It is strange how some random recollection of an old Broadway musical tune started my thinking.
I was recently having coffee with my wife, when the strains of a song kept going through the back of my mind, over and over. After several replays, it finally hit me: it was music from Lerner and Loewe’s Camelot.
Memories of a former time, when John Kennedy was president. roared back. Camelot came to be a term referring to the Kennedy era retrospectively. President Kennedy was a master at using words of where to take the country. In his inauguration speech, he set the tone: “And so, my fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.”
He had a vision: Land a man on the moon; create the Peace Corps; support West Berliners with a speech using the phrase, “Ich bin ein Berliner” (“I am a Berliner”) in response to Russian erection of the Berlin Wall. Press conferences were often a venue for his wit. His family in The White House, wife, Jackie and children, John-John and Caroline, were extended members of a national family.
Then, my thoughts come back to today. President Trump, in his inaugural address, expressed his vision: America first. His guiding principles are deport Mexicans, keep Muslims out, and build a wall. Press conferences are a contest between President Trump, “fake news” reporters and President Obama (he has yet to accept that he is our one and only President). His oratory doesn’t get beyond superlatives like “the greatest.” Camelot, it is not.
We can’t live in the past. Today, we are where we are. We must move on. But we can still look back and hope. And remember.
Back to Camelot. President Kennedy’s favorite lines were from the final song:
Don’t let it be forgot,
That once there was a spot,
For one brief, shining moment,
That was known as Camelot.
Edwin F. Begg
