Why does the memory of John F. Kennedy exert such an enduring hold on the imaginations of so many Americans?
There are, to be sure, numerous factors that conjoin memorably in our thinking of his unfinished life: his relative youth; his visionary leadership; his notable speaking and writing ability; his manifest energy; his trademark personal style; his skill of connecting with the world through the universal, personalizing medium of television; his personification of the high tide of postwar American self-confidence and faith in the future.
All that is knitted together with a golden thread: Kennedy’s mastery of the art of becoming.