Caffeinated Politics

I was a toddler when President John Kennedy was assassinated. Over the course of my lifetime, there was always a respectfully placed invisible line around his death and the loss of life so young due to his role as our national leader. A young widow and young children, and the continuously unanswered questions of what the nation might have looked like had he lived, never stop being discussed.

When I was twelve, a relative at a family reunion brought me two newspapers from November 1963. A curiosity was struck, and over the next several years, I would read as much as I could about the assassination. A sixth-grade teacher would talk to the class about her interest in the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln. I do not recall that she held to any conspiratorial-type thinking, and I know with certainty I did not move in that direction regarding Kennedy. But I did start to have an interest in the old newspapers from that national trauma. Years later, while working at WDOR in Sturgeon Bay, I would greatly expand my collection of newspapers of that tragedy. primarily due to a sale at the local library.

By the time I was becoming aware of the larger world around me, the Kennedy Center had been built and opened to the public. The nation seemed to understand and agree that this site was the appropriate and worthy memorial for a slain president. The degree of national respect and honor that I grew up understanding to be the way the nation conducted itself following the brutal murder of a president was how we lived our collective lives. Yes, there were arguments about the Kennedy Administration’s policy directions or partisan perspectives on his time in office, but the need to honor his service was, as I wrote above, an invisible line not to be crossed.

So, it was immoral and disgraceful for Donald Trump to place his name on the Center that was built in memory of a slain president. It was as if Trump thought his own name was more important than the memorial to which the building had been constructed. Who does such a thing?

I had long felt that the most disgusting and low point in the life of Trump was his mimicking a disabled man, Serge F. Kovaleski, an investigative reporter for The New York Times. When obituaries are written for Trump, that incident will be a clear example of Trump’s lack of character and his absence of any sense of empathy. At age 63, I thought I had seen arrogance, ignorance, and shallowness in dump-truck loads from Trump, but putting his name on the Kennedy Center showcased Trump at his lowest.

Over the past few weeks, the federal courts have weighed in on the illegal placement of Trump’s name on the Center. A judge ruled his name must be stripped off. (Pun intended.)

I am glad that I am grounded, like so many others in this land, with an appreciation for the duty we are called to both know our history and preserve its memory. I come from the foundation of understanding that we pay respect to a young president cut down in broad daylight, recall the days of almost stunned silence across the nation, and then, on the other side of the tragedy, not allow for it to be cheapened by a slimy grifter and a damaged piece of DNA.

The Kennedy Center was the right memorial as the First Family championed the arts by infusing the White House with cultural vitality, hosting legendary performers, restoring the mansion as a living museum, and laying the groundwork for federal arts and humanities endowments. This building was not an act of hero worship; it was clearly not a mausoleum but rather a living institution dedicated to the arts. Something Trump has no interest in or even a rudimentary understanding of. He has put a hyper-toxic cage match center stage on the South Lawn of the White House. Need I write more?

I come at this issue not because of politics, heck, I have lived through enough presidents to know they come in all flavors. I come to this issue because of the sheer audacity of Trump believing his name belonged beside a slain leader’s memorial. He told the nation, “You know what this needs? Me.” It was arrogance on steroids. So many of us in this country said that his name had to come down.

As I write this column, I am surrounded, as always, by scores of books on history. I have watched in my lifetime a full spectrum of ego in public life. I’ve watched scandals, tantrums, delusions of grandeur, and enough self‑promotion to fill a landfill. But Trump’s vile attempt to overwrite a national memorial with a personal billboard was the lowest. A violation not of politics, but of decency. Something my parents taught me that I carry tightly these many decades later.

There are lines we simply don’t cross. President Kennedy’s memory remains one of them. Now, even Donald Trump was forced to understand that, too.