Perhaps if one wants to remember Kennedy the best thing to do is to open The Burden and the Glory, a collection of the speeches of the last two years edited by Allan Nevins. It is surprising how one remembers the phrases that pounded at you out of the television and the printed page:

"Simultaneous and identical actions of United States Steel and other leading steel corporations increasing prices by some $6 a ton constitute a wholly unjustifiable and irresponsible defiance of the public interest...."

"This government, as promised, has maintained the closest surveillance of the Soviet military build-up on the island of Cuba. Within the past week, unmistakeable evidence has established the fact that a series of offensive missile sites is now in preparation that imprisoned island...."

"There is a rhythm to a personal and national and international life, and it flows and ebbs...if you ask me whether this was the 'winter of our discontent,' I would say no. If you would ask me whether we were doing quite as well this winter as we were doing in the fall, I would say no."

Of course, the language of the speeches often is not his own, and it is often dull language: wave after waves of facts on conservation and industrial growth.

Perhaps the best book on John Kennedy is one written before he died. It is not James MacGregor Burns's John Kennedy: A Political Profile--a distinguished campaign biography, but still essentially a campaign biography, but--a book not even totally concerned with Kennedy, Theodore H. White's The Making of the President, 1960.

The book is a closeup of Kennedy as he faced what was to be the supreme effort of his life. White followed him through his triumphant campaign tours and through his less triumphant ones:

At noon he stood at the head of the street in the one-street village of Phillips and looked down its length and saw no one; he entered its hardboard factory and spoke to the workers on the line, who grunted and let him pass; he visited the local newspaper, which was totally indifferent to the fact that a Presidential candidate was pausing with them; he circulated the cafes on Phillips' main street, courteously interrupting the men and women slurping coffee and eating sandwiches, saying, "My name is John Kennedy, I'm running for President in the primary;" and they went on eating. He left the town shortly after noon and the town was as oblivious of his presence as of a cold wind passing through.

From Phillips, Wisconsin, in March, 1960, to Boston on November 6, 1960, White follows Kennedy, culling the anecdotes and pointing to the distinctive ones. It is a book written accurately, for White weighs against the attacks on Kennedy not only the candidate's counterclaims, but his experiences. After a campaign with Kennedy White wrote with emotion, but not the kind of emotion one feels now. Perhaps only when we re-attain this accuracy will we be able to see John Kennedy as we saw him then. More probably, we will never see him as "accurately" again