Here are our questions for Wednesday:
- Compare the Kennedy children’s book to Weems’ biography. Does the modern text appear more balanced? How so or not so? If the current text is more balanced, does it suggest that we don’t need Legendary Americans or civiv texts anymore?
- In a recent Times article, Kennedy was ranked 11th in the list of best presidents even though the article acknowledged that he dealt mainly in rhetoric and passed “very little in the way of funding or legislation.” With this in mind, assess the roles of sensation and achievement in the lives of Legendary Americans. How does this relate to Kennedy’s scandalous personal life, assassination, etc?
- What does the shifting data expressed in the polls reveal about how the public felt about different events in Kennedy’s presidency? Do you think polls are useful/truthful as a source?
Prompt #1
The children’s book about John Fitzgerald Kennedy, written by Jane Sutcliffe, eerily resembles Weems’s biography of George Washington, written over a century earlier. They both cover famous, highly-regarded presidents of the United States, of course. But their styles are rather similar as well. Each author covers the entirety of their subject’s life, including the early and more unimportant years, in detail. For instance, Weems dedicates a fair amount of time to the cherry tree story when teaching about Washington, while Sutcliffe focuses a lot on JFK’s lack of enthusiasm for learning. Realistically, the Muckers Club was relatively insignificant to JFK’s life, yet Sutcliffe still dedicated several pages to the story. Both authors use a plethora of anecdotes in this manner.
The similarities reach beyond the surface though. Sutcliffe had a reason for including such enigmatic episodes in JFK’s life as the Muckers Club. JFK’s “turning point” in which he truly became interested in politics is emphasized by discussing such an event in his life. The Muckers Club helps to teach young children in America that JFK was a better person after he began caring about school and his country. This is one of the many ways in which Sutcliffe’s book serves as a civic text. She attempts to teach children values much as Weems did with the cherry tree and other stories about Washington. When reading her book, one notices that it emphasizes hard work, ambition, and courage, and it promotes America and its leaders relentlessly; again, much like Weems’s biography, Sutcliffe’s book attempts to obtain consent from the nation’s youth by creating a heroic image of our presidents.
This point is particularly interesting. Sutcliffe talks extensively about JFK’s courageous act of dragging his wounded fellow soldier with his teeth in order to save his life, as well as other more minor tales. However, she completely neglects a major policy failure of JFK’s early presidency, the Bay of Pigs. In fact, virtually every questionable aspect of JFK’s political career, such as his unremarkable terms in the House of Representatives or his “mixed record” in dealing with the civil rights movement, remains untouched (American National Biography). In this manner Sutcliffe merely recreates Weems’s biography. It is definitely not more balanced, because it only serves to put JFK on a pedestal to gain consent and teach values to America’s children, just like Weems’s work did.
For this reason, Sutcliffe seems to argue that we still do need Legendary Americans and civic texts. She carries on the tradition perfectly, only adapting it to a more modern American figure. Whether or not this book itself is necessary is an entirely different question, but the Kennedy children’s book definitely suggests that the need for Legendary Americans continues.
Prompt #3.
The shifting data in different polls at different times during Kennedy’s presidency shows how volatile public opinion can be, and it also shows that public opinion cannot be traced down to individual incidents or occurrences. Public opinion stats and figures can be useful at times, but can also be misconstrued to manipulate voters and historians.
As an example, the reading by Debra Conway about the interpretation of the polls explains how Kennedy’s popularity spiked following the bay of pigs disaster, and dropped to its lowest point during the Civil Rights March in Washington. The article points out that these facts seem illogical, given the nature of both occurrences. However, what the article fails to mention is that the bay of pigs invasion happened during the first couple months of Kennedy’s presidency, so it might have been that the public was eager for any type of action after the Republican Eisenhower’s last months as President. The point is, that public opinion about instances in the past cannot be determined by how we view these same instances today. With the Civil Rights movement, the public see these radical figures fighting for change and they begin to cry out against all authority in place, and thus Kennedy, by being in power during the march on Washington, would naturally have had to fight off opposition and mistrust of government regulation. The fact is, that public opinion during the 60’s cannot be explained away by the rational of today. That is the scary thing about using polls and stats as historical sources, because so much background information is needed to fully understand these figures. Somebody cannot just say that ‘during his presidency, John F. Kennedy was liked by 83% of the public’. Much more information is needed.
The differing data shows that the public was very divided during Kennedy’s presidency, and also how controversial and sensational Kennedy’s actions were. The up’s and down’s in the polls show that the public did not have a very firm opinion one way or the other about Kennedy. Some actions they liked, some they didn’t, and I think the fact that the public was very scared and confused during his presidency lead to their divided minds. America had never been in such a situation, scared that each day would be the day that the Russians began attacking, and in a hostile situation such as this, the public could not decided wether to flock to the government, or to mistrust it. It is hard to pin down exactly what the public from the past thought, and why they trusted or mistrusted the institution of government. The polls can give us limited insight into the mind of a 1960’s American, but we must treat everything we are told through something as one-sided as a numerical figure with caution, because facts and figures can be easily twisted to manipulate our opinions of the past and present.
As we have seen in the past, factual events tend to have little to do with how a person is remembered. The perceptions of the figure are the driving force behind his legacy. If the perceptions are positive, society forgets the transgressions of the figure and focuses on the positives of his life, even formulating new stories to augment the figure’s character. Kennedy benefited from this positive memory, as we attribute many positive qualities to him that factually never existed.
Taking a figure like John Brown, we see that people embrace him as a martyr for abolition without paying full account to his raid that killed fourteen men. His identity as a hero and passionate voice for freedom has eclipsed his act of guerilla warfare. Looking at Kennedy’s life, a similar theme emerges. People focus on his success at the Cuban Missile Crisis, forgetting about the Bay of Pigs invasion that went terribly. They lose his matrimonial unfaithfulness amidst his enthusiasm and vision. Overall, the nasty things from Kennedy’s presidency have not come back to haunt him, since they have been obscured by the hazy cloud of memory, in part due to the nature of his death.
Kennedy’s assassination sealed his fate as one of the most popular presidents. He was snatched away young while he was in the prime of his popularity, giving people the impression that if only he had lived, he might have made the difference that they so desperately wanted him to make. This effect further shrouded negative opinions toward him, since it would be in poor taste to insult the man right after he was killed. Like Verba says, Kennedy’s death was a major integrating force in society. The mass of grieving after his death was nearly ubiquitous, and such solidarity is rarely seen in any arena, much less the bitter area of politics. This lament was a product of his popularity though, based in many parts on the hope that JFK would get around to creating the revolutionary policy changes they hoped he would.
Achievements are necessary to get the mythmaking ball rolling, but they do not guarantee legendary status. There has to be something else, there has to be a general fondness in the American memory that doesn’t fade with time. Kennedy had this support from the people, but he was killed before he could accomplish (or not) his goals. This put him on a high pedestal, along with many other Americans, and he won’t be leaving soon.