The President of the United States is an institution.
The president is seemingly omnipresent, omnipotent and omniscient.
Basically, there’s a reason why every parent encourages their child to become president someday. It’s a one-way ticket toward being immortalized.
But today of all days, we are reminded that the president is, in fact, none of those things, after all.
The president is mortal. The president is fallible. Being the president isn’t an easy job.
John F. Kennedy may have balked at civil rights progress. He may have been a dishonest husband. He may have been an imperialist.
I can accept these things. He was larger than life, but he certainly wasn’t the greatest president to occupy the Oval Office.
What I can’t accept is his death.
A whole generation of Americans remember where they were on the day Kennedy was killed.
For our generation, though, maybe we’ll remember when we first learned what took place in Dallas almost a half-century earlier. I sure do.
Scholars often cite the assassination as a pivotal point in Americans’ loss of innocence, but my own experience doesn’t jive with that assumption.
I remember seeing the pain on my dad’s face while he recounted the event to me, though I was still in early elementary school. I couldn’t understand why or how anyone could kill the president.
We’ve grown up in a time when no legitimate, public assassination attempts have taken place against a U.S. President.
The Kennedy assassination may have created an open wound that struggled to heal throughout the 1960s, but I think that wound has mostly scarred over in the 50 years since.
We’re naive again about the American Presidency.
Just look at what Americans think of President Barack Obama. Some say he’s ushering in Armageddon. Others cry with joy at the mere sight of the man.
I hear friends call President Obama a lot of things — favorable and otherwise.
But what I don’t hear said about President Obama is perhaps even more important than his health care proposal or his foreign policy.
He’s a father, a husband and a friend.
He’s human.
And what took place 50 years ago today in Dallas could easily happen again.
My father is a lifelong Democrat who is unabashed about his respect and admiration for John F. Kennedy.
Rarely do I hear him speak about JFK like how I hear most discuss the president. JFK’s policies never mattered to my dad, so much as his ability to relate to his fellow man or woman.
To my dad, JFK was just another person, like you or I, who just happened to be president.
There’s a person behind the institution.
Sam Howard is a sophomore studying journalism and a staff writer for The Post. Do you think Americans find their presidents relatable? If so, email Sam at sh335311@ohiou.edu.
