On Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot channel 125, Fox News contributor Pat Caddell, who was one of President Jimmy Carter’s top advisers, said John F. Kennedy’s assassination not only damaged “the psyche of America,” but also is when Americans started to lose trust in its institutions.
He said that distrust was “reaching levels beyond anything we’ve seen” on the right and the left today. Caddell said the Tea Party revolt and the disruptive forces on the left that distrust the “best and the brightest” have their roots in the Kennedy assassination
Speaking to host and Breitbart News Executive Chairman Stephen K. Bannon, Caddell said America after the JFK assassination was a country in which the self-sustaining myths about “who we are” was “shattered.” He said Americans believed “we were a country of laws and not bullets.” But the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy, in addition to Watergate, shattered those beliefs. Caddell also said Americans felt before Watergate that the president was “divinely” chosen and that the “office makes the man.”
He also said the Warren Commission also did not help Americans trust its leaders. Caddell said people did not previously believe their leaders would lie to them, but data shows that after the Warren Commission, Americans started to believe the government was trying to “bamboozle” them.
Caddell mentioned that during Kennedy’s time, “vast majorities said you could trust the government most of the time,” while now vast majorities say “hardly ever.” He said Americans no longer believed the “government reflected them” and that the “people were in charge.”
“These are the lines that are drawn today,” Caddell said. “It starts there. And you can track much of the alienation and discontent [to Kennedy’s assassination].”
He said this is a “new phenomenon in America,” and “now it is reaching levels beyond anything we’ve seen.”
Caddell added that the country is so used to politicians “getting up with confessionals and soundbites” that they “forget the big ideas move a world and move a country.”
He criticized “Obama’s hope and change fraud” as “a Democrat who once wanted to believe him.” Caddell said Obama’s lie that Americans could keep their health insurance under Obamacare may ultimately destroy his presidency and legacy.
Caddell then noted that Kennedy was a “cold warrior” who “inspired millions” and believed in achieving peace through strength where America was the “watchman on the walls” of the world’s freedom. Caddell said he was “excited to be an American” because of Kennedy. He added that Kennedy “inspired and energized the baby boom generation,” but that idealism was “taken away” and “killed” when he was assassinated on 11/22/1963–when Caddell was 13 years of age.
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