I'm not old enough to have lived when JFK was President, but can anyone reference something so I have a better idea of who he was from an ordinary person.
Like Jackie said, she wanted him to be remembered for the right reasons.
So was JFK the best President in the last 100 years? Of all-time? Rank your presidents in order if you disagree.
It's hard to say, because he was president so briefly. People talk about him being overpraised or lionized because he was assassinated, but he also gets a lot of blame for things that weren't his fault and even for things he was trying to stop (anti-Castro assassination plots, the assassination of the Ngo brothers in Vietnam, etc).
They killed him for a reason -- wealthy though he was, he was becoming a threat to the power structure. And he would never have pursued Vietnam as LBJ did.
The only good things to come out of LBJ's presidency were Kennedy initiatives, but it probably took Johnson's arm-twisting skill in the Senate to pull them off (JFK should have worked harder to have a better relationship with his vice president) but I don't believe for two seconds that LBJ cared about those things (e.g., voting rights, poverty).
LBJ's mistress on JFK and the assassination:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WcXeutDmuRA
Kennedy was becoming increasingly aware of how the military industrial intelligence complex works and how oil companies and their military hardware divisions were using the CIA as a way of controlling the White House's foreign policy -- and you don't want military hardware profiteers setting war policy, for obvious reasons: they can, will and do manufacture unnecessary military conflicts to create an artificial market for their products. (By the late-'60s, Vietnam was the #1 business in America).
As a result, and because he felt they'd misled him in the Bay of Pigs incident, JFK swore to smash the CIA into a thousand pieces and scatter those pieces the wind, but he was dead before this could be done (not that he would have succeeded).
The hawks in the gov't had become so delusional in the Cold War/red scare hysteria of the late-'50s and early-'60s, that they actually approached JFK twice (in July 1961 and again in September of 1963) to drop The Bomb not just on Cuba but also on Russia (under the misguided belief that Russia's capacity for a retaliatory strike was limited if the USA initiated a strategic attack) but Kennedy refused, apparently muttering expletives as he walked out of the first meeting with the Joint Chiefs and the CIA. (His success during the Cuban Missile Crisis was seen as another lost opportunity by the hawks).
In the mid-'90s, classified documents about Operation Northwoods revealed that the CIA had multiple plans to create fake attacks on America to convince the population into supporting a war on Castro or any place the military-intelligence people wanted; they even tried to trick the president the same way, but he wasn't biting.
Even after his assassination, there was an attempt to paint JFK's death as a scheme by the communists, but LBJ didn't want a nuclear holocaust on his watch so he demanded Oswald's communist credentials be minimized; as a consolation prize, LBJ opened up the lucrative war in SE Asia, a war Kennedy had been dragging his feet on and privately talking about pulling out of (not that NSAM memo #263 can really be called "private" today).
Kennedy also motivated young people to joining Peace Corps and, after a slow start, began pushing for civil rights with increasing focus and sincerity. And he tried to create an atmosphere of optimism in the country (however successfully is a matter of debate) as the world seemed to be looking into the face of eternity.
Was he, or would he have been, a great president? Who knows...
But he kept us from dying. Even if the cost may have been his own life.
I guess I qualify as an ordinary person who remembers JFK (I was in college when he was elected and in grad school when he was assassinated). I was, and am, a Democrat, and was overjoyed when he was elected (I had rung doorbells for his campaign). He's the only president whose hand I have shaken (back when he was in the senate). Having said that, I have to admit that he was not a "great" president in terms of accomplishments, and, sadly, will be remembered mostly for his death. His judgment was not always the best: the Cuban Missile Crisis had us all terrified, and his handling of Vietnam laid the groundwork for the coming disaster there. And I don't think he would have had the clout to get civil rights legislation through: it was largely passed as a kind of memorial to him (be sure to see the movie All the Way, if you haven't).
But on the positive side, what he did was symbolic, to provide inspiration. His line from the inaugural ("Ask not...") is perhaps the most quoted line from any inaugural address, and set the tone for the next three years (and beyond, through the cultural shifts that replaced the fifties with the sixties). Camelot!
As for ranking the presidents in order... this isn't really a contest, but it's probably safe to say that the top rank would be a tossup between Obama and Eisenhower. With Bush II and Harding at the bottom (so far).
Just my two cents on your question.
Best President of the past 100 years? FDR.
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