I Am JFK Jr.

: Well, this is the man

who, in the next 24 hours,

may become President of the United States,

and she, First Lady of the land.

: So now,

my wife and I prepare for a new administration

and for a new baby. Thank you.

Ask not what your country can do for you.

Ask what you can do for your country.

Every degree of mind and spirit that I possess

will be devoted

to the long-range interests of the United States

and to the cause of freedom around the world.

: Just a moment, please.

Something has happened in the motorcade route.

Stand by, please.

Parkland Hospital... there has been a shooting.

Parkland Hospital has been advised to stand by

for a severe gunshot wound.

The flash, apparently official,

President Kennedy died

at 1:00 p.m. Central Standard Time.

: The president of the United States is dead.

I have just talked to Father Oscar Huber

of the Holy Trinity Catholic Church.

He and another priest tell me that the pair of men

have just administered

the last rites of the Catholic Church

to President Kennedy.

President Kennedy has been assassinated.

It's official now. The president is dead.

: As the casket is returned to the caisson,

there comes a family vignette that must take its place

with those memories we hold warm and dear,

a gentle reminder from his mother,

and John John celebrates his third birthday

with a soldier's farewell to his father.

It's easy for someone to say, "Well, I'm going to be me."

Well, that's easy

when nobody gives a damn who you are,

but when somebody has definite ideas about you,

superlative ones, in John's case...

"You'll be the greatest.

You are the most handsome.

You are royalty.

You are bound and destined for greatness.

Do nothing normal. Do nothing pedestrian.

You are better than that and everyone."

That's not easy to have on your shoulders.

He's the only person we've ever seen

have that kind of greatness put upon him.

In our culture,

where we don't recognize royalty,

he was the closest thing we had to a crown prince.

He was the heir,

the heir to the promise and to the challenge,

"Don't ask what your country can do for you.

Ask what you can do for your country."

That salute of John Jr.

is the first extraordinary celebrity moment

in John Jr.'s life.

From that moment on, his life was different.

From the very beginning, you know, that little salute,

he was under scrutiny and pressure.

I think John F. Kennedy Jr.'s salute

is a defining moment in the American public,

in their psyche,

that we're going to see more from this kid.

: Is it tough being a junior?

I don't have a basis of comparison, so...

I mean, are there ever days you say,

"I wish my name were David"?

No, I'm pretty happy with what it is.

It's complicated,

and it makes for a rich and complicated life,

but that's, I think, part of the puzzle

to figure out in my life.

For me, it wasn't meeting

the little boy saluting the casket.

I think for my mother, it would have been that.

For me, it was like, I mean,

he's, like, a hot New York bachelor.

The first time I met him,

I was working out in my gym in Tribeca,

and a mutual friend had brought him up there

while I was working out,

and so I was on the bike, and we shook hands.

I was just fortunate enough to meet him and engage with him

and go on just a minute

of a cosmic-dust journey with him,

and it was pretty awesome.

You know, his tentacles, his love,

it reaches out from the grave. It's still here now.

A Native American said

that when somebody takes your picture,

you lose a piece of your soul.

How he retained his soul

after hundreds of thousands of pictures

is one of his greatest accomplishments.

He had a brilliant capacity

for getting people to quit looking

at the balloon of himself that he was towing overhead,

the sort of Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade-sized

John F. Kennedy Jr.

to the guy that was standing there

who was remarkable in his own way

but was, you know,

put his pants on one leg at a time.

You know, one of the things

that John tried to do throughout his life

was be his own man and go his own path.

He obviously had the whole specter

of his presidential father and his very famous mother

and a family that was known for politics,

but, you know, John was very much his own man.

He marched to his own beat.

Like many sons of famous fathers,

there's a legacy.

There's sort of a big mountain to climb.

So I think he felt like he had to do something significant.

I mean, he couldn't just get a job.

: His being part of the Kennedy legacy,

the really important thing to know about John

in that regard

was that he was not a Kennedy.

He was a Bouvier.

His mother was the guiding, shaping force in his life,

and he looked very much like her,

but he was also very much a Kennedy,

very devoted to his family, to the name,

to the history, very, very much so.

He couldn't separate himself from that legacy,

and nor would he want to.

The process of separation

becomes a problem for a presidential child.

Their greatest single challenge is to find a separate identity.

Who am I?

He called me up one night, and he said,

"I've been thinking a lot about great men,

and it occurs to me

that it would be kind of a cakewalk

for me to become a great man.

I mean, everybody expects me to be a great man.

I'm perfectly positioned.

You know, if I don't f*** up in some major way,

I can just do it,"

and he said, "But I've been reading a lot of biographies

of great men all the way through history,

and I'm realizing that not one of them

seems to have been a good guy at home.

I mean, even Gandhi beat his family,

and, you know, and my father was no model,

and I wonder

if it wouldn't be a much more interesting challenge

in my position

to set out at this point

and see if I couldn't make myself a good man."

And that was really paramount to him.

He wanted to be good

in his relationship with his wife.

That was really important. He wanted it to work.

He wanted to be good in his relationship with his sister,

who was very important to him.

No schadenfreude at all.

He wanted his friends to succeed,

so I think John Perry Barlow's comment

about him wanting to be good

is really important in understanding who John was.

I also knew that pressures were about to enter his life

in increasing force

that would make sticking with that principle

an extremely hard thing to pull off

because everybody in the world

was going to be tugging at his sleeve.

People were going to treat him like a thing.

They already were.

It's difficult to maintain your goodness

if you're being treated like a thing.

If you were to have a son,

would you encourage

a political career for him?

I would, definitely.

I would hope he would grow up to be,

if not a politician

in the sense of devoting all of his time,

I would hope that whatever he did do,

that he would have some sense of responsibility

for what went on.

Over a quarter century ago,

my father stood before you

to accept the nomination

for the presidency of the United States.

In 1988, John introduced his uncle Teddy Kennedy

to the Democratic National Convention.

The place went wild.

Thank you.

There's a huge gravitational pull towards politics

because that's kind of what he...

I mean, he was just such a natural at it.

John was smart enough to know "I'm Junior.