Why are those days called 'Camelot'?

That was something Jackie herself came up with very shortly after the President’s death – not intentionally I think at that moment but rather as an answer to a question put by Theodore H. White - “What sticks out in your mind as something he enjoyed?”or the like. Mrs. Kennedy replied that he enjoyed listening to records at night, among them the soundtrack to Camelot.

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Assassinations, Cuba Crisis, Mafia, Scandal, Racism and so on.

I was ten years old when Kennedy was elected President. My family were Democrats and I liked John Kennedy immensely. In fact I played JFK in a grade school debate during the 1960 campaign. So as someone who lived through the era, here's my reaction to the question posed, weren't things actually pretty bad?

No it was an era of hope an optimism.

The assassinations? Other than Diem in South Viet-Nam I can't think of any. (Except of course, Kennedy's, which ended everything.) The Mafia? For years J. Edgar Hoover denied there even was any such thing as organized crime. Kennedy knew better and his Administration was going after them. Scandal? Which ones? There are scandals in every era. For most people they're just background noise. Racism? Kennedy was in office when the Civil Rights era began. He was the first American President to openly support civil rights for African-Americans.

Here's a quote (and below it the link to the page where it came from):

She described the years of her husband's presidency (1960–63) as an American Camelot, a period of hope and optimism in U. S. history, and asked that his memory be preserved.

http://xroads.virginia.edu/~ug03/omara-alwala/Camelot.html

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