I'm supposed to tape a show tomorrow with Channel 8's Gus Koernig on the 40th anniversary of the Kennedy assassination. Also appearing will be my old pal, former Gazette Editor Dick Wesnick, so I want to look and feel my very best. If anybody out there has any insights in the Kennedy legacy, I would be interested in hearing about them here no later than noon Wednesday.

Here's my not-terribly-original take so far: John F. Kennedy was one of the most gifted politicians ever to hold public office. He was handsome, smart, witty, vigorous, married well and had smart kids. He was a speed reader and wrote a Pulitzer Prize-winning book. Is that enough for a presidential legacy? No, of course not. And his actual achievements were fairly small. The Bay of Pigs was on his watch, and civil rights came later. He got us started in Vietnam, but would that war have turned out better if he had survived? Who knows?

I've always thought that one way to judge Kennedy's place in history would be to see whether we would eventually remember him on his birthday, as we do Lincoln, rather than on the date of his death. After 40 years, we still remember him more for how he died than for what he did while alive.

Kennedy's most important legacy may have been the grace he brought to office. He made public service -- especially through the Peace Corps -- seem desirable and honorable, and a whole generation of, well, bureaucrats were inspired by his example. But it's remarkable how little of that legacy survives. The notion that government workers are lazy, incompetent and corrupt is thorougly ingrained in Americans. The only exception is for soldiers. Why military service is considered honorable while the peace-making arts are belittled is one of those mysteries of American life that I have not been able to get my imagination around.

I have an old LP record of Kennedy's press conferences that I retrieved from a library that was about to discard it. Some of the fun in the record comes from the anachronisms: It's delicious to listen to a Democratic president making the case for tax cuts and defending himself from attacks by Republicans that he was spending too much on defense. He didn't like spending so much on defense either, he said, but "we live in a dangerous world."

Listening to the record yesterday, I was struck less by Kennedy's wit -- which was formidable -- than by his utterly relaxed and candid manner. It was striking how many of his answers began with a chuckle at the question. He seemed thoroughly at ease and utterly unintimidated. I don't believe we will ever see a president like that again.

As a wit, he was no standup comedian, but he was sharp. Asked about reports that Republican Sen. Barry Goldwater had been "captured by the radical right," Kennedy said it wasn't clear who had captured whom. Asked about former President Eisenhower's endorsement of term limits for congressmen, Kennedy said that sounded like the sort of proposal he might endorse in his post-presidential period. Asked if his administration was trying to "manage the news," Kennedy said, "Well, we're not managing it very well, if that's what we're trying to do." Asked to comment on a resolution by the Republican National Committee that declared the Kennedy administration a failure, he said, "I'm sure it passed unanimously."

Comedian Mort Sahl used to tell a story about riding on Air Force One. While Kennedy was joshing with the passengers, Sahl made a smart-alecky comment, and Kennedy looked at him. You know, he said, if this plane were to crash tonight, tomorrow in the papers your name would appear in very small print.

That was Kennedy: sharp, sure of himself, and on target. Too bad we lost him so soon.