The Kennedy Half-Century: The Presidency, Assassination, and Lasting Legacy of John F. Kennedy

by Larry J. Sabato

Overview

An original and illuminating narrative revealing John F. Kennedy's lasting influence on America, by the acclaimed political analyst Larry J. Sabato.

John F. Kennedy died almost half a century ago-yet because of his extraordinary promise and untimely death, his star still resonates strongly. On the anniversary of his assassination, celebrated political scientist and analyst Larry J. Sabato-himself a teenager in the early 1960s and inspired by JFK and his presidency-explores the fascinating and powerful influence he has had over five decades on the media, the general public, and especially on each of his nine presidential successors.

A recent Gallup poll gave JFK the highest job approval rating of any of those successors, and millions remain captivated by his one thousand days in the White House. For all of them, and for those who feel he would not be judged so highly if he hadn't died tragically in office, The Kennedy Half-Century will be particularly revealing. Sabato reexamines JFK's assassination using heretofore unseen information to which he has had unique access, then documents the extraordinary effect the assassination has had on Americans of every modern generation through the most extensive survey ever undertaken on the public's view of a historical figure. The full and fascinating results, gathered by the accomplished pollsters Peter Hart and Geoff Garin, paint a compelling portrait of the country a half-century after the epochal killing. Just as significantly, Sabato shows how JFK's presidency has strongly influenced the policies and decisions-often in surprising ways-of every president since.

Among the hundreds of books devoted to JFK, The Kennedy Half-Century stands apart for its rich insight and original perspective. Anyone who reads it will appreciate in new ways the profound impact JFK's short presidency has had on our national psyche.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781620402818
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Publishing
Publication date:	10/15/2013
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	640
Sales rank:	210,360
File size:	11 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.

About the Author

Larry J. Sabato is the founder and director of the renowned Center for Politics at the University of Virginia. He has appeared on dozens of national television and radio programs, including 60 Minutes, Today, Hardball, and Nightline. He has coanchored the BBC's coverage of U.S. presidential returns and inaugurations, and has authored or edited more than a dozen books on American politics, including the highly praised A More Perfect Constitution-Why the Constitution Must Be Revised: Ideas to Inspire a New Generation. His other books include Feeding Frenzy, about press coverage of politicians; The Rise of Political Consultants; and Barack Obama and the New America. Sabato runs the acclaimed Crystal Ball website, which has the most comprehensive and accurate record of election analysis in the country. In 2001, the University of Virginia gave him its highest honor, the Thomas Jefferson Award. He lives in Charlottesville, Virginia.

Enrollment is now open for a free JFK course online with Professor Sabato at www.coursera.org/course/kennedy
The founder and director of the renowned Center for Politics at the University of Virginia, Larry J. Sabato has been called "the Dr. Phil of American politics." He has appeared on every national television and radio program, including 60 Minutes, the Today Show, Hardball, The O'Reilly Factor, and Nightline. A Rhodes scholar, he received his doctorate in politics from Oxford, and has been on the faculty of UVA since 1978. He is the author of countless articles and some twenty books, including Feeding Frenzy: Attack Journalism&American Politics, The Rise of Political Consultants: New Ways of Winning Elections, and most recently The Sixth Year Itch: The Rise and Fall of George W. Bush's Presidency, and he coanchored the BBC's coverage of the 2006 election. In 2002, the University of Virginia gave him its highest honor, the Thomas Jefferson Award, given annually to one person since 1955.

Enrollment is now open for a free JFK course online with Professor Sabato at www.coursera.org/course/kennedy

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments ix

Introduction: The Birth of a Legacy 1

1 "President Kennedy Died at 1 P.M. Central Standard Time" 6

2 "All the Marbles" 34

3 Victory Without a Mandate 58

4 The Torch Is Passed 74

5 Steel at Home and Abroad 98

6 Europe, Space, and Southeast Asia 118

7 Echoes from Dealey Plaza 132

8 11/22/63: Questions, Answers, Mysteries 160

9 Rounding Up the Usual Suspects: The Assassination's Puzzle Palace 186

10 Examining the Physical Evidence: Old and New Controversies 208

11 Inevitability: The Assassination That Had to Happen 231

12 The Assassination and the Kennedy Legacy 240

13 "Let Us Continue": Lyndon Johnson-Pretender to the Throne 257

14 Crossed Swords: Camelot vs. the Great Society 275

15 "Tin Soldiers and Nixon Coming": JFK's Repudiation and Revival 299

16 The Carters and the Kennedys: Democratic Hatfields and McCoys 322

17 Reagan and Kennedy: Opposites Attract 337

18 Clinton Grabs Kennedy's Torch 370

19 G. W. Bush: Back to the Republican Kennedys 390

20 Full Circle: The Twinning of Barack Obama and John Kennedy 395

21 The People's President 406

Conclusion: A Flame Eternal? 419

Notes 429

Index 583

Editorial Reviews

09/09/2013
On the 50th anniversary of J.F.K.’s assassination, Sabato, professor of political science at the University of Virginia and frequent cable news pundit, offers a clear-eyed evaluation of the Kennedy political legacy. He knowledgeably addresses the early Kennedy career, highlighting the hard-fought Nixon-Kennedy presidential race and the much-discussed debates. Throughout, Sabato notes the differences between politics circa 1960 and now, noting that Kennedy’s Catholicism was controversial and his well-received 1960 speech promising the separation of church and state made contemporary Catholic politician Rick Santorum “want to vomit.” Sabato also attempts to clear the murky waters surrounding the Kennedy assassination and readers will be interested in his discussion of the vexing question of whether Oswald operated alone, and if not, who else was involved. Sabato is extremely critical of the Warren Commission Report, pointedly judging it a failure, and his synthesis of existing knowledge about the assassination promises to include “new revelations” presumably supportive of his skepticism. He also discusses concrete successes and failures: the Berlin crisis, the Bay of Pigs, and the Cuban Missile Crisis. The final third of Sabato’s book traces the influence of Kennedy on his presidential successors to round out a timely, well-documented, and measured view of our 35th president. (Nov.)

Publishers Weekly

In The Kennedy Half-Century, Larry Sabato not only sheds new light on the assassination, but, and more importantly, masterfully explains the enduring legacy of Kennedy and his 1000 days in office.” —John Grisham

“Larry Sabato has compiled a mountain of research that is sure to be the go-to reference on the assassination for years to come. He seems to have examined any and everything connected to Kennedy's death and brought new insight and understanding to that awful weekend when America lost its innocence.” —Bob Schieffer, CBS News

“The Kennedy Half Century is a Master Class in discovering and evaluating John F. Kennedy as a man,a President and a game-changing figure in American life. The cultural change Kennedy brought to the nation is the real and original contribution Larry J. Sabato brings to the never-ending debates about the 35th President.” —Richard Reeves, author of Portrait of Camelot: A Thousand Days in the Kennedy White House

“If you think you know everything about the Kennedy assassination, you haven't read Larry Sabato's book. I urge you to do so!” —Julian Bond

“The Kennedy Half-Century is full of new insights and revelations about a President whose tragic death left so many wondering, "What if?" This is a fascinating examination of the policies he put in place and how they influenced the nine Presidents who followed him into the oval office.” —Katie Couric

“Ambitious… Sabato is the most prominent political scientist of our age…. a valuable contribution to the literature of the assassination.” —James Rosen, National Review

“In The Kennedy Half Century: The Presidency, Assassination, and Lasting Legacy of John F. Kennedy, Sabato shows how Kennedy was transformed from a charismatic, if flawed, man into a mythological figure on the scale of Abraham Lincoln. Sabato goes far beyond Kennedy’s presidency to explore how his legacy has affected every president since, particularly Lyndon Johnson and Ronald Reagan. Most important, Sabato relies on “cutting-edge audio technology” to debunk a key finding of a House committee in 1979 that an open microphone on a Dallas police officer’s motorcycle picked up the sound of a fourth shot — suggesting the involvement of a second shooter.” —The Columbus Dispatch

“A timely, well-documented, and measured view of our 35th president.” —Publishers Weekly

From the Publisher

09/15/2013
More than the other books this reviewer has assessed here, Sabato's (director, Ctr. for Politics, Univ. of Virginia; A More Perfect Constitution: Ideas To Inspire a New Generation) work gratifyingly describes the ways JFK's assassination has affected both our historical memory of his life and our estimation of his legacy. Sabato includes a helpful overview of the Kennedy administration, followed by a detailed review of the many prominent assassination theories. He skewers the Warren Commission for allowing itself to be pressured into concluding that Lee Harvey Oswald was the lone gunman; although Sabato endorses no specific assassination theory, he considers a conspiracy involving Oswald and organized crime, angry CIA officials, or anti-Castro Cubans to be plausible. He concludes with coverage of the way Kennedy's presidential successors struggled with and made use of his myth-driven record. Interestingly, he believes that of the presidents succeeding Kennedy, it was Ronald Reagan who inherited the Kennedy mystique. Reagan, like Kennedy, was a charismatic orator, possessed a sense of humor that connected with the public, and advocated conservative politics similar to Kennedy's. (See, in this context, Ira Stoll's JFK, Conservative.) Intriguingly, Sabato promises that new revelations about the assassination will be forthcoming at a press conference on October 22, 2013. This thought-provoking title will pique the interest of Kennedy fans and historians of the era.—KH

Library Journal

2013-10-01
Half a century later, Lee Harvey Oswald's bullets still reverberate, as Sabato (Politics/Univ. of Virginia; Pendulum Swing, 2012, etc.) recounts in this thoughtful consideration of John Kennedy's life and afterlife. The author provides a smart précis of JFK's political career, which had plenty of odd moments: his taking on the followers of the Protestant positive-thinking guru Norman Vincent Peale, for instance, which tied in to the anti-Catholic prejudices of the day, and his subsequent decision to "reduce the impact of the religious issue by going into the lion's den" to speak before a convention of evangelical ministers. Yet Sabato's greater interest is to examine the events of November 22, 1963, and their effects. No breathless conspiracy theorist, he nonetheless offers plenty of fuel for readers who subscribe to the notion that Oswald was not alone. Why, unlike Lyndon Johnson's vehicle, did a Secret Service agent not ride on the rear bumper of JFK's car? Doing so would alone have blocked Oswald's shot. The central point of the book comes midway, when Sabato writes, "It has taken fifty years to see part of the truth clearly. John F. Kennedy's assassination might have been almost inevitable." Sabato hazards the view that, of Kennedy's many enemies, one who particularly wanted to see him dead was Jimmy Hoffa, the labor leader, who speculated about shooting the president somewhere in the segregationist Deep South. Ronald Reagan, for his part, laid out the "case for a Communist conspiracy" by observing both Oswald's connections to Cuba and the Soviet Union and the fact that in 1962, the Cold War went close to becoming dangerously hot. Whatever the case, Kennedy served at a time of considerable danger to any president, with a roiling civil rights crisis, religious prejudice, a fraught international climate and "a shockingly casual approach to presidential security." Provocative reading for this semicentennial year.

Kirkus Reviews