In evaluating contemporary presidents, historians have often differed sharply from the American public. The gap over the last forty years between public perceptions and historical judgments of the Harry S. Truman presidency is a case in point, as is, to a lesser extent, the differences between public and historical assessments of the Eisenhower presidency. But there is probably no presidency on which public perceptions and historical evaluations have remained more at odds than that of John F. Kennedy.

Most Americans think of President Kennedy as the young, handsome, athletic, vibrant chief executive who was just coming into his own when he was cut down by an assassin's bullet in Dallas on 22 November 1963. Most historians, however, have painted quite another portrait of the nation's thirty-fifth president. Those writing in the 1970s were particularly harsh in their criticism, characterizing Kennedy as a person of style rather than substance, of profile rather than courage, driven by ambition rather than commitment, physically handsome but intellectually and morally unattractive. With regard to foreign policy, they accused him of being a conventional Cold Warrior who brought the world to the brink of nuclear disaster during the Cuban missile crisis of 1962.

Such views are still much in evidence. Indeed, the latest Kennedy biography, by Thomas Reeves, is among the most damning, and is made all the more so by the fact that Reeves is a well-respected historian and biographer who grew up sharing the popular view of Kennedy.