The Kennedy Ideal

How fitting that Presidential Election Season 2016 has officially kicked off, and it's Groundhog Day.

(Don't drive angry!)

Gold star for nailing the movie reference, but the point I'm trying to make is this: Here we go again. Political candidates are vying for votes and momentum as we approach what could be the most crucial presidential election in our history. Of course, someone says that with every presidential election, hence….

(Groundhog Day?)

Winner winner chicken dinner!  On the one side we have the presumptive frontrunner beaten by almost four points. On the other, a candidate declaring victory despite the facts that: 1) not all votes had yet been tallied, and B) the margin of "victory" was less than two tenths of one percent. Call my crazy, but a victory that doesn't seem to make.

(You're crazy.)

I… dammit. I walked right into that one.

(Duh.)

Back to the point… The Iowa Caucus has come and gone and we know exactly nothing. We've heard nothing new. The candidates have given us nothing, of themselves, or into which we can sink our support, our hope for a better nation. Neither side has made any progress whatsoever in moving this nation forward with this election, and that makes me sad.

I think I'm even more forlorn because on Sunday I spent several hours in quiet contemplation and reflection whilst traversing the halls of the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library in Boston.

(Boston? Did you pahk your cah and go get some chowdah?)

*gives stink eye*

I'm trying to be poignant and serious here.

(Sorry. Carry on.)

So there I was at the JFK Library, watching old newsreels and the debate between Kennedy and Nixon, reading speeches and memos, and it hit me: Our political system hasn't progressed in the last fifty-three years. Not one iota. It's regressed. It's shamefully regressed. It's devolved to the point that the United States of America, in many corners of our fragile world, has become a laughing stock. And I'm ashamed.  I have said this before and I'll say it again:

The last, great hope for this nation died with the assassinations of both John F. and Robert F. Kennedy.

(That's a pretty bold statement.)

It's meant to be a bold statement. The lives and campaigns of these two men, their respective presidency and attorney generalship, embodied a true sense of American idealism that has not since been repeated, by any president, by any party. Sure, they were politicians, and as do all politicians, I'm certain that yes, even they had their own, self-serving tendencies. But they were true idealists. If you watch the speeches and interviews with these two men you can see the heartfelt pride in their eyes when they extol our nation's virtues; you can sense the genuine anger well within them when they discuss our nation's injustices; and you can feel the sorrow they feel when forced to accept the fact there were some things they simply couldn't change, despite every desire and aspiration to do so.

Martin Luther King, Jr. had a dream. John F. Kennedy had an idea. He had the idea that this nation, while great, could be greater, and that it was our duty to make it greater. I need not recite the most famous quotation of his inaugural speech; you should know it, and you should be heeding his words especially at this pivotal time when we hold our nation's governance in our hands. Instead, I'll give you this:

 

"A man may die, nations may rise and fall, but an idea lives on."

Let that sink in for a moment.

This notion that America was once great, and can be greater, extends beyond any one of us. We need to keep that idea alive, even as Kennedy uttered those words in a dreadfully unintentional foreshadowing of his own death. The idea lives on. It must live on, if Kennedy's death, and the words he spoke, are to have any meaning at all.

Both Jack and Bobby Kennedy stood for something that transcended American politics: they stood for what was right. Not because it was necessary for their political ascension, or because it was what the party commanded of them, but because they believed in something greater than themselves. Justice. Progress. Hope. Those were the cornerstones of the Kennedy platform, regardless of which Kennedy.

"Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lots of others,

or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope,

and those ripples build a current which can sweep down

the mightiest walls of oppression and injustice."
 

Senator Robert F. Kennedy uttered those words in an address at the University of Cape Town, South Africa on June 6, 1966. He dared to pry open the jaws of Apartheid in its own lair and declare loudly that its lustful hunger for injustice would go unfed. Because it was right.

We forget that the seeds from which were grown many of the achievements in civil liberties we've sown were planted by these two men, working together to make our country worthy of the notion that life, liberty and happiness were deserved, and could be enjoyed, by all its citizens.

"We are confronted primarily with a moral issue.

It is as old as the scriptures and is as clear as the American Constitution."

I'm not certain that President Kennedy knew just how profound those words would be when he said them in a Report to the American People on Civil Rights on June 11, 1963. Five months later his opportunity to act on those words was cut short forever.

Modern candidates talk of morality as if it were a party joke. There are those that not only refuse to promote equality, but actively seek to prevent it. Our country's moral compass has long since been smashed, replaced by hypocrisy; it doesn't matter from which side of the political aisle you hail. One cannot profess the openness of political office and conceal thousands of pieces of email correspondence. One cannot say in one breath that abortion is murder yet support the death penalty. One cannot claim that we need to care for our poor yet either place that burden on the backs of those that struggle themselves, or refuse to pass legislation that would aid those that fought to preserve our right to be free.  We have lost our empathy and compassion for our fellow man, and in doing so have abandoned that which both Jack and Bobby Kennedy fought with their lives to promote and protect. Our politicians should be ashamed. We should all be ashamed.

We will never know the extent to which the Kennedys would have been successful in their efforts to make American a nation of equals. Those terrified of that notion extinguished those fires with extreme acts of cowardice. In a twist of ironic fate, an eternal flame burns at John Fitzgerald Kennedy's gravesite in Arlington National Cemetery. For me it serves as the embodiment of Kennedy's idea living on. That flame burns still, and must continue to burn, if we are ever going to be, as a nation, as a people, deserving of Kennedy's pride. If only our candidates felt the same way. If only the next President of the United States will feel as Kennedy felt the day he took office, we might have a chance at the greatness in which the Kennedys so ardently believed.

"All this will not be finished in the first one hundred days.

Nor will it be finished in the first one thousand days,

nor in the life of this administration, nor, even perhaps

in our lifetime on this planet.

But let us begin."

 

© 2016 J.J. Goodman. All rights reserved.