Camelot casts a long shadow

Let the word go forth...

The US Presidential inauguration speech of 20 January 1961 remains, 50 years on, one of the finest examples of mass political oratory anywhere and anytime.

Veteran reporter Alistair Cooke covering the event said that John Fitzgerald Kennedy delivered "the simple, rolling cadences of what is certainly one of the simplest and most eloquent of inaugural speeches". "Rarely has the anthem of courage been sounded so resonantly or so bravely in recent years," said another.

Sadly, in the intervening years, this address has come to be viewed not so much as a crucible of humanity’s highest aspirations but rather as a rhetorical template for successive generations of charlatans who would seek to dupe us with the language of principle and the appearance of clean-cut wholesomeness.

One could argue that Kennedy himself was the very acme of such hypocrisy. Certainly, there is ample evidence to back this up; from accounts of both his personal and political conduct and of course, in the sins of his father Joe Kennedy. (For an evocative, fictitious portrayal of Kennedy’s campaign and assassination, The Deptford Croppy seriously recommends James Ellroy’s American Tabloid.)

It is also frequently said of Kennedy that his was a regime short on substance and that, had he lived, his legacy would have been less gilded. (The Bay of Pigs fiasco was a taster.) While that is undoubtedly a possibility, it seems somehow sour to castigate a man as an underachiever because he died young and in the line of duty rather than living long enough to prove you wrong.

In the final analysis, it probably matters little whether we see Kennedy as a priapic playboy whose crooked Daddy bought him the presidency with mob money and muscle or as the beatific embodiment of a new generation’s hopes. Once his campaign became a how-to guide, comparisons with Kennedy became both a blessing and a curse for successive generations of liberal politicians.

For all his venal failings (and there were many), Kennedy still captured a moment, a yearning, a hope that the world could indeed be a better place. I don’t think we should feel duped that he had feet of clay. In fact, in these morally relative days, even a profligate Kennedy would probably still be a man of higher principles than many of those currently entrusted with public office, on either side of the Atlantic.