Hmmmm....not that Bush and Obama did/didnt/wtf/owtfwc have exit strategies...maybe both of them only wanted to do as much damage to this country as possible and exit...stage left...only history will tell...because the people living/lived through it can't
Off-the-record loose talk by a Dead Kennedy doesn’t mean much. I think JFK would have done a better job (at first), but he planned to escalate in Vietnam, despite having spent his Senate years bitching about the Eisenhower administration’s pretty minor involvement in “Indo-China”, particular in “Lay OS” (that’s how the Hyannisport Hustler pronounced it).
Kennedy campaigned on “missile gap” and the need for “brushfire wars”, but once in office crippling the Bay of Pigs and (as quoted in “Conversations with Kennedy”) said ‘watch the generals’ because they don’t necessarily know what they’re doing (IOW, his mistake, owning it in public, desclaiming it in private); then taking the US closer to the brink than the brinkmanship years of Truman and Eisenhower during the Missile Crisis. Oh yeah, great president.
Jake Javits referred to JFK as “a lousy president”, and I can’t but agree. Despite his massive blundering into Vietnam and escalating beyond comprehension, while micromanaging it from DC, LBJ got a lot more done and dealt with problems far more effectively. And he only had two more years in office than JFK.
JFK and his brother picked a fight with the Mob and both were assassinated in retribution. That’s pretty much diagnostic of “not too bright”. They were smart, but arrogant beyond belief (IOW, quintessential Demwits), and despite being wildly popular and charistmatic to the great unwashed, the brothers and their Ivy League genius brigade alienated everyone else.
Joe Sr’s plan was for Joe Jr to run for President. At a large private gathering, Joe Sr toasted his eldest son as “a future president of the United States.” Jr blew up trying to fly a planeload of high explosive (bailing out at the last minute) into the French coastal cliffs where the London Guns were being constructed. When he heard the news, JFK reportedly told his shipmate, “I can feel Pappy’s eyes on me now.”
JFK was to have eight years, followed by Bobby in 1968 (and he did indeed run on schedule, but, uh, didn’t finish the race), and then by Fatso Teddy in 1976. Ted had a press conference declining to run, and not expecting to ever run again. But Carter effed things up so badly in Fatso’s opinion that he ran against him in 1980. When Carter heard he’d announced his challenge, he said, “I’ll whip his ass.” And he did.
Kennedy’s campaign included no specifics on Israel, instead redirecting questions about it to inquiries about what Carter’s actual position was. (we know now, don’t we? Carter had his various family proxies taking different positions on US-Israel relations, one of these was a call for “undivided Jerusalem”). He also wanted to push for universal health care, and said “I’d let the Blues do it.”