On 22 Nov 1963, President Kennedy was shot to death while riding in a motorcade in Dallas. Texas Gov. John Connally, in the same limousine as Kennedy, was seriously wounded. Suspect Lee Harvey Oswald was arrested. When I was a plebe at West Point I marched in Kennedy’s inauguration parade. I was in my senior year there and a duty office when the word came in that he was shot—I didn’t believe it, but suddenly the Cadet Chapel was full of cadets in prayer.
Kennedy spoke at West Point, I think at a graduation. I don’t remember his exact words, but he said that he came to Washington full of ideas and energy and had put together a team to help him achieve his goals. And after two years of leaning on the federal bureaucracy with all his effort and energy, he was pretty sure that it was still doing exactly what it would have been doing if he’d never been born.
I’m sure that things haven’t gotten any better in our federal government over the years. We don’t need band-aids to fix our government—it’s long past time for major surgery.
