I also never understood the "Camelot" thing.

The Camelot thing was an exercise in historical revisionism directed by Jackie herself. She literally invented the term and began wrapping people's interpretation of the JFK Presidency in that cultural metaphor from nearly the day he was shot. It might have been her way of coping psychologically with seeing her husband murdered next to her -- remember, SHE could have just as easily been killed in the assassination. It might have been her attempt to immediately begin masking all of the issues that would eventually be unearthed (his issues with Adkins, his drug use stemming from Adkins, his private immorality) that would obliterate the picture post card view that had been previously sold to the public (young couple, tanned handsome guy playing touch football on the lawn, a new start for America with the young generation...).

Regardless of her motivations, as journalists and historians of the time began trying to document what the JFK Presidency had been and what was lost, Jackie worked from the beginning to surround it in this aura of magical optimism and progress, when in fact it was as mired in reality as any other administration.

WTH