Here are some highlights from the first forty-three years of my life:

• I graduated from Harvard (1936-1940).
• When Pearl Harbor was bombed, I enlisted in the Navy (1941-1943). It hardly seems necessary to mention that my time was served in combat.
• I served six years in the House of Representatives, and eight years as a Senator.
• I've written several books and won a Pulitzer.
  

• I have brains, integrity, and I live by a socially-acceptable code of ethics.
  

• In short, I have many of the qualities befitting the President of the United States of America.

A nation which has forgotten the quality of courage which in the past has been brought to public life is not as likely to insist upon or regard that quality in its chosen leaders today - and in fact we have forgotten. - JFK

Do you remember this guy? Do you remember those televised debates with Richard Nixon? Do you remember his energy, his youth, his willingness to fight for social change? Do you remember how you felt during the Cuban Missile Crisis? Do you remember how you felt when John F. Kennedy was killed?

I don't, you old, scurvy bastards. I was born more than a decade after you buried your President.

During those ten years, you fogeys kept yourselves busy, didn't you? You walked on the moon. You had two or three social revolutions. In Vietnam, you saw your police actions develop into a losing war. You killed off another Kennedy, two popular black leaders (and a handful of less visible black leaders), and your military executed yet another globally-loved martyr. I'll bet half of you don't know the name of this guy:

Double or Nothing:
Do you remember where you were when he was killed?

In August, 1974, you accepted the resignation of the 37th President of the United States of America: Richard M. Nixon.

Two months later, I was born.

Last week I visited the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum (the J.F.K. Library and Museum has a fantastic website). Most of the stories about John F. Kennedy that I've heard or read were chronicled on the walls of the beautiful building in Boston, overlooking the water, or told by reels of wonderfully preserved film.

From developing the Peace Corps to instituting several research and care programs to help the developmentally disabled, John F. Kennedy created several social awareness projects more or less from scratch.

Q: What does John F. Kennedy have to do with Abu Simbel, the Aswan Dam and the Lotus Flower Tower?

A: A few years before you elected John F. Kennedy to the Presidency, Egypt commenced advanced plans to build a stable Aswan Dam. Between the United States and Britain, $270 million dollars in promised loans to aid the construction were withdrawn, in part due to Egypt's intention to nationalize the Suez Canal. The Soviet Union, however, offered nearly one third of the construction cost, the scientific know-how, and the skilled workers necessary to complete the Aswan Dam. This offer, of course, was presented as a gift rather than a loan. The Lotus Flower (on the right) stands as a monument to commemorate the friendship between Egypt and the Soviet Union.

There was a problem: the rising flood waters blocked by the partially-built Aswan Dam threatened to destroy Abu Simbel, an ancient and precious temple from the pharaonic era. The tightening cold-war conflict notwithstanding, Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy mobilized the global effort to save Abu Simbel, and with her help, John F. Kennedy crossed cold-war boundaries to financially support the salvage mission.

Wouldn't it be nice to have someone representing our country, now, internationally, with that kind of class?

Did we really elect George W. Bush to represent our country?

From time to time, people of my generation hear stories about this young Irish fellow who served as President of the United States. You tell us these great stories, inspiring stories, stories that would seem more appropriately fitted to a long-lived legend, rather than to John F. Kennedy, who, after all, served as President for only the short years between 1961 and 1963.

These stories, though, they're only fairy tales. Whether or not John F. Kennedy was a great President doesn't matter in the slightest. Whether or not John F. Kennedy was a great man doesn't matter in the slightest. Whether or not the death of John F. Kennedy was a tragedy doesn't matter in the slightest.

Only the fact that you've made John F. Kennedy into a mythological hero matters in the slightest.

Look, old people: you lived through crucial years. You saw our isolated world smooshed into the same vat of goo with all the other isolated worlds. Planes, trains and automobiles. Long-distance telephone calls. A square, squat box filling your living room with the magic of the universe. You fought wars against countries living on the other side of the globe--countries you never knew existed.

A young Irish-Catholic flashed into your life and inspired you to look through your pleasant, whitebread window curtains, to see the world as a place worthy of your interest.

You old people cannot understand this truth: we don't believe you. There isn't a single concept you associate with morality, with leadership, with the decency of the United States that hasn't been trampled, dismissed, satirized, and destroyed.

I'm almost an old fogey myself, the same as you. But there is a difference. I was born in the immediate aftermath of the Watergate scandal. I've lived through the following presidencies: Gerald Ford, Jim Carter, Ronald Reagan, George Bush Part I, Bill Clinton, and now, unfortunately, George Bush Part II.

These are the old men you've brought into my living room. You did it yourselves. This lot represents your highest, most pathetically hopeful code. What's happened to you? When was the last time you thought about the importance of inspiring your children? Here are a few words from the grave, some mulch to grind into your plastic lawns:

"A man may die, nations may rise and fall, but an idea lives on. "

"A man does what he must - in spite of personal consequences, in spite of obstacles and dangers and pressures - and that is the basis of all human morality. "

"A revolution is coming- a revolution which will be peaceful if we are wise enough; compassionate if we care enough; successful if we are fortunate enough - but a revolution which is coming whether we will it or not. We can affect its character, we cannot alter its inevitability."

And, most importantly (in case you've forgotten in your dotage):

"All this will not be finished in the first hundred days. Nor will it be finished in the first thousand days, nor in the life of this administration, nor even perhaps in our lifetime on this planet. But let us begin. "

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