THE JFK CENTENNIAL

President Kennedy was born 100 years ago. His tragic demise in that miserable Dallas thoroughfare remains a wound on the collective memory of generations. While his legacy is ambiguous, his "persona"continues to rule the imagination. This sphinx-like man retains his enigma despite the number of books and findings about him. The public and private personae still do not add or match, but in the end the president prevails over the often flawed individual.

JFK came to the White House as if he was entitled to it... to the manor born. This most Eurocentric of US presidents was the ultimate Anglophile but was also able to get along with deGaulle, of all difficult personalities. His Churchill cult made it probably easier for him to assume the Bay of Pigs fiasco, as the former British P.M. had also to swallow the Galipolli humiliation. Both met their destiny in crucial circumstances, in World War II or during the Cuban missile crisis. Both owned the outcome.

President Kennedy surrounded himself with the best (Sorensen, Schlesinger) and by what have been called the last American "aristocrats":  David Bruce, Charles Bohlen, Llewellyn Thompson. A minus point is that he underestimated his vice- president Lyndon Johnson, who after him became a visionary reformer, driven out like a King Lear because of the Vietnam tragedy. Krushchev underestimated him and paid the humiliating price later.

Sure, JFK was a superb performer, with the support of Mrs. Kennedy who knew how to match style with historical legitimacy. They almost made a "royal couple." Since then, only the Reagans, with flair, and the Obamas, with commitment, have been able to emulate and modernize this JFK template.

Like Obama in his pre-presidential Berlin, Nobel prize and Cairo addresses i.a., President Kennedy was able to galvanize and to launch ambition into action. True, the bi-polar world then helped to create a "us versus them" narrative. The multi-polar, messy world now has changed all that. Hence President Obama often sounded over-existential, while the current president sounds and looks like a deranged first grader who doesn't do his homework.

We must beware of nostalgia. This Rubik world no longer obeys to former club rules. Even transgression then became a perverse way for recognizing their intrinsic value. The former bridge game has become a vulgar poker-face bluff. For this type of "amusement" we got the leaders we deserve, in all corners. They are no longer the custodians of an order. They prefer to disrupt what they never took pains to understand. In Churchill's words: "A nation that forgets its past has no future".

JFK was a "Berliner". After him, the trail went cold.