They say that everybody remembers where they were when Kennedy was shot. Writing this, it's very nearly forty-one years since it happened, and although forty-one is hardly a significant number, unlike last years' fortieth anniversary, there's sure to be at least one TV show on or around the 22nd November which deals with Kennedy, and more than likely with the single event for which he is most well-known - his assassination.

I of course wasn't alive at the time, and yet I can say with the an almost casual certainty that of course I have heard of John Fitzgerald Kennedy, President of the USA, husband to Jacqueline Kennedy, etc, etc. He is, as I've already said, mainly still-remembered because of the manner of his death - but that in turn must be some reflection of the popularity, or at least the public awareness, of the man when he was still alive. There have been other notable assassinations - Kennedy's own brother Robert less than five years later. For that matter, Martin Luther King, who one could easily argue was a far 'greater' man in terms of what he achieved. But it's the assassination of President Kennedy that is the single event which it seems everyone has heard of. Put it another way - have you ever heard anybody say that they remember where they were the day Doctor King was shot?

So what is this obsession we have with him? I saw a snippet of a documentary a few months ago where a group of American students were asked about the Kennedy era, and they more or less universally agreed that they wished he was President now. Even allowing for the fact that they might have thought anything better than Bush (and we can't scoff too much at that - in 1997 we thought that anything would be better than the Tories, and of course that's why we're now lumbered with Tony Blair) this is quite a comment on the affection and respect with which a man who was President for only a short space of time (approximately 1,000 days, a period that he ironically referred to in his inauguration speech in 1961, when he said that the job ahead "will not be finished in the in the first 1,000 days") is still regarded, forty years and more after his death. Nobody in the group said they wished Ronald Reagan were President now instead of Bush, or Nixon, or Carter... And to be honest if the interviewer had put those suggestions I suspect derision would have been the response.

Perhaps part of Kennedy's appeal is not so much a reflection on him personally, so much as the general sense that things always seem different in retrospect; or rather, things were better in the past than they are now. That's probably more akin to wishing that the students were living in the early 1960s and it was Kennedy's presidency 'now', rather than wishing that he was somehow President in 2004. Certainly, a very popular image of JFK is of a young man bringing a new wave of optimism and... not necessarily prosperity, but personal and social success. OK, part of it probably is just image, and even to my heterosexual eyes I would have to say that Kennedy was a lot easier on the eye than, for example, Roosevelt or Johnson or either of the Bush men. But there is surely more to it than that, isn't there, some substance to back up the style? I think there is - even if he didn't necessarily write it himself, there is something both politically brave and personally inspiring about the address that includes what we would perhaps today dismiss as a sound bite: "Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country." In a modern age where political promises tend to be of the "vote us in and we will do this for you" variety, where the suggestion of a communal sense of 'duty' is almost frowned upon, it's quite surprising to hear a speech like that - not one of promises and vote-pulling, but one of encouragement, and also of pragmatism and honesty.

Of course, in one sense Kennedy was fortunate to be running for/sitting in office at the time that he was. Nowadays he just wouldn't have the same squeaky-clean image that still, in part, clings to him. We know for example that he was quite the womaniser, and although Marilyn Monroe is the most famous of his affairs, there were by all accounts others. Whether today it would affect his political career adversely is more difficult to say (Bill Clinton and Boris Johnson would probably give you different answers to that question) but certainly his 'smooth-limbed, clean-living, all American boy' image would not survive intact.

But image aside, his ability to deliver powerful speeches-- again, I can't honestly claim that he wrote them all, but equally he can't be entirely robbed of all credit. Nobody ever dismissed Olivier or Gielgud's performances with a sniffy "Well, Shakespeare deserves the credit for the writing". JFK's ability to deliver powerful speeches that could rally a crowd is impressive, although I grant that today we only ever see 'Best Of...' clips rather than whole speeches. So although I can quote the "Ask not..." extract above, and "Ich bin ein Berliner" from his Brandenberg Gate speech, I certainly couldn't reel off anything else from the relevant addresses, nor tell you what (if anything) the speech was actually about. But regardless of that talent to inspire, irrespective of his apparent avowed intent to try and negotiate with 'the Evil Empire' (which, yes, I know is a quote of a later President), despite such noble plans as to avoid war in Vietnam, and in spite of his weakness for the opposite sex... any and all of those things are forever secondary to his status as a President who was assassinated. And that high-profile has not just remained, but has in fact grown since 1963, as the common consensus on what actually happened has changed.

Even over my lifetime, which didn't even get going until 7 years after that day in Dallas, I have been aware of a change of popular opinion. When I was at school, the answer to the trivia question "Who shot President Kennedy?" was a clear and unequivocal "Lee Harvey Oswald". Now, I think that the majority, not just a crank-infested minority, believe it to have been a conspiracy by other parties - although admittedly there is not much unity on the subject of who the conspirators might have been. The Mafia? The FBI? The CIA? Fidel Castro?

The notion of a conspiracy is perhaps part of the reason why there is still such interest in JFK. Conspiracies always attract passionate interest among those who buy into them - whether it be claims of a faked moon landing in 1969, or that Paul McCartney is dead (this latter, incidentally inspired the 'Peter Davison Is Dead' conspiracy on this very site - and the fact that its evidence is equally as credible as that given in defence of many 'real' conspiracies brilliantly underlines how absurd most of them are). The fact that the killing of JFK is in general terms a publicly-acknowledged conspiracy gives it, I suppose, an added dignity that some of the more ludicrous claims don't possess.

But I don't think even that is the whole of it. I think the truth as to why the life, and death, of JFK still nags at us after all this time, is because of a combination of two things - the first that he was comparatively early in his political life, particularly if you assume that he would almost certainly have won a second term at the White House; the second is that the manner of his death was so very public. Consequently not only was there the sense of so much potential, so much more that he would go on to do, but also the fact that those who were alive at the time saw all those possibilities dramatically snatched away in an instant.

I once saw David Frost interviewed about That Was The Week That Was (TW3 as it was called), and in respect of the assassination of Kennedy he commented that as the news came in, they realised they couldn't just ignore an event of such importance. Their original plan, he said, was to comment seriously on the assassination at the start of the programme, and then get on with covering the rest of the news - but it soon became apparent that there was no other news. For a more dramatic illustration of the potency the death of Kennedy had, there's the powerful news footage of the US anchorman announcing the death. He visibly breaks down as he delivers the news, a man probably in his 40s, maybe older, who has amongst other things lived through the Second World War, reduced to tears and robbed of the ability to deliver his bulletin.

If George Bush were shot tomorrow, there would be many, many official statements of grief and sympathy... but would there be any outpourings of genuine public sorrow for the event? Ditto if it happened here, to Tony Blair? We seem to live in an age where there are no leaders left to inspire us, none who seem able to lead us confidently and competently. Maybe it's because we are now living in an age where none of our leaders have been through anything like the Second World War - and although there are many other 'measures of a man' it nevertheless gave dignity and gravitas to Reagan, Bush senior, Thatcher, Callaghan that they had lived through such a significant time.

Ultimately, perhaps it's the fact that JFK represents, however inaccurately, however falsely, a more innocent time, a time where a leader could make a rousing speech and people would believe him, and where it seemed perfectly credible that he would have the interests of all people at heart; whereas now we live in a disenchanted world where one politician seems very like another, and where it's hard to believe that there is much personal integrity behind the warmongering, insular rhetoric of the likes of the newly re-elected US president.

Whatever the reason, 41 years on people still admire many things about John Fitzgerald Kennedy. Whether the reputations of the leaders of today will last as long, only time will tell.