June 1, 2007
Kennedy at 90 II Posted by John Steele Gordon at 09:55 AM EST I agree with Alexander Burns that a major part of the Kennedy mystique, like that of Achilles, lies with his early death. We did not see him grow old, and so he is forever young, vital, and unblemished by the vicissitudes of life, which have a nasty habit of crowding into the later years. This idea, that early death is not without its compensations, has engaged the thoughts of some of the greatest poets. John Keats hints at it in “Ode on a Grecian Urn.” And A. E. Housman addresses it directly in perhaps his most famous poem, “To an Athlete Dying Young.” I imagine President Kennedy, who was a literate man, knew them both well. Regarding alternative histories had any of a thousand minor events thwarted Lee Harvey Oswald, I am reminded of a historical anecdote I have heard often but cannot vouch for. I hope it is true, but it seems a little too good to be so. Someone is supposed to have asked Mao Tse-tung, several years after Kennedy’s assassination, how the world would have been different had it been Nikita Khrushchev who had been killed rather than Kennedy. Mao puffed on his cigarette for a minute and then said, “I don’t know, but I don’t think Aristotle Onassis would have married Mrs. Khrushchev.”
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