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Date:         Sun, 22 Nov 1992 18:12:40 -0600
From:         "VALENTINE M. SMITH" <CDELL@UMKCVAX1.BITNET>
Subject:      "22 November, A Day's Remembrance"
Comments: To: val-l@ucf1vm.bitnet, jwales@iubvm.bitnet, olsenj@stolaf.edu,
          kousen@rayleigh.res.utc.com, klur@maristb.bitnet,
          History@ubvm.bitnet, politics@ohstvma.BITNET, writers@ndsuvm1.bitnet,
          Fi@grebyn.com, anthlal@umnacvx.BITNET

"22 November"

22 November, 1992   1005-20

The sixth day of rain in a row, a grey sky, cloud-filled and
ground-drenched after so much water has fallen. I always think of
November as damp, cold and grey, and this November is archtypal in
its manifestations of all three. As the rain thuds down upon the
house, I sit here indolent, facing a dozen tasks, and wanting to do
none of them. The high pressure has me and one son laid partially low
with vile headaches, so motion, especially that of encountering the
cold, seems unlikely. I think I shall lay down, and contemplate old
memories of this day that I will never forget.

1230-

Finally, I have read all my mail (only took six days to catch up!
Argh!), completed a book (my 9th of the month, Spider Robinson's
latest Callahan-related book, we all read fluff some of the time!),
and now I can meander, perhaps, towards what I should be doing -
writing on papers! Groan! So, instead, I'll write a few lines on this
meandering essay about what 22 November means to me.

I cannot help but mention this grim anniversary's meaning to me,
because it was such a riveting and intense event, not only for me,
but millions of other Americans too. I recall that day so clearly, 29
years ago now, when it was announced that JFK had been shot, and I
will never forget to my dying day Walter Cronkite's sonorous
statement, "The President died at ..." (I think 1:30 in the
afternoon, Dallas time). At that point in my life, no President had
died in office (FDR died two years before I was born, and Truman,
Eisenhower and Hoover were all still alive then), and to have the
President murdered was a double shock.

In the many years since, I, like many others, have wondered what
might have happened had JFK not been killed. Might Vietnam not have
happened? Many seem to believe this national tragedy might well have
not occurred had Kennedy lived, I do not know. His death brought to
me my first political despair - the realization that even the "best
and the brightest" (or so it seemed) could be shot down.

For a lot of years, I was an "assassination buff," reading the great
body of material that erupted in the wake of the assassination. I
still know a lot about the event, I still agree with the House
Committee's findings in the Seventies that a conspiracy existed
(though I agree we'll never know who), and that probably Oswald, who
DID fire a gun that day, was probably set up, a patsy for a larger
purpose. Despite the testimony of the autopsy surgeons earlier this
year, I still believe there were two teams of shooters, and that one
was on the "grassy knoll." The "death shot" came from the opposite
direction the Warren Commission asserted, Kennedy could have only
fallen the way he did from a shot in front - years around a superb
ballistics expert has me convinced of that.

But, the grim reality is that whatever occurred in Dallas that sad
day, Jack Kennedy died, and so did most of my generation's political
innocence in the wake of his death. Never again has the "spirit of
Camelot" descended on Washington, not even in the bright hope days
many of us tried to have when the gentleman peanut farmer came to
Washington in 1977. JFK's death scarred a generation about what could
happen to a sitting President who ran afoul of whomever JFK ran afoul
of, and the deaths of RFK, King, and Malcom X, and the attempts on
Ford, Reagan and Wallace all tended to buttress that view.

I still cry when I see footage of that period, not because I'm
particularly sentimental, but because of the damned waste, both of
Kennedy and of political hopes. My country, and many people in it,
are much more cynical about politics than when I was sixteen, and I
contend that Kennedy's murder had a lot to do with that mindset.
(That bloody Richard Nixon didn't help either!) Off to eat some food
and hope THAT will chase this awful headache!

1600-

I've been thinking about what I wrote above as the afternoon waned.
Young Charles and I strolled out into the damp cold to pursue a
newspaper (the little store was out of them, drat!), as the rain
finally subsided for a few hours, and it's just unpleasant now as
opposed to out-and-out a mess. So, we bought V-8 and grape pop, and
came home again - he with his headache gone, and mine getting worse.

Look at the Presidents we got after JFK - LBJ, Nixon, Ford, Carter,
Reagan, Bush and now Clinton coming up. Only LBJ MIGHT be considered
at least a good President (legislatively, he rammed a lot through,
some with quite forward vision - he booby-trapped himself with
Vietnam). The Right believes Reagan a good President, only the second
to be re-elected since FDR, I will always wonder because of the
eightfold increase in the national debt, the sixfold increase in the
deficit on his and Bush's watch, and his basic failure to "get
government out of our lives." Carter made a mess of things, Ford and
Bush "led" by veto, and Nixon ... well, Nixon was disgusting. I do
not care that he may have been the best foreign policy mind we've had
in the White House since FDR, the man was a base power-grubber, who
would do ANYTHING to stay in office. He demeaned what the Presidency
should be, and deepened the cynicism about American politics born in
the wake of JFK's death.

This day always reminds me of "what might have been," a foolish line
of thinking, because as I pointed out to POLITICS today about another
issue, that isn't what happened - we have to deal with reality as
opposed to the "what ifs." I think Perot understood that cynicism,
though he may not have understood its sources, and tried to
capitalize on the feelings many Americans have held for all these
three decades since that horrible day in Dallas, sunnier than today,
but much more fraught in tragedy.

1715-

Headache still pounds, and Kennedy's mischance in Dallas is still on
my mind. I'm told, and have read many places, that most Americans
recall only three events where they know exactly what they were doing
- Pearl Harbor (7 December, 1941), the death of FDR (12 April, 1945)
and the death of Kennedy (22 November, 1963). Isn't it odd that a
trio of tragedies are what tend to key people's memories the
strongest? For me, the benchmarks that followed, where I recall what
I was doing clearly, are also all tragedies (4 April, 1968, the death
of Martin Luther King; 5-6 June, 1968, the death of Robert Kennedy; 9
August, 1974, the resignation of Nixon; 18 July, 1981, the collapse
of the skywalks of the Hyatt Regency in KC that killed over 100
people). I count Nixon among the tragedies because I believe he
befouled the Presidency in a way never before, and dishonored the
country by his actions vis-a-vis Watergate.

1745-

As a political creature, fairly well read and somewhat aware of
realities, I understand Jack Kennedy was really a fairly weak
President, legislatively and in his personal life. I do not count him
great, nor do I deify him because of the manner of his death.
I liked the guy, thought he had wondrous style, he seemed indomitable
to my teenage eyes, and even now, when I see a clip of him, I realize
that he had a flair that just defies really labelling very well. He
LIKED being President, no matter that much of what he tried failed.
It was a job to him, but one he had a lot of zest for - it seems that
no one who followed had that zeal to the same degree, or in the same
way. He had fun, he could be fun ... and you damned sure don't see
much of that in the leaders who followed him.

1810-

Well, enough dark reflecting upon the past. I'm sure I will catch
heat from some for having ANY admiration for JFK, and I'm sure that
anyone could dredge up dark tales of his vileness as a man and
President. But, a certain spark in American political life died when
he did, and I, for one, quite miss that. VMS
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