By David K. Shipler
History is
supposed to have an unerring eye for ultimate accuracy. From the distance of
time, historians are expected to act as the final judges, to cut ruthlessly
through to the truth. It is fitting to reflect on this now, during a week of
renewed mourning for President John F. Kennedy, who was felled in Dallas by an
assassin half a century ago.
He and Jackie were dazzling. They
tapped Americans’ vestigial yearning for royalty, the excitement of stylish
celebrity, and the deep need for optimistic commitment to high purpose. Yet as
popular as Kennedy was—his Gallup approval rating averaged 70.1 percent—he was
never so widely admired as he became after his death. Indeed, Gallup’s graph of
his rating shows a gradual, yearlong downward slope to 58 percent the week
before he was killed—still higher than President Obama has enjoyed since the
first six months of taking office, but a significant decline nonetheless. It
followed a sharp bump up 13 months earlier after JFK faced down the Soviet
Union in the Cuban missile crisis. (Presidents’ percentages typically rise
after a national security crisis, as Franklin D. Roosevelt’s did after Pearl
Harbor and George W. Bush’s following 9/11.)
One is tempted to wonder what
course the line on that graph would have taken had JFK lived and had been able
to win a second term.
