Visit to JFK Library a nostalgic return to greatness

The post was first published in the Wilson Times June 22, 2019

Check another box on the bucket list. Last week, I visited the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library. The JFK Library was just one stopping point in a weeklong trip to Boston, but it was the one thing that most attracted me to Boston.

Had I been asked at any time, “What American political figure do you most admire?” I would have quickly answered John F. Kennedy, the youthful, heroic, farsighted, charming, charismatic senator who was elected president the year I turned 11 years old. The 1960 election infected me with an interest in politics and public affairs that led me into a newspaper career.

Visiting the Kennedy Library took me back to those years, 1960-63, when the youngest man ever elected president gave America’s young adults inspiration, hope and a commitment to service. In his inaugural address on a freezing cold Jan. 20, 1961, Kennedy laid out an ambitious agenda, both domestic and global. The world was far different then. Racial discrimination prevailed throughout the nation. The Soviet Union, promising to “bury you,” in the words of its blustering leader, was an existential threat to the United States and other western democracies. Fast-growing world populations demanded food, clean water and housing in numbers that seemed impossible. “I do not shrink from these responsibilities, I welcome them,” he announced.

In his inaugural address and other speeches, Kennedy pointed America toward the big picture, the long-term needs of the world. He challenged the nation to reach for the stars, to put astronauts on the moon in an unbelievably short time frame, “not because it is easy but because it is hard.” He invited America’s youth to make a difference in the world, and he wanted people to see politics and public service as an honorable profession, a high calling. He also offered advice we could use today: “civility is not a sign of weakness.”

Kennedy ran a brilliant campaign as the political world transitioned from the “party boss” system of selecting presidential nominees to a more voter-centric system that includes obligatory primaries. By going into primaries in West Virginia and Wisconsin, Kennedy proved he could win in states that some thought would be hostile to his campaign. His main contender was Lyndon Johnson, who eschewed primaries as meaningless. Johnson, the most successful Senate legislator in history, thought the old party-boss system would give him the nomination. Johnson looked at the past while Kennedy looked to the future and the growing importance of primaries.

The campaign sold Jack Kennedy like a commodity with jingles, campaign songs and snappy television commercials. His televised debate with Republican nominee Richard Nixon began a new era in politics. JFK Library videos of speeches and campaign events show how much politics and politicians have changed.

One video shows the entire inaugural address, and I sat in awe, as did many other visitors, and listened to a speech that was filled with challenging words, eloquence, inspiration, quotes from the Bible and other sources, a broad vision of world peace and the triumph of democracy around the globe with an over-arching aim to “assure the survival and success of liberty.” I learned on my visit that Kennedy’s is the shortest inaugural address of the 20^th century. He insisted on a short speech, but it is filled with more guidance and statesmanship than any inaugural address of my lifetime.

I was glad to see the library’s video of Kennedy’s very brief speech in West Berlin, which I consider one of the greatest speeches of any American statesman. In the June 1963 speech, he tells the gathered Berliners that they are special; they are on the front lines of a global conflict between freedom and oppression. Thus, the statement “I am a Berliner” is as great a boast as “I am a Roman” was in ancient times. He argued against the rhetoric that Communism isn’t so bad or democracies can work with the Communists and learn from them. After each excuse, he addressed the advocates of surrender, “Let them come to Berlin!” His final “Let them come to Berlin” was said in German to the crowd’s roar. All free men, he told them, are citizens of Berlin; therefore, he proudly proclaimed “Ich bin ein Berliner” as the crowd roared.

The speech is the most succinct argument for democracy and freedom to come out of the Cold War, delivered without benefit of a Teleprompter and with scant notes, which kept blowing away. It compares well for its brevity and inspiration with Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address and for eloquence with Martin Luther King’s 1963 “I Have a Dream” speech.

Some enthusiasts claimed Barack Obama’s 2008 Berlin speech was as good as Kennedy’s. Anyone who says that has not seen JFK’s speech. There is simply no comparison.

The Kennedy Library includes the events of November 1963, but the grief of those days is not emphasized. Kennedy’s legacy, his inspiration and his eloquence, are far more important. We can only dream and lament for what might have been if not for that day in Dallas.