Making JFK Matter: Popular Memory and the Thirty-Fifth President by Paul H. Santa Cruz (review)

Making JFK Matter: Popular Memory and the Thirty-Fifth President is the first book to analyze how various institutions and individuals have used popular memory of President John F. Kennedy to shape America’s political culture. While the book is somewhat incomplete, Paul H. Santa Cruz, an archivist at the George W. Bush Presidential Library in Dallas, does launch an important discussion.

Santa Cruz emphasizes the “mixed blessing” of JFK’s popular memory, which is considerably more adulatory than scholars’ assessments (p. 130). The public has named JFK one of the top five American presidents, while scholars list him somewhere in the middle. Although the author obviously understands the gap between JFK’s captivating image and his actual record, Santa Cruz wisely refrains from laboring on those differences. Instead, Santa Cruz uses individual case studies of the city of Dallas, Texas, President Lyndon B. Johnson, and Robert F. Kennedy to show how the “practical quality” of public memory is often used for political ends (p. 7). Santa Cruz also warns against the possibilities of setting impossible standards and getting “used by” the same memory in the public realm (p. 114).

In his discussion of Dallas, Johnson, and Robert Kennedy, Santa Cruz shows the motivations, execution, and results of their efforts to invoke JFK’s memory. Dallas civic leaders remade the city’s image from one of violent extremism tied to the Old South to one that was “moderate, progressive, [and] tolerant” (p. 38). City leaders also launched civic improvements while downplaying JFK’s actual murder in their city. A citizens’ memorial for the president was purposely located away from the site of his death, but public interest in his assassination—fueled in part by conspiracy theories—ultimately led to the establishment of the Sixth Floor Museum. President Johnson used the slain president’s memory to pass legislation, such as a tax cut and a civil rights bill that JFK had already introduced, to solidify his credentials as a liberal Democrat in anticipation of the 1964 election. However, soon after the election, Johnson distanced himself from JFK in order to sell his antipoverty measures and establish his own legacy. Johnson was only moderately successful, especially as growing social turmoil led many to wonder about what would have happened if JFK had lived. Meanwhile, Robert Kennedy used his brother’s memory much more deliberately in selling his political candidacies to the public, but with mixed results. His close working relationship with JFK surely helped Robert win a Senate seat in 1965, but it did not decisively boost his 1968 presidential bid. It possibly even undermined his candidacy, as he argued against his brother’s Vietnam policies and did not connect as well with working-class white voters.

The second half of the book, unfortunately, loses steam. Especially puzzling is the lack of a chapter about Jacqueline Kennedy. Santa Cruz states that her use of the term Camelot, which she introduced to Life magazine within two weeks of JFK’s death, did more than anything else to shape the president’s memory in popular culture. She dramatized JFK’s funeral and burial and played important roles in the construction of the Kennedy Space Center and the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library. These actions beg for the same kind of analysis as the other case studies. The final chapter, titled “Observations,” asserts that JFK had a positive vision and stirred civic engagement but also sensationalized American politics by contributing to a culture of celebrity. Perhaps Santa Cruz could have achieved a more innovative conclusion by consulting recent scholarship on public memory and on the conflation of Hollywood and politics. Nevertheless, his book provides a good starting point and will be especially useful to scholars interested in public history.