This author and blogger was a sophomore in 1963, when John F. Kennedy was assassinated on November 22, 1963.
It was the most stunning event of my life until the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
The Kennedy assassination transformed American politics dramatically, both in good ways and bad ways.
It brought about the possibility of the greatest period of reform since Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal, with Lyndon B. Johnson and the Great Society.
But it also brought on a devastating long term war in Vietnam, and the beginning of disillusionment with government at all levels.
Had Robert F. Kennedy survived and won the Presidential Election of 1968, instead of being assassinated after winning the California primary in June 1968, the potential for more great reform and change, and to avoid the Presidency of Richard Nixon, would have existed.
WIth RFK’s death, after the earlier tragedy of JFK, America was put into a permanent decline in hope and optimism for the next forty years, as even the election of Jimmy Carter in 1976 and Bill Clinton in 1992 did not revive the hopes of the Kennedy legacy.
Instead, we had Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush cause great regression in so many ways, as Richard Nixon had done earlier.
Barack Obama was a bright light, but faced great opposition, and the horrors of Donald Trump as his succession!
Joe Biden, who has a bust of RFK behind him on the left in all photos when he is sitting at his desk, is trying to revive the Kennedy legacy of hope and promise, and has made a good start.
But it is clear the two Kennedy assassinations in the early and late 1960s have left a permanent scar on the nation!