History time: JFK Assassination Anniversary Special!

So it's the 50th anniversary of the assassination of John F. Kennedy and no doubt we're in store for a slew of documentaries and minor features on breakfast TV.

But if you want to cover most of the topic then you could do worse than watching two (very good) films:

Thirteen Days is the story of inside the White House during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Ignore Kevin Costner's terrible Boston accent (you'll tune it out after about half an hour) and enjoy the way Bruce Greenwood and Steven Culp nail the mannerisms of John and Robert Kennedy as they try to stop the American military from starting a nuclear war. The film is a little limited in not showing much of the background or why the Soviets put missiles in Cuba in the first place and Greenwood isn't quite as charismatic as the real life JFK but succeeds brilliantly in showing how much pressure there was for a "firm" response and how difficult it was for Kennedy and his team to resist the demands of the generals. The guy who plays Curtis LeMay seems over the top until you read a bit of his Wikipedia page and realise how much they toned him down.

JFK is Oliver Stone's film about the investigation into the Kennedy assassination by Jim Garrison played by Kevin Costner (him again). The conclusion that Garrison, and the film, reaches is a bit nuts but the first part is more understandable than the second.
Basically he concludes that 1) the assassination couldn't have been the work of just Lee Harvey Oswald and thus must have been a conspiracy involving other people and 2) that conspiracy was hatched by the military industrial complex (including J. Edgar Hoover and Lyndon Johnson who the script calls "accomplices") to prevent Kennedy from ending the Vietnam war.

Now I've just started reading Robert Caro's "The Years of Lyndon Johnson" and if you read anything about him you'll know that he has a history of what we'll euphemistically call "ethically dubious behaviour" but this is pretty crazy stuff. In fact one of the best bits of the film is where the jury in the big trial scene, who have until now been going along with Garrison's explanation of how Oswald couldn't have been the lone gunman, start to scoff and shake their heads when he moves on to his LBJ coup d'etat theory. Tommy Lee Jones' character (the defendant) smiles as well because he knows that at this point he's now guaranteed a "not guilty" verdict.

The number of problems with Garrison/Stone's military industrial conspiracy theory is huge, not least of all the idea that JFK would have withdrawn from Vietnam. Evidence is unclear but Kennedy increased US involvement more than Eisenhower but it's likely that he would have continued US involvement though perhaps not escalated in the way that Johnson did after 1964.
What Stone said afterwards is that the reason for proposing such an outlandish theory was to circulate a "counter-myth" to challenge the myth that Oswald acted alone and dethrone it as the accepted truth even if not directly aiming to replace it.

Regardless of the facts of the assassination, the power of the film is best summarised by the late (great) Roger Ebert:

"The facts, such as they are, will continue to be elusive and debatable. Any factual film would be quickly dated. But “JFK” will stand indefinitely as a record of how we felt. How the American people suspect there was more to it than was ever revealed. How we suspect Oswald did not act entirely alone. That there was some kind of a conspiracy. “JFK” is a brilliant reflection of our unease and paranoia, our restless dissatisfaction. On that level, it is completely factual."

These two films represent Kennedy's greatest triumph (avoiding a nuclear war over Cuba) and the legacy of his untimely death and the way it still captures the public imagination. They don't really touch the other area Kennedy is remembered for, advancing civil rights, but his legacy here is actually pretty limited and most of the actual leg-work was done by Johnson after Kennedy's death, something which I think is pretty well acknowledged now.

Apart from these two films though, most of my knowledge of Kennedy comes from Robert Dallek's "An Unfinished Life" (of which apparently Alex Ferguson is a big fan too). It talks about his crippling (and secret) health problems, his scandalous lack of fidelity and the effect on his marriage, and the influence of the patriarch of the Kennedy clan: Joseph P. Kennedy. The multimillionaire sponsor of JFK's political career whose time as ambassador to the UK is mainly remembered for his pro-appeasement sentiments and support for peace with the Nazis.

The main thing I remember from Robert Dallek (I read the book about 10 years ago so memory is sketchy) is what he said about the unique tragedy of Kennedy's death. To paraphrase: Lincoln's assassination came when relief at the end of the war was more powerful than grief at the loss of a president despised by the South and not yet as revered in the North as he is now. Similarly for Franklin Roosevelt whose death also came at the end of a war and after he had achieved great things. Kennedy's death is tragic because of what he wasn't able to achieve and how a glittering, hopeful future was cruelly snatched away and replaced with Vietnam, social unrest and turmoil.

Is it completely unrealistic? Of course. Kennedy would never have been able to deliver this. Lyndon Johnson signed more of Kennedy's agenda into law than Kennedy himself would likely have been able to. But Johnson's legacy is sullied by Vietnam and his own bullying reputation. Barack Obama came to office with sky high expectations and hopeful rhetoric and has achievements which arguably place him in the same category as Johnson but the reality of governing tarnishes the image and brings it back to Earth.

Kennedy faced his share of criticism while president (though in a less partisan and polarised era) but the premature end to his presidency allows us to imbue him with the hopes of the baby boomer generation without ever having them disappointed.

There's a scene in another Oliver Stone film where Richard Nixon, near the end with the net of Watergate closing in on him, looks up at the mournful portrait of Kennedy and says "When they look at you, they see what they want to be. When they look at me, they see what they are."