Posted on 11/20/2013 10:00:27 AM PST by SeekAndFind
By almost any measure, John F. Kennedy was a middling president at best, and an occasionally disastrous one. The Bay of Pigs fiasco, the Cuban missile crisis, setting the nation on the wrong course in Vietnam, his nepotism, the spying on political rivals — all must weigh heavily in our judgment of his presidency. And while Kennedy the president was a middle-of-the-range performer at best, Kennedy the man has been relentlessly diminished by the eventual revealing of the facts of his day-to-day life.
Conservatives who see in Kennedy a committed combatant in the Cold War and a supply-side tax-cutter must keep in mind his bungling at home and abroad. Liberals who see in Kennedy a receptacle for all they hold holy must keep in mind his calculating cynicism — for example, his opposition to civil-rights legislation when he believed its passage would strengthen the Republican president proposing it. Kennedy’s virtues — his vocal anti-Communism, his assertive sense of the American national interest, his tax-cutting — would hardly make him a welcome figure among those who today claim his mantle. His vices, on the other hand, are timeless.
The Cuban missile crisis is generally presented as the great episode of Kennedy’s hanging tough in the face of Communist aggression, but, like so much about Kennedy’s life, that story represents a triumph of public relations over substance. Kennedy gave up much more than he let on to resolve the crisis, agreeing to remove U.S. missiles from Turkey — on the condition that the concession remain secret, so as not to undermine his political career or his brother’s. And the Cuban missile crisis was brought on in no small part by Kennedy’s inviting displays of weakness: His performance at the 1961 Vienna summit made little impression on Nikita Khrushchev, and within a few months the Berlin Wall was under construction. After the Bay of Pigs, the Soviets had little reason to suppose that Cuba was anything but a safe port for them.
But Kennedy had a gift for spinning gold out of goof-ups.
John Kennedy looms large in the American imagination, but not for anything he accomplished in office. He was a handsome and vivacious man whose ascendancy coincided with that of television, a politician who was one part royal, one part movie star. That Americans found his celebrity and his pretensions to aristocracy appealing is beyond argument; however, it does not speak well of our political culture. But as created personas go, JFK was a doozy: He won the Pulitzer Prize for a book largely written by somebody else; his reputation as an intellectual was largely the creation of Arthur Schlesinger; and his family was figuratively and perhaps literally in bed with Joe McCarthy (who dated two of the Kennedy women), but the stigma of McCarthyism has never attached itself to his name. His pathological sexual appetites gave him the reputation of a charming rogue, when the truth is that he was closer to a mid-century Anthony Weiner. He was a veteran with an admirable military record, an unexceptional and difference-splitting senator with an Irish name: But for his celebrity, he would have been John McCain or John Kerry.
Kennedy did not transform the country, but he did transform the presidency – largely for the worse. Combining grandiose rhetoric with shallow policy, he established the modern template of president as media hero, beginning the conversion of the office of the presidency from that of chief administrator of the federal government to the modern grotesquery it has become. The main effects of his time in the White House were to make his immediate predecessor look like Cincinnatus by comparison and to unleash the ugliness of Johnson and Johnsonism on the republic after his martyrdom at the hands of a deranged Communist. That Lyndon Johnson, a man he detested, was Kennedy’s political heir is a testament to the fact that there was hardly any devil he was unwilling to get in bed with if it brought him political power.
And what did he do with that power? Among the heaviest burdens facing the American public in 2013 are the direct expenses and unfunded liabilities associated with Medicare and Medicaid, two ill-shaped programs conceived of by the Kennedy administration but executed under Johnson — which is to say, we’ll be paying the price for Kennedy’s grand dreams for a long time to come.
He looked great in a suit, and he could deliver an applause line with the best of them. We may grieve the murder of a president, but our grief should not blind us to what kind of president, or man, he was.
Disagree, not when I saw him. During the 1960 campaign he came to Syracuse NY and a liberal friend and I walked to a corner to watch him drive by on the back seat of a convertible. He so impressed me just sitting there, that I had to sign up for door to door canvasing for Nixon.
He was strong and impressive looking, but a scum bag like all the Kennedys.
Always thought the Press had kind of a gay thing for him and still does.
“he was the only PT boat skipper to get run over by an enemy ship.”
And for that he should have been court marshaled, better yet keel-hauled. How does a high speed PT boat get cut in half by a Japanese cruiser?
Maybe JFK was passed out drunk?
I was shocked at how unwell he looked. Like a fragile old lady whose face has been carefully painted.
Don’t believe he used teleprompters either !?
Did they even have them 50 years ago?
JPK certainly was an appeasor and a coward. Perhaps FDR kept him at his job as Ambassador to Great Britain because he knew the US was not ready for war at that time and he knew Kennedy had no stomach for it all. JPK cowered in the English countryside during the Blitz as Prime Minister Churchill and the King and Queen remained in London throughout the ordeal.
Many Irish-Americans sided with Hitler against England.
RE: Nothing turns a sub-standard POTUS into a Saint like tragic death in office.
Well, St. Jimmy Carter is alive and well... see how people view his legacy...
Based on the enemy of my enemy theory...
I was alive and able to vote at the time this man was President. All was not idolization of Kennedy. In fact, he was trailing Goldwater in all the polls of the day. He was losing big in Texas and that is why he went to that state in November. He and his advisers thought that by going to Texas he could revive his fortunes.
RE: All was not idolization of Kennedy. In fact, he was trailing Goldwater in all the polls of the day.
So, do you believe he would have lost in 1964 had he been alive then?
Indeed. Colonists came to American to escape oppression. Then they had to rebel as it followed them. And even then there was a great portion of Americans who shunned freedom.
Now we have created generations of voluntary slaves craving the yoke of oppression in exchange for bread and circuses. And they are just about to extinguish the light of freedom forever.
The Great Experiment is almost over.
But he was a TRUE CONSERVATIVE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
The English were still being very very nasty up until the mid-19th century, and the 17th and 18th centuries had been brutal http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-irish-slave-trade-the-forgotten-white-slaves—so 800 years would not be necessary. The older generation would remembering what their grandparents had experienced and relayed from the few previous generations would have been quite ample.
That it has been so swept under the rug that there is not a realization of how relatively close it is would make those few who do remember quite bitter.
It was my understanding that the boat was anchored at night. I think they were partying but am not sure. Probably no one on watch but even if the destroyer was seen there may not have been time to get out of the way. Seemed like a freak accident with incompetence thrown in.
It’s all about the myth.
One of best opines on this junk I’ve read
I salute NR
Now get your Neo con what culture war heads out of your butts
I went to Catholic schools 1-12. I had a grade school friend who chose to go to the public high school. In those days (sixties) most Catholic kids went to the Catholic hs and most Protestants went to the public high school. After Kennedy got shot, one Protestant kid, who I also knew, danced down the high school corridor shouting with glee about how happy he was Kennedy got shot. My grade school friend punched him out. Considering the level of anti-Catholic feeling still prevalent in the country in those days, I'm sure there were more than a few fist fights in the wake of the shooting between different religious parties.
Kennedy was guilty of dereliction of duty for not posting a man on watch. Despite getting some medals for saving the lives of his crewmen, he faced a Naval hearing when he went back to the States. He was not punished for various reasons: either the brass figured they needed more heroes than scapegoats or Pa Kennedy pulled some strings, but nothing was done to him.
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