JFK's legacy 45 years later

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Shortly after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963, CBS commentator Eric Sevareid perceptively noted that the most important legacy of the dead leader might well be an "attitude," a contagious spirit that all things are possible for Americans if only we have the vision and will.Is JFK's legacy only emotional and intangible?Kennedy's White House tenure included the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962, studied and restudied endlessly since, for good reason. Before the missile crisis, American foreign policy officials, with the almost-unique exception of Republican CIA director John McCone, made a serious error in assuming that the Russians would never put long-range missiles into Cuba.In recent years, meetings between surviving officials from both sides in the missile crisis have revealed that Soviet generals in Cuba in 1962 possessed short-range nuclear weapons, and at least for a time had authority from Moscow to use them if faced with an American invasion. During the crisis, a number of Washington decision-makers, including members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, were convinced that if we invaded, the Soviet response would at the most be restricted to the level of conventional weapons.Kennedy, like other men with direct military and war experience, was consistently cautious about using force. In the end, he and his advisers were able to finesse the missiles out of Cuba through the pressure of a naval blockade, avoiding a military invasion. That perspective and outlook contrasts markedly with today's comfortable neoconservatives, anxious to use force in Iraq and elsewhere, while utterly lacking in any direct military experience.The two domestic issues always on the front burner during the Kennedy administration were civil rights and organized crime, the former pressing in from the turbulence of American society, the latter the focus of driven Attorney General Robert Kennedy. JFK was careful on race relations, addressing the subject decisively only when pressed to do so by a massive public march on Washington.RFK was relentless in pursuit of the mafia, and a very large number of gangsters had been convicted and imprisoned at the time of the Dallas assassination. President Kennedy's death abruptly ended this crusade, and nearly a decade passed before the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) legislation reignited the effort. Ironically, at several levels, President Richard Nixon's war on organized crime provided effective policy implementation of Kennedy's initiative.Sen. John F. Kennedy received the Pulitzer Prize for the book "Profiles in Courage," about U.S. senators in history who put principle about political expediency. His contemporary critics cracked that he ought to show "less profile and more courage."Professor Robert Dallek's recent book, "An Unfinished Life -- John F. Kennedy," uses previously confidential information to document an extraordinary array of health problems that plagued JFK from birth.Despite this, he managed to enlist in the U.S. Navy in World War II, and beyond that volunteered for hazardous PT boat duty.Sevareid's observation perhaps applies most directly to the American space program. Kennedy at the start of his administration made a dramatic public commitment to reach the Moon by the end of the decade. The always-practical President Dwight Eisenhower had opposed manned space flight. The space program successfully put a man on the Moon, and returned the astronaut team back to Earth, during the Nixon administration.A number of innovations and inventions resulted from the space program, including extreme miniaturization of computer and other components. Every time you turn on your laptop or desktop computer, you're saying hello to JFK.Arthur I. Cyr is Clausen Distinguished Professor at Carthage College and author of the book "After the Cold War" (NYU Press). He can be reached at acyr(at)carthage.