Not a good day for JFK. Neither for the JFK of history, nor for the JFK of modern-day politics. Two articles on the second page of Tuesday's Boston Globe drew my attention to two surveys. One was by the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute, and it measured the standing of 20 public figures with a cross-section of Americans. To Quinnipiac, Rudolph Giuliani came in first; Barack Obama, second; John McCain, third. Condoleezza Rice, Bill Clinton, and Joe Lieberman came in next, in that order. And--no surprise--Hillary Clinton came in ninth, behind New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and John Edwards. And all the way down at the bottom of the list was John Forbes Kerry. This is not good news for Hillary or Kerry. In fact, it is terrible news for them. Money can't buy you everything. Obama's standing in the polls is astonishing. Americans do respect individuality and quality. The other poll was a less "scientific" one. Ten historians, including sometime TNR contributors Gordon S. Wood and David M. Kennedy, participated in the survey which was written up and analyzed by Ross Douthat (also a sometime contributor to TNR). The question the historians were supposed to answer by naming names is: Who were the 100 most influential figures in American history? The top of the list was more or less predictable: Lincoln, Washington, Jefferson, FDR. Then it became more interesting: Einstein, Henry Ford, Eli Whitney, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, W.E.B. DuBois, Jonas Salk, "Babe" Ruth, Frederick Douglas, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Herman Melville, even Sam Goldwyn and Sam Walton. Also a founding editor of TNR, Walter Lippman. There were 17 American presidents on the list. Ronald Reagan was #17 out of the hundred. Other political figures made the cut, including Eleanor Roosevelt, Earl Warren, Henry Clay, John C. Calhoun. But not JFK. Of course, John Forbes Kerry did not make this list. I mean the other JFK, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, the president. Is this a surprise? I actually think that he deserves to be counted here. After all, he did set the precedent for a twentieth-century Monroe Doctrine. No foreign nukes in the Western Hemisphere. Hugo Chávez, watch out. Otherwise, his achievements were mostly in style. Jackie persuaded André Malraux to let the Louvre lend the Mona Lisa to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Oh yes, JFK also pushed through legislation establishing the Cape Cod National Seashore without which Truro and Wellfleet would already be like East Hampton.