Why Should We Still Care About the JFK Assassination?

 A Book Review of Killing Kennedy: The End of Camelot (Bill O'Reilly and Martin Dugard)

Not a day goes by without news commentary about the president of the United States. In any conversation with a friend about politics, the talk often focuses on the president and what he's doing. Try to imagine what a day of discussion would be like on the day a president is murdered? How about the days after it? How about the weeks, months, and years after it? If it is hard to imagine, it's because we haven't experienced a presidential assassination in fifty years. The fiftieth anniversary of the JFK murder will take place this November 22. O'Reilly and Dugard's Killing Kennedy brings that horrific day and it's immediate aftermath vividly back to life, forcing the reader to experience the horror the country went through on that day, and how the nation tried to make sense of it afterwards.

With the cottage industry of books available on every conceivable scenario surrounding the Kennedy assassination, of who may or may not have been involved in it, is it necessary to read O'Reilly's? After all, he's not a historian by trade. Furthermore, his book doesn't offer any facts that add something new to our understanding of the event.

If the reader is looking for a fun, engaging, fair-minded treatment without conjecture and outlandish or tedious theorizing, Killing Kennedy delivers superbly. It is barely 300 pages in length, and can be finished in a reasonable amount of time. The writers do not claim to have written the last word on the Kennedy assassination -and in fact- they are so fair minded, they admit there is more to the story than what the known facts tells us about the tragedy.

Most impressive is the scope of coverage this short book delivers on John F. Kennedy's whole life, and not just about the events of the assassination. O'Reilly and Dugard give us the story of PT-109, in which Kennedy first demonstrated his bravery during the sinking of his boat in World War II. The book then moves on to his early political career. The bulk of the book focuses on the main events of JFK's presidency, from the Bay of Pigs, to the missile crisis, to Vietnam, to civil rights, and more. The president's sexual affairs with Marilyn Monroe and others receive special coverage, and the impact these affairs had on his marriage is neither ignored nor excused. 

It is tempting to assume that a conservative pundit like Bill O'Reilly would be harsh in his judgement of (the supposedly liberal) John F. Kennedy's legacy, but quite the opposite is true. If we set aside the obvious Irish and Roman Catholic heritage the author shares with the president, the book offers much for conservatives to admire about JFK. Two decades before Reagan, JFK initiated major tax cuts to help the economy. His critics (Historian Paul Johnson among them) argue that Kennedy cut taxes to raise government revenue, but Kennedy was aware that doing so would stave off a recession. He was advised by British officials that high taxes punished job growth and deprived a government of revenue, therefore Kennedy was advised to kill both birds by cutting taxes. Consequently, the early sixties were boom years for the American economy. Imagine that!

For the armchair historians who believe Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone in the killing of JFK, the book offers reasons to support that view, although the authors do not entirely commit themselves to it. For many people who believe a vast conspiracy of very powerful people orchestrated the assassination, the starting point for them is the assumption that someone so insignificant and ordinary as Oswald could not have brought down a towering figure so large as John F. Kennedy. After all, Kennedy and Khrushchev held the world at the edge of nuclear holocaust during the Cuban missile crisis. Furthermore, the president of the United States was protected by the formidable Secret Service (even Lincoln did not have this).

Oswald was a nobody who couldn't hold a job or keep a family together. Yet, the conditions of the Dallas motorcade on November 22, 1963, made it absolutely plausible that a marksman with a decent rifle and scope could kill the president of the United States should that president be riding in an open convertible along a route the assassin was sure would lead the president within the shooting range of his rifle. The motorcade route was published in the local Dallas papers three days in advance, giving Oswald plenty of time to choose his ground. Conveniently, the motorcade came along window-view of Oswald's workplace, the Texas School Book Depository. On his lunch break, Oswald shot the president instead of eating lunch. That is how someone as ordinary as Oswald could have brought down the president of the United States.

The conspiracy theories began with Oswald himself. Soon after his arrest, Oswald told reporters he was merely a patsy. While telling them this, he smiled and proudly displayed his handcuffs. Reading of this, I couldn't help but wonder, if Oswald was really a patsy, why did he smile while telling it? Shouldn't a patsy or a pawn be terrified? On the contrary, Oswald was proud of what he'd done and was putting on a performance to drum-up publicity to make himself all the more significant and famous. What I gather from Killing Kennedy is that the murder of the president was a deed from a pathetic man who had given up on life and was throwing it away, reaping some glory on his way out.

Lee Harvey Oswald may have been the biggest winner from the assassination of John F. Kennedy, but America was the biggest loser. What followed was a gut-wrenching period of mourning for a president (despite his critics) much beloved by many of his countrymen. The Kennedy assassination has a grim distinction among presidential murders. Unlike the assassinations of Lincoln, McKinley, and others, the murder of John F. Kennedy was captured on film, in real time. Anyone can watch the last fleeting moments of President Kennedy's life by going to youtube and finding a clip of the Zapruder film. There, they will watch the smiling, waving president, whose skull is then exploded by the assassin's bullet. They can watch the First Lady's horror as she witnesses the butchering of her husband before her own eyes, his blood and gore spraying her face and clothes.  This country has never recovered from that gruesome day, and for the younger generations who have no first-hand memory of it, Killing Kennedy: The End of Camelot is a terrific starting point to learn of its impact on our great nation.

Patriot Thought