2/25- JFK Closure

Answer these questions in your ntbk:
Why do you think Lee Harvey Oswald murdered John F. Kennedy?
How do you think John F. Kennedy’s death affected the way Americans view him now/then?

Complete this assignment:

For each section, underline the main idea. Respond using one of the five responses. Each response must be used once.
Ask- What else do I need to know?
Analyze- Describe it. Break it down.
Reflect- Express personal thoughts.
Interpret- Explain meaning.
Predict- What will come next?

Excerpt from James Reston’s Why America Weeps

The New York Times

November 22, 1963

Passage Passage	Your response
Highlight or Underline the Main Idea	Ask a Question, Analyze, Interpret, Reflect, Predict
America wept tonight, not alone for its dead young President, but for itself. The grief was general, for somehow the worst in the nation had prevailed over the best. The indictment extended beyond the assassin, for something in the nation itself, some strain of madness and violence, had destroyed the highest symbol of law and order. The irony of the President’s death is that his short Administration was devoted almost entirely to various attempts to curb this very streak of violence in the American character.
He was in Texas today trying to pacify the violent politics of that state. His central theme was the necessity of adjusting to change and this brought him into conflict with those who opposed change. Thus, while his personal instinct was to avoid violent conflict, to compromise and mediate and pacify, his programs for taxation, for racial equality, for medical care, for Cuba, all raised sharp divisions with the country. The President somehow always seemed to be suspended between two worlds—between his ideal conception of what a President should be, what the office called for, and a kind of despairing realization of the practical limits upon his power.
He came into office convinced of the truth of Theodore Roosevelt’s view of the President’s duties—“the President is bound to be as a big a man as he can.” In his inaugural address, the President reminded all that “now the trumpet summons us again.” The President set out to take action and answer the call but it was not easy. The young President discovered two truths. The first was that the powers of the President are not only limited but hard to bring to bear. The second was that the decisions—as he himself so often said—“are not easy.”
Since he was never one to hide his feelings, he often shared his mood. He believed that “politics is one long second-best, where the choice often lies between two blunders.” There is, however, consolation in the fact that while he was not given time to finish anything or even to realize his own potentialities, he has not left the nation in a state of crisis or danger, either in its domestic or foreign affairs. Thus, President Johnson is not confronted immediately by having to take any urgent new decisions.
He was, even to his political enemies, a wonderfully attractive human being, and it is significant that, unlike many Presidents in the past, the people who liked and respected him best, were those who knew him the best. He was a rationalist, and an intellectual, who proved in the 1960 campaign and in last year’s crisis over Cuba that he was at his best when the going was tough. No doubt he would have been re-elected, as are most one-term Presidents. But he is gone now at 46, younger than when most Presidents have started on the great adventure. In his book, Profiles in Courage, all his heroes faced the hard choice either of giving in to public opinion or of defying it and becoming martyrs. He had hoped to avoid this bitter dilemma, but he ended as a martyr anyway, and the nation is sad tonight, both about him and about itself.

TEST is tomorrow. Bring your notebook. I will be grading them. 

You can use one regular sized note card on the test. You must hand write the note card and only write on one side.