Politicians From Boston

"We shall never know many of the facts about the... [U.S. invasion of Panama], nor shall we know the true extent of the massacre. Defense Secretary Dick Cheney claimed a death toll between five hundred and six hundred, but independent human rights groups estimated it at three thousand to five thousand, with another twenty-five thousand left homeless... Noriega was arrested, flown to Miami, and sentenced to forty years' imprisonment; at that time, he was the only person in the United States officially classified as a prisoner of war... The world was outraged by this breach of international law and by the needless destruction of a defenseless people at the hands of the most powerful military force on the planet, but few in the United States were aware of either the outrage or the crimes Washington had committed... White House phone calls to publishers and television executives, congress people who dared not object, lest the wimp factor become their problem, and journalists who thought the public needed heroes rather than objectivity."

"Listening to George Bush, toward the end of his speech, read the poetry written by Ray Price with the gestures scripted by speech coach Roger Ailes, I was struck anew by the elaborate charade of emperor's clothing in which the American press is so supinely complicit. Bush has no more sense of poetry than he does of grammar. After the speech there was much division in the pundit corps over whether Bush had just "hit it out of the park" (both sports and war metaphors were much in vogue) or whether we had just heard a load of nasty political drivel without a single redeeming idea. But all hands were solemnly pretending we had just heard George Bush, the nation's most incoherent speaker, stand up and make a fifty-eight-minute political address. George Bush without a Teleprompter can scarcely produce an intelligible sentence. I've been listening to him since 1966 and must confess to a secret fondness for his verbal dyslexia. Hearing him has the charm and suspense of those old adventure-movie serials: Will this man ever fight his way out of this sentence alive? As he flops from one syntactical Waterloo to the next, ever in the verbless mode, in search of the long lost predicate, or even a subject, you find yourself struggling with him, rooting for him. What is this man actually trying to say? What could he possibly mean? Hold it, I think I see it!...The fact is that unless someone else writes a speech for him, the President of the United States sounds like a border-line moron. But the media sit around pretending that he can actually talk-can convince, inspire and lead us."

"But setting aside his relative inaction during the recession, Bush’s long record of supporting policies that benefit the wealthy at the expense of average Americans cemented his legacy. He was no patrician statesman whose example can lead us out of our current dark times. Rather, he was a foot soldier for the ruling class who played a substantial role in bringing us to where we are today. His role as a chief architect of U.S. neoliberal trade policy through ushering in the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) helped to exacerbate global inequality and fuel the loss of over one million manufacturing jobs in the United States and Canada."

"From the beginning of his presidency, Bush built on the legislative victories of the Reagan Revolution, spearheading wealth redistribution programs benefiting the corporate class — and his own family. In 1989, Bush bailed out the heavily deregulated Savings and Loan industry, to the tune of about $124.6 billion in taxpayer funded money. The New York Times later published a report detailing how Bush’s son Jeb had personally benefited from the bailout, noting that the federal government paid ​“more than $4 million to make good” on a loan Jeb had used to buy a Miami office building."

"Bush also fought against raising the minimum wage. In 1989, he vetoed a bill raising the minimum wage to $4.55 an hour. His own version of the Fair Labor Standards Amendments which he signed into law that year, raised the minimum to $4.25, significantly lower than the original legislation. Bush’s greatest assault on labor rights came with the passage of NAFTA, which he spearheaded and signed just a month before he left office. The trade deal faced widespread resistance from progressives and labor unions, but Bush’s commitment to neoliberal trade policy was unbending. In the Latin American Perspectives essay ​"NAFTA and the Corporate Redesign of North America," Kim Moody explains that the ​"Bush administration, backed by a number of authoritative think tanks and business organizations, attempted to mute opposition to NAFTA by producing an expert consensus that the agreement was a win-win solution.""

"President Trump’s path to the White House rests in part on the working-class misery engendered by decades of neoliberal trade policies. During the 2016 campaign, Trump ran on an anti-free trade platform. Rather than proposing the dissolution of the entire existing trade system, Trump told voters he’d use his expert negotiating skills to secure a ​"better deal" for them. He cast the blame for inequality not on the greed of capital, but on ​“illegals” desperate and eager to take away jobs away from Americans. While Trump’s rhetoric is appallingly racist and his policies have only benefited the rich, his ascent — along with the rise of far right populism in Europe — helps illustrates the extent of the damage dealt by Bush and other architects of neoliberal trade policy."

"The President made his move. He nominated a man as different from Thurgood Marshall as George Bush differs from Mahatma Gandhi...Among those who detested Marshall and who generally despise Black men there was a willingness to promote Clarence Thomas because Clarence Thomas was not the point: The point is to homogenize the Supreme Court. If someone with Black skin will serve that purpose, then fine! But we, the people, must not yield to judgment without representation. If we yield, there will be no justice. And without justice, believe me, there will be no peace."

"in 1988 George H. W. Bush came to power promising action on acid rain."

"I would often surprise people by citing George H. W. Bush as a recent president whose foreign policy I admired. Bush, along with James Baker, Colin Powell, and Brent Scowcroft, had deftly managed the end of the Cold War and the successful prosecution of the Gulf War."

"I almost wish the Gulf War had gone on a little longer. The first propaganda was so powerful, excessive, overbearing, but a lot of those yellow ribbons would have been frayed, removed from lapels and doorways-and not only because Americans were being killed. Bush never did get rid of the wonderful "Vietnam Syndrome." For that reason, the government knew that it had to be a short war."

"Poor George. He can’t help it. He was born with a silver foot in his mouth."

"Regime change in Iraq wasn't a new idea. It's not something that flew into D.C. with George W. Bush. George Herbert Walker Bush invented regime change in Iraq and Bill Clinton inherited it, and ran with it. The CIA made four concerted efforts to assassinate Saddam Hussein under Clinton's leadership. So it's not like this was a passive program; it was an active program."

"Way back in 1988, on July 3, the U.S.S. Vincennes, a missile cruiser stationed in the Persian Gulf, accidentally shot down an Iranian airliner and killed two hundred and ninety civilian passengers. George Bush the First, who was at the time on his"

"During the parade, George H.W. Bush came over and talked with Carolyn and me at length, as proud a father as could be. It was not quite two years earlier that I'd had the pleasure of celebrating his seventy-fifth birthday with him in what was dubbed Operation Spring Colt, a parachute jump from twelve thousand feet with the parachuting team. What few people realize is that shortly after he jumped from the aircraft, the former President had trouble getting into position and began to tumble uncontrollably. It was only through the extraordinary aerial prowess of one of the Golden Knights, the Army's elite parachute team and a member of the U.S. Freefall Association that they were able to steady the guest of honor so that his parachute could properly deploy, and that happened only at the last possible moment. Once safely on the ground, the former President was aglow, joking with us on how much more pleasurable it was than the first time he'd jumped, which was over the Pacific after his bomber had been disabled by Japanese gunfire in World War II."

"Before the game, they said the V.P. was going to pinch-hit, and he requested me to pitch to him. He even called me "Spahnie" this afternoon. Talk about a thrill."

"Yale teammate Dick Tettelbach has seriously compared him to Keith Hernandez as a defensive first baseman. "Absolutely superb. A real fancy Dan.""

"So the punchline for George Bush is this, you would have wanted him on your side. He never lost his sense of humor. Humor is a universal solvent against the abrasiveness of life. He never hated anyone — he knew what his mother and my mother always knew: hatred corrodes the container it’s carried in."

"The success of this Government, and thus the success of our Nation, depends in the last analysis upon the quality of our career services. The legislation enacted by the Congress, as well as the decisions made by me and by the department and agency heads, must all be implemented by the career men and women in the Federal service. In foreign affairs, national defense, science and technology, and a host of other fields, they face problems of unprecedented importance and perplexity. We are all dependent on their sense of loyalty and responsibility as well as their competence and energy.""

"By the way, right at that time Birmingham had exploded, and the Negroes in Birmingham—remember, they also exploded. They began to stab the crackers in the back and bust them up 'side their head—yes, they did. That's when Kennedy sent in the troops, down in Birmingham. So, and right after that, Kennedy got on the television and said "this is a moral issue.""

"President Kennedy did not send troops to Alabama when dogs were biting black babies. He waited three weeks until the situation exploded. He then sent troops after the Negroes had demonstrated their ability to defend themselves. In his talk with Alabama editors Kennedy did not urge that Negroes be treated right because it is the right thing to do. Instead, he said that if the Negroes aren't well treated the Muslims would become a threat. He urged a change not because it is right but because the world is watching this country. Kennedy is wrong because his motivation is wrong."

"On 13 March 1962, a US military memo was circulated outlining Operation Northwoods: plans to initiate a wave of false flag terrorist attacks in order to justify military intervention in Cuba. Declassified documents describe the proposed plan: "We could develop a Cuban Communist terror campaign in the Miami area, in other Florida cities and even in Washington… The terror campaign could be pointed at Cubans refugees seeking haven in the United States. We could sink a boatload of Cubans en route to Florida (real or simulated.) We could foster attempts on lives of Cuban refugees in the United States... Exploding a few plastic bombs in carefully chosen spots." President John F Kennedy declined to implement the plan and removed its author, General Lemnitzer, as Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, causing a rift with some military officials who perceived him as being soft on Cuba. This was despite the fact that Kennedy had authorised a failed invasion of Cuba at the Bay of Pigs as well as Operation Mongoose – another covert plan to destabilise the Cuban government which included numerous terrorist attacks on Cuban soil."

"John Kennedy, in his youth and good looks, brought a new generation to replace the dour faces of the Eisenhower administration, and added social glamour and greater public-relations skills to the presidency's power. He was the first president for whom television- particularly his witty and informative news conferences, broadcast live- became a calculated political instrument. In his term, too, the president's responsibility for managing the national economy was acknowledged and accepted. Kennedy's brief tenure, coinciding with the apogee of American power in the world, made him a sort of young emperor; and his murder was doubly shocking because Americans, by 1963, considered their president somehow preeminent over mere mortals, as superior as the nation itself, thus lacking ordinary human vulnerability."

"He was in my view the most dangerous cold warrior that we have had since the end of World War II."

"I was charmed and delighted by Kennedy personally, and certainly he was intelligent. But any man who gave us an invasion of Cuba, a missile crisis, and the war in Vietnam in 1,000 days — give him another 1,000 days, and we would be irradiated atoms in space. No, he was a mistake as president."

"After Kennedy was killed, and nobody asked, you know, what was Kennedy's real policy on Vietnam? Well... he was going to pull out of Vietnam. He was very clear about it, and that's what people get confused. Johnson, Lyndon Johnson, who took over the office went right to war quickly... this is... where we went to a war on a false basis. It was a lie, another lie, and that war was a disaster... Unfortunately, the same forces that made that war happen continued in our life, and they controlled us and pushed us into another war and another war and another war..."

"As one of our interviewers... says in the film, once you kill a sitting president in high noon in Dealey Plaza and blow his head off, you're not going to go back to normal and say, "Oh, wow! We found this whacky--this crazy lone nut who killed him." It doesn't work. It doesn't really work as a narrative for this country. What happened was much deeper than that, and there was so many inconsistencies, so many holes in the Warren Commission... The point is that you cannot remove legitimacy from government like that and get away with it, and the people knew something was wrong. They didn't know exactly what was wrong, but they sensed that something had gone astray, like anarchy has set in. Some method of control was being exerted because forces that were more powerful than one person were able to kill him, forces that were somewhat, I mean, clearly related to intelligence agencies, to possible military agencies, and these forces came to dominate American life..."

"The most shocking part [about the assassination of JFK] is...the sequence of the shooting, the timing,... the wounds and the autopsy. It's all quite shocking when you...think seriously about it. It doesn't make any sense the way they described it. That's the most shocking part of the case. When you start to investigate Oswald, of course there are a thousand interesting things that come up. The files on Oswald were much more closely supervised by the CIA then we knew at the time and were omitted by the Warren Commission. They treated it like a routine investigation, but it was hardly so. We draw a line between the cover-up and the assassination. The cover-up is filled with another cast of characters. That is to say, the Warren Commission itself, who is in charge of the investigation; and the main man, Alan Dulles, the ex-chief of the CIA and one of the most powerful figures in government. He was fired by Kennedy, as were all his top officials, two years earlier. He was put in charge of the investigation and buried certain information. That's part of the cover-up."

"There was a civil war in this country... Kennedy provoked such hostility and hatred. His death was cheered in the South because of his support for Martin Luther King. He was moving to change things on all fronts. He was starting to end the Cold War. He made a deal with Khruschev and Russia in 1962 to end the missile crisis, and he furthered the deal when he signed the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty in 1963. He installed the Hot Line. He... described the Soviets for the first time in American history as mortals, like us, who care about their children. He seemed to have an expanding vision of the world, much like Gorbachev did in Russia in the '80s. People in power are afraid to ask the obvious questions. From Day 1, they accepted the cover story that Oswald did it [assassinated JFK] alone. Oswald said he was the patsy. A lot of people believed him, but not the establishment. Since that day, the media has chanted the mantra that Oswald did it alone. But the American public, which has been brainwashed with that for 28 years, has never accepted it. They smell a rat."

"What are the similarities and differences between Presidents Johnson and Kennedy? Both are political pros who exude confidence and, generally speaking, embrace the same broad philosophies. But Kennedy was an idealist; Johnson is a pragmatist. Kennedy was a voracious reader, a stickler for detail; Johnson has little patience to read, he hits at the heart of a problem rather than get enmeshed in detail. Kennedy had little luck with Congress; Johnson's 32 years' experience on Capitol Hill caught him how to handle lawmakers. Kennedy's foreign-policy style had a continental touch; Johnson's has the flavor of a Texas barbeque."

"Jack ought to show a little less profile and a little more courage."

"Yet another universally held conviction [among Europeans is that] Americans make it a point of honor to elect only mental defectives as Presidents. From the Missouri tie salesman Harry Truman to the Texas cretin George W. Bush, not to mention the peanut farmer Jimmy Carter and the B-movie actor Ronald Reagan, the White House offers us a gallery of nincompoops. Only John F. Kennedy, in the eyes of the French, rose a little above this undistinguished bunch, probably because he had the merit of having married someone of French extraction; naturally, this union could not fail to raise President Kennedy's intelligence to at least average level — but doubtless still too high for his fellow citizens, who never forgave him and ended up assassinating him."

"Shouldn't someone tag Mr. Kennedy's "bold new imaginative" program with its proper age? Under the tousled boyish haircut it is still old Karl Marx — first launched a century ago. There is nothing new in the idea of a government being Big Brother to us all. Hitler called his "State Socialism" and way before him it was "benevolent monarchy.""

"Despite the limited nature of Kennedy's philosophical transformation after the Cuban missile crisis, his American University speech nevertheless had an extremely favorable impact on the Soviet leadership. Krushchev told Averell Harriman that it was the best speech delivered by a U.S. president since Franklin Roosevelt. In response, on June 20 the Soviet signed a "hot line" agreement, which established a direct teletype link between Moscow and Washington. The agreement was designed to reduce the risks of an accidental nuclear was as well as ease tensions during international crises."

"The Cuban missile crisis also had beneficial consequences. The close brush with nuclear war helped create a climate for productive arms control negotiations, which had not existed since the abortive Paris summit of May 1960. Attempting to reduce tensions with the West, Krushchev, on December 19, 1962, sent Kennedy a personal letter inviting him to intensify the effort to conclude a nuclear test ban treaty. With the humiliation of the Bay of Pigs fiasco erased by his astute performance during the Cuban missile crisis, and sobered by the close superpower approach to nuclear war, Kennedy accepted Krushchev's invitation. Six months later, Kennedy delivered the most conciliatory speech on the Soviet Union of his career. In a commencement address at American University on June 10, 1963, he called on Americans to reexamine their attitudes toward the Soviet Union. "In the final analysis," he told his audience, "we all inhabit this small planet... And we are all mortal." Kennedy called on the American people to support his effort to conclude a nuclear test ban agreement. It would be an initial step toward preserving the life of the planet. As a sign of good faith in the ultimate success of the test ban talks, Kennedy announced that the United States would not conduct atmospheric nuclear tests as long as the Soviet Union employed similar restraint."

"Kennedy was praised nationwide, even by his Republican critics, for his masterly handling of the Cuban missile crisis, a response Schlesinger characterized as a "combination of toughness and restraint." Yet few discussed what could have happened had he failed. Historian Louise FitzSimons points out what many preferred not to think about: "In the flush of success and relief from danger, Kennedy was determined to force Krushchev's total capitulation- no matter the cost." During the height of the crisis, the president himself placed the likelihood of disaster at "somewhere between one out of three and even," and lamented that the world's children might not live out their lives. Ironically, the enhanced short-term prestige that Kennedy experienced in the wake of the Cuban missile crisis only produced greater long-term insecurity for his country. The humiliation Krushchev suffered at the hands of Kennedy during the missile crisis contributed to his removal from power in October 1964. The new Soviet leadership, headed by Leonid Brezhnev, was determined to avoid a repetition of the humiliation Krushchev had experienced. Beginning in early 1965, the Kremlin embarked on a massive expansion of the Soviet nuclear arsenal that would enable the Soviet Union to achieve nuclear parity with the United States by the end of the decade. in addition, Kennedy's triumph in the Cuban missile crisis contributed to the development of what historian William J. Medland has called an "arrogance of power," a belief that the United States had the communists on the run. This new attitude helped to explain the growing U.S. involvement in Vietnam."

"In the opinion of another historian, Bruce Miroff, Kennedy's reaction to Krushchev's blustering revealed an acute inferiority complex, which the president manifested by a perverse need to prove his leadership capabilities. As a result, rather than ignoring or minimizing Krushchev's threats, as Eisenhower usually did, Kennedy personalized them and converted them into tests of will, in the process manufacturing crises that need not have been. "There was really nothing in that [Eisenhower] era comparable to the Berlin crisis of 1961 and the Cuban missile crisis of 1962," Miroff observes, both of which represented the closest approaches to a superpower nuclear war during the Cold War. For whatever reasons, whether they were primarily ideological, political, or psychological- and all were important- in formulating his initial response to the Soviet Union Kennedy chose to emphasize Krushchev's bellicose actions rather than his friendly gestures. Only after Kennedy had proved to the Soviet leader that he was not soft on communism would diplomacy make any headway during his presidency."

"Krushchev's public rhetoric also made Soviet-American reconciliation difficult, if not impossible, early in Kennedy's presidency. On January 6, 1961, the Soviet leader declared his country would support "wars of national liberation" in the underdeveloped world. Krushchev's declaration, wrote the president's confidante and historian Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., "alarmed Kennedy more than Moscow's amiable signals assuaged him." Although Kennedy was willing to negotiate an end to the Cold War, the Third World challenge which Krushchev threw at him would have to be dealt with first."

"Nikita Krushchev's eagerness to challenge U.S. interests around the world contributed to the spread of the Cold War in the Middle East, East Asia, Latin America, and even Africa. Krushchev's aggressiveness was motivated not only by a desire to take advantage of an opportunity to expand Soviet influence but also by the perceived Soviet need to fend off a growing challenge by China for leadership of the communist movement. Krushchev's willingness to engage the United States in a nuclear arms race was motivated primarily by his realization that the Soviet Union, despite the continuing development of its nuclear arsenal, was still vulnerable to an American nuclear strike. He undoubtedly believed that the best defense is a good offense and that a forward policy would conceal Soviet nuclear weakness while serving to pressure the West to resolve issues, such as Berlin, to the satisfaction of the Soviet Union. Krushchev's aggressiveness also made Soviet-American reconciliation impossible during the 1950s."

"Less than a year after Lee Harvey Oswald fired from the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository, the Warren Commission formed by President Lyndon Johnson completed its investigation into that day. The commission found what it politely called "certain shortcomings and lapses from the high standards which the Commission believes should prevail in the field of Presidential protection." Many dealt with the Secret Service's advance work. No one thought to check the buildings along the motorcade route. There were no formal procedures for working with local law enforcement agencies. Marc Ambinder, who is editor at large of The Week and has written about the agency, says the Secret Service of 50 years ago was ill-prepared to deal with the gregarious Kennedy. "It's a combination of the fact that the Secret Service playbook was outdated and they had never really encountered a president before John F. Kennedy who loved to mix it up, and loved to get in the middle of huge crowds, and fed off the energy of huge crowds," Ambinder says. After the assassination, the Secret Service made some immediate changes. Open limousines were out. And it began taking a more aggressive approach to its advance work. "Not criticizing what happened in 1963, but I think it's fair to say that protections changed quite a bit, and how we do things on a day-to-day basis," says Special Agent Brian Leary, who serves as a spokesman for the agency."

"The extent to which the world was being weighed down by millions of the old still in power, getting older without losing their power, was not nearly as present in consciousness in the 1960s as it is in the 1970s. The temporary hope of young leadership, who ruled in new countries some fifteen years ago, brightened by the youthful looking President John Kennedy, dwindled as the whole world mourned for him as a symbol of youth destroyed."

"Kennedy would have ordered nuclear retaliation on Cuba — and perhaps the Soviet Union — if nuclear weapons had been fired at United States forces."

"And none so poor to do it reverence. What happened? Surely something did, for that portrait of Kennedy can hardly be recognised from the version we have today. He is now widely thought of, when he is thought of at all, as either an earlier model of President Carter, all goodwill and muddle, or a belligerent adventurer likely to follow the Bay of Pigs fiasco with an unprovoked nuclear strike on Moscow. Was it all show and froth, good looks and rhetoric? I do not believe it. In the first place, Kennedy was not a liberal in the Carter mode (let alone the Dukakis version); it would almost be closer to the reality to say that he was a liberal in the sense of the Manchester school."

"Kennedy's posthumous reputation has undergone an extraordinary series of metamorphoses. As could have been predicted, the first revaluation of his character and achievement was almost as depressing as the conspiracy theories; his histoire amoureuse was being touted around before the first blade of grass had grown on his grave, and soon every whore in America was announcing that he had enjoyed her favours."

"As President, Jack was a glory on the mountaintop. The New Frontier of which he dreamed touched deep and responsive chords in the American character. He could make lightning strike on the things he cared about. He was an irresistible force that made immovable objects move. He taught us to redeem the promise of health care for America's senior generation, to whom the nation owes so much of its present greatness. He taught us to control the atom, to end the threat of nuclear annihilation, so that we could leave our children a safer world. He taught us to make freedom ring in America --freedom for black and brown as well as white; freedom to live and work and vote; freedom to sit at a public lunch counter, to learn in a public classroom, to play football on a public field. He added a new dimension in foreign policy by tapping the idealism of our youth. He led us beyond our planet and launched us toward the moon. And in our own hemisphere, he summoned us to a new alliance of effort for the benefit of those less fortunate than ourselves. That is the way it was with Jack. There was a sense of progress and adventure, a rejection of complacency and conformity. There was a common mission, a shared ideal, and above all the joy of high purpose and great achievement. Jack believed that America's promises, that challenges are opportunities in disguise, that our spirit can soar again."

"My brother was the first President of the United States to state publicly that segregation was morally wrong. His heart and his soul are in this bill. If his life and death had a meaning, it was that we should not hate but love one another; we should use our powers not to create conditions of oppression that lead to violence, but conditions of freedom that lead to peace."

"But if there was one thing that 'President Kennedy stood for that touched the most profound feeling of young people around the world, it was the belief that idealism, high aspirations, and deep convictions are not incompatible with the most practical and efficient of programs — that there is no basic inconsistency between ideals and realistic possibilities, no separation between the deepest desires of heart and of mind and the rational application of human effort to human problems."

"Courage is the virtue that President Kennedy most admired. He sought out those people who had demonstrated in some way, whether it was on a battlefield or a baseball diamond, in a speech or fighting for a cause, that they had courage that they would stand up, that they could be counted on."

"The greatest leader of our time has been struck down by the foulest deed of our time. Today John Fitzgerald Kennedy lives on in the immortal words and works that he left behind. He lives on in the mind and memories of mankind. He lives on in the hearts of his countrymen. No words are sad enough to express our sense of loss. No words are strong enough to express our determination to continue the forward thrust of America that he began. The dream of conquering the vastness of space — the dream of partnership across the Atlantic — and across the Pacific as well-the dream of a Peace Corps in less developed nations — the dream of education for all of our children — the dream of jobs for all who seek them and need them — the dream of care for our elderly — the dream of an all-out attack on mental illness — and above all, the dream of equal rights for all Americans, whatever their race or color — these and other American dreams have been vitalized by his drive and by his dedication. And now the ideas and the ideals which he so nobly represented must and will be translated into effective action."

"John Fitzgerald Kennedy, 35th President of the United States, has been taken from us by an act which outrages decent men everywhere. He upheld the faith of our fathers, which is freedom for all men. He broadened the frontiers of that faith, and backed it with the energy and the courage which are the mark of the Nation he led. A man of wisdom, strength, and peace, he moulded and moved the power of our Nation in the service of a world of growing liberty and order. All who love freedom will mourn his death. As he did not shrink from his responsibilities, but welcomed them, so he would not have us shrink from carrying on his work beyond this hour of national tragedy. [...] I earnestly recommend the people [...] to pay their homage of love and reverence to the memory of a great and good man."

"The day Kennedy arrived at Love Field airport, the front page of the Dallas Morning News was bordered in black. The right-wing radicals and John Birchers who dominated the city despised Kennedy. The president's brother, Attorney General Bobby Kennedy, had been using the Justice Department to advance the cause of civil rights. And President Kennedy wanted to reduce or even eliminate subsidies for the oil industry, which infuriated the Dallas oilmen. "You know, it was a kind of Camelot of the right," Wright says. "George Wallace came to Dallas to announce his decision to run for president, for instance. We had Barry Goldwater, who was a senator in Arizona, but he was always in Dallas." After the assassination, a grieving nation turned its anger upon Dallas. The feeling was that if the city leaders didn't actually pull Lee Harvey Oswald's trigger, they practically loaded the gun. For the first time in its swaggering existence, Dallas was ashamed of itself."