Would Kennedy have been a forgotten President if he wasn't killed?

Politics & Elections
21

Is it really possible for any post World War II USA president to be ‘forgotten?’ Jimmy Carter is probably the least well known president from that time frame. He never got to appoint a Supreme Court judge, but most educated Americans would still know Carter for the Camp David accords, Iran hostages, 1980 Olympic boycott, and economic malaise.

8 years of Kennedy/Johnson may have meant a lot less strife in the 1960’s as Kennedy could push his agenda with his charisma while Johnson worked the Senate to get it passed.

22

It’s kinda like the old line about death being a good career move for certain rockers. It certainly applies in his case.

And I can understand that a lot of us graying Baby Boomers still remember him and Jackie and the whole Camelot thing through rose-colored glasses. What I can’t understand is a contemporary survey of historians ranking Presidential greatness putting Kennedy at #8. (Just ahead of Ronald Reagan, incidentally. I’m hardly the biggest Reagan fan around, but Reagan had a much more consequential Presidency than Kennedy did. There’s reason to argue Reagan belongs in the top 10. I’d like to ask some of those historians what the case is for ranking Kennedy that high.)

For most of the Great Society stuff, it took more than “respect for the glamorous young President who died way too soon.” It took Goldwater losing big in 1964 and taking the GOP with him, resulting in Dem supermajorities in the 1965-66 Congress.

There was a lovely little book called “The Begatting of a President” which retold the political history of the 1960s in faux-Biblical form. The “LBJenesis” chapter has LBJ creating the Great Society in six days, then throwing a barbecue on the seventh. Quoting from memory here:

“Then LBJ said, ‘Shucks, let there be an eighth day.’ And on the eighth day he escalated.”

His political epitaph, right there.

23

Didn’t JFK’s approval ratings go up after the Bay of Pigs thing?

He was popular, and then he got shot. It’s a thankless business to speak ill of the dead, and I think JFK is remembered because his death marked (more or less) the end of the 50s. And he wasn’t around to get blamed for the consequences of any of the policies he supported.

Yes indeed. Also LBJ’s incredible knack for legislation. That guy knew how to make a deal, and he had the circumstances to follow thru.

And to give LBJ credit, he pushed for civil rights even though he knew it would cost him political capital. I think he did honestly believe his Great Society would work, and he could win the War on Poverty. He meant well, and he did his considerable best.

Regards,
Shodan

24

Minor quibble: I may be wrong, and I certainly can’t prove it with name-recognition surveys or anything, but I’d wager Gerald Ford is less well known than Jimmy C? Though probably only slightly. As much because of their very different approaches to post-presidential life as what they did/didn’t do in office.

Here’s the reasoning behind my wild-assed guess:

  1. if you don’t know who Carter is, you probably don’t know who Ford is, either. (Heck, decent chance you don’t recognize Reagan or GHWB either! I know people who don’t recognize any of those guys; of course, they’re teenagers.)

  2. On the other hand, you might just possibly have never heard of Ford but seen Jimmy Carter out there in the world, doing stuff in his post-presidency. Like, if you watched the Daily Show in the 00s, or other newsy TV shows.

I think Hendrik Hertzberg, one of his speechwriters, said that Carter was a great role model for future presidents – but only after he left office.

25

Like andy, I disagree with this characterization of Obama and Clinton. I think I kind of see what you’re saying: both were hindered in achieving their goals by outside forces (recession, GOP congressional obstruction, sex scandal, whatevs). More significantly hindered than some other recent presidents (although it’s not like Reagan or GWB or Nixon didn’t have problems!)
But both also acted aggressively and were transformative in pretty significant ways. On effectiveness, they both get decent grades (though not As) from me.

Oh yeah, we can’t know what Kennedy would have accomplished or failed at, but (apologies for the callousness, and echoing Shodan above) I really doubt it would have outshone dying young, relatively untested by the events of the 1960s, and cute.

26

In The Story of the English Language (1967), Mario Pei said that Kennedy had so much respect for American history that he would have wanted to keep the name Canaveral, one of the oldest place names in the US. I think Pei was right and this understanding of Kennedy’s character was the chief motivation behind reverting the name.

27

Probably this isn’t quite what the OP is looking for, but it’s almost impossible to become a memorable President. There’s George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, and “those guys in living memory”.

If you read 19th century literature, it’s sort of impressive how often Napoleon is mentioned, even towards the end of the century. It quickly becomes apparent that he was their Hitler. Not in the “embodiment of evil” sense, but in the “if you keep talking, eventually someone will raise the subject of Hitler” sense. Nowadays, how often do you see Napoleon being mentioned? If Trump is forced to resign or is impeached, he’ll boot Nixon from the “Worst ever President” seat. If another President is assassinated, he’ll boot JFK from the “President most taken before his time” position. We tend to have some general narrative stock characters that, once we find a more recent, relevant example, we swap out the old one for the new one and largely forget the predecessor. JFK is memorable for being youngish and being killed before being able to complete his job.

As a slightly more knowledgeable person than the average and regular poster on the SDMB I am more aware of Madison, Jackson, and the two Roosevelts and might add them to a pool of “commonly known Presidents”, but I suspect that if I went out and interviewed your average person on the street, I wouldn’t be surprised if most of them couldn’t tell you a thing about them except by guessing that if they’re old, dead, and famous then maybe they were the President?

Franklin Pierce was a youngish, good looking President whose 11 year old boy was gruesomely killed just days before he took office. That seems like a pretty good comparison to JFK. Granted, JFKs legacy is better than Pierce’s, but if you asked me if there was ever a famous person named “Franklin Pierce” is history, I’d have to honestly answer “Minus Wikipedia, not that I’m aware of.”

By 2117, with no one around that was alive at the same time as it, I don’t know that even the Cold War will still be remembered. JFK certainly will not. Maybe there will be someone that fills a similar niche in the minds of those future Americans, but it won’t be JFK.

28

Yeah, I’d definitely go with Ford. Carter I can always remember a few things… Iranian hostage crisis, 1979 oil crisis, etc. Ford uh… well, he finished Nixon’s term.

Bush 41 is probably the next least-memorable of post-WW2 presidents. “Read my lips” and that’s about it. The big stuff like the Berlin Wall and Soviet Union falling happened on his watch but feel more like they were attributable to Reagan.

An argument could be made for Eisenhower in terms of his presidency but he’s got the WW2 general thing going for him in terms of memorability.

29

You present a compelling argument well stated. But I would mildly dispute your conclusion because of one difference that the modern era provides - Television. IMHO it is not just the propinquity of semi-recent history that bolsters the memory of Kennedy, it is that he exists as a media idol also. And the fact that we have recorded TV broadcasts available will keep him more in the public’s consciousness for a longer period than those guys with whiskers who were president in those black and white photos. The dies-young media figures of the sixties have a certain stickiness in popular culture and they don’t seem to always be supplanted by more recent avatars of similarity.

30

It seems to me that the whole point of the OP is flawed.
There are a number of people, (not a particularly large group), who regard Kennedy with almost worshipful reverence, but the majority of scholars and political observers give him middling grades.
There is also a group, (only sightly smaller that the worshipping group), who expend a lot of effort attacking the beliefs of the worshippers, generally going overboard in their dismissal and criticism.

I cannot think of an actual scholar who rates JFK as a “great” president; he was simply not that good at getting any controversial program through Congress. However, claiming that the author of the Peace Corps and the moon landings would be “forgotten,” (beyond the sad number of Americans who have trouble remembering who is currently president or his predecessor in any given year), is simply buying into the narrative of the people who inflate the number of his admirers so that they can tear it down.

31

OK, but what about this C-SPAN survey of historians from earlier this year ranking Kennedy at #8 among past Presidents?

I don’t know which historians C-SPAN picked to fill out their survey (and I’m sure few of the names would mean much to me if I did), but I’d expect them to be able to pick a group that wasn’t totally out of the mainstream.

Like I said earlier, I’d like to know their reasoning, because it makes no sense to me. But obviously there are historians out there who think Kennedy was a great President.

ETA: here’s their collective scorecard. They’ve got all sorts of categories like “Public Persuasion” and “International Relations,” but they don’t seem to have one for “Got shit done” or “made a difference.”

32

First it was newspapers, then radio, then film and television, then satellites and now internet–all presidents since FDR are famous and indelible thanks to mass communications and media. The President of the United States would be the most famous person in the world anyway, but media ensures a form of immortality no matter how good or bad one performs the job.

Of those in my lifetime, JFK was the most affable and charming (Jimmy Carter would be second); and, despite his privilege and wealth, seemed like a genuinely nice guy who was learning as he went along, a tad pragmatic but also empathetic. This is a very sharp contrast to who occupies the White House right now, eh? If JFK had any flaws or controversial opinions he had the good sense and grace to keep them as private as possible, for he was someone who believed in inclusion rather than polarization.

Of course, he’d be considered a mildly liberal Republican today, but I’d vote for him.

33

How weird that the #1 best president ever, Lincoln, is flanked by the two worst. That stark juxtaposition certainly sets off Lincoln in unusually high relief, in addition to his intrinsic merits. At least that old sad sack Buchanan can take some comfort in that he isn’t the rock-bottom worst any more.

34

I would not have regarded 8th as “great.” I think that while Ike and Truman did their jobs well, I would not have considered them “great,” either.
Also, as noted, it would be interesting to see which historians were selected for the poll and have them rated by their peers as to the quality of their efforts. Their own biases would have an effect on where they rated the presidents.

35

That coup was what Malcolm X was referring to by the phrase “chickens coming home to roost.”

When I finally read in detail about the way the coup and assassination actually went down, turned out it was deeply weird. Diem/Nhu got wind of a coup plot, so their brilliant plan was to stage a fake coup instead, just before the real one started, “defeat” the fake one, and wind up more secure in power by using that as the pretext to get rid of the real conspirators. By this ruse Diem/Nhu planned to turn the tables on the coup plotters. Imagine their surprise when the guys they’d hired for the “fake” coup turned the tables on the table-turners themselves and made it real. Bang bang my baby shot me down.