Bryce Zabel's FOR WHAT IT'S WORTH

Time's New Man-of-the-Year: Still JFK After All These Years

Last month, President John F. Kennedy would have turned 90 years old, had he lived. Even so, JFK is enjoying a banner year of publicity, especially for a dead man.

This week, it's Time magazine joining the fray, giving Kennedy the cover ("What We Can Learn from JFK") and a whopping 18 full pages of print and photo space. He gets a mostly adoring view from the writers who call him "A Warrior for Peace" and an "Icon of American Elegance."

Time joins a veritable publishing bonanza trading on the fascination with JFK-ness. There's Vincent Bugliosi's Reclaiming History which argues the most sensational assassination story you can imagine: namely that Oswald, in fact, acted alone. This book is being made into an HBO mini-series by Tom Hanks & Co. Before Bugliosi, it was Salon's editor David Talbot's Brothers which argued that Bobby Kennedy intended to win the presidency first and then investigate for a conspiracy which he believed in. And, before that, it was E. Howard Hunt who, basically on his death-bed, claimed in American Spy that it was Lyndon Johnson who conspired to see Kennedy shot.

Maybe that's what makes Time so unique with its latest issue. The assassination only gets two pages. One is devoted to Bugliosi's Oswald-acted-alone case and the other to Talbot's Bobby-suspected-conspiracy case. Everything else dissects what made JFK such a great president.

In fact, he was. His speeches were perfect pitch in confronting the Soviet menace and the Cold War, telling the enemy that we would "bear any burden" to oppose tyranny but also extending the olive branch of peace if they wished to be our partners. He was inspirational in other areas from race relations to volunteerism. He literally was of the new generation. He gave Americans hope and he gave people from around the world reason to like Americans.

Amazingly, one of the associated Time articles called "The Swingingest President Ever" is not about the hundreds, if not thousands, of women besides Jackie Kennedy that JFK bedded. It is about his golf game. The closest the writers come to analyzing his personal fall from grace is this single passage from the cover story's introduction:

"In more recent years, he has suffered from a revisionist backlash, portrayed in books and the media as a decadent prince who put the nation at risk with is reckless personal behavior. Journalist Christopher Hitchens has gone so far as to dismiss him as a "vulgar hoodlum." While Kennedy's private life would certainly not pass today's public scrutiny, this pathological interpretation misses the essential story of his presidency."

At the risk of sounding like I'm full of "revisionist backlash," I'm not certain I fully agree.

First, however, as I've said many, many times, I loved JFK and his death made a mark on me like everyone else of my generation. Second, I'm a life-long Democrat.

Still, I'm not inclined to accept Time's analysis that all would have been wonderful if only he'd lived. He lived a life of lies from his medical condition to his now-legendary affairs. He tried to kill foreign leaders. He had friends in the mob who did him favors. And, at the time of his assassination, he was not as universally liked as he was when he became a martyr.

Co-author Harry Turtledove and I have worked through the "if Kennedy lived" scenario and come up with a fairly controversial new conclusion. If JFK survived Dallas, we believe the resulting investigation would have exposed in a very short period of time all the unsavory things that have instead taken over four decades to come out. The backwash would have crippled his presidency and his reputation would be quite different today. It's an alt-history book which we invite you to check out by clicking on the image below.

Articles of Impeachment: If Nixon and Clinton, Why Not Bush and JFK?

After Senator Chuck Hagel let loose the "I" word on This Week with George Stephanopoulos, people are buzzing about the possible impeachment of that other George, George Bush. After Andrew Johnson actually got himself impeached back in 1868, it took another century before Richard Nixon resigned to avoid the same fate in 1974. These days it seems we look at it as just another political weapon to use against a vulnerable incumbent -- going after Clinton in 1998 and Bush in 2007.

As you know as a reader of FWIW, Harry Turtledove and I are working on a novel that says impeachment would have been used in 1965-1966 against John F. Kennedy if he'd survived the assassination attempt in Dallas. Our alternative-history book, Winter of Our Discontent: The Impeachment and Trial of John F. Kennedy, has its own site dedicated to stating the case.

There's no question impeachment would have been a very steep hill to climb in the case of John Kennedy. He was still quite popular and he had a large Democratic majority in both houses of Congress. But coming up with possible "Articles of Impeachment" wouldn't have been that difficult. We know, because we've actually done it.

In both the Nixon and Clinton cases, the "Articles of Impeachment" were drawn up in a way where there is a lot of overlap and similarity in form. Like filling in a contract template, we've used those examples to write the "Articles of Impeachment" for John Fitzgerald Kennedy. We plan to modify and finalize them as the novel is completed, but you're welcome to read our working draft by clicking on the link below and downloading the PDF.

ARTICLES OF IMPEACHMENT, JFK.pdf 

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Because many people still think of impeachment as the end result and not part of the process, a basic fact set is probably in order whether you're talking about Bush in today's reality or JFK in our alt-reality.

Impeachment is the expressed power of the legislature which allows for formal charges to be brought against a high official of government for conduct committed in office. The actual trial on those charges, and subsequent removal of an official on conviction on those charges, is separate from the act of impeachment itself.

When it comes to removing a president, the House of Representatives acts as a grand jury bringing an indictment and the Senate acts as the court conducting the trial itself. The Senators themselves vote as a jury would on guilt or innocence. Therefore, Richard Nixon, who resigned before a final vote in the House of Representatives, was not actually impeached, although he was the first president to resign. Bill Clinton, on the other hand, was most definitely impeached, but he was not convicted and thus not removed from office.

The people who want to impeach Bush now, or the people who seek the impeachment of JFK in our novel, all had to start with the U.S. Constitution. Article II, Section 4 states:

“The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors."

Interestingly enough, a minority view on this comes from the man who most directly benefited from the near-impeachment of Nixon. Four years before he became president, back In 1970, then-Representative Gerald R. Ford defined the criteria for impeachment as he saw it then:

"An impeachable offense is whatever a majority of the House of Representatives considers it to be at a given moment in history." 

Could Bush be impeached now? No doubt. Could JFK have been? Of course. Bottom line: it's politics.

Winter of Our Discontent: The Impeachment and Trial of John F. Kennedy
Written by Harry Turtledove & Bryce Zabel