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To get over with the obvious: I was in first grade when the announcement came over the Liberty Elementary School PA system. The President had been shot. School was canceled. We got on the school buses, in the orderly fashion we had been frequently instructed to take.

My father came home shortly thereafter. His Federal office had also been shuttered.

The next four days were spent at the black and white TV, with nonstop tragedy. The non-network stations might have kept with regular programming (I don’t recall), but we didn’t watch it.

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The network morning shows and the news sites and the magazines are full of reassessments of the Kennedy legacy.

As usual, almost all of the pontificators talk about Kennedy as the face of youth, Kennedy as the bold public speaker, Kennedy as the inspiration to young lives.

But what is the Kennedy legacy, really?

Granted, he turned out to only have 34 months in office.

But still, there should be more than just a rugged face, a carefully crafted public image, some sex stories, some rumors, and some conspiracy theories?

He certainly got the ball rolling toward that whole Vietnam debacle.

He stalled on many of the day’s simmering civil-rights issues until almost the end of his shortened term (knowing that a Dixiecrat/GOP coalition in Congress would likely stall any meaningful race legislation), eventually leaving them to the next guy.

He totally blew the Bay of Pigs fiasco, but made up for it during the Cuban missile crisis.

He started an investigation of organized crime, but was hampered by his own alleged family connections to same.

In the end, it might just have been that the American “ship of state” was (and certainly now is) too bulky to effectively re-maneuver or re-steer toward progress (it’s easy, however, to careen that “ship” toward the rocky shoals of disaster).

Perhaps speeches and a public image are all a President can employ for good.