Caroline Kennedy’s op-ed article “A President Like My Father,” appearing in The New York Times on Jan. 27, launched the news media into orbit around a central theme: The torch has been passed from John F. Kennedy to Barack Obama.
From all appearances, the essay by JFK’s daughter was a heartfelt and sincere endorsement of Obama. “Sometimes it takes a while to recognize that someone has a special ability to get us to believe in ourselves, to tie that belief to our highest ideals and imagine that together we can do great things,” she wrote. “In those rare moments, when such a person comes along, we need to put aside our plans and reach for what we know is possible. We have that kind of opportunity with Sen. Obama.”
Only diehard Bush loyalists are likely to dispute Caroline Kennedy’s assertion that in the present day, “we need a change in the leadership of this country — just as we did in 1960.” And with quick follow-up endorsements of Obama coming from other close relatives of the martyred president, most notably his brother Sen. Edward Kennedy, the public gravitation of so many Kennedys to the Obama campaign was surely a legitimate major news story.
But much has been lacking in the media coverage. In a word: History.
When accepting the endorsement of Sen. Kennedy during a widely publicized joint appearance on Jan. 28 at American University, Obama said that President Kennedy brought exemplary values to US foreign policy. Such claims reflect widely held beliefs in the United States. But rather than simply promoting those beliefs as equivalent to fact, the news media should open public discourse to the historical record.
John Kennedy campaigned for the presidency in 1960 while falsely claiming that the United States was on the short end of a “missile gap” with the Soviet Union. He pursued a foreign policy — in Asia, Africa and Latin America — that kept the US government on the side of the landed gentry and the rich elites. Often that meant sabotaging and destroying grassroots movements that were seeking fundamental change for social justice.
Only weeks ago, Philip Agee died. As the author of “Inside the Company: CIA Diary,” Agee drew on his experiences working for the US Central Intelligence Agency in Latin America — a stint that included the years of the Kennedy administration. Like countless other sources, the Agee book provides chilling examples of how the CIA — as a direct arm of the US government’s foreign policy — engaged in a range of dirty tricks and worse.
The maneuvers included payoffs, forgery and murder.
The targets included labor-union organizers and other foes of US-backed oligarchies. With the rationale of stopping Communism, the Kennedy foreign policy was a continuation of Uncle Sam’s efforts to thwart movements for democracy. In the process, to mention just one country, JFK aligned Washington with rich autocrats at the top of the government in South Vietnam.
But in 2008, for the US news media, such factual matters would muddy the waters.
Instead, a clear plot line prevails: John F. Kennedy was the epitome of democratic idealism. End of story.
It’s an uplifting fairy tale. And no one can argue that JFK lacked eloquence or style. His rhetoric was soaring, and his speechwriters could turn rapturous phrases about democracy and freedom.
Yet the role of news media should extend past the repetition of comfortable myths. Journalists should contrast what most people believe with what the relevant facts can tell us.
Myths about the past have routine ways of buttressing myths about the present. That was the case when — 16 years ago — the US news media supplied vast quantities of hype about Bill Clinton when he ran for president in 1992. News outlets obligingly glorified the snippet of blurry footage that showed a young Bill shaking hands with President Kennedy in the Rose Garden. Again and again, we heard that the torch was being passed.
Now, we’re told again, the torch is in transition. It can be heard as a beautiful story. But the role of journalism should involve less entertainment and more information.
— Norman Solomon’s latest book, “Made Love, Got War: Close Encounters with America’s Warfare State,” was published this fall.
