Kennedy Crash: Reactions

HOST: Valerie Pringle

GUEST: Gil Troy, Presidential Historian, McGill University

PRINGLE: John F. Kennedy Jr. certainly has a special place in the collective consciousness of Americans absolutely -- but people around the world who saw this brave little soldier in a pale blue coat and shorts saluting his father's casket as it went by in 1963, and through his life making something of it and eventually creating the political magazine George. Historian Gil Troy is with us from Montreal.

What did you make of this young man and what he'd done with his life as far as it has gone? Especially dealing with the parents and the legacy and the expectations, the looks, the power, the privilege that he had.

TROY: John F. Kennedy Jr. was a symbol struggling to be an ordinary human being, and I think in many ways he was able to pull off that very delicate balance. He was born to great wealth, to great glamour, to great power, to an amazing legacy. And yet the themes of his life were his attempts to be a regular guy.

I'm exactly the same age as John John, and we watched him grow up. We saw him have long hair when he was greeting Jimmy Carter at the opening of the JFK Library. We saw him get accepted into Brown University and struggle with the issues that all university students struggle with. We saw him struggle as an assistant district attorney. And all these things made the Kennedys both more accessible and less accessible. It showed that there was a normalcy to this guy, but also of course he was always struggling with these big issues on a big stage.

PRINGLE: Well, I guess we'll never know what it is ultimately he wanted to do with his life. I mean, the magazine was one sort of backdoor into politics. I think a lot of people wondered if he would ever enter politics himself or if his mother would just have thought that too horrible.

TROY: Clearly we saw the impact of his mother. His mother had worked very hard to ground both him and his sister. The interesting thing about choosing to start this magazine George was John John was doing what his father had done, which was connecting celebrity and politics in a very interesting and a very glamorous way. And that is, I think, one of the central themes of American politics in the second half of the Twentieth Century.

PRINGLE: Obviously, like everyone else, you just think, "What more for this family?" This young man who'd survived so well to this point --

TROY: There are two major themes that seem to emerge from the coverage of this weekend. One was the human tragedy that struck us all as Canadians, as Americans, as people around the world -- all the greatness that the Kennedys have had, all the glamour, and also all the tragedy. But there's also a peculiarly American cast to it. We see the great hopes that people impute to the president. We see this very strange thing: that the United States is very much a democracy, very much a meritocracy, but also very much looking for the things that you find in an aristocracy. What ultimately was John F. Kennedy Jr. but the son of a president, the son of a great man? And we also see it more broadly, I think, with the Kennedys --

PRINGLE: Gil? We'll be talking to you again later in the program. Thanks.