Today would have been the 90th birthday of President John Kennedy. The moment gives me pause to think about what different times we now have than during the Camelot years.
What did the assassination of the young President in Dallas that horrible November day take from us? It is possible that we lost much more than a political leader; we likely have had a very different past and present. It is arguable that the debacle in Viet Nam would not have been escalated to the level that Lyndon Johnson oversaw. Without the divisiveness of that conflict tearing the fabric of the nation, would we have avoided the massive deaths now enshrined on a black wall in Washington? Would the young lives taken by the Ohio National Guard at Kent State University be with us still? Would America have elected former Vice President Richard Nixon to the Presidency on the promise of a "secret plan" to end the war? Would President Kennedy have led a full life as an elder statesman? We will never know the answers to these questions, but it is interesting to speculate.
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