50 Years Later: Remembering JFK (And Why We Still Need Him)

President John F. Kennedy, Sen. Robert Kennedy, and Sen. Ted Kennedy

The picture to the left (or right, top, bottom-it's sometimes hard to tell with Blogger) is not just an iconic portrait of three of the past sixty years' most important men: it's also the picture that adorns my library wall.  In fact, I have two portraits of President Kennedy in my library, as well as a stack or two of magazines featuring the late president and his family, and a worn copy of Profiles in Courage on a shelf.  In my car, I've listened to both the recent Jackie and Jack tapes that Caroline released, and remember standing in the doorway of Sen. Ted Kennedy's office in the Capitol before he died, and I remember watching and crying during his funeral.  When I was in high school, on my bedroom door (carefully taped so that I wouldn't ruin the finish) was a collage of my political heroes, and firmly in the center of that picture was John F. Kennedy.

More than any other group of politicians, the Kennedy brothers have shaped my attitude toward politics.  It's hard to talk to someone like me about the downside of Camelot, as I refuse to be particularly cynical about such things and have some rose-colored glasses about some aspects of the legacy of these great men.  I'm aware, of course, that they were not paragons of husbandly virtue, but I think of them more as men of accomplishment, and there's little to argue with that claim.  I meant to type this on the exact anniversary of the President's death, but time got a bit in the way.  However, I couldn't let this past week pass without at least mentioning his legacy in some fashion.

For me, the greatest lasting legacy of President Kennedy's time in office are two issues close to my heart: civil rights and the Space Race.  While Presidents Truman and Eisenhower admittedly started the ball rolling with desegregation of the military and continued pushes for Civil Rights bills (particularly toward the end of Eisenhower's second term), it was Kennedy's famous address on June 11, 1963, which transformed the issue of civil rights away from being a strictly legal issue and turned it more correctly into a moral one.  His words, "now the time has come for this Nation to fulfill its promise" have been stated not just in reference to the Civil Rights movements of the 1960's, but in conjunction with civil rights for women, immigrants, disabled Americans, and still today in regard to the gay rights' movements.  Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., would later declare that this was the "most sweeping and forthright (civil rights legislation) ever presented by an American president."

President Kennedy's work on the Space Race was also, admittedly, started during the Eisenhower administration (it goes to show how different politics have become that a Republican and Democratic president could have such a common set of goals).  President Kennedy, though, pushed the program considerably harder than President Eisenhower had, ensuring funding for a flight to the moon, and declaring in another famous speech, this time at Rice University, that "we choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard."  This last statement could be attributed to most of the things that President Kennedy, along with his two younger brothers, set out to accomplish with his presidency.  His New Frontier had true, monumental goals for ending poverty, discrimination, and for expanding science and education to all.  Through President Kennedy and later through President Johnson, some of the most expansive domestic legislative achievements in over thirty years were achieved.  Everything from expanding school lunch programs to better economic security for the unemployed were achieved under the New Frontier.  For the first time ever people discussed mental health issues before Congress, and the Equal Pay Act took a bold step forward for addressing income inequality for women.  His Clean Air Act allowed regulations on the environmental safety of air.  He was a man of accomplishment, and his legacy lived on long after his 1000 days in office.  And he did many of these things knowing full-well it could be the end of his political career for pursuing them.

One of the harshest truths in modern politics is that guts, that willingness to go out on a limb seems to have evaporated, and the public's willingness to take a chance with an issue is gone.  Whether its the fault of the media, the politicians, or indeed, ourselves, ideas like the New Frontier and the Space Race don't exist today.  The most meaningful, change-oriented piece of legislation of the past five years has been thrown to the dogs in the past few weeks, with people abandoning it rather than trying to pick up the good and fix the bad.  The country has 46 million uninsured people, and health issues in this country can cripple a middle or lower income family.  People avoid going to the doctor to avoid having to have to pay the bills.  Senior citizens have to choose between food and their medicine.  That is the travesty in all of this-that is what we should be talking about on the news every night instead of random made-up stories on Sean Hannity or trying to play the blame game on why a website didn't work.  There's a reason that many people still wax nostalgic for the days of Jack, Bobby, and Ted, but it's not because they want to remember the days that they were in power-it's because they want that focus on issues, that honest discussion that came from finding an issue and solving it.

Because the reality is that 46 million people not having healthcare sadly isn't the only major issue in this country.  Income inequality has become such a major quagmire in America that we seem to toss it aside during interviews about issues of the day-the richest 400 people in the country have more money than the bottom 150 million combined-how is that of massive concern?  All across the country, gay citizens do not have the same marriage and employment rights as those in neighboring states.  Climate control legislation is an issue of vital importance to our planet's safety, and yet we get bogged down in issues as seemingly open-and-shut as fracking or drilling in ANWR.  The DREAM Act has yet to pass both the House and the Senate.  Gun control legislation can't even make it through a cable news panel, much less Congress, despite tragedies in Aurora, Tucson, and Sandy Hook.  The balance between civil liberties and "the common good" has gotten so off-base with programs like PRISM that it feels like the scales have been thrown in the garbage.  And forget the fact that we've abandoned the Space Race entirely-what about any sort of scientific race that doesn't involve a smart phone?  Why isn't there a national debate about ending cancer, AIDS, and diabetes in the next decade?  Not just treating and putting yet another bill on people's already shrinking monthly budgets, but curing.

These are real issues, and while this past week is a time to reflect on the great achievements put forth by the Kennedy brothers (in conjunction with millions of brave Americans who saw injustice and said "enough"), it should be a reminder that we have to strike forward with gusto when injustice comes into our purview.  President Kennedy once said, "ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country."  This week, more than ever, all of us should remember that we have to answer that question.