On JFKs 100th birthday, Trump repudiates his legacy
By Charles Lane Opinion writer May 24 at 7:47 PM
Former presidents George H.W. Bush and Jimmy Carter are both over 90, and still with us — making it just barely conceivable that John F. Kennedy might have lived to celebrate his 100th birthday on Monday, if he had not been assassinated in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963.
Surely JFK would have noted a contrast between his Jan. 20, 1961, Inaugural Address and that of his succcessor Donald Trump exactly 56 years later. “Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country,” Kennedy instructed. His epigrammatic call for patriotic responsibility resonated in a nation of World War II and Korea veterans “tempered by war, disciplined by a hard and bitter peace.”
President Trump encouraged a sense of grievance in his very different audience, casting them and their country as victims of a corrupt “establishment” focused more on “other countries” than “the just and reasonable demands of a righteous public.” Instead of offering to “bear any burden” or “support any friend” on behalf of liberty, Trump issued a “new decree” of “America First” and claimed that “protection will lead to great prosperity and strength.” And this was no mere tonal difference; it was a flat repudiation of JFK’s policy legacy, whether Trump intended it that way or not.
One of the things Kennedy asked of Americans was to break with their protectionist past once and for all. He spent much of 1962 campaigning for the Trade Expansion Act, a tariff-slashing measure he called “the most important international piece of legislation . . . affecting economics since the passage of the Marshall Plan.” Congress passed the bill with bipartisan support, and JFK signed it Oct. 11, four days before he learned Soviet missiles were on Cuba.
Indeed, but for the missile crisis, free trade might loom larger in JFK’s legacy. Familiar institutions such as the U.S. trade representative, “fast-track” negotiating authority and trade-adjustment assistance owe their existence to Kennedy’s law, which he presented as an act of enlightened self-interest, economic and geopolitical.
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