Source: National Archives UK
In November 1963, during a presidential motorcade around Dallas, John Fitzgerald Kennedy was shot in the neck and head. The shot came from a building nearby and was fired by Lee Harvey Oswald. After that shot, the president was quickly brought to the nearby hospital but 30 minutes later, JFK was pronounced dead. The American public was left in shock and sorrow after the lost their own president.
JFK was no ordinary president, he was one of the youngest president in the US presidential history. With that characteristic of his, many people in the US hoped for big changes, different from his predecessors, in how the US would navigate its way in the world and the way it treated its people. It is true that he also had made some controversies from his questionable morale to a huge miscalculated operation that's now known as the Bay of Pigs Invasion. But again, It was also JFK who led the US on its one of the most dangerous event, such as the Cuban missile crisis and the numerous events that accompanied it.
Following his death, countless words of condolence and mourning followed. Even the USSR, a country that most people least expected to, also showed its condolences. In fact, there were panics among the USSR officials and those in KGB as they feared that the world would accuse them of the assassination. After numerous check-ups throughout the ranks, it was safe to say that the USSR was not involved in it. Such was the impact of a man's death. But at last, a lost was a lost, and with the death of JFK, the president seat was then empty.
Filling the spot JFK left empty, came his vice president Lyndon B. Johnson. Taking the mantle of US president in those volatile times was no walk in the park, especially for Johnson. As a president, he had little to none experience in international politics and foreign policy. His political career and experience were mainly based in domestic politics from his times in the US Senate. This was one of the reasons why, unlike JFK who can be considered as a hands on statesman, LBJ always had his advisors or experts to decide what course of action was available and best to take.
At the start of his career, the ineptness in international politics didn't attract any controversy. This was attributed to his ambitious domestic campaign called "Great Society" that aimed to increase the social welfare of all Americans in all fields, from education to employment. The Great Society program followed by his success in passing the civil rights acts through US Congress did a good job in building huge support for him, especially from those who had been victims of racial inequality. Unfortunately, these developments would all come crumbling down after another tragedy that happened abroad and LBJ's ineptness in dealing with it.
The death of JFK also opened up an unwanted door many US citizens wished to close, that is the Vietnam war. Under Kennedy's administration, the amount of US personnel there had grown rapidly to more than 12,000 men from a few hundreds. The nature of the conflict there was alien to the US and looking at the grim prospects that lied beyond, it can be agreed that the US won't gain anything through prolonged involvement there. Many have claimed that had JFK lived, he would have pulled out those men back, saving the Americans from a pointless fiasco.
Unfortunately, that vision never materialized as LBJ instead increased that number to more than half a million men each year from 1965-1969. The US, during those troublesome times, would find itself committing heinous war crimes, from slaughtering civilians to using chemical weapons all in the names of western ideals, the so called liberty. Not only that, it would find itself being shunned by countries from all sides, from its allies in the west to those "enemies" in the east.
The lost of JFK can be taken as another tragedy in the US history or an extra step can be taken to see it as a lesson. A lesson of how important leadership and experience are for statesman. Lest we all forget how lost the US was under LBJ's presidency and how far it deviated from when JFK was in charge.