Asked to name presidential assassinations, minds turn immediately to Lincoln and Kennedy and their assassins Booth and Oswald. Countless films and conspiracies about about the two. But the other two assassinated presidents, Garfield and McKinley, get no love and people care even less about their assassins, Guiteau and Czolgosz.
This is exemplified in a episode of 24; the villainous President Logan saying “You’ll make me a martyr, I’ll go down in history with Lincoln and Kennedy, but you’ll go down with John Wilkes Booth and Lee Harvey Oswald, is that what you want?”
They both died later of their wounds, but if Lincoln and Kennedy died later I doubt we’d forget about them like we have Garfield and McKinley. What’s the explanation?
Lincoln and Kennedy were both important and beloved (albeit far from universally in Lincoln’s case) presidents and slain by people with agendas that underscored some of the crucial issues of the time.
With Garfield, I think it’s pretty straightforward why he’s not emblazoned in the collective memory. He was basically a placeholder late 19th century president and, to somewhat simplify, was killed essentially by a crazy person with no particular political agenda other than getting himself a patronage office.
With McKinley, I think it’s a little less clear since he was a reasonably popular and important president, at least by late 19th century standards, and the radical politics and foreign background of his assassin underscored many of the big issues of the time. My theory would be that Roosevelt’s staggering popularity made it somewhat difficult in hindsight to view McKinley’s death as a great and lingering tragedy for the country.
Garfield was a brilliant man who very likely could have become a great President, but he never got the chance. McKinley, as Greasy points out, was replaced by a greater President.
Lincoln was the saviour of his country. Kennedy was insanely popular, albeit not a great President. Both were succeeded by men who disappointed everyone; Andrew Johnson was a terrible President, and LBJ sent his country’s army off to lose a pointless, horrible war.
Lyndon Johnson has a very mixed legacy, but I don’t think it’s fair to say that the love for Kennedy was enhanced because of Johnson’s unpopularity. Kennedy was and is one of the most popular presidents, but Lyndon Johnson, despite Vietnam, is one of our greatest presidents.
The Kennedy assassination is still big news because of the many (and contradictory) conspiracy theories about bit. This keeps it in the public eye.
Lincoln’s death is a memorable tragedy, given the timing – he had won the war, saved the Union, but was shot at his moment of triumph. Of course, his saving the Union and freeing the slaves made him a great president on deeds alone. (I’ve seen the analysis that, if America is a religion, George Washington is our God and Lincoln our Jesus.)
Garfield wasn’t in office long enough to accomplish much, so there’s nothing to bring him to mind.
McKinlay was an popular president, but he was overshadowed by his successor. Also, at the time he was shot, anarchists trying to kill leaders all over the world, so the assassination wasn’t as shocking as Lincoln’s (the first president killed) or JFK’s (the first time in 60 years).
As a comparison to McKinley and Teddy, think if the positions had been reversed in the 1960 nomination: that Johnson won the nomination and picked JFK as his running mate, and then Johnson, the older, machine pol, was assassinated and succeeded by JFK, the youthful, vigourous younger guy.
I’m sure many would argue this was the case for Kennedy too, given the progress made in civil rights under Johnson. I was under the impression that Kennedy was a bit of a disappointment.
He was a smart, but I don’t see any indication in his background or his time in office that he was shaping up to be anything but a reasonably competent president who accomplished nothing of particular note, in the vein of most of the post Civil War 19th century presidents.
He’s on the “died in office” list, but not the assassinated list. Of course you could argue he was killed by his homeopath doctor’s faulty diagnosis of his heart problems, since had he been correctly diagnosed and treated he might have cancelled the remainder of his west coast trip, recuperated and finished out his term. There is also the somewhat bizarre theory that Florence Harding poisoned him to get revenge for his extramarital affairs.
Presidents need great events to become great presidents. Lincoln had the Civil War. Kennedy had the Cold War. Even McKinley had the Spanish-American War. But the biggest crisis of Garfield’s administration was corruption in the post office. He handled it well but it’s not the stuff that legends are made of.
He did have the potential for a good personal scandal however. He cheated on his wife with several women. But it appears he settled down when he became President.
Kennedy didn’t have much of a chance to prove himself, unfortunately. The Cuban Missile Crisis was a major success, of course. Kennedy’s death was a shock to most of us at the time, because he was such a young man, with a vivacious and intelligent wife and two small, adorable children. It was such a marked change from Eisenhower, Truman, et al, that there was a certain amount of anticipation that he could achieve great things with his younger ideas and high energy. His death brought a shocking and abrupt end to those expectations.
As for LBJ, his turnaround on the issue of civil rights, and his subsequent championing of the Civil Rights Act make him one of the better presidents in recent history, in the opinion of many. As noted above, his legacy is mixed because of the misguided escalation of the war in RVN, but the man accomplished more in a few years than many do in eight.