The man wasn’t perfect by any stretch of the term, but those who followed will certainly not be remembered with any great sympathy, although they occasionally did some good things, if only by accident, rather than design.

The rest of the day and that weekend were a blur of black and white TV images — Air Force One and the casket, Oswald and Ruby, the slow parade, the muffled drums, “Eternal Father…” the eternal flame — and the scary knowledge that the world had changed and not for the better.

America has the capacity for greatness. Our constitutional governmental structure is designed to make greatness possible. Kennedy made a worthy attempt at it: for all his imperfections, he deserves much of the praise he receives today. It is my sincere hope that we can recover the drive toward genuine representative government, and toward that leadership in pursuit of genuine international cooperation which we once considered an ideal. May the memory of John F. Kennedy inspire us as we pursue that goal.