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By Root 1467 0

their conscious decisions. In his first 1,036 days in office, no issue had so defined his presidency as had Cuba. At the Bay of Pigs he had suffered his most pathetic defeat, and a year and a half later he had stood strong against the choice of war during the missile crisis. He then chose to continue the attempt to bring Communist Cuba down in the dangerous folly of a secret war. Even at this moment one of Castro’s would-be assassins was meeting in Paris with several CIA officers and receiving a Papermate pen with a tiny hidden needle that he was to use to prick Castro’s skin, killing him with poison. Cubela said that he preferred to do the deed with “two high-powered rifles with telescopic sights” that could be used to kill Castro from a distance.

Kennedy was riding through the clamorous streets because he chose to be there. Everything he had done led him to Dallas. He was a politician, and he needed Texas money. The top was down because he had made a covenant with the people, and in a democracy the people saw their leaders. Kennedy carried the seeds of his own death within his pained, weakened body, and if he had not let his maladies haunt his days, he surely would not let the fear of assassination haunt him either. All of his life he contemplated courage and its meaning. For him, riding on a sun-dappled day in an open limousine through the streets of Dallas was not restless disregard of the dangerous circumstances. It was the essence of his life.

The speech that he was about to give at the Texas Trade Mart evoked many of the themes of his life. What made it different was that in recent months he had grown distressed at the growing hysteria on the dark edges of American politics. There were critics who called strength weakness and slandered their enemies as traitors. Kennedy was a politician running for reelection, and it was natural that he would not look kindly at those who condemned his stewardship of America, but this was far deeper than a calculated ploy. Since his youth, he had seen that the strength of democracy was its people and the leaders they freely chose. “America’s leadership must be guided by the lights of learning and reason, or else those who confuse rhetoric with reality and the plausible with the possible will gain the popular ascendancy with their seemingly swift and simple solutions to every world problem.” He condemned the far Left and its apparent assumption “that words will suffice without weapons,” and the warriors of the far Right who thought that “peace is a sign of weakness.”

“We, in this country, in this generation, are—by destiny rather than choice—the watchmen on the walls of world freedom,” he was to say. “We ask therefore that we may be worthy of our power and responsibility, that we may exercise our strength with wisdom and restraint, and that we may achieve in our time and for all time the ancient vision of ‘peace on earth, goodwill toward men.’ “It was an uneasy, difficult destiny, and Kennedy professed it passionately, even if he did not always listen to the words he spoke or act on the ideals he believed.

As the limousine moved past the cheering crowds, the Secret Service men looked out on the restless, happy faces, searching for one with a hard, purposeful look. They were trained to look away from the president, to look into the faces of the crowd, to look up at the buildings, to look for a malevolent glint of steel, but never to look into Kennedy’s eyes.

Ahead stood the Texas Book Depository, and on the sixth floor crouched a man with a cheap rifle and a dream of immortality. The next moment has become so much a part of the American psyche that it is as if we are all riding beside the first lady in the back seat of that black Lincoln. We shiver soundlessly at a loss beyond loss. In that instant all the certitudes and easy optimism of American history were blown away.

32

Requiem for a President

The last of the flocks of geese had glided across the gray sky flying south. The Kennedys had already sent the Honey Fitz to Florida; if it had not been for the traditional