The Best and the Brightest first delayed and then demanded the invasion be a day time operation at The Bay of Pigs. The Bay of Pigs was a terrible place to invade. It was isolated and precluded local help.
The people in charge then wanted to cancel the operation because it would fail.
They were persuaded to continue because they were promised air support.
The Russian and Cuban forces moved down a single road to get to the isolated Bay of Pigs. They would have been sitting ducks for coordinated air strikes. With effective air support and support of the underground it could of succeeded.
The Kennedy State department gave the Cubans information on the underground. Anti-Castro Cubans were betrayed, rounded up and arrested or killed.
The Cubans were not given naval support, supplies or air support. The invasion lasted three days. During that time Kennedy showed no leadership and the his advisers sabotaged the mission.
Eisenhower had been in charge of the largest successful amphibious invasion in history. The man in charge of the D-Day landings could have easily seen that Kennedy's plan was a disaster and could have never worked.
The self-described Best and Brightest of the Kennedy and Johnson administration failed at everything they did.
“The self-described Best and Brightest of the Kennedy and Johnson administration failed at everything they did.”
I would say that their performance was worse than mere failure.
They couldn’t have done worse if Khrushchev had been calling the shots—which, you know, he was.