his “glamour, heroism and eloquence” isn’t balanced nearly enough by the enormous body of evidence that JFK was an overrated president.Published 45 years after JFK’s defeat of Richard Nixon, the book may signal that the “Camelot” myth – so carefully orchestrated by Kennedy’s widow and his close associates such as Theodore Sorensen, Ben Bradlee, Arthur Schlesinger Jr., and Tom Wicker – has finally crossed the time zone from contemporary to historical.Ms. Rubin approaches her subject like a Latin teacher drilling rudimentary grammar into a student’s brain. In the course of a book that could’ve been cut by half, these words or phrases appear with mind-numbing frequency: telegenic, cool, iconic, suave, beguiling, witty, well-spoken millionaire, energy, excellence, dashing, ironic, charisma, “Fortune’s favorite,” grace, love of poetry, idealism, the aura of JFK’s “light,” and self-deprecatory.She also perpetuates the myth that the 1950s was a mass of conformity which was “safe and prosperous” with an entire nation striving to join the postwar middle class. “[P]eople were ready for something new,” she writes, “and the glamorous, dashing Kennedy satisfied this hunger.” While there’s no doubt Kennedy captured a certain zeitgeist that Nixon wouldn’t have recognized, Ms. Rubin ignores the fact that almost half the country voted for the Republican candidate.The implication of “Forty Ways” is that the social upheaval (for better and worse) of the 1960s began the day Kennedy was elected. There isn’t even a passage in the book about the Beats, Elvis Presley and the explosion of rock ‘n’ roll, the backlash of McCarthyism (although she does note Bobby Kennedy’s association with the Wisconsin senator), or the underground popular culture that would become mainstream 15 years later.There is one theory about Kennedy’s attraction that I hadn’t read before in any of the scores of books about his presidency on my bookshelves. Americans, Ms. Rubin asserts, were entranced by the young candidate’s perceived risk-taking. She writes, “But at the same time that he offered the allure of beginnings, Kennedy tapped into the apocalyptic longings in the American public … the public embraced the specter of Armageddon.”That’s hogwash. During the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, I clearly remember, even at the age of 7, how my large family – including several Kennedy supporters – was scared silly during that tense period. We didn’t “embrace” Armageddon: In fact, at the height of the standoff, my normally unflappable mother whispered at dinner one night that the world might end.Like President Clinton three decades later, Kennedy was preoccupied with his “legacy,” and told confidants that in order to be ranked among the legendary American presidents, it was necessary to preside over a war. Kennedy’s policies, from civil rights to Vietnam, were shaped by political considerations, not by boldness.In fairness, Ms. Rubin does touch on the least flattering aspects of Kennedy’s “Camelot” reign. She describes patriarch Joe Kennedy’s ruthless bullying of the press, JFK’s dependence on drugs to cover up his myriad medical ailments, and Bobby Kennedy’s blatant intimidation of political foes, as well as the young attorney general’s role in tapping the phones of Martin Luther King Jr. and his submission to FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover to cover up his brother’s constant philandering.She also gives a glimpse of how Kennedy was often oblivious to the effect his many inspiring speeches had on the public. For example, Louis Martin, Kennedy’s lone black adviser, told the president, “Negroes are getting ideas they didn’t have before.” Kennedy asked, “Where are they getting them?” and Martin replied, “From you! You’re lifting the horizons of Negroes.”Ms. Rubin, infatuated by Kennedy, goes on to write about the many politicians who’ve tried to imitate the 1,000-day president, generally without success. Ms. Rubin writes: “The fact that Kennedy was Kennedy can’t simply have been the result of manipulation,” then justifies that claim by saying the assassination of President McKinley in 1901 barely registers with historians. McKinley certainly didn’t project a movie-star persona, but had his funeral been televised and meticulously choreographed like Kennedy’s, perhaps her view would be different.It doesn’t dawn on Ms. Rubin that the mythological status that Kennedy still maintains came because he was the first American president of the modern media age. Just as Babe Ruth remains the iconic home run king of baseball, a star who transcended his sport, the confluence of circumstances that resulted in John F. Kennedy’s place in this country’s folklore simply can’t be duplicated.Mr. Smith last wrote for these pages on steroid usage in baseball.

A Belated Kennedy Hagiography

A Belated Kennedy Hagiography

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