by Scott Farris
Hart, who lost the 1984 nomination to Walter Mondale, stumbled again in 1988 because of allegations of infidelity, as he discovered the news media in the 1980s did not give politicians the pass Kennedy had received in the 1960s. But Democrats still tried to capture the Kennedy magic in 1988 by nominating the governor of Kennedy’s home state of Massachusetts, Michael Dukakis, who then selected a Texan, Senator Lloyd Bentsen, to be his running mate in a reprise of the Kennedy–LBJ “Boston-Austin Axis.” Alas for the Democrats, Dukakis lacked Kennedy’s inspirational qualities, while Bentsen lacked the political machinery (and chicanery) that allowed LBJ to carry Texas for the Democrats in 1960.
Oddly enough, it was the attempt of the Republican vice-presidential nominee, Indiana senator Dan Quayle, to draw a parallel between himself and Kennedy that led to one of the few memorable moments of the 1988 campaign, when Bentsen rebuked Quayle with the withering put-down, “Senator, I served with Jack Kennedy, I knew Jack Kennedy, Jack Kennedy was a friend of mine. Senator, you’re no Jack Kennedy.”
The party’s failure in 1988 did not stop Democrats from trying anew to rekindle the Kennedy aura in 1992. A key moment in the campaign film biography of Bill Clinton was grainy footage of a teenaged Clinton shaking hands with Kennedy while in Washington for Boys Nation. Like Hart, Clinton claimed it was Kennedy who inspired him to a career in public service (although friends testified that Clinton had been planning a political career virtually since kindergarten). Clinton biographer John Harris said it was “the Kennedy example more than any other that had defined [Clinton’s] political sensibility,” and that “JFK’s ghost hovered over the entire week” of Clinton’s inaugural festivities. At that week’s concert at the Lincoln Memorial, Kennedy’s inaugural address was replayed endlessly on a gigantic video screen, while Clinton watched and mouthed the words of a historic speech he had clearly memorized.
For his own inaugural address, Clinton drove his speechwriters to try to duplicate the inspirational tone, particularly the call for a generational change in leadership that had been the core of Kennedy’s address. But Clinton’s request that Kennedy-era icon Bob Dylan headline the concert at the Lincoln Memorial was a sign that perhaps Clinton’s concept of generational change was a nostalgic return to Kennedy’s 1960s, not an advance to the 1990s.
Clinton’s vice president, Al Gore, had first run for president himself in 1988, when he was but thirty-nine years old. Gore was obsessed enough about being seen as the next Kennedy that he took the time to make lengthy private notes of the many parallels he saw between himself and Kennedy: They were young candidates from political families; both were Harvard graduates; both had known the tragedy of a sibling’s death; and Gore viewed his own hawkish foreign policies and centrist domestic policies as evocative of Kennedy’s political philosophy. Gore even borrowed Kennedy’s 1960 campaign theme, about the need to get the country moving again after the supposed somnolence of a presidential administration led by an older man. “After eight years under Ronald Reagan, the oldest president, Americans may feel as they did in 1960 that it is time to turn to youth, vigor, and intellectual capacity,” Gore said in announcing his candidacy in the Senate Caucus Room—the same room in which Kennedy had announced his candidacy twenty-eight years before. Gore even asked Kennedy counselor and speechwriter Theodore Sorensen to review and edit his announcement speech.
In 2004, the Democrats turned to another candidate, John Forbes Kerry, who liked to note that his home state, his religion, and his initials were the same as Kennedy’s. Like Hart, Kerry seemed to work hard to capture Kennedy’s gestures, hairstyle, and supposedly vigorous lifestyle, though unlike Hart, Kerry had actually known the Kennedys from his youth, having briefly dated Jackie Kennedy’s half sister and having once gone sailing with Kennedy himself. Kerry said he decided to enlist in the Navy and volunteer for duty in Vietnam when he heard a former Kennedy aide speak at Yale and tell students that serving in Vietnam was one way to help fulfill the Kennedy legacy. Once in Vietnam, Kerry sought command of river patrol boats known as “Swift” boats because they evoked the PT boats that Kennedy had commanded during World War II. Kerry, of course, also served as the junior senator from Massachusetts—junior to Kennedy’s youngest brother, Edward Kennedy.
But it was in 2008 that the most overt comparison was made between a Democratic presidential candidate and Kennedy—a comparison made by the Kennedy family itself. It was considered enormous news when Senator Edward Kennedy endorsed Barack Obama over Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination. At forty-six, Obama possessed Kennedy’s youth and also his aura of “cool,” not only in terms of “hipness” but also in his emotional detachment.
There was also a sense that the Democrats’ nomination of Obama, the first truly serious African-American presidential candidate, was the fulfillment of JFK’s supposed legacy on civil rights, and Obama’s eloquence on the stump seemed to promise a return to the rhetorical heights achieved by Kennedy in his most memorable speeches. Observing the enormous crowds that thronged to see and hear Obama, Kennedy’s daughter, Caroline Kennedy, joined her uncle in endorsing Obama as heir to the Kennedy legacy, writing in a New York Times guest editorial, “I have never had a president who inspired me the way people tell me that my father inspired them.”
While Caroline Kennedy believed the Democrats had finally found the “new Kennedy” in Obama, Reagan’s children believe the Republicans’ search for a “new Reagan” is sheer folly.
Reagan’s elder son, Michael, himself a conservative radio commentator and author, said Republicans do a “disservice” to themselves and the party by seeking to “out-Reagan themselves.” He added, “There was only one Ronald Reagan, thank God.” During an interview on the occasion of the hundredth anniversary of her father’s birth, Reagan’s daughter Patti Davis added that her father “would be amused and puzzled at people trying to imitate him. Because he never imitated anybody.”
Yet, as conservative commentator Jennifer Rubin of the Washington Post has noted, Republicans “spend endless energy and time debating who is the natural heir to Ronald Reagan.” Among the GOP faithful, Reagan is hailed as “Ronaldus Magnus”—Ronald the Great—an appellation even placed on the Republican National Committee’s website as if Reagan were the Holy Father. For some, he is. “He was a giant,” said Reagan speechwriter and biographer Peggy Noonan, adding her own italics for emphasis.
From the time he was succeeded by his vice president, George H. W. Bush, every Republican candidate for president has sought to don Reagan’s mantle. When asked to name their favorite president or the president they most hope to emulate, every Republican candidate states, for the record and without a moment’s hesitation, that it is Reagan. Neither Lincoln nor Teddy Roosevelt, and certainly not Eisenhower or Nixon, ever receives a mention.
Bob Dole unsuccessfully sought to assure his party and the nation he was Reagan’s heir in 1996, even though he chose as his running mate Jack Kemp, one of the originators of the “supply side” theory of economics popularized during Reagan’s tenure. George W. Bush became the front-runner for the Republican nomination for president in 2000 when an influential column by Rowland Evans and Robert Novak argued that Bush was less like his own father than he was the natural heir of Reagan.
John McCain endlessly invoked Reagan during his 2008 campaign, but it was his running mate, Sarah Palin, who led author and conservative columnist Ann Coulter, among many, to suggest that with a little work, Palin “could be another Ronald Reagan.” McCain won the 2008 nomination in part by highlighting the apostasy of fellow challenger Mitt Romney, who in his younger days had offered mild criticism of the Reagan presidency. A McCain ad stated, “If we can’t trust Mitt Romney on Ronald Reagan, how can we trust him to lead America?”
Romney committed no Reagan heresies in 2012 and won the nomination, but it was his young running mate, Wisconsin congressman Paul Ryan, who earned the adjective that has been made from Reagan’s name, with
one commentator saying of Ryan’s acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention, “He was Reaganesque in speaking with conviction, framing big issues as a clear contrast, and sounding cheerful and optimistic.”
Ron Reagan, Reagan’s younger son and, like his older brother also a radio commentator but a professed liberal, has suggested his father has become a “fetish object for the right,” but it is more than that; Reagan and everything associated with him is a talisman for conservatives to the point that one commentator, only mildly in jest, suggested that the initials of the 2012 Republican ticket—“R/R” for Romney/Ryan—“sounds like the right RR,” which boded well for the ticket’s chances.
It did not; Obama won reelection. But it has not stopped the ongoing search, or the speculation that perhaps in 2016 or 2020 or some year after that, the “new Reagan” will emerge.
The quest has become oppressive, Jennifer Rubin argued in a 2013 essay titled “Tear Down This Icon,” and threatens to crush the Republican Party under its weight. An entire generation of voters has only the vaguest memories of Reagan, and conservatism needs new solutions and new leaders for a new era, but Rubin said the GOP seems interested only in leaders who are no more than “groundskeepers for a Reagan monument.” If the Republican Party chooses to remain “a Ronald Reagan historical society,” it cannot remain a force in national politics, she said.
There is a reason why the two major parties continue to search for a new Kennedy or a new Reagan, and why so many presidential contenders offer themselves as such. It is because they believe it’s what the American people want. And there are surveys that show just how remarkably popular Kennedy and Reagan remain.
Eight times from 1999 through 2011, Gallup polled Americans on the question of who they considered to be our nation’s greatest president, and only three names emerged as top vote getters: Lincoln, Kennedy, and Reagan. Lincoln and Reagan each topped the list three times; Kennedy did so twice. Other surveys confirm this ongoing public admiration—even adoration—for Kennedy and Reagan. A 2000 ABC News survey found that more respondents listed Lincoln as our greatest president than any other, followed closely by Kennedy, with Reagan finishing fourth behind FDR. A 1999 NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll asked who was the most important president of the twentieth century; FDR was the most frequent choice, but Kennedy and Reagan were second and third, far outpacing Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Harry Truman, and Dwight Eisenhower. When a 2009 Gallup poll specifically matched Reagan and Kennedy against the three men historians typically rank as our greatest presidents—Washington, Lincoln, and FDR—Reagan and Kennedy outpaced all three.
What is particularly remarkable about Kennedy and Reagan’s popularity is that it is increasing with the passage of time, not decreasing. A 1999 Gallup survey found only 56 percent of those responding thought Reagan would be remembered as an “outstanding” or “above average” president, but when the same question was asked in 2012, that number had increased to 69 percent. Meanwhile, a 2010 Gallup survey discovered that Kennedy’s retrospective job approval rating was an astounding 85 percent, which was up 2 percent from a 2002 survey; Reagan’s retrospective job approval rating was also an extraordinary 74 percent. No other recent past presidents are so fondly remembered, or their records so positively reappraised.*
* While in office, Kennedy, like Eisenhower before him, enjoyed remarkable job approval ratings that are almost unimaginable in today’s political climate. Kennedy enjoyed an average job approval rating of 70 percent, with a low of 56 percent in September 1963 as he was losing white Southern support on the issue of civil rights. Reagan’s average job approval rating was a respectable 53 percent, with a high of 68 percent, achieved twice, and a low of 35 percent, reached in January 1983 during the depth of a recession when unemployment hit 10 percent.
The increasing admiration for Kennedy is particularly remarkable given the constant barrage of new revelations regarding his often-sordid sex life that should have badly sullied his reputation, but which has not—even among Republicans, who, based on a 2011 Gallup poll, place the Democrat Kennedy as our fourth greatest president. Democrats are not as generous in their opinion of the Republican Reagan—he is not among their presidential top five. Harvard University professor of government Harvey Mansfield attributes Reagan’s lesser performance among Democrats to his being a “partisan” president in the mold of FDR. “To like Reagan without reservations,” he said, “you have to be of his party. Otherwise, you can admire certain of his qualities, but much of what he did you will not approve of.”
Reagan was also a more polarizing president while in office than Kennedy was, which explains why one ABC News poll taken a few years after he left office found Reagan simultaneously ranked both the greatest president in history and the second worst, behind only Nixon.
As time passes, there are signs that Reagan’s bipartisan appeal is growing. Reagan is now often lauded by Democratic leaders as exemplifying the type of pragmatic conservatism they find lacking in the supposedly more extreme Republican Party of the twenty-first century. Just as Reagan used Kennedy’s tax cut legislation to bolster support for his own proposed income tax rate cuts in 1981, so President Barack Obama and other Democrats have cited and applauded Reagan for his willingness to sometimes raise taxes in order to reduce federal deficits or fund worthy government programs. The use of Reagan by Obama and other Democrats underscores their awareness of his enduring influence and popularity.
But if Jennifer Rubin is correct, and an entire generation of voters has no memory of Reagan, who left office a quarter century ago as of this writing—and how many more must have no memory of Kennedy, who was killed a half-century ago—then how can their popularity be increasing? One answer must certainly be that there are miles of film and television footage of both men, and they were masters of the medium. They also seem forever young. This makes sense with Kennedy because he was assassinated while still only forty-six years old; we never saw him grow old. But Reagan was seventy-seven when he left office, yet he was preternaturally young for his age, still vigorous to the end of his term—and then he disappeared from public view in 1994 when he was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. So, in our memories and on the tapes that are replayed, we never really see Reagan as a truly old man.
But it is not just their handsome, youthful, vigorous appearance that remains stuck in the American memory. Kennedy and Reagan were both men of ideas, and they were men of accomplishment. Much of the latter half of this book will be about those ideas and those accomplishments, though if historians have their way, it will not be enough for either man to earn a place on Mount Rushmore.
His image should be carved on Mount Rushmore. In America, such a statement is how we assign greatness to a president. Yet the four faces carved in the South Dakota Black Hills rock—George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, and Theodore Roosevelt—were not chosen by an act of Congress or a special commission devoted to assessing presidential greatness. They were chosen by the sculptor in charge of the project, Gutzon Borglum, who said he never claimed “to be selecting the four greatest men in American history”; he mostly just wanted to create something big and grand that celebrated the greatness of America.
When Borglum began sculpting in 1927, the only controversial choice was Roosevelt, who had been out of office less than twenty years and seemed too fresh a figure for history to make a judgment on his place in the American saga. But the Idaho-born Borglum just liked Roosevelt, whom he considered a fellow Westerner by virtue of TR’s time as a cowboy in the North Dakota Badlands, and he knew Roosevelt would be a popular choice. Over time, historians have validated Borglum’s decision; in surveys of historians, Roosevelt is regularly ranked as one of our greatest presidents.
Historians, however, do not share the public’s enthusiasm for either Kennedy or Reagan. Kennedy had openly pondered how he would be judged by history, but Reagan professed not to care. As he told his political
director Ed Rollins in 1985, “First of all, the history will probably get distorted when it’s written,” Reagan said. “And I won’t be around to read it.”
The ranking of presidents by historians is a relatively new academic pastime. The first coordinated effort by historians to rank our presidents was organized by Harvard professor Arthur Schlesinger Sr. in 1948, with the results printed in Life magazine. In that survey, seventy-five historians concluded Lincoln was our greatest president, with Washington second and FDR third, which was likely consistent with public opinion then as well. Schlesinger polled his colleagues again in 1962 (while his son, historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr. was working as an aide to Kennedy), and the rankings remained the same: Lincoln, Washington, and Roosevelt.*
* Indeed, young Schlesinger was brought in to the Kennedy White House to serve as an in-house historian who was expected to chronicle the Kennedy years, presumably favorably. Whenever an event of expected historic significance would occur, Kennedy would call out to Schlesinger, “There’s one for the book!” Reagan, meanwhile, despite his professed supposed lack of interest in historical judgment, brought in Pulitzer Prize–winning biographer Edmund Morris in 1985, not as paid staff but with extraordinary access as his designated authorized biographer.
Other scholars and institutions have since mimicked Schlesinger’s surveys, including one organized by Schlesinger’s son in 1996, though what had previously been considered little more than a parlor game had evolved into a serious affair. Since the rankings are now viewed not just as historical reflection but also as commentary on contemporary events and persons, there is vigorous debate as to whether having too many liberal or too many conservative academics biases a survey.
A cumulative average of the nearly fifteen surveys taken of scholars by various institutions and media outlets over the past twenty years rank Kennedy as roughly the eleventh-best president in our history—commendable and the highest of any president who served one term or less, but still outside the top quartile. Reagan ranks six spots lower, in the seventeenth slot, though, again, the judgments fluctuate wildly, depending on who is organizing the survey.