December 1983 | Volume 35, Issue 1 Was the murdered President
one of our best, a man of “vigor., rationality, and noble
vision” or was he “an optical illusion,” “an expensively
programmed waxwork”? A noted historian examines the mottled
evolution of his reputation. The murder of John F. Kennedy
twenty years ago last month occasioned an overwhelming sense of
grief that may be without parallel in our history. When the news
first was announced, people wept openly in the streets, and
during the painful weekend that followed, as the mesmerizing
images of the youthful President and his family were flashed
again and again on the television screens, the feeling of
deprivation deepened. A San Francisco columnist reported: “It is
less than 72 hours since the shots rang out in Dallas, yet it
seems a lifetime—a lifetime of weeping skies, wet eyes and
streets. … Over the endless weekend, San Francisco looked like a
city that was only slowly emerging from a terrible bombardment.
Downtown, on what would normally have been a