J.F.K. After 20 years, the question: How good a President?

After 20 years, the question: How good a President?

In an essay on Napoleon, Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote, "He was no saint—to use his word, 'no capuchin,' and he is no hero, in the high sense." Napoleon had fulfilled an earthly career, at any rate. His life went the full trajectory. One could study the line of it and know, for better and worse, what the man was, and did, and could do. He inhabited his life. He completed it. He passed through it to the end of its possibilities.

John Kennedy's bright trajectory ended in midpassage, severed...