And What about the President?
Besides associating the king with Elvis Presley, some other interpretations suggest that the king and queen are President John F. Kennedy and First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy. Alleged assassin Lee Harvey Oswald, who happens to share physical similarities with Bob Dylan, takes the role of the court jester.
President John Kennedy rides in a motorcade from the Dallas airport into the city with his wife Jacqueline and Texas Governor Johhn Connally.
Kennedy’s presidency was full of idealism and wit, and the first couple was challenging the institution of the presidency itself, filling it with many of the breadths of innovation that were sweeping the country in all respects. During the early 1960s, the Broadway play “Camelot” was very popular, and the public started to romanticize Kennedy’s presidency as modeled on King Arthur’s Court. It is, therefore, feasible that the assassination of the President in the fall of 1963 by Lee Harvey Oswald is associated with the jester stealing the crown of the king, robbing him of his authority.
Singing “ no verdict was returned ,” McLean refers to the suspicious circumstances surrounding the death of the President. Besides the shocking murder that paralyzed the country, Kennedy’s death was a severe blow to the morale of the nation, because it severed the old post-war innocence and replaced it with an ever-growing cynicism toward the American Government and culture. Once again, the word McLean once new was changing.