A trifle over 62 years separated the assassination of William McKinley and that of John F. Kennedy. The American people had grown perhaps complacent in the thought that presidential assassinations were a thing of the past, although Giuseppe Zangara could easily have assassinated President-Elect Roosevelt instead of Chicago Mayor Anton Cermak in 1933, and Puerto Rican terrorists came perilously close to assassinating Harry Truman in 1950. Nevertheless, the assassination of John F. Kennedy hit America hard.
Back in 1963 I was in second grade, but I was not in school. Sick with pneumonia, my mother had taken me to the doctor and he had prescribed penicillin. After getting my prescription filled my mother took me home. She turned on our television set and I planted myself on the couch to watch it. As we watched television we saw the initial news flashes that President Kennedy had been shot. This was on a Friday, and the remainder of that day and the weekend, my mother, father and I and my brother practically lived in front of the television set, riveted by the around the clock coverage, something unprecedented in this country before that dreadful day.
Conspiracy theories have flourished almost before Kennedy’s corpse was cold, a great many people unwilling to accept that a frustrated loser like Lee Harvey Oswald could have been the assassin of Kennedy.
Born in 1939, Oswald had a troubled childhood. A psychiatric assessment he received as a juvenile could be a summation of his life: Oswald the assessment concluded had a “vivid fantasy life, turning around the topics of omnipotence and power, through which [Oswald] tries to compensate for his present shortcomings and frustrations.” As a teenager he began to read about socialism and quickly became a convert to that doctrine.
Joining the Marine Corps at 17, he qualified as a marksman. His fellow Marines referred to him as Ozzie Rabbit and Oswaldskovich because of his Communist leanings. He was courtmartialed after accidentally shooting himself in the elbow. He left the Marines on a hardship discharge in 1959, claiming that his mother needed his support. Traveling to the Soviet Union he lived there until June 1, 1962 when he left for the United States with his Soviet wife and their daughter.
He and his family settled in Dallas where his mother and brother lived. In March 1963 he purchased a 6.5 mm caliber Carcano rifle. On April 10, 1963 he attempted to assassinate retired U.S. Major General Edwin Walker at Walker’s home. Walker was a figure on the far right in Dallas. The attack failed and Oswald escaped without being discovered. Traveling to New Orleans in May 1963 he found work and attempted to set up a Fair Play for Cuba, a pro-Castro organization, chapter in New Orleans.
In September 1963 Oswald traveled to Mexico City and spent five fruitless days at the Soviet and Cuban embassies, attempting to get permission to travel to Cuba and the Soviet Union. The Cubans regarded Oswald as a nut and rejected his application to travel to Cuba.
On October 3, 1963 he was back in Dallas and on October 16 was hired by the Book Depository.
On November 22, 1963 at 12:30 PM, Oswald fired three shots from the sixth floor of the Book Depository, killing Kennedy who was passing by in an open motorcade and severely wounding Governor John Connally. During his attempt to elude capture, Oswald shot to death Patrolman J. D. Tippit with a revolver. Oswald was captured at the Texas Theater shortly before 2:00PM. During two days of interrogation, Oswald denied that he killed either Kennedy or Tippit.
On November 24, 1963 at 11:21 AM, as he was in transit from the Dallas Police headquarters to the county jail, Oswald was shot to death by nightclub owner Jack Ruby.
With that, the conspiracy theories were off and running, with some 42 separate groups being blamed for the Kennedy assassination. I have seen nothing to convince me that Oswald was not the assassin and that he acted completely alone.
What was the impact of the Kennedy assassination on American history? Probably minimal. The economy was in good shape so Kennedy was doubtless going to be re-elected in 1964, especially with newsmen not covering his constant womanizing and his addiction to painkillers from a back injury he sustained during World War II. Contrary to the imaginings of some liberal commentators, Kennedy was a cold warrior to his core, and the idea that he would have avoided the Vietnam War is fanciful.
Assuming that Kennedy had slaughtered Goldwater, a fairly safe assumption, he would probably have embarked on something like the Great Society in 1965, many components of which were actually stalled New Frontier initiatives, made possible in 1965 by the sweeping Democrat gains in Congress from the 1964 elections.
It is interesting to contemplate how Kennedy would have confronted liberal criticism of the Vietnam War. It is possible that he would have fought resolutely against it, and based upon his views up to his death that is a logical conclusion. However, I suspect that he would have been just as much a political chameleon as his brothers Bobby and Teddy, and he would quickly have moved left as the Democrat party moved left.
However this is all speculation. Due to the inner demons that drove Lee Harvey Oswald, the tale of John F. Kennedy ended abruptly at age 46, all his possible tomorrows being rendered matters of fiction only, and outside the realm of history.
I have seen nothing to convince me that Oswald was the assassin and that he acted completely alone.
Did you drop a “not” in there?
Thanks for catching that Foxfier! The correction has been made.
the blog has been a bit recondite as of late- i’d like to reignite the fire that is called Trump, if possible. the following is an interesting read ….
Subject: RE: Interesting Trump read
The author, Don Fredrick, on December 10, 2015, sums up a popular debate fairly well if you read it to the end.
If he steps on your preferred candidate’s toes…remember, it’s an opinion that’s expressed here, not the Ten Commandments..
O
Why Trump?
You may or may not agree but he makes many good points!!
All of the candidates have baggage. Read this with an open mind, even if you disagree.
Excellent read. The author is the political correspondent for Bloomberg and wrote extensively about Obama even before he was elected and he did it with facts and more facts.
“Who is Donald Trump?”
The better question may be, “What is Donald Trump?” The answer: A giant middle finger from average Americans to the political and media establishment.
Some Trump supporters are like the 60’s white girls who dated black guys just to annoy their parents. But most Trump supporters have simply had it with the Demosocialists and the “Republicans in Name Only.” They know there isn’t a dime’s worth of difference between Hillary
Rodham and Jeb Bush, and only a few cents worth between Rodham and the other GOP candidates.
Ben Carson is not an “establishment” candidate, but the Clinton machine would pulverize Carson, and the somewhat rebellious Ted Cruz will (justifiably so) be tied up with natural born citizen lawsuits (as might Marco Rubio). The Trump supporters figure they may as well have some fun tossing Molotov cocktails at Wall Street and Georgetown while they watch the nation collapse. Besides, lightning might strike, Trump might get elected, and he might actually fix a few things.
Stranger things have happened. (The nation elected a Marxist in 2008 and Bruce Jenner now wears designer dresses.
Millions of conservatives are justifiably furious. They gave the Republicans control of the House in 2010 and control of the Senate in 2014 and have seen them govern no differently than Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid. Yet those same voters are supposed to trust the GOP in 2016? Why? Trump did not come from out of nowhere. His candidacy was created by the last six years of Republican failures.
No reasonable person can believe that any of the establishment candidates will slash federal spending, rein in the Federal Reserve, cut burdensome business regulations, reform the tax code, or eliminate useless federal departments (the Departments of Education, Housing and Urban Development, Energy, etc.). Even Ronald Reagan was unable to eliminate the Department of Education. (Of course, getting shot at tends to make a person less of a risk-taker.) No reasonable person can believe that any of the nation’s major problems will be solved by Rodham, Bush.
Many Americans, and especially Trump supporters, have had it with:
Anyone named Bush
Anyone named Clinton
Anyone who’s held political office
Political correctness
Illegal immigration
Massive unemployment
Phony “official” unemployment and inflation figures
Welfare waste and fraud
People faking disabilities to go on the dole
VA waiting lists
TSA airport groping
ObamaCare
The Federal Reserve’s money-printing schemes
Wall Street crooks like Jon Corzine
Michelle Obama’s vacations
Michelle Obama’s food police
Barack Obama’s golf
Barack Obama’s arrogant and condescending lectures
Barack Obama’s criticism/hatred of America
Valerie Jarrett
“Holiday trees”
Hollywood hypocrites
Global warming nonsense
Cop killers
Gun confiscation threats
Stagnant wages
Boys in girls’ bathrooms
Whiny, spoiled college students who can’t even place the Civil War in the correct century . . .and that’s just the short list.
Trump supporters believe that no Democrat wants to address these issues, and that few Republicans have the courage to address these issues. They certainly know that none of the establishment candidates are better than barely listening to them, and Trump is their way of saying, “Screw you, Hillary Rodham Rove Bush!” The more the talking head political pundits insult the Trump supporters, the more supporters he gains. (The only pundits who seem to understand what is going on are Democrats Doug Schoen and Pat Caddell and Republican John LeBoutillier. All the others argue that the voters will eventually “come to their senses” and support an establishment candidate.)
But America does not need a tune-up at the same old garage. It needs a new engine installed by experts–and neither Rodham nor Bush are mechanics with the skills or experience to install it.
Hillary Rodham is not a mechanic; she merely manages a garage her philandering husband abandoned. Jeb Bush is not a mechanic; he merely inherited a garage. Granted, Trump is also not a mechanic, but he knows where to find the best ones to work in his garage. He won’t hire his brother-in-law or someone to whom he owes a favor; he will hire someone who lives and breathes cars.
“How dare they revolt!” the “elites” are bellowing. Well, the citizens are daring to revolt, and the RINOs had better get used to it. “But Trump will hand the election to Clinton!” That is what the Karl Rove-types want people to believe, just as the leftist media eagerly shoved “Maverick” McCain down GOP throats in 2008–knowing he would lose to Obama. But even if Trump loses and Rodham wins, she would not be dramatically different than Bush or most of his fellow candidates. They would be nothing more than caretakers, not working to restore America’s greatness but merely presiding over the collapse of a massively in-debt nation. A nation can perhaps survive open borders; a nation can perhaps survive a generous welfare system. But no nation can survive both–and there is little evidence that the establishment candidates of either party understand that. The United States cannot forever continue on the path it is on. At some point it will be destroyed by its debt.
Yes, Trump speaks like a bull wandering through a china shop, but the truth is that the borders do need to be sealed; we cannot afford to feed, house, and clothe 200,000 Syrian immigrants for decades (even if we get inordinately lucky and none of them are ISIS infiltrators or Syed Farook wannabes); the world is at war with radical Islamists; all the world’s glaciers are not melting.
Is Trump the perfect candidate? Of course not. Neither was Ronald Reagan. But unless we close our borders and restrict immigration, all the other issues are irrelevant. One terrorist blowing up a bridge or a tunnel could kill thousands. One jihadist poisoning a city’s water supply could kill tens of thousands. One electromagnetic pulse attack from a single Iranian nuclear device could kill tens of millions. Faced with those possibilities, most Americans probably don’t care that Trump relied on eminent domain to grab up a final quarter acre of property for a hotel, or that he boils the blood of the Muslim Brotherhood thugs running the Council on American-Islamic Relations. While Attorney General Loretta Lynch’s greatest fear is someone giving a Muslim a dirty look, most Americans are more worried about being gunned down at a shopping mall by a crazed lunatic who treats his prayer mat better than his three wives and who thinks 72 virgins are waiting for him in paradise.
The establishment is frightened to death that Trump will win, but not because they believe he will harm the nation. They are afraid he will upset their taxpayer-subsidized apple carts. While Obama threatens to veto legislation that spends too little, they worry that Trump will veto legislation that spends too much. You can be certain that if an establishment candidate wins in November 2016, his or her cabinet positions will be filled with the same people we’ve seen before. The washed-up has-beens of the Clinton and Bush administrations will be back in charge. The hacks from Goldman Sachs will continue to call the shots. Whether it is Bush’s Karl Rove or Clinton’s John Podesta who makes the decisions in the White House will matter little. If the establishment wins, America loses.
Re: conspiracy theories:
People find it difficult to accept that the typical head-of-state assassin was basically a loser driven by fanaticism.
Booth was a mediocre actor far outshone by his father and older brother, and his love for the Confederacy and hatred for blacks was sufficient.
Leon Czolgosz was a factory laborer entranced by Emma Goldman’s violent anarchist speeches, and killed McKinley with the same type of revolver used by another anarchist (the same type was bought and used by Sirhan Sirhan).
[I was privileged to make two presentations on Czolgosz for the Michigan Historical Society and the Alpena Public Library a few years back–Czolgosz still has relatives in the area, and they caught a lot of undeserved grief in the first few years after McKinley was murdered.]
Ditto the other anarchist assassins of the 1880s-early 1900s.
So it was with Oswald, who exuded fanatic failure along the same lines. Sad to say, angry losers can and do make history. The fanatical failure is the pattern, not he exception.
About the only non-ideology-driven assassination in American history was Guiteau’s murder of James Garfield. He was still a loser, but just plain nuts.
Individualism has been a strong theme in American life and so it is with American Presidential assassins, the notable exception being the Puerto Rican terrorists who came close to murdering Truman. Another aspect is how many have made unsuccessful attempts. Bismarck never said it but he should have: God looks after fools, drunks and the United States of America.
About the only non-ideology-driven assassination in American history was Guiteau’s murder of James Garfield. He was still a loser, but just plain nuts.
==
Disagree with you there. I don’t think anyone’s figured out what was going on in the head of Giuseppe Zangara when he shot the Mayor of Chicago in 1933, or even who his actual target was. “Ideology” seems a rather elaborate term to describe the thoughts of James Earl Ray and Sirhan Sirhan; more like ‘animus’. Arthur Bremer, John Hinckley, and Jared Loughner all had schizophrenia diagnoses. Lynette Fromme was a Manson votary; is that an ideology? Dan White had some purely personal resentments (as well as poor emotional self-regulation). In Oswald’s case, there’s a reasonable hypothesis that his target was Gov. Connolly, whom he blamed for his dishonorable discharge from the Marine Corps.
That’s the first time ever I’ve heard the claim that Oswald was actually aiming at Gov. Connally. (I HAVE seen claims that Zangara was actually aiming at Cermak and not FDR.) What could he possibly have had to do with Oswald being kicked out of the Marines?
What could he possibly have had to do with Oswald being kicked out of the Marines?
==
He was Secretary of the Navy for a time.
“What was the impact of the Kennedy assassination on American history? Probably minimal.”
The assassination’s impact on the Worst Generation, and on their parents’ ability to convincingly stand by the principle of gradual, optimistic improvement, can’t be overstated. As bad as things are right now, our era is the result of decades of effort to recreate a crisis that showed up organically in only five years, 1963-1968.
I remember that day and weekend quite well. Impossible to forget.
And I agree that Oswald was the lone gunman. The Walker shooting demonstrated that he was well prepared to act alone in his homicidal pursuits.
I also disagree with the notion that many have that JFK would have avoided or minimized our involvement in Vietnam. After backing the Diem coup, Nov. 1-2, 1963, it was essentially our war to win or lose. We deposed the only leader capable of uniting S. Vietnam under non-communist rule. How could we pick up and leave?
John F. Kennedy-RIP
The assassination was certainly responsible for a multitude of books, films, TV programs and various far ranging theories and conspiracy proposal. In the end, I think the evidence that is most apparent and most agreed on meets the Sherlock Holmes test of probability. The other speculations are interesting today as was the Lincoln assassination and the speculation about Secretary of War Stanton and others in the government in that day but conjecture is about all there is. Probably time to close the books on both.