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November 22, 1963. Of course anyone who was old enough to know what was going on that day knows exactly where he or she was when the news came out of Dallas. I was in Mrs. Battaglia's eighth period English class. The announcement came over the school PA that the president had been shot and we were sent home early.
A couple of weeks ago I took my son, who, as I was on that day, is 12, to the John F. Kennedy museum in Boston. We stood looking a black-and-white tape of Walter Cronkite broadcasting the news that the president was dead. Cronkite was holding back tears; so was the man standing near my son and I; and so was I. It will always be that way, I suppose. We don't just remember the event in all its vividness, but also the way the event made us feel, maybe even more vividly.
Lately though, I've been thinking about the assassination of John F. Kennedy in other terms. I've been thinking not so much about what happened, but about what might have taken place had the shooting in Texas never occurred at all.
As the years marched on into the 1970s and 80s, the results of elections and the cultural bent of the nation seemed to be saying that an era had ended and a brand of ideology had run its course. From the traumatic presidency of Lyndon Johnson and then from Richard Nixon on through Ronald Reagan, George Bush and even Bill Clinton, these have not been salad days for people who call themselves liberals or progressives. From the inside and the outside there has been a feeling that what we stood for was passe, out of the mainstream, on the defensive.
Many reasons are given for this, ranging from that we were just plain wrong, to the sense that we were right but we over-reached. Or that we've simply been outdone by the ability of the Right to come up with plausible-sounding explanation for a myriad of ills, backed by massive amounts of money devoted to pushing what is essentially a divisive, anti-government, anti-collective-action rhetoric.
There are varying amounts of truth in all of those explanations. But the next time someone from the Right tells me that liberalism is dead or dying, I'm going to be tempted to reply with, "Well, how many of the leaders of your movement were assassinated?"
Let me be clear, this isn't about conspiracy theories. I don't know who really killed JFK or why. And I'm not even sure I want to find out, but I do think it is worth speculating on what the world might have been like had it not happened. For that matter, what if Bobby Kennedy weren't gunned down five years later? I'm not saying either one of them was a saint or even a hero. But they were smart, articulate, progressive-minded politicians. Having one or both around to a ripe old age could surely have had an impact. Any of number of things that happened might not have.
Would John have extricated the US from Vietnam without the political polarization the 1970s brought? Or, might Bobby have won the nomination in 1968, meaning there would have been no Nixon presidency and no Watergate? If there were no Watergate there probably would have been no Jimmy Carter, for better or worse, and quite possibly no Reagan presidency, no supply-side economics, no "Me decade," or whatever.
Life, politics, history are chains of events that could take any twist or turn depending on any number of big or small circumstances. The deaths of John and Robert Kennedy, not just the events themselves but their ensuing absence from debate and dialogue-those are big circumstances. And with all due respect to the likes of George McGovern, Carter, Walter Mondale, Michael Dukakis and so on, well, how much can you expect when the "first team" isn't in there competing?
Of course people in history are mostly remembered for what they do. When I look back on November 22, 1963, though, I can't help thinking that what is just as important is the things people don't do because they aren't on this earth to do them.
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