“JFK had a huge cult of personality, which outlived him. Every public school had pictures of him well into the 1970s. Not bad for a president whose accomplishments were minor at best.”
Of course you realize this is so because he was martyred. The same thing happened to Lincoln: widely despised in his own time, beloved by history.
“So if asked to resign for health reasons, he would have refused”
We need not ask the president to resign, if he was in fact insane, as you implied he would have become.
Not really. Obama is using old Clinton cronies, and he and the Clintons are at much greater odds than Johnson and Kennedy were. It’s not as if Johnson could have gotten away with piling on a bunch of good old boys from Texas. There’s a lot to be said for continuity after a shock to the body politic.
“Going public where? Remember that the self censorship of the media back then was intense.”
Be that as it may, those in the know that wanted him dead, as you imply, could have at least tried leaking the story to Kennedy’s opponents before taking the huge step of assassinating him.
I very pointedly said that they were mistaken in believing at the time that large doses of cortisone would make a person insane. Cortisone will not do that to you. But at the time, they thought it would. And to make matters worse, it was not just a medical belief, but a public belief, as seen in that James Mason movie.
And that is likewise a critical part of my argument. Despite any efforts to hide his problems by his family, and the media, the Washington elite on both sides of the aisle would quickly have figured out what his condition was, and the only known treatment for it at the time.
Also, don’t think the Republicans would act on that knowledge. JFK blatantly stole the election from Nixon, and Nixon refused to do anything about it. That is a bad Republican habit. McCain refused to go on the attack against Obama, likewise. Medical problems were off limits, at least as far as the Republicans were concerned. Remember as well the press refusing to show FDR in a wheelchair.
Perhaps it boils down to the old saying. “First you get disciples, and then they crucify you.” The cult of personality demands perfection, that followers always praise, and scoffers be shut up. This is why the press not only ignored JFK’s sex scandals, but treated those who mentioned them as enemies of the state.
The big question is still who, if the theory is correct, would have done the deed, in their mind to prevent a nuclear exchange. It really doesn’t narrow down the suspects.