Pearcy

Although he died 50 years ago, President John F. Kennedy still mesmerizes Americans.

“There continues to be this fascination,” said Slippery Rock University history professor Tom Pearcy, who was the joint historian to the U.S. Department of State and the CIA from 2005 to 2006.

Much of this has to do with his assassination on Nov. 22, 1963.

“Kennedy is romanticized because of the way he died,” said Pearcy, who occasionally teaches a class exclusively on Kennedy's assassination.

Overall, both Pearcy and Michael Coulter, a professor of political science and history at Grove City College, say Kennedy is a relatively minor president.

Coulter said Kennedy's three years in office do not give political thinkers and historians much to analyze.

“It's incredibly hard to evaluate,” Coulter said. “You'd have to give it an incomplete.”

Coulter noted that some of the signature accomplishments of Presidents Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton took place during their second terms, and their presidencies would be looked upon differently if they only included their first three years.

He said that some of Kennedy's successes include the start of the space race and a ban on certain aspects of nuclear testing in 1962.

“So, there's some diplomatic advances,” Coulter said, adding that Kennedy did not have too many domestic accomplishments.

Another success was the handling of the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962.

Pearcy said that Kennedy's decision not to attack Cuba but rather create a blockade was a good choice because there were enough active missiles in Cuba to strike every major American city. The Soviets also had nuclear weapons and Soviet commanders had launch permission.

An American strike would have triggered a nuclear war.

“In hindsight, Kennedy looks really good,” Pearcy said.

Kennedy also had a notable failure with the Bay of Pigs Invasion of Cuba in 1961.

Coulter said that escalating the number of American troops in Vietnam could be considered a failure by Kennedy as well. He said there were 800 troops in Vietnam in 1961. There were 16,000 by 1963, but no exit strategy.

Coulter said that one of the biggest results of Kennedy's assassination was an outpouring of support for anything related to Kennedy.

President Lyndon Johnson, Kennedy's vice president who became president after his death, was elected to a full term in 1964 by a massive landslide, and there was an overwhelming majority of Democrats elected to the House and Senate at the same time.“From a policy perspective, the '60s were significantly different as a consequence of that,” Coulter said.The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was something only briefly discussed by Kennedy's administration, but it easily was passed by Congress. Medicare and Medicaid were approved in 1965. Education reforms also took place during at that time.Coulter said that he does not imagine that so many pieces of legislation would have been passed if Kennedy lived and was elected to a second term.Kennedy's death, as well as the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy, led to Americans becoming interested in conspiracies, which is not necessarily good for the government.“It is politically troubling if a lot of people think it's an insider job,” Coulter said.Pearcy said that there is a perception among most people that the people who worked on the Warren Commission, which investigated the Kennedy assassination and concluded that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone, were good people just doing their jobs.However, he said it is more complicated than that. He said that Warren Commission members were frightened of FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, who quickly had concluded that Oswald acted alone. In a recording of one of the commission's meetings, one member said that all it has to do is rubber stamp Hoover's conclusion.In the 1970s, the U.S. House of Representatives Select Committee on Assassinations reinvestigated the crime and came to the conclusion that there were multiple shooters.“Both conclusions were permitted to stand,” Pearcy said.He said that this is the only time in American history where there are two official investigations with two official answers that are both accepted.He said there continue to be misconceptions about Kennedy's assassination. Some people think that the “bubble top” that was removed from the limousine Kennedy was in at the time he was shot would have saved his life. However, Pearcy said the bubble top was either plastic or plexiglass, which was meant to shield people from the weather, and was not bulletproof.He said the only way these issues, and possibly the fascination with Kennedy, will be put to rest is if every document related to the assassination is released, which is projected to happen in 2017. However, in Pearcy's opinion, not all of the documents will be released because of the way intelligence operations do business.“This will continue to be an issue for a long, long time,” Pearcy said.

Coulter