The Kennedy chieftains and American politics

Contemporary Review, August, 2004 by Dan Casey, Conor Casey

A MONTH after John F. Kennedy's assassination in November 1963, Theodore H. White, prize-winning author of The Making of the President books, convinced skeptical Life Magazine editors that Camelot, 'that once peculiar spot' where Arthurian chivalry was hatched and honed, had been symbolically restored. White's notion that the Kennedy years--those halcyon thousand days--had so transformed and invigorated the nation with contagious exuberance and an insistent call to public service, that the promise of a Second Camelot had been realized.

After all, Kennedy's oft-quoted challenge--'Ask not what your country can do for you'--revved a latent New Frontier missionary spirit into action. Everything seemed possible in a land where an Arthur look-alike raised the banner and dared a nation to greatness. In true Shavian spirit, Kennedy passed the gauntlet: 'Some men see things as they are and say, why; I dream things that never were and say, why not'. It was as if some prophetic force had been unleashed in the land. The popular response was overwhelming.

'For that one brief shining moment' Camelot materialized. Merlin worked magic, and a legion of Arthur, Guinevere, and Galahad wannabes in modern dress converged on Washington to work magic of their own. A hundred and twenty thousand Peace Corps volunteers, caught in the fervour of the moment, answered a call to humanitarian service in distant Third World countries, a tradition that continues today (see Jason Mosley's article on page 97 below). And, JFK proclaimed, 'Let the word go out from this time and place, to friend and foe alike, that the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans'. Henceforth virtue and good works would be their own rewards. Evil would be forever banished. 'In that one brief shining moment', the idealism of Camelot was revived. 'Camelot' was frequently mentioned because a Broadway musical of that title opened in New York the month after Kennedy's election.

In a 1964 New York Times piece, James Reston said of John F. Kennedy: 'He was a story-book President, younger and more handsome than mortal politicians, remote even from his friends, graceful, almost elegant with poetry on his tongue and a radiant young woman at his side'. Reston not only bought into White's image of a heroically martyred President, even Jackie, the 'radiant young woman at his side', allowed White's vision of JFK as charismatic chieftain attended by champions imbued with generosity of spirit and nobility of purpose.

The Kennedys were, after all, the American royals living the American dream--the sons energetic, idealistic young men with attractive wives, surrounded by romping children and attentive grandparents; the daughters bright, spirited young women with promise of their own. Hyannis was Camelot, and the Kennedy mythos was firmly established in the American psyche.

White's 'Once and Future King' played well to an adoring public. A decade later the vision would be modified to reflect the glories of a bygone era, and the tragedies of interrupted lives and unfulfilled destinies. Despite revelations of JFK's indiscretions and questionable alliances and subsequent trespasses by the clan, White's Camelot vision has endured, perhaps a tad tarnished, but nonetheless intact. It has survived because it appeals to the popular imagination, and because, in the grand Celtic scheme, there is still abiding loyalty to a Kennedy myth that transcends the imperfections.

As long as Americans embrace democratic ideals and breed heroes to champion them, the Camelot analogy will not go away. And, the Camelot factor--that Kennedy-inspired utopian idealism that infuses hope and promise--will continue as a pervasive force in American life and American politics.

A Celtic Consciousness

There were, of course, Kennedy detractors who railed at White's exercise in Celtic myth-making, but there were others who saw the Camelot imagery as a redaction of an ancient mindset that refused to quit. As far-fetched as it seems, White had not sinned against the Arthur legend, he simply had not taken it far enough.

Boston-Irish Fitzgerald and Kennedy ancestors had, after all, inherited and passed on millennia-old Celtic tribal values and traditions rooted in family and kinship. And, the immigrant Kennedys, who were, remember, Irish on both sides, entered the world with a sure sense of an Irish past. J.F.K. once confessed, 'All of us of Irish descent are bound together by ties that come from a common experience; experience which may exist only in memories and legends but which is real enough to those who possess it'.

Granted, Camelot was not Tara, where the ancient Irish High Kings raised their standards, but it was nonetheless Celtic in its orientation and its psyche. It was close enough. Rose Kennedy, the matriarch 'king-maker', once explained, 'The Irish had their local chieftains, who often warred against one another for fancied glory and advantages for themselves and their followers. They made unstable alliances that could find one year's ally another year's foe. Yet they produced especially strong leaders, superchieftains who reigned as kings over large regions, in turn allying and defecting and forming new constellations as the winds blew'.