All these are massively subjective, particularly to different generations. To me he’s most famous for dying in lake Windermere, YMMV
JFK is the classic example of that IMO. Those that lived through the assassination (particularly if they were too young to be involved in party politics and policy) remember him for his assassination, my generation who came of age in the time of the Oliver Stone film do too. I’d say as time goes on his assassination becomes just another high profile violent death that was caught on camera, the historic events he was pivotal to become more important than the manner of his death.
I disagree with this. I think the further we get from JFK’s presidency, the more mediocre his term will appear. The big issues of his day will be obscure and lack context to most people, and the thing that will remain most notable thing about him will be the manner in which he died. William McKinley was president during the Spanish American war. How many people remember his actions and policies during that time? I sure as fuck don’t - I forgot he was even president during that time, probably because Teddy Roosevelt sucks up all the limelight in that conflict. But I totally remember him getting shot because he didn’t give some random loser a job in a post office.
JFK’s following the same arc. The Cuban Missile Crisis is just another time the US and Russia didn’t go to war, same as we didn’t go to war under the previous administration, same as we didn’t go to war during the subsequent administration. Outside of historians or people with a specific interest in this time period, that’s all going to muddle together. But the assassination of the leader of wealthiest and most powerful nation in history, at the absolute height of its influence and reach? That shit’s going to live on forever.
Yeah, that was explicitly my point. If you lived through these events, they were a big deal. If you didn’t, they weren’t. As the number of people who lived through these events decreases, his role in those events is going to be seen as less significant or interesting, compared to his assassination.
And for better or worse, preventing a war just isn’t as defining as getting shot and killed in a motorcade. One is the absence of something happening, the other is the political assassination. One is understood and appreciated by people who study history, the other is a scandalous murder.
Possibly eventually but right now the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Civil Rights Movement, and the Vietnam War are remembered as pivotal moments in US history, and they (and JFKs part in them) are fading from view much more slowly than the assassination.
I’m going to go with worse. Kennedy’s assassination was a tragedy, and whenever a nation becomes unstable leadership-wise even for for a while, it gives other nations with evil intentions, insurgents and terrorists opportunities to take advantage (that didn’t happen in this case), but all-in-all the course of history didn’t change much as a result of Kennedy’s death.
However, if Kennedy mishandled the Cuban Missile Crisis, it could very well have resulted in nuclear war between two superpowers. That would have changed the coarse of history significantly—for the worse.
Two of those things mostly happened after he died, though. I think LBJ is much more strongly associated with both the Civil Rights movement and the escalations in Vietnam. And I don’t think the Cuban Missile Crisis occupies that much space in the heads of most post-Boomer Americans.
It doesn’t, but it should, lest history repeat itself. That’s why I said “worse” above. People often don’t remember, or place proper significance, in the things they should, especially with the passage of time. It’s also why the Spanish flu of 1917 (one of the worst pandemics in human history, perhaps killing ~100 million) was mostly forgotten shortly after it subsided. Folks don’t like to remember bad things. Human nature.
Yeah and he is still inextricably linked to them in the public perception regardless of that fact
Then when did you see one of the other cold war close calls depicted in mass media? 60 years later if a show wants to depict a Cold War nuclear close call, they show the Cuban missile crisis. Rightly or wrongly it’s become the example of when the cold war almost went hot in the public consciousness.
Indeed, the primary reason we haven’t seen nuclear war since WWII is because of Second Strike capability. You hit us and blow up half the world, we’ll hit you right back and blow up the other half. Thankfully, that sobering thought has deterred even insane leaders…so far.