43 ... and 46

John Fitzgerald Kennedy died 43 years ago.  He was 46 years of age.  And, to close a small circle of numbers, he became President of the United States at the age of 43.  Like many other boomer-bloggers, I’ve marked this awful anniversary before ... you can read those posts here and here.

If he’d lived, Kennedy would now be 89 years old.  That’s an advanced age, but even if he were with us today JFK wouldn’t be the oldest living President—Jerry Ford, who became the Chief Executive almost 11 years after Kennedy died, was born nearly four years earlier.  In fact, the 35th President was born after the 36th (Lyndon Johnson), the 37th (Richard Nixon), the 38th (Ford), and the 40th (Ronald Reagan).

The first President born in the 20th century, as he so memorably reminded us in his inaugural address:

We dare not forget today that we are the heirs of that first revolution. Let the word go forth from this time and place, to friend and foe alike, that the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans—born in this century, tempered by war, disciplined by a hard and bitter peace, proud of our ancient heritage, and unwilling to witness or permit the slow undoing of those human rights to which this nation has always been committed, and to which we are committed today at home and around the world.

was born 17 years into the century, and almost 27 years after the last 19th-century-born President.

As we all know, only Theodore Roosevelt became President at a younger age than Jack Kennedy, and of course TR wasn’t elected at that tender age.  Surprisingly, fully six other Presidents (all elected) took the oath of office before reaching their 50th birthdays—Polk, Pierce, Grant, Garfield, Cleveland (the first time), and Clinton.

In addition to memorializing Kennedy on the anniversary of his assassination, I suppose the other small point I’m making in this miniature history lesson is that, of all the arguments surrounding the possibility that Barack Obama might run for President in 2008, pointing to his so-called “youth” is completely without merit.  Senator Obama was born on August 4, 1961, making him 45 years old at the moment.  On January 20, 2009, he’ll be 47, older than Ulysses S. Grant and Bill Clinton were on Inauguration Day.  And also older than John Kennedy was on the day he died.  There are plenty of valid arguments against an Obama-in-2008 run, but his age isn’t one of them.

On the other hand, he would mark off another milestone for me.  In 2004, John Edwards was the first serious Presidential candidate younger than I am.  Barack Obama, were he to run for President in 2008, would be the first candidate too young to have conscious memory of the seminal event of my historico-political life, the death of John Fitzgerald Kennedy.

On this date, 43 years ago.

Comments

All who remember him miss him. I read his old speeches, remembering the cadence of his words.

I miss him most when I think of his successors. I was just coming of age during his administration, and I came to think of him as “normal”; only later was it clear how unusual he was. Imagine having a president who had won a Pulitzer Prize; who held a live press conference every week; who admitted his errors. Mostly, though, he was an optimist: He spoke of social justice, and meant something tangible.

We will laugh again, but we will never be young again.

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