Last week, my piece noting the May 29th anniversary of President John F. Kennedy’s birthday (“JFK at 108”) drew some attention from my American Spectator colleague Francis Sempa. Make that disapproving attention. All of which is happily received in the spirit of open dialogue between conservatives! (READ HERE: Conservatives and the Myth of JFK)
Here is how he concluded his thoughts on conservatives and JFK.
But the truth is what conservative writers should write about JFK, even in an article noting that JFK would be 108 years old. There is no sense in conservatives perpetuating the myth of JFK’s greatness. Leave that to the liberals. Conservatives like Jeffrey Lord, who usually writes splendid and informative articles for The American Spectator, should know better.
Message received! Thoughtful criticism, particularly when coming from a decidedly respected colleague like Frank, is always welcome. And worthy of a response!
To begin, just for the record, as a reader of presidential history, it is a hard fact that no president is perfect. The reason is obvious: no human being is perfect.
Which is to say, as with JFK, there are private truths about George Washington that have not undone the positives of his public record.
As Frank notes, over time, after JFK’s passing, stories of his various imperfections, which Frank quite accurately recalls, began to make their way into the media. And as such, into the hands of presidential historians who make it their business to accurately record and, when called upon, to debate, the record of the president then under the historical microscope.
There isn’t a president who has escaped this micro examination, although generally the historical reckoning comes after they have left office — sometimes long after.
But in the Biden case, already, mere months after Joe Biden’s White House departure, books and tales about the 46th president have begun to appear. Already in book form is CNN’s Jake Tapper’s and Alex Thompson’s Original Sin: President Biden’s Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again. There will doubtless be more books taking ole Joe and his presidential term to task.
Frank is correct to point to the role memoirs from JFK staffers Theodore Sorensen and Arthur Schlesinger play in this fact of life. Those two books are purposely designed to make their boss a hero, a great president. And there were more from other JFK staffers. There’s nothing new about this. Lionizing ex-presidents by ex-staffers for the president involved in these types of books is a fact of presidential history that has long since followed presidents.
All the way back there in 1890, a full quarter century after President Lincoln had his fateful Ford’s Theater reckoning with assassin John Wilkes Booth, Lincoln’s former staffers John G. Nicolay and John Hay would pen their recall of their beloved boss in Abraham Lincoln: A History.
As someone who served in the Reagan White House, I can certainly testify that there have been a fair number of ex-Reagan staffers/officials who rushed into print with favorable re-tellings of the Reagan era, much like JFK’s Sorensen and Schlesinger,
In the case of JFK, yes, Francis is right. All kinds of sordid tales about the 35th president eventually eeked their way into the public and historical arena long after he had passed.
But I would submit this is fairly typical of history and presidents. When Franklin Roosevelt, who, like JFK, died in office, he was instantly treated as an iconic presidential hero. It took years for tales of FDR’s affair with his wife Eleanor’s Social Secretary, Lucy Mercer — a fling with the notion of divorcing Eleanor — to make their way into the history books and public view.
In the case of Woodrow Wilson, it wasn’t a romantic affair that later emerged as news. The tale was the revelation of Wilson’s incapacity after a stroke and the role of his wife Edith in covering up for him and, yes indeed, effectively making herself the presidential decision-maker. Only recently has this tale come back into public view with comparisons to Dr. Jill Biden’s role in running her cognitively impaired husband’s life and time in the White House.
And, of course, not to be forgotten is the post-presidency of Warren Harding and the tale of the philandering president, his mistress, and an illegitimate daughter! Something not revealed until well after this popular president’s passing!
Notably, all three of those presidents — FDR, Wilson, and Harding — were, like JFK, popular in their time in the White House and in the immediate aftermath lionized as heroes.
My point in the “JFK Is 108” piece is that, in fact, President Kennedy had an enormous and positive impact on millions of Americans in the day — especially on young Americans. (And yes, I was one of those!) Was he perfect? No. Did he make mistakes that he should not have made in terms of his personal, if private, conduct? Yes.
But, I would submit, presidents, like every other human soul walking the earth, should be judged not simply on their all-too-human flaws but, particularly in the case of presidents, on their entire record.
The Republican Kennedy
In terms of JFK, as a Reagan and later congressman/HUD secretary/GOP vice presidential nominee, Jack Kemp staffer myself, I listened endlessly — in person — as both Reagan and Kemp lionized JFK’s record on cutting taxes, essentially making him into a 1960s supply sider. It wasn’t just a one-off (as I may have given the impression in my article) with Reagan saying nice things about JFK at a fundraiser for the JFK Library.
Without question, President Kennedy and his record on tax cutting had a decided real-world effect on Reagan and his congressional supporters like Kemp long after JFK was gone. And no one cared about Kennedy’s private behavior as they went about repeating and following his quite public economic behavior that was endorsed and christened as “Supply Side Economics” in the Reagan-era 1980s.
In fact, this particular debate over JFK on tax cutting that Reagan and Kemp led has grown over time to a larger GOP point that, were JFK here today, he would not be a Democrat but a moderate Republican. Which is to say, his policies on being a hardliner with the Russians, or standing up for civil rights in the fashion of the GOP’s Abe Lincoln, or tax cutting are not even close to the far left of today’s Democrat Party.
So the debate over President Kennedy goes on — and will go on. Not to make too fine a point of it, but over there at George Washington’s Mt. Vernon, “Ten Common Misconceptions About George Washington,” there is this :
Ten Common Misconceptions About George Washington
The very first paragraph says:
Some of the most commonly known “facts” about George Washington are simply not true. Go beyond the mythology and find out how much you don’t know about the man.
Which is to say, as with JFK, there are private truths about George Washington that have not undone the positives of his public record.
In short? Let history speak about presidents — all of the history. The good, the bad, and the ugly.
To borrow from JFK? “Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country.”
And while my colleague Francis Sempa may disagree on Kennedy, I have not the slightest doubt that he is following JFK’s stated-above wisdom just as I and millions of other Americans try to do every day.
God Bless America!
Onward!
READ MORE from Jeffrey Lord: