If I am to select a single
American president to be the greatest, first I have to examine the very concept
of „greatness“. The greatness is of course not an objective, scientific term,
that could be reduced to numbers or neutral factual observations. Even though
it would be unwise to ignore the facts entirely, since they can form a solid
basis for evaluation and serve as a fundamental qualification, the greatness is
essentially a matter of subjective values. A man can be „great“ only from a
certain perspective and to some person or people. In regards to politics, the
greatness is most often judged from the historical, personal and national
perspectives. Objectively speaking, these perspectives normally entail
significant factors like president’s concrete accomplishments, prosperity of
the USA during his term, military victories, magnitude and scope of his vision,
his legacy, renown and importance, strength of his character, his charisma and
rhetoric skills or his level of patriotism, decisiveness and resolve. I listed
these mostly objective factors in no particular order, since their relative
importance varies, depending on who is assessing it. At this point, I need to
decide, who’s perspective and what measure do I want to adopt.
President’s worth can be judged
by many different kinds of observers, but who’s opinion matters the most? The
one of the president‘s contemporaries, who were actually there, or that of the
people of today, who have the benefit of hindsight? The opinion of the learned
experts, historians and scholars, or common people’s „vote“? After all, each
president is ultimately one of the people, serving the people. In this regard,
the issue of ideology has to be considered as well – should the criteria to
judge a president be partisan, coming from either his own party members or the
opposing party members, or should the criteria be non-partisan, as unbiased as
possible? Since I am neither an American, nor an ideologue, and because I do
not live in the past, if it is to be genuinely my perspective, I choose it to
be non-partisan and focused on the impact on the present. And while I certainly
intend to take expert opinions into account, ultimately I consider the opinions
of the ordinary people of America (or the world) to be of at least equal
importance and the given president’s impact on the lives and imaginations of
said people to be of paramount importance.
Speaking of taking relevant
opinions into account, If you cross-reference the picks of the scholars with
numerous popular polls conducted throughout the second half of the twentieth
century[1],
you will find out that only less than twenty presidents of the total 44 appear
at least once among the more noteworthy top ten lists of presidential greatness.
Furthermore, If you count only those presidents, who have been named both by
the scholars and the people, which I would, for I hold their opinions to be of
equal merit, the number turns out to be exactly 14 - 8 from the 20th century
and 6 from an earlier time period. These 14 all-time favourites are (in order
of appearance) George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison,
Andrew Jackson, Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Franklin
D. Roosevelt, Harry S. Truman, Dwight D. Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B.
Johnson and Ronald Reagan. For each of these candidates, being in this sample
means that they are still cherished in living memory, and that is why, in the
end, my choice should be one of these presidents. However, I need to devise
additional criteria for their final comparison.
It is difficult, however, to come
up with such universal criteria, which would be fair to all the presidents,
because each of them had found themselves in a different historical situation,
dealing with unique domestic and foreign issues. Moreover, many of the pre-selected
presidents differed strongly in their overall philosophies, located anywhere
between the abstract extremes of pure pragmatism and pure idealism. While it is
easy and unproblematic to say that victory in a war, crisis resolved or economy
flourishing are positive and their opposites are negative, it is much harder to
appreciate the intrinsic value of the ideals promoted by a president. And last
but not least, how much can a single man, albeit very powerful, really make
happen all by himself, and how much of any president’s „accomplishments“ are
merely the faceless forces of history and society playing out? Giving credit
where credit is not due would not be fair at all – many successes or crises are
merely inherited.
After carefully weighing all the
factors mentioned above, I have chosen John Fitzgerald Kennedy, the 35th
president of the United States of America, to be the greatest. In terms of
specific military achievements, by resolving the infamous Cuban Missile Crisis,
he succesfully prevented a nuclear war. No American president before or since,
or any other world leader for that matter, had to seriously and directly face
the threat of that magnitude – possibility of a man made global apocalypse and
mass extinction (if you don’t count global warming, which I personally find
questionable in some fundamental respects). True, Nazis were a lethal adversary, but they couldn’t actually
destroy the world. As for the rest of the „baddies“, the terrorists of today
would be lucky to get their hands on a single nuke, larger nuclear powers have
since the CMC learned to be careful about the use of nuclear weapons and mostly
keep slowly disarming them, and until the WWII the technology didn’t even
exist. And JFK never authorised the use of nuclear weapons, despite having the
option. And enemies. And the precedent in the bombings of Hiroshima and
Nagasaki winning a war. Instead, in no small part thanks to JFK, the conflict between the USA
and the USSR moved in a constructive direction by increased engangement of the
USA in a „space race“ with the (later achieved) goal of sending manned
expedition to the Moon.
Apart from getting the closest to
actually saving the world, Hollywood style, and laying a foundation for a major
scientific progress in the future, JFK managed to become more than just a man
through the tragic circumstances of his death in combination with the ideals he stood for in
life. A close parallel presents itself in regards to Abraham Lincoln, who also
saved the nation, set the USA on the course for future prosperity and then,
too, died as a result of an assassination, which only immortalized him as a symbol
of American ideals, inspiring all who came after him. What differentiates the
two in my opinion is that in the case of JFK, the stakes were higher. I am not
saying that the civil war was easy to win or that it didn’t matter, quite the
contrary. But what Abraham Lincoln is to America, John Fitzgerald Kennedy is to
the world. Later, Ronald Reagan has been credited for „winning“ the cold war,
but I find that to be the case of an undue credit. The USSR was already
defeated long before it ultimately collapsed, in terms of economic efficiency,
scientific advancement as well as the appeal of cultural ideals, represented by
the competing nations. Not to mention that Reagan‘s influence on the American
economy, though bringing the appearance of prosperity for a time, is having
detrimental effects in the present, and not only on the American economy.
However, JFK was definitely not a
perfect and infallible human being. Human beings simply do not possess these
characteristics. I find it therefore much more prudent to judge their
intentions and their efforts first, before considering their failings. JFK was
maybe the biggest casanova of all the American presidents, allegedly even
having an extramarital affair with Marilyn Monroe. Which is something that many
of his fellow Americans, and especially catholics and other Christians, find
highly contemptible. It is not inconceivable, though, to see it as yet another
reason to admire JFK, either. In the military context, JFK sanctioned
operations leading to the initial Cuban Bay of Pigs fiasco and the eventual
American loss in Vietnam. But in the context of the era, what else should the
Americans have done? Firstly, however trite and clichéd it may sound, you
cannot make an omelete without breaking some eggs, and secondly, the
alternative was to simply not oppose the spread of the Soviet influence and
return to the prior American isolationism. Which didn’t exactly work out for
the rest of the world from one world war to another. If trying to save the
world is not a case of ends justifiyng the means, or a good cause to provoke
your potential enemies, nothing is.
There were also other less
significant missteps in foreign affairs, as well as other minor victories;
JFK’s reluctance to address the racial inequality issue, later in his last year
of life ballanced by a strong newfound commitment; disparity between the
dazzling rhetoric and much more sober reality, nevertheless inspiring current
and future American generations to radically transform American society;
alleged JFK’s ties to mafia through his campaign funding, but also a decent
measure of economic prosperity brought by JFK’s policies, fighting self-serving
corporate interests and promoting education. And so I could continue on and on[2].
In many cases the value assigned to a given decision varies based on the
beholder’s partisan or personal perspective – for instance, for many people the
whole space race was pointless waste of tons of money, while others (including
me) cannot disregard the revolutionary technologies it brought and what the
exploration of space means for the whole humanity. What is the most striking to
me about JFK is that his example demonstrates more than any other, how a single
politician, an ordinary man chosen by the people, can have a profound influence
on events insurmountably larger than any single man, or even a single nation.
As the JFK’s first lady,
Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy, put it in an interview shortly after JFK’s
assassination, the JFK’s „reign“ was „an American Camelot“[3].
The Kennedies were in fact, and still are, considered to be something of an
American royal family, which naturally brings just as many negative
connotations as positive ones. The un-americanism of royalty in the American
political context set aside, the myth of Camelot has a deep significance for
the whole English-speaking culture. The legend of Arthur and his knights is not
about a monarch lording over his subjects, it is an opposite of that – it is
the epitome of the rule of the highest ideals, the ruler being equal to the governed
and doing everything for their benefit, full of hope for the improvement of the
mankind’s condition. As JFK himself said, demonstrating that he does indeed
subscribe to this philosophy (and that he chooses to follow in Lincoln's footsteps), „My fellow Americans, ask not what your country
can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.“ He also said, somewhat
prophetically, that a „Man may die, nations may rise and fall, but an idea
lives on.“[4]
The bottom line is that JFK’s
idealism transcended the „American
dream“ beyond mere nationalism of the founding fathers and wartime presidents,
just like beyond the mere pursuit and export of material security or
prosperity, which was the main agenda of the more pragmatic, peacetime
presidents. Thanks to what JFK in his words „made happen“ and made America stand
for, everyone in the world wanted to be an American. And that is why, in my humble opinion, John
Fitzgerald Kennedy is the greatest president in the history of the United
States.
Sources:
Historical rankings of Presidents of the United States. In: Wikipedia: the free encyclopedia [online]. San Francisco (CA): Wikimedia Foundation, 2001- [cit. 2012-10-12]. Dostupné z: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_rankings_of_Presidents_of_the_United_StatesJohn F. Kennedy. In: Wikipedia: the free encyclopedia [online]. San Francisco (CA): Wikimedia Foundation, 2001- [cit. 2012-10-12]. Dostupné z: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_rankings_of_Presidents_of_the_United_States
WALLECHINSKY, David a Irving WALLACE. President John F. Kennedy: Pros of His Presidency. Trivia-library.com [online]. [cit. 2012-10-12]. Dostupné z: http://www.trivia-library.com/a/president-john-f-kennedy-pros-of-his-presidency.htm
WALLECHINSKY, David a Irving WALLACE. President John F. Kennedy: Cons of His Presidency. Trivia-library.com [online]. [cit. 2012-10-12]. Dostupné z: http://www.trivia-library.com/a/president-john-f-kennedy-cons-of-his-presidency.htm
Tina Sinatra: Mob Ties Aided JFK. CBS. Cbsnews.com [online]. 2009 [cit. 2012-10-12]. Dostupné z: http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-18560_162-238980.html
Why Is The Kennedy Presidency Called "Camelot"?. Enotes.com [online]. October 26, 2000 [cit. 2012-10-12]. Dostupné z: http://www.enotes.com/history/q-and-a/why-kennedy-presidency-called-camelot-287666
John F. Kennedy Quotes. Brainyquote.com [online]. [cit. 2012-10-12]. Dostupné z: http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/j/john_f_kennedy.html
[1] Wikipedia 2012 A
[2] All the mentioned facts and opinions are surmised for example in Wikipedia 2012 B, trivia.library.com A and B and Cbsnews.com 2009.
[3] Enotes.com 2000.
[4] Quotes are taken from Brainyqoute.com.
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