IT may be impossible to date precisely when the American Left, and especially its intellectuals, began to fall out of love with the presidency, but a compelling case can be made for November 22, 1963-the day John F. Kennedy was assassinated. From the intelligentsia’s perspective, Kennedy was quite simply their president. He was Harvard-educated, personable, stylish, funny, and eager to surround himself with “the best and brightest.” Kennedy’s 1960 campaign was a crusade of youth and vigor and of liberal good intentions. His election was, for them, a true passing of the torch (as Kennedy noted in his inaugural address) to a new generation of leaders who could, and would, change the world.
When the sun set on November 22, Lyndon Johnson was president-and Johnson was nothing if not the anti-Kennedy. He was not Ivy League. He looked, talked, and acted like what he was, a Texan. One of the most skilled and successful managers of the U.S. Congress in history, Johnson as president achieved far more for the “progressive” agenda than Kennedy would likely ever have attempted (and perhaps even wanted). For Camelot’s lords and ladies, however, Johnson would always be the Other. And then, of course, there was Vietnam. This was a catalyst. By June 1967, Newsweek was publishing an article on “LBJ and the Intellectuals,” recounting the president’s efforts to “win back the campus defectors.” He could, of course, have saved himself the effort.
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