Matthew Yglesias (January 05, 2008) - The Myth of JFK (Politics)

Well,
he did bluff the Sovs out of putting IRBMs in Cuba.
C

Posted by Poicephalus | January 5, 2008 10:19 PM

Never underestimate the power of living fast, dying young and leaving an interesting corpse to foster a posthumous cult of personality.

I don't truck with no Nixon, but the way Kennedy beat him with the lie of the "missile gap" and the questionable ballots in Illinois was pretty disgusting and Dubya-like.

Posted by calipygian | January 5, 2008 10:20 PM

Setting aside the merits of JFK praise, it really seemed to me (and I posted this in the last thread without seeing this one) that Richardson was pretty directly comparing Obama to JFK. The question was clearly refering to Obama, and Richardson could've used it to say that youth and experience matters. Instead he said flat-out that youth doesn't matter (deflating one of the major attacks on Obama) and brought JFK up out of the blue to praise him for his inspirational abilities (the same thing people are drawn to about Obama).

Posted by jbryan | January 5, 2008 10:21 PM

At least Richardson brought him up very specifically -- he said JFK was a hero because of certain ways he found him inspiring, i.e., said we'd go to the moon, etc. Sure the JFK worship gets lain on thick, but Richardson didn't do it too over the top.

Posted by El Cid | January 5, 2008 10:21 PM

Um...yeah. Cuban Missile Crisis.

Also civil rights, anti-poverty, space exploration.

Posted by Mr. Noah | January 5, 2008 10:23 PM

I was born 3 months after Kennedy was killed so I don't remember him directly. But I have have been following politics and Democratic politics since elementary school.

My own sense of the Kennedy legacy? Three things:

The Cuban Missile Crisis
The Peace Corps
Inspiring the rest of the world about America

I've worked and traveled in Latin America for 20 years and I can't count how many baby boomer era Latin Americans I've met who still fondly recall Kennedy and I think every Latin American capital I've ever visited has an Avenida Kennedy. He was truly an inspirational figure to the rest of the world.

Posted by Kent from Waco | January 5, 2008 10:23 PM

then there was also that whole assassination thing - pretty powerful, symbolically. and then his brother and MLK.

Posted by cleek | January 5, 2008 10:25 PM

Oh yes, how could I have forgotten.

Space Exploration and the Apollo program was most definitely Kennedy's legacy.

Posted by Kent from Waco | January 5, 2008 10:27 PM

Most Democrats who (like me) are old enough to remember Kennedy speak about him as an inspiring, charismatic figure, not as a particularly great president. They couch their praise of Kennedy in terms like, "He made all of us excited about public service." That's a big difference from the Reagan cult. There are no Democrats proposing that JFK be added to Mt Rushmore, for example.

Posted by Karl Weber | January 5, 2008 10:28 PM

LBJ's the president nobody talks about. There's a decent argument to be made the LBJ is one of the two or three best AND worst presidents of the 20th century. I agree completely with Matt that people have given Kennedy credit for LBJ's accomplishments. The Great Society trumped The New Frontier in pretty much every way.

But Viet Nam...The Best and The Brightest makes the case as clear as it needs to be made that Johnson backed his way into making that war steadily worse because he could never bear being charged with "losing Viet Nam" the way Truman "lost China." Tragic, for everyone.

Posted by mrsaturdaypants | January 5, 2008 10:29 PM

Thank you, Matt, for bravely sharing what I think is a sentiment held by many who dare not say it. JFK just wasn't that great a president. Maybe he would have been if he had lived through his first term and then had a second term. But his presidency as it really was doesn't live up to the hype.
People citing the Cuban Missle Crisis as an example of a good legacy need to read their history. There was a reason Khruschev picked that fight.

Posted by yowxa | January 5, 2008 10:29 PM

In what sense did Kennedy initiate Vietnam policy? Eisenhower originally got us mixed up in the mess, and the vast, vast bulk of our escalation and casualties ocurred during the Johnson administration.

And I think part of it is that there were rumblings that JFK was going to pull out of Vietnam, and I find it unlikely that escalation to 1968 levels would have happened under a JFK administration. It is the counterfactuals that attract people to Kennedy.

Also, space exploration is cool too.

Posted by PTS | January 5, 2008 10:29 PM

The Illinois ballots story is bullshit. The GOP repeatedly challenged the ballots in Illinois and never turned up any evidence that the votes had been stolen.

There was a sense in the immediate aftermath of the JFK assassination (surprising, considering he emotion) that there had not been large accomplishments in the administration, but that he had changed the tone and brought people a sense of belonging to their government again. The sense of government belonging to people can be worth 100 times any policies being passed.

That said, JFK spared us nuclear war and banned atmospheric nuclear testing; but it should be said his assassination spurred most of his major policy initiatives forward.

Posted by Brian | January 5, 2008 10:29 PM

Richardson's "making his move" in the way that Rawls did when Carcetti became mayor. Instead of being loyal to the Clintons, he's seeing the writing on the wall and angling for a gig with Obama. Maybe VP. Who knows. It's pretty obvious that he knows he's got no chance; he's just getting some attention and hoping it lands him a job.

Posted by tinisoli | January 5, 2008 10:29 PM

Matt, I'm just old enough to have been trained in "duck and cover" in elementary school. JFK had many faults, but he steered us through the Cuban missile crisis without triggering a nuclear war, at a time when that was a very real possibility.

The Cuban missile crisis is mentioned in Wickipedia, if you've never heard of it.

sheesh... kids, these days.

Posted by foldedpath | January 5, 2008 10:30 PM

Kennedy's greatest legacy is by far his deft handling of the Cuban Missle Crisis. He was flanked by warmonger advisors who demanded an invasion of Cuba. He was also on record as a hardcore Cold Warrior (missle gap and such) and the '62 elections were fast approaching add more pressure not to look weak. Despite all of that he wisely resisted war and chose a strategy that gave the Soveits time to rethink their position and to ultimately back down. Is there any doubt that Nixon or Johnson would have chosen war in the same circumstance?

Posted by UofazGrad | January 5, 2008 10:31 PM

To pass over the Cuban Missile Crisis as you do is absolutely phenomenal. It's not just your age that's showing; it's apparently an indifference to recent history that has produced ignorance. How, the guy had the guts to stand against his advisers and prevent a nuclear holocaust. What's the big deal, right?? And what about the test ban treaty? Look back at the foreign policy crises of those years. Try to remember that it was only a few years removed from the Soviets getting the bomb, the Korean war, the blacklist and all the McCarthy nonsense.
And try to remember that if you went to a water fountain even in a city even in what thought of itself as the "progressive" South--as in a Sears in Raleigh, NC--there were still black and white water fountains in the 50s. That still in the 60s blacks had to sit in the balcony in movie theaters. That the white public high schools in NC WOULD NOT PLAY an integrated Catholic school team. But JFK--add all the caveats you want--essentially took the side of civil rights. And JKF had only three years.

Posted by skeptica | January 5, 2008 10:32 PM

Matt, you are a young fresh turd.

JFK took on the Soviet Union in the cold war and defeated them. The Russians essentially surrendered over the Cuban Missle Crisis and they never recovered.

Because of JFK we have an American flag on the freaking moon.

JFK took on organized crime and broke there hold over large swaths of American life.

And yeah, Matt, he gave even people a chance to serve the country in the Peace Corps.

And his death was the only reason that Johnson was able to get the Civil Rights bill passed. Politicians were frightened to oppose thhesignature issue of the Kennedy administration. Johnson gets credit but it never would have happened without Kennedy's assassination.

Posted by ken | January 5, 2008 10:33 PM

Matt, you are a young fresh turd.

JFK took on the Soviet Union in the cold war and defeated them. The Russians essentially surrendered over the Cuban Missle Crisis and they never recovered.

Because of JFK we have an American flag on the freaking moon.

JFK took on organized crime and broke there hold over large swaths of American life.

And yeah, Matt, he gave even people a chance to serve the country in the Peace Corps.

And his death was the only reason that Johnson was able to get the Civil Rights bill passed. Politicians were frightened to oppose the signature issue of the Kennedy administration. Johnson gets credit but it never would have happened without Kennedy's assassination.

Posted by ken | January 5, 2008 10:34 PM

OK, I agree that JFK wasn't great. His signature accomplishment, though, was huge: Cuban Missile Crisis. Granted, much of that crisis was brought about by his own irrational mania of Castro, but he handled it pretty damn well, mostly by ignoring the hawkish counsel of everyone close to him, including the military and his brother.

Above, I see someone say JFK "bluffed" the Soviets out of putting ICMBs in Cuba. Actually, some Soviet missiles were already in place, and Kennedy didn't bluff anyone. He made a secret pact with the Soviets to get them out.

Also, I see someone mention civil rights, as well as RFK and MLK. Whuu? JFK dragged his feet on civil rights, and RFK (with JFK's blessing) had the FBI illegal bug MLK. JFK sucked on civil rights.

Posted by Jim E. | January 5, 2008 10:34 PM

Yeah, the Civil Rights Act of '64, which Kennedy introduced, was kind of a big deal.

Posted by Tyler | January 5, 2008 10:35 PM

The whole "go to the moon" thing was an extension of the arms race. After all, the impetus for the development of the rockets to take us to the moon was the desire to make a rocket that could drop a 1000kg physics package on Moscow.

After being beaten into space by the Russians, with the realization that while it was Sputnik today, tomorrow it could be an atom bomb, we needed to show the Russians and the world that our dicks were bigger.

A proper space program would have taken its time, built upon its predecessors and we would be sending men to Mars now probably.

Kennedy's rush to the moon, with no other real rationale other than to rub the Russian's face in the acheivement and the development of better technology for ICBMs, kind of imparted on people an attitude of "Well, we got there and now what?" rather than serving as the stepping stone to further accomplishment.

Posted by calipygian | January 5, 2008 10:37 PM

I was in high school the day Kennedy was shot. I still remember exactly where I was when I heard the news. It didn't interest me at the time - the only thing that mattered to me was that the news coverage knocked EVERYTHING off the air for a week or more.

People shouldn't underestimate the impact of that assassination on the people alive at the time. JFk and Jackie were a glamorous couple - probably THE most glamorous political pair in the last 100 years.

There's a reason Clinton spent a lot of time acting like Kennedy. The Clintons tried to bring back that "glamor" (mostly unsuccessfully, in my view - because Hillary was no Jackie and both of them had too much Arkansas baggage).

I could see Obama trying the same schtick, but I doubt it will work this time around.

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | January 5, 2008 10:38 PM

JFK's greatest contribution to the 64 civil rights act was dying -- LBJ sold it as if it was JFK's signature issue, when it really wasn't. Aside from MLK (and SNCC and the SCLC, etc.) the politician that probably deserves the most credit for the civil rights act was LBJ.

JFK's record on civil rights isn't horrible. It just wasn't a priority for him. It wasn't even a priority for RFK until several years later.

Posted by Jim E. | January 5, 2008 10:38 PM

Well, assuming that we did really come extraordinarily close to triggering a full nuclear war with Russia over those Cuban Missiles, I think that fact alone can make a case that Kennedy was one of the *worst* American presidents of the twentieth century.

I'll admit I haven't devoted any real time to studying the circumstances, but I have the strong impression that once the memoirs on both sides were published it turned out that at two or three different unrecognized juncture-points, a single decision taken the wrong way or shot fired could have killed tens of millions of people, half of them American.

Also, didn't Russia just put the missiles in Cuba because we'd put some missiles in Turkey? And didn't the deal which ended the crisis amount to mutual withdrawal (after a face-saving "decent interval")?

If my casual understanding of this history is wrong, I apologize to the Shrine of JFK?

Otherwise...well I did like the Space Program...but JFK was still a *terrible* president...

Posted by RKU | January 5, 2008 10:38 PM

flush twice.

sorry about the double posts

Posted by ken | January 5, 2008 10:40 PM

Am I wrong in thinking that JFK bore at least some responsibility for the Bay of Pigs? Odd that no one has mentioned that.

On civil rights, he certainly had at least a lot of symbolic importance. I grew up in the South in the 1960s and 1970s and recall seeing portraits of JFK, often alongside that of Dr. King, in African-American households on several occasions.

Posted by guyx | January 5, 2008 10:43 PM

Kennedy's handling of the Cuban Missile Crisis was nothing short of a miracle because there were a lot of things that could have gone wrong. I was at a conference a few years ago and met a retired Russian general who was a young Major in Cuba. He had the authority to launch nuclear armed tactical missiles if he thought Cuba was threatened with invasion without asking permission from Moscow.

Additionally, the submarines that sortied from the North Fleet to Cuba had the same authority with the nuclear torpedos on board.

Combine that with batshit insane Generals like LeMay who wanted to take the Russians out and it is a miracle that Kennedy was able to pull out a deal with Khrushchev.

And yeah, it was a quid pro quo - take the SS-4s out of Cuba and we would take the Jupiters out of Turkey a few months later and pretend it wasn't an exchange.

Posted by calipygian | January 5, 2008 10:43 PM

Put on a Nehru jacket and some Hai Karate and give Dana Perino a call.

Posted by joejoejoe | January 5, 2008 10:44 PM

That's it. Forty years from now, you mention Obama, and I'll come back and haunt ya.

Posted by bob mcmanus | January 5, 2008 10:46 PM

Matt, were you born before 1963? You had to be there!

Posted by Independent | January 5, 2008 10:47 PM

I threw the Cuban Missile Crisis out there, off the top of my head. I feel that his stressing that government service was an honorable thing was, in the long run, more important. That is my numero uno complaint (among many) against St. Ronnie of the Naps; that if you want to contribute to the country, you should be in the private sector. We still haven't recovered from that.

Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country.

C

Posted by Poicephalus | January 5, 2008 10:49 PM

Bill Richardson mentioned in response to a question about whether or not "relative youth" is a detriment in Presidential politics that JFK was his idol.

He also could have mentioned that all the candidates are older than Bill Clinton was in 1992.

Posted by right | January 5, 2008 10:53 PM

Hey, he bagged Marilyn Monroe. Pretty damn inspirational.

Posted by Jimbo | January 5, 2008 11:02 PM

There are no Democrats proposing that JFK be added to Mt Rushmore, for example.

That's because Kennedy is already on the dime.

Posted by Just Karl | January 5, 2008 11:03 PM

You're too young. JFK gave beautiful--beautiful--speeches, and made people feel proud to be Americans. I'm 62. And Obama makes me feel young. He makes me feel like its 1968 again, and that the world really might change. After 30+ years of a defensive crouch as a liberal/progressive, it's a great feeling. And it's like an Autumn love affair--I just don't care if I'm being naive or unrealistic.

Posted by Matt | January 5, 2008 11:05 PM

The Bay of Pigs was a pretty serious clusterfuck on Kennedy's watch. In general, the Cuba policy that developed under Kennedy has been pretty bad for both Cuba and the United States over the ensuing decades...

Posted by Spike | January 5, 2008 11:09 PM

There are no Democrats proposing that JFK be added to Mt Rushmore, for example.

That's because Kennedy is already on the dime.

I don't get it. Pretty sure that's FDR on the dime.

Posted by right | January 5, 2008 11:13 PM

"No government or social system is so evil that its people must be considered as lacking in virtue. As Americans, we find communism profoundly repugnant as a negation of personal freedom and dignity. But we can still hail the Russian people for their many achievements--in science and space, in economic and industrial growth, in culture and in acts of courage." (American University commencement speech, 1963)

Pretty remarkable words considering the era, and remarkably modern (just substitute "Arab" for "Russian" and "Islamic fascist rule" for communism and it would be a line I'd love to hear delivered by a presidential candidate today.)

Posted by MPL | January 5, 2008 11:13 PM

Karl, Roosevelt's on the Dime. Kennedy is on the Half Dollar.

You know, half dollars used to be in pretty common circulation before Kennedy was on them. Since Kennedy was introduced on the half in 1964, people started thinking of them as collectibles instead of currency. Now you never even see them anymore because whenever anyone gets one, they hang on to it. Eventually, the mint stopped putting them in general circulation and now only sells them to collectors.

Pretty silly, really. Its a useful denomination.

Posted by Spike | January 5, 2008 11:15 PM

It's a generation transition thing; probably what Obama is appealing to. All the G.I.s now had houses in the suburbs and 2.2 kids and the went with the young guy who fought with them; not the heir of the old guy who led them. Kennedy's victory made them realize that they had come of age. For my 50 something generation it was a comparable moment at Reagan's election - sucked to be a democrat then. I think the 20 somethings are dying to have a politics that doesn't reference the Clintons or Bushes - Obama looks to be the guy who bring them into their majority in the temporal as well as electoral sense.

So when folks recall JFK with enthusiams, they might be talking about some of his policies, but more likely they're recalling their own sense of having arrived.

Posted by Pudentilla | January 5, 2008 11:18 PM

Before the 1980s - which started out with the biggest recession since the depression - the biggest and most inclusive economic boom in our history was during the 1960s - started by the economic and fiscal policies of the Kennedy Administration - and unlike the 1980s, achieved with budget surpluses and continual paying down of the huge national debt left over from WWII. During the 1960s millions of Americans moved out of poverty and sub-standard housing because that sort of stuff was a national priority (and yes, it started before Johnson). It may not sound sexy to you, but a lot of that was Kennedy's legacy.

Posted by Ethel-to-Tilly | January 5, 2008 11:19 PM

Before the 1980s - which started out with the biggest recession since the depression - the biggest and most inclusive economic boom in our history was during the 1960s - started by the economic and fiscal policies of the Kennedy Administration - and unlike the 1980s, achieved with budget surpluses and continual paying down of the huge national debt left over from WWII. During the 1960s millions of Americans moved out of poverty and sub-standard housing because that sort of stuff was a national priority (and yes, it started before Johnson). It may not sound sexy to you, but a lot of that was Kennedy's legacy.

Posted by Ethel-to-Tilly | January 5, 2008 11:20 PM

I honestly can't believe you would just pass over the Cuban Missile Crisis. That kind of careless blogging really hurts your credibility. Do you want people to think you are serious, or just another wise-ass kid with a computer?

Posted by Joe | January 5, 2008 11:20 PM

Americans and their Presidents

Christ, the most tradition-bound Brits don't love their Queen nearly as much as the average American loves his god-emperor Presidency. So whatever you do, do not get between America and one of its mythic hero Presidents, however thin the reality behind the myth. This particular myth even has the Attys-Adonis thing in it, so it's a real third rail.

Personally, I think that we should abolish the presidency and burn down the White House. Or, better yet, turn the WH over the Ripley's Believe It or Not folks for them to turn into one of their grade B, cabinet of oddities, museums. Let an animatronic Cheney vie for attention with the two-headed alligators, and serve as boogy man for generations of six-year olds. It could be the best way of insuring that we have generations of six year old left to have the Bejeesus frightened out of.

Posted by Glen Tomkins | January 5, 2008 11:21 PM

Among Democrats of a certain age, this seems to be an incredibly common sentiment

Er, well, this boomer would like to take your opportunity to make a bumbling stab at giving some nuance on that.

This boomer thinks of JFK idolization as something that her parents did. And that Richardson has it at this late date makes Richardson look a little dopey and naive to me and lowers his savvy quotient in my eyes a bit. That's without factoring in my knowledge of history, that's just a gut reaction that comes from my youth.

It's usually the real early boomers are into that, like Bill Clinton, the ones that were into their teens when he was still around. Most later boomers with Dem parents, friends or relatives grew up with JFK holy martyr pictures around, and thought of it as a signifier of the greatest generation, sort of old-fashioned and bit clueless. It's something you would tolerate and respect without joking about it, but you see it as unsavvy.

For the greatest generation, his presidency was culturally revolutionary, "JFK and Jackie" were like a shock wave otherthrowing parochial 1950's American culture and bringing in "class" and light, enlightened social thinking, international savoir-faire, that was part of it, maybe even more so than any policy. (For many blacks of the greatest generation, of course, he was a sainted symbol of the start of the civil rights movement.)

As for the "I'm still a worshippers of RFK" cohorts, well I don't know about other boomers on that, but I'd like to take the opportunity to say that they drive me nuts. That one's a bit more complicated, though. Even as a young very politically unsavvy teen, I knew all about his phony side, all the Attorney General funny business, his past with McCarthyism, opportunism, the whole down side of the supposed wunnerful Kennedy family. And it's a myth that plenty of us weren't aware that the JFK administration was partly responsible for Vietnam. Remember, if you were a real leftie then, you had no love for the Dem mainstream party! You know, 1968 Dem convention, heard about that? They were all part of the "system." The hated LBJ was, after all, JFK's choice for vice-president Some of us just didn't buy RFK as a liberal at the time, to me and others he was more status quo, not enough "change," to use the catchword of 1992 and now 2008, not that much removed from Hubert Humphrey, just prettier and more able to schmooze with the fancy words. Perhaps it's a little like you might think of the Clintons, I dunno, as a Gene McCarthy fan, it was sort of like you would roll your eyes that Bobby Kennedy was really an anti-war liberal, those that thought like me thought the RFK fans were very naive. I don't know how to explain it better--RFK fans, they were more like the kumbaya type, naive "wholesome" youth, not "hippies" or "radicals." That some of those still hold onto iconic adoration of RFK makes me wonder if they've read anything of historical work on the Kennedys at all in the last three decades or have any capacity of mind over emotion.

Posted by artappraiser | January 5, 2008 11:22 PM

"But from where I sit JFK, um, wasn't a very good president."

Where do you get this from?

I think you might be confusing "wasn't actually one of the greatest 5 Presidents" with "wasn't a very good president"

---Who has been better than him in the years before and after him?

JFK versus Eisenhower, JFK is better
JFK versus Johnson, Johnson is both better and worse
JFK versus Nixon, Ford, Carter , puh-lease
JFK versus Reagan? Surely not, at least not from a progressive perspective
JFK versus Clinton or Truman, I'd be interested in your thoughts.
JFK versus FDR, FDR wins, JFK oses.

Posted by Rob | January 5, 2008 11:22 PM

Eisenhower totally beats JFK for no other reason than I make use of the Interstate Highway system a lot more than the Space Program.

Posted by Spike | January 5, 2008 11:31 PM

RKU, you should hear participants in the Cuban Missile talk about it, as well as, you know, actually study it before pronouncing on it with such certainty. _Of course_ we could have been blown up at any number of times in that crisis; it was the nature of the crisis. And his deft handling of it was why Kennedy deserves an important place in history (though he was surely not the greatest President by any means, or even a particularly good one -- just one who got his key decision exactly right).

I heard Robert McNamara speak a few years ago at college, and got a chance to talk with him about the crisis. He mentioned that at one point, a Russian submarine commander turned his launch key, but his executive officer refused to go along -- we were that close. So I guess I don't really see how JFK's skillful navigation of such difficult geopolitical waters counts against him. He was citing the freaking GUNS OF AUGUST for chrissake!

The movie THIRTEEN DAYS actually does give a pretty accurate summation of the ins-and-outs of the crisis, though Kevin Costner's Boston accent is truly laughable.

Posted by Ben Cronin | January 5, 2008 11:33 PM

I can't believe that people are actually citing the Cuban Missile Crisis as one of JFK's positive accomplishments. The inexperienced buffoon damn near got the entire world blown up and you're going on about his wonderful "leadership"? And over what? With ICBMs, it doesn't matter a damn whether the missiles are in Cuba or in Siberia.

JFK is, by far, the most overrated President in U.S. history. One of the many reasons that I look forward to the eventual extinction of the Boomers is that maybe we'll finally get over this silly JFK-worship that has consumed so much of the past 40 years.

Rob's statement above is not the worst example of JFK-idolization, but on what possible ground can he claim that JFK was a better President than Eisenhower? Ike did a good job of marginalizing the kooks and weirdos in his party, and his military experience kept him out of the blunders JFK got into. He worked fairly well with the Democrats and got the Interstate Highway System built — a major achievement that drastically affects American life to this day. The reason that there's a lot of nostalgia for the 1950s is that the 1950s were actually pretty good for most Americans. Economically, they were much more progressive than today, with union membership at record highs and wealth inequality far lower than now. The challenge for liberals in the 21st century is to figure out how to combine the major social advances of the past 50 years (civil rights, feminism) with the economic solidarity that served us so well during the post-war period.

JFK is a dead end. His combination of Cold War hawkery and tax cuts makes him a prototype of the neoconservatives, not a liberal. He has a lot in common with George W. Bush; they were both phonies who had no real achievements of their own, but gained high office because of their powerful fathers. (Kennedy's famous book, Profiles in Courage, was ghostwritten.) The best thing Kennedy ever did for liberalism was to get shot.

Posted by Josh G. | January 5, 2008 11:38 PM

Karl, Roosevelt's on the Dime. Kennedy is on the Half Dollar.

Oops. That's right.

Perhaps it's a little like you might think of the Clintons, I dunno, as a Gene McCarthy fan,

No, Hillary was a Goldwater Girl.

Posted by Just Karl | January 5, 2008 11:39 PM

""No government or social system is so evil that its people must be considered as lacking in virtue. As Americans, we find communism profoundly repugnant as a negation of personal freedom and dignity. But we can still hail the Russian people for their many achievements--in science and space, in economic and industrial growth, in culture and in acts of courage." (American University commencement speech, 1963)

Pretty remarkable words considering the era, and remarkably modern (just substitute "Arab" for "Russian" and "Islamic fascist rule" for communism and it would be a line I'd love to hear delivered by a presidential candidate today.)

Posted by MPL | January 5, 2008 11:13 PM "

MPL,candidates from left to right, and th current President, have all made comments like that all along. It's just not that remarkable in the current era, and comments like that don't matter to Muslims, because they don't address the policy issues that are upsetting them. Comments like that are also not noticed by liberals, because they like to think of US policies under conservatives as bigoted towards Muslims.

Posted by Rob | January 5, 2008 11:39 PM

I'd say "not a very good president" is pretty mild. The best thing I could say about him is that you might expect a mob-connected, speed-addicted degenerate like JFK to have been even worse. As it was, his greatest sins were using the FBI and the IRS against his political enemies, and almost sparking a nuclear exchange for no particularly good strategic reason in the Cuban Missile Crisis. But hey, he had nice teeth.

Posted by Gene | January 5, 2008 11:43 PM

So, why is it always JFK and not FDR? Roosevelt came into a nastier situation, stayed longer, and did vastly more --- so much that people forget that the Presidency was his first national elective office; his major experience at the time he was elected President was a very short term as Governor of New York, and many of the pols there who knew him best viewed him as a flyweight. (At least one national columnist called him "Feather-Duster" Roosevelt). And despite Truman's Senate service, "experience" was a rap on him as well. We could do worse.

Posted by "Charles Dodgson" | January 5, 2008 11:43 PM

Eisenhower totally beats JFK for no other reason than I make use of the Interstate Highway system a lot more than the Space Program.

No you don't. Unless you don't watch TV or use a telephone, which today mostly require the satellites developed during the space program. Also develped were cordless tools, Dustbusters, velcro, CATscans, MRI machines, etc, etc. The benefits of the space program have been profound and it's the single greatest example of how government funded research can improve the lives of everyone in the world.

Posted by Just Karl | January 5, 2008 11:51 PM

Most later boomers with Dem parents, friends or relatives grew up with JFK holy martyr pictures around,

The generational line is a bit fuzzy here; the latest credible year I've seen for the baby boom cohort is people born in 1964, which overlaps the earliest suggested birth year for the 13th Gen/Generation X (1960). These late boomers/early Gen-Xers wouldn't have come of age in the 1960's and aren't what most people think of as typical of that generation.

Posted by Wrye | January 5, 2008 11:54 PM

Cuban Missile Crisis: JFK did a good job, but it should be noted that he lied pretty badly to the American people about it. It was a trade, he did not "stand up" to the Soviets.

However, let's not forget that JFK is responsible for the Bay of Pigs, the Cuba embargo that still exists 4 1/2 decades later, and the assassination attempts against Castro.

All in all, he was a bad President on Cuba.

Space: he did a very good job, no qualifications.

Fiscal policy: awful. He substantially cut taxes for the very rich, and ran budget deficits to pay for them after Ike had the government in surplus. He was the model for Reagan. Yuck.

Civil rights: absolutely putrid. He tapped MLK's phones. He was so intransigent on the issue that the 1963 March on Washington ("I have a dream") was A PROTEST AGAINST KENNEDY'S ANTI-BLACK POLICIES. He refused to stand up to the bigots in his party. He did propose a civil rights act, but it was FAR WEAKER than the laws ultimately passed by LBJ, and he did nothing to help it pass. Truman, Ike, and especially LBJ were all far better on civil rights.

Peace corps: good idea.

Vietnam: again, putrid. Yes, he gave a couple of speeches about getting out. But he kept escalating. When he took office, there were 700 Americans there and they weren't in combat. When he left, there were either 16,000 or 25,000 depending on whom you ask and they were in combat. He was just like LBJ. He was more concerned with looking tough on communism and making sure that the war was passed to the next President so he wouldn't be blamed for "losing" it. 58,000 Americans and 1 million Vietnamese were killed because JFK didn't pull out those 700 advisors and end US involvement in Vietnam.

Terrible President. And no, I don't care that he gave great speeches or Jackie Kennedy was glamorous.

Posted by Dilan Esper | January 5, 2008 11:58 PM

No you don't. Unless you don't watch TV or use a telephone, which today mostly require the satellites developed during the space program. Also develped were cordless tools, Dustbusters, velcro, CATscans, MRI machines, etc, etc. The benefits of the space program have been profound and it's the single greatest example of how government funded research can improve the lives of everyone in the world.

Sending satellites and probes and robots into space is pretty useful and has led to a lot of technological spinoffs and new scientific knowledge. Sending people up there is, and always has been, completely pointless. One reason to like Obama is that he wants to cut back the manned space program to free up the money for other things.

Posted by Jesse M. | January 6, 2008 12:01 AM

I'm in agreement with Jesse M, here... space isn't really meant for humans.

Posted by Spike | January 6, 2008 12:04 AM

It's just piling on at this point. But yeah, JFK managed not just to SAVE THE WORLD, but additionally managed to get the Soviets to back down and won a big PR victory.

I'm told he also led to the decline in men wearing hats. But that's a more ambiguous legacy.

Posted by ixnaythemetier | January 6, 2008 12:05 AM

JFK aside, surely Kruschev and Castro must bear some of the blame for the Cuban Missile Crisis? Since they um, put the missiles in Cuba and all that. Also, since JFK didn't finish his presidency, perhaps the only fair grade is incomplete?

Posted by guineapigfury | January 6, 2008 12:15 AM

Kennedy and the Test Ban - as a rule, countries do not sign on to any sort of Test Ban until they are done testing. We had more to gain by testing underground than we did by atmospheric testing in 1963, as did the Soviets.

Kennedy signing up to the Atmospheric Test Ban Treaty isn't any sort of real accomplishment. After the Soviets tested a 40 Megaton bomb that had the capability of a 100 megaton yield (Tsar Bomba, search for it on youtube, its cool), there really wasn't any rationale for them to continue atmospheric testing.

The Atmospheric Test Ban Treaty was an easy sop to doves in both the United States and the Soviet Union (if there were a lot of doves in the Soviet Union at this point).

Posted by calipygian | January 6, 2008 12:16 AM

What we call the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Soviets called Operation Anadyr' and the declassified source documents are here, if you are interested:

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/nsa/cuba_mis_cri/index.htm

Posted by calipygian | January 6, 2008 12:20 AM

It's just piling on at this point. But yeah, JFK managed not just to SAVE THE WORLD, but additionally managed to get the Soviets to back down and won a big PR victory.

No, ixnay, he made a deal (albeit a good one), and then lied through his teeth to the American people because he was afraid of being portrayed as soft on Communism.

It isn't that he did a bad job on the issue, but what he did nonetheless gets overplayed and spun.

JFK aside, surely Kruschev and Castro must bear some of the blame for the Cuban Missile Crisis? Since they um, put the missiles in Cuba and all that.

You know, there was no nonproliferation treaty at the time, and the US was trying to overthrow Castro's government. I really don't see what was so immoral about the Soviets basing missiles in Cuba. Really not any different than NATO basing missiles in Europe.

Posted by Dilan Esper | January 6, 2008 12:20 AM

One reason to like Obama is that he wants to cut back the manned space program to free up the money for other things.

I'm with that, too. Gil Scott-Heron had a point.

Posted by live | January 6, 2008 12:36 AM

Spin offs technologies of manned space flights include medical devices from the research into the physiological aspects of weightlessness (NMRs, pacemakers), breathing systems (scuba), food requirements (juice boxes), space suits (temper foam, Durette flame retardant material used by fire fighters and race car drivers), microbiological contamination (HEPA filters), cooling systems (blue gel ice packs), water rescue devices (self righting liferafts) and sports equipment (ski goggles).

Certainly there have been benefits from manned space flights. Perhaps the biggest has been the continuation of the space program. Without manned flights, would NASA still exist? The return to the economy for every dollar spent by NASA is something around $7 dollars.

Posted by Just Karl | January 6, 2008 1:16 AM

I'd like to expand on some of the above points based on Tim Weiner's "Legacy of Ashes". Firstly, JFK authorized the CIA to conduct domestic surveillance. Secondly, JFK had actionable intelligence on the missile buildup in Cuba six months before the U2 flight, but he balked. As someone said above, his experience with the Bay of Pigs affected his judgment.

So, really, if Obama=JFK, Part 2, then I'm worried about a young president taking long gambles with extreme tactics, sometimes on, sometimes off. The interesting part about these debates is, that Clinton does a solid job, even when she's tag-teamed, or fatigued, but Obama just doesn't perform. I've read he sometimes takes an entire speech to warm up, also, even though set-piece speeches are supposedly his strength. I've been annoyed by this loooooong campaign, but Clinton just seems to be the candidate who would be ready to go at any time without wavering.

The only counterpoint is, that JFK had his brother, and Clinton has to deal with the dynastic issue, too. Obama is not JFK, the son of an anti-semite and Hitler admirer. But, I wouldn't argue this is a disqualifying point, like Matt does. There's no dictator, as in Pakistan eliminating rivals, in the US. We, the People have done this.

Perhaps Americans like their "change", i.e., a woman president, with an old name.

Posted by Baltimoron | January 6, 2008 1:32 AM

Yeah, um.....preventing a nuclear holocaust is kind of a big deal, or does that not count as an accomplishment??

Lord knows if Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld were at the helm, many of us wouldn't be here. It took guts to stand up to the Curtis LeMays arguing for invasion, to me that was Kennedy's greatest feat. He thought his way through that crisis, and millions of people owe their lives to his grace under pressure.

Posted by Dan | January 6, 2008 1:34 AM

You'd have to give JFK an Incomplete, since he got his brains blown out in, uh, Texas, just as he was hitting his stride.

This just points out the risks American presidents run when they go to foreign countries.

Posted by MoeLarryAndJesus | January 6, 2008 1:39 AM

Kennedy was mostly a colossal fuck-up whose biggest achievement was not government policy, but the cultural and political 'Spring' he ushered in. Simply, he gave liberalism a makeover and sold it to a new generation. In his favor, I think it cannot be discounted that many of the participants in the youth protests in the late '60s first awakened to politics because of the Kennedy's celebrity.

Still, despite, his effectiveness as a minister of American civic religion, Kennedy was just disastrous as a president. He maybe had three accomplishments that I would give him credit for: tax cuts, going after the Mob, and the Peace Corps. His screw-ups were, however, huge: Bay of Pigs (after Iraq, the single biggest foreign policy disaster in American History -- which, by the way, accepting Lee Harvey Oswald as his sole assassin, led to his own death), Cuban Missile Crisis (a bit of blowback from Bay of Pigs and a direct result of his decision to escalate cold war tension by putting missiles in Turkey), civil rights (he was an obstacle to progress, having taken for most of his term a position on civil rights more conservative than Eisenhower), total failure to address the poverty situation he famously campaigned on. Kennedy, like Bush II, ought to be considered a warning to American voters who think that there's no consequence to voting for presidential candidates with light experiential backgrounds. They don't all turnout like Lincoln and FDR.

Posted by dry_fish | January 6, 2008 1:46 AM

JFK "prevented" nuclear holocaust in the sense that he very nearly caused a nuclear holocaust, but managed to escape by the skin of his teeth.

If you really look at the details of the Cuban Missile Crisis, Kennedy does not come off well. He complains to his advisers that the Soviets putting missiles in Cuba would be like the U.S. putting missiles in Turkey. His lackey has to then remind him that he did exactly that just a year earlier. I don't know if his mind was completely drug-addled by this point or what, but Jesus Christ.

From day one, the Soviets made it clear that they would remove the missiles from Cuba if the U.S. would remove the missiles from Turkey. Indeed, this may have been the purpose behind moving the missiles to Cuba in the first place. Kennedy refused to take the deal, at least publicly, a fact which he hoped to conceal, since even he acknowledged that the public would see it as a very fair deal.

He saw a chance to make the Soviets look stupid, and he took it - even though it meant risking nuclear war.

So yeah, the Cuban Missile Crisis is definitely not something JFK apologists ought to point to, unless you actually think showing up the Ruskies was worth risking a nuclear war.

Posted by Jason C. | January 6, 2008 2:13 AM

The basic thing to remember about the Cuban Missile Crisis is that all of Kennedy's advisors told him to do things that would almost certainly have led to a nuclear war. Kennedy refused, and, moreover, came up with a deal that gave the US a propaganda victory. Yes, he had to withdraw missiles from Turkey, but it was done in such a way that the US got a PR victory, and Khrushchev got overthrown for his weakness two years later, and in large part as a result of the Cuban Missile Crisis. I don't see how that could possibly not come up as a pretty serious positive.

As far as civil rights, I fail to see how he was worse than Eisenhowe - at the very least, he was willing to provide genuine rhetorical support for the movement, whereas Eisenhower was silent and unsympethetic - and the Test Ban Treaty was also a major accomplishment.

Kennedy was by no means one of our greatest presidents, but he wasn't at all a bad one, and the backlash against him is deeply exaggerated.

Posted by John | January 6, 2008 2:16 AM

If you think a propaganda victory was worth risking nuclear war, then yes, you probably would like JFK just fine.

Posted by Jason C. | January 6, 2008 2:26 AM

First and only Catholic to be elected president.
Was kind of a big deal to papists in 1960.

The Civil Rights Act of 1964 may not be all Kennedy's but according to Robert Dallek (biographer of LBJ) Kennedy deserves a great deal of credit.

On June 11 1963, Kennedy made the decision to give a televised evening speech announcing his civil rights bill proposal. With only six hours to prepare, it was uncertain that his counselor and speechwriter, Ted Sorensen, would be able to deliver a polished text in time. The president and his attorney general brother, Bobby, discussed what he should say in an extemporaneous talk should no text be ready. Five minutes before Kennedy went on television, Sorensen gave him a final draft, which Kennedy spent about three minutes reviewing.

Although Kennedy delivered part of the talk extemporaneously, it was one of his best speeches--a heartfelt appeal in behalf of a moral cause that included several memorable lines calling upon the country to honor its finest traditions. "We are confronted primarily with a moral issue," he said. "It is as old as the scriptures and is as clear as the American Constitution. The heart of the question is whether all Americans are to be afforded equal rights and equal opportunities ... One hundred years of delay have passed since President Lincoln freed the slaves, yet their heirs, their grandsons, are not fully free. They are not yet freed from the bonds of injustice. They are not yet freed from social and economic oppression. And this Nation, for all its hopes and all its boasts, will not be fully free until all its citizens are free ... Now the time has come for this Nation to fulfill its promise ... The fires of frustration and discord are burning in every city, North and South, where legal remedies are not at hand ... A great change is at hand, and our task, our obligation, is to make that revolution, that change, peaceful and constructive for all ... Next week I shall ask the Congress of the United States to act, to make a commitment it has not fully made in this century to the proposition that race has no place in American life or law."

The following week, on June 19, Kennedy requested the enactment of the most far-reaching civil rights bill in the country's history. He presented it against the backdrop of the murder of Medgar Evers, a leading black activist in Mississippi and veteran of the D-Day invasion, who was assassinated a day after the president's June 11 speech by a rifle shot in the back at the door to his house in front of his wife and children.

The proposed law would ensure that anyone with a sixth-grade education would have the right to vote. It also would eliminate discrimination in all places of public accommodation--hotels, restaurants, amusement facilities and retail establishments. Kennedy described the basis for such legislation as clearly consistent with the 14th Amendment's equal protection clause, the 15th Amendment's right of citizens to vote regardless of race or color, and federal control of interstate commerce. In addition to expanded powers for the attorney general to enforce court-ordered school desegregation, he also asked for an end to job discrimination and expanded funds for job training, which could help African Americans better compete for good jobs, and the creation of a federal community relations service, which could work to improve race relations.

Posted by counterfactual | January 6, 2008 2:50 AM

JFK was inspiring. One expected good things from JFK, something that cannot be said of many presidents.

Posted by gauss | January 6, 2008 2:54 AM

JFK was inspiring. One expected good things from JFK, something that cannot be said of many presidents.

Posted by gauss | January 6, 2008 2:54 AM

i see that matt and many others, especially younger readers, don't have a clue about jfk and his legacy and why he was a very good president. at least.
probably not a great president, because of his death, but to argue that he was not a very good president reveals plain old ignorance.
the peace corps as his greatest accomplishment?
again, what rock have you lived under?
his handling of the cuban missle crisis was enough to warrant great praise.
his biggest problem, the entire cuba mess, was an inherited problem that he was struggling to get a handle on. though the bay of pigs was actually hatched in the eisenhower administration, he should have kept the cia on a shorter leash and he should taken tighter control over the elements that dragged us into that mess. he can rightfully be criticized for that failure.
the same thing can be said about the military and vietnam, though all evidence clearly indicates that he would never have gotten us into the mess that lbj did.
how can anyone in their rational mind compare a policy that has 20,000 or so troops/advisors with one that has 500,000 troops? should he have removed all military personnel, even those 20,000? yes.
can he be held responsible in any fashion for the fact that lbj sank 500,000 troops into the rice patties? absolutely not.
but jfk earns his place in history because of the fact that he put the us on a path that led to the civil rights legislation that lbj later passed.
no, civil rights was not a priority when he assumed office, but jfk rose to the occasion and put everyone on notice that african-americans could count on the federal government to start acting on their behalf, once faced with the events that started to explode in the south.
no one doubts that lbj does not pass all of the essential civil rights legislation -most of which was originated by kennedy - without kennedy's influence and death.
i understand that matt does not share my life experience, that he did not, as a young black kid, have to visit segregated alabama and deal with the crap associated with that society.
he, like many of the readers here, just do not get it.
he - they - just do not quite understand how important and powerful it was to finally have the president of the united states unequivocally state that black folks were human beings also and that they deserved to be treated as human beings and that the government would use its authority and power to make sure that would happen.
kennedy did that, and in doing so, he helped black folks start to achieve a promise that had been denied for decades.
any president who would have done so, would have to be considered a very good president and cannot by any definition be considered, "not very good".
a word of advice: before you write something this stupid again, please seek out and consult with a few old heads. a little bit of real-life experience can be quite illuminating.

Posted by frankie d | January 6, 2008 3:02 AM

[quote=Jason C]JFK "prevented" nuclear holocaust in the sense that he very nearly caused a nuclear holocaust, but managed to escape by the skin of his teeth.[/quote]

The deal to deploy the PGM-19 Jupiter missiles to Turkey was completed during the Eisenhower administration. While the actual missiles were deployed during Kennedy's administration, it's ridiculously unfair to blame Kennedy for that.

You also make it sound like it was an easy decision to simply remove our missiles from Turkey in exchange for the Soviets not to deploy their missiles to Cuba. Even if you took the Soviets at their word (which in itself is a gamble), you're basically saying Kennedy should have folded in the face of Soviet threats. No President could or should do that.

Additionally, nearly all of his advisers were pushing for bombing and invasion, which would most definitely would have sparked a nuclear holocaust. Kennedy, amazingly, goes against their wishes and chooses a blockade. In the end he navigated this minefield, brought us back from the brink, and made the Soviets back down (and they did back down, they didn't challenge the blockade).

Posted by Dan | January 6, 2008 3:34 AM

I'm actually a little bothered by the Kennedy-Obama parallels. I think Obama could restore the mythos of the presidency that has been destroyed beyond recognition in the last two decades with Clinton's foibles and Bush's failures. But I don't know that we'd really be better off if it were. I'd rather people embraced the fact that presidents are just ordinary human beings. It might encourage a little humility in the face of the impossible business of leading the free world.

Posted by gerontion | January 6, 2008 3:35 AM

But from where I sit JFK, um, wasn't a very good president...boomers seem to have taken the Kennedy/Johnson years, attributed all of the Vietnam stuff to Johnson even though Kennedy initiated the policy, then attributed all of the popular domestic stuff to JFK even though almost none of it passed while he was president

1. Boomer Progressives (bizarrely) seem to blame Nixon for Vietnam--not Johnson or JFK

2. I'm not much of a JFK fan, myself, but when a president is faced with a situation that literally puts his nation (and possibly all of humanity) on a very real precipice of extinction and comes out of it in a better position than he went in...well...that doesn't exactly make him Franklin Pierce.

3. Many of the Great Society programs are now either frighteningly insolvent (medicaire), irrelevant (CPB, DoT) or abject failures (war on poverty), suggesting that LBJ didn't think about them beyond their popularity.

Posted by Shinyk | January 6, 2008 4:05 AM

His signature accomplishment was guessing right on how to handle the Cuban Missile Crisis when damn near everyone else in Eashington -- including his own Cabinet and his own brother -- was advocating actions which, we now know, would have gotten the world blown up. For that, I'm inclined to cut him a lot of slack. And the indications are that he would have shown comparable good sense in pulling us out of Vietnam early (again against his Cabinet's wishes). Given Matt's emphasis on the importance of a President rejecting excessive hawkishness, it seems very peculiar that he can ignore that aspect of JFK.

Posted by Bruce Moomaw | January 6, 2008 4:15 AM

That's "Washington", not "Eashington"...

Posted by Bruce Moomaw | January 6, 2008 4:19 AM

Sorry, Dan, the fact that Kennedy merely acquiesced to the placing of Jupiter missiles in Turkey is not a valid excuse. Kennedy had ample opportunity to reverse the decision if he had been competent. It took at least a year into JFK's presidency for the missile squadron in Turkey to become operational. Indeed, it appears that the only reason the missiles were ultimately deployed to Turkey was because Kennedy lost a bureaucratic fight with his own Air Force to have them removed. Ultimately, though, the missile discussion is a distraction: the only reason there was a Cuban Missile Crisis was because of Kennedy's (if you prefer, "acquiescence in") massively failed, hyper-hawkish Cuba policy.

Sorry, frankie d, but you need to re-read your history. Eisenhower's administration passed two Civil Rights Acts. And, he made the most aggressive use of Federal power in defense of civil rights since Reconstruction by his deploying of federal paratroopers in Little Rock. And, his administration created the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department. So, saying that Kennedy was some how being bold by proposing another Civil Rights Act is not really accurate. Needless to say, as someone else has already mentioned, the 1963 March on Washington (which Kennedy tried to cancel) was originally conceived as a protest against the Kennedy Administration. Ultimately, the 1964 Civil Rights Act would have died in committee if not for LBJ's political acumen. And there's no way in heck that the politically timid Kennedy would ever have gone for the strikingly aggressive 1965 Voting Rights Act. From 1957-1968, the key Washington establishment political agent of progress on civil rights was LBJ (slimy bastard he was), not JFK.

Posted by dry_fish | January 6, 2008 4:22 AM

For anyone born after JFK's death, the salient facts that color our impression of JFK are 1. he was a sex addict to a criminally negligent degree and 2. he was in terrible health. Between the Addison's Disease, severe back pain, constant STD reinfection and his drug use (both prescribed and otherwise), he was absolutely unsuited for the physical and mental burdens of office. http://www.doctorzebra.com/Prez/g35.htm

In the 1960 race, the best Democrat by far, Missouri Senator (and former Air Force Secretary) Stuart Symington lost out because he actually believed that Civil Rights stuff.

Symington ran in the 1960 presidential election and won the backing of former President Harry S. Truman, but eventually lost the nomination to Senator John F. Kennedy. Symington, unlike Kennedy or LBJ, refused to speak to segregated audiences in the South, and this hurt his chances. He was considered Kennedy's first choice for Vice President, but was dropped in favor of Texas Senator Lyndon B. Johnson...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuart_Symington

Posted by beowulf | January 6, 2008 4:41 AM

The fact that there's sooooo many mentions of the Cuban Missile Crisis and only a few of the Bay of Pigs is quite telling.

Posted by Cain | January 6, 2008 4:46 AM

JFK's key acheivement was the missile crisis, as many previous commentors have noted. But note that he was faced with a crisis on two fronts--not only did he have to face down the Soviets, but he also had to face down our own crazies, who were longing for a military confrontation with the Soviets.

Imagine the way the Bush/Cheney adminstration would ahve handled the crisis, if you want to grasp the extent of Kennedy's acheivement

Posted by rea | January 6, 2008 6:11 AM

Ike was a modern extremist in regard to presidential power. That being he actively tried to demote it. He was non activist on principal. (The exception being his acquiescence to serial CIA adventureism). He rarely even used the bully pulpit to carry any agendas. He was passive. (So passive he forgot to mention his worry about the military industrial complex until after it was built under him and he was leaving.((the biggest what if in post WWII history is what if Ike had put his foot down on permanent war. He was the only one with the stature to do it and he didn't))

The result was that Kennedy took over and couldn't really do much. Congress ran things pretty much totally. What he could do, with the help of television , was to create Camelot. A fairy tale land representing the ever more sophisticated powers of modern media to shape the opinions and feelings of people, especially younger adults and youths.

His ineffectiveness and limited accomplishments were primarily institutional.

Posted by rapier | January 6, 2008 7:19 AM

The funny thing about the nuclear holocaust meme is that at the time the USSR had no method of delivery to the United States. That was the whole point of the missiles in Cuba. Missiles which were liquid fueled and took a better part of a day to fuel up, Enough time to blow them up conventionally. (I am not sure but at the time of the crisis I am pretty sure the warheads were not yet in Cuba)

We had the crummy missiles in Turkey but we had the B52's ready willing and able to strike the USSR.

The USSR could have I suppose launched an attack on Europe, but to what purpose? I am not saying the situation wouldn't or couldn't have devolved to the point where nukes were used but first none would have hit the US. The crisis is universally understood now to have been the avoidence
of the hell of MAD, which was not technically possible till much later in the decade.

Posted by rapier | January 6, 2008 7:30 AM

Re: The Russians essentially surrendered over the Cuban Missle Crisis and they never recovered.

Actually it was an even trade: we took our missiles out of Turkey, which is what the Soviets were reacting to in the first place. Neither side "lost"; both sides did something sensible but only after coming inexcusably close to ruin.

Re: For many blacks of the greatest generation, of course, he was a sainted symbol of the start of the civil rights movement.

The start? So all that stuff in the 50s (Brown, Little Rock etc.) just descended out of the sky with no one working their butts off to get there?

Re: Many of the Great Society programs are now either frighteningly insolvent (medicaire), irrelevant (CPB, DoT) or abject failures (war on poverty), suggesting that LBJ didn't think about them beyond their popularity

The problem being the lack of follow-through from later administrations. Ever hear of Ronald Reagan? George W Bush? As for Medicare, whatever its financing problems it has absolutely done what it was supposed to: provide healthcare for the elderly (a population the private market does not want) keeping them out of poverty and out of early graves. The financing problems are trivial compared to that.

Re: I am not saying the situation wouldn't or couldn't have devolved to the point where nukes were used but first none would have hit the US.

None at all? Are you telling me that the missiles in Cuba were fake? That Russia had no bombers? Moreover, as we know now we would be well and truly screwed in a major nuclear war even if not a single bomb landed in our country.

Posted by JonF | January 6, 2008 8:23 AM

Kennedy was an excellent President. He was charismatic and he was a leader. He was loved by all the poor people in the third world - for a damm good reason; He was on their side. He stood up to the Soviets, but he was no chickenhawk. He did not have a cavalier approach to war.
Kennedy's boldness re Space Program can be illustrated by re-reading the debates in Congress at the time. Bob Dole heaped ridicule on the idea of going the Moon - a colossal feat of American ingenuity and inspiration.
He inherited Ike's mess in Indochina. Had he lived, he would have pulled out of Vietnam. Ask Ted Sorenson if you doubt us on that.

Posted by Comment | January 6, 2008 8:41 AM

It is really unfair to judge Kennedy on his record in office when he was assassinated only 3 years in. Not without personal failings, he nonetheless showed all the hallmarks of a good, even great, leader.

Posted by Bill | January 6, 2008 9:28 AM

How can the Cuban missile crisis be fairly considered a success for the Kennedy administration? JFK's Cuban policy in large part _caused_ the Cuban missile crisis.
Castro and Guevara demanded nuclear missiles from the Soviets in response to the Bay of Pigs attempted attack. They felt, not without reason, that the Cuban regime was in danger of an American backed invasion, and they wanted nuclear missiles in order to wreak revenge on the US if they were ever invaded. The Bay of Pigs invasion was the direct provocation that led to the Cuban demand for nuclear missiles, and it was Kennedy's fault.

Posted by Hector | January 6, 2008 9:49 AM

"The Republican hagiography of Ronald Reagan is embarrassing but the JFK business is even more detached from reality."

Okay, Matt, I don't have time to read comments, but this is, from you, an almost uniquely indefensible statement. JFK overrated? Sure. But

JFK: Cuban Missile Crisis; Civil Rights

Ronald Reagan: Philadelphia, MS; Iran-Contra.

Just stop it.

Posted by elle loco | January 6, 2008 10:34 AM

"The Republican hagiography of Ronald Reagan is embarrassing but the JFK business is even more detached from reality."

Okay, Matt, I don't have time to read comments, but this is, from you, an almost uniquely indefensible statement. JFK overrated? Sure. But

JFK: Cuban Missile Crisis; Civil Rights

Ronald Reagan: Philadelphia, MS; Iran-Contra.

Just stop it.

Posted by elle loco | January 6, 2008 10:35 AM

Okay, now I did scan thru comments: the neocon trolls luv U; the people who largely agree with you think you're, um, being a young fresh turd. QED

Sorry for the double above.

Posted by elle loco | January 6, 2008 10:41 AM

No, you're wrong on JFK's Viet Nam policy. He was preparing to reduce troops in October, 1963.

It's all in John M. Newman's book JFK and Viet Nam where Professor Newman, a former intelligence analyst, reviews and analyzes the recently de-classified material.

Have fun...

Posted by Garuda | January 6, 2008 10:45 AM

The Obama-Kennedy comparison is grating to me, because like many here I believe Kennedy is the most overrated President in recent memory. I was born in 1970, but the record seems pretty clear as Matt points out.

He was overly hawkish on Cuba and Vietnam just to show how macho he was, and nearly precipated a nuclear holocaust. The US put nukes in Turkey and sponsored an invasion of Cuba, was it totally irrational for the Soviets to act as the did? Sounds like we were save from Kennedy's mistakes by a Russian submarine XO (reminded me of that film Crimson Tide.)

He moved way too slow on civil rights.

I guess I can see the point about him being a symbol of the cultural changes taking place as the 50s moved into the 60s, but all of the conspiracy theories about his assassination are just laughable when you look at his actual record.

Maybe Democrats and independents are supporting Obama because they want a new approach after the politics of the post-Cold War Bush-Clinton-Bush years? Maybe Obama will put a knife in the heart of the Republicans' southern strategy which has bedeviled progressive politics for so long.

Posted by Peter K. | January 6, 2008 11:10 AM

"The fact that there's sooooo many mentions of the Cuban Missile Crisis and only a few of the Bay of Pigs is quite telling.

Posted by Cain | January 6, 2008 4:46 AM"

Very true. If I shoot you and then drive you to the hospital quickly enough to save your life, I don't deserve that much praise. It's good that JFK showed better judgment than his advisers, but the Bay of Pigs put him in that position in the first place.

Like any president, JFK has a mixed record. He was very nervous about MLK's march. MLK also got very annoyed with his foot-dragging. Although JFK was close to the Rat Pack, he wasn't exactly thrilled when Sammy Davis, Jr. married a white woman. Part of me wonders that he knew the South would bolt the Democrats once the legislation passed, so he was hoping to get re-elected before he could do this so that he would still be in office.

The Peace Corps and the space program are probably his greatest legacies and did much to help enhance American soft power. It is difficult to judge his record due to his assassination. I think RFK could have been one of our best post-war presidents and could have helped to craft a new generational Democratic majority (just as FDR once did) without the Dixiecrats after LBJ helped pass Civil Rights and Voting Rights, or at least come a lot closer than any Democrat did after 1965. Ted Kennedy has been one of the better Senators of the past 50 years and we've been proud to have him from Massachusetts.

The sticking point is Vietnam. There are so many narratives with a decent amount of smart and honest use of data that taken as a whole there is a lot of noise in the data when one tries to figure out what JFK's long-term policy on Vietnam would have been. McNamara said JFK was more agnostic on Vietnam than LBJ and that LBJ was the key to the war being as bad as it was during his presidency, but part of me has wondered how much of this is McNamara trying to pass off his guilt onto LBJ. Some sources I've read have said that JFK didn't like our policies on Vietnam and wanted to draw down, but felt that Ike's policies combined with institutional inertia made this impossible. Then again, I've read that he felt Vietnam was somewhere where he felt he had to stand strong against communism.

Posted by Reality Man | January 6, 2008 11:48 AM

During the Cold War there were only two direct military confrontations with the Soviet Union, either of which could have led to all out war.

The first was the Berlin blockade which was countered by the year long airlift organized by Truman.

The second was the Cuban Missile Crisis where Kennedy got the Ruskies to back down and nuclear war was averted.

Every other military encounter was by proxy in that in no other time or place did and American have to put American military directly up against the Russion military.

History will record that it was these two direct military confrontations won the Cold War. After the Cuban Missile Crises everything else was a mopping up operation.

Posted by ken | January 6, 2008 12:32 PM

"History will record that it was these two direct military confrontations won the Cold War. After the Cuban Missile Crises everything else was a mopping up operation.

Posted by ken | January 6, 2008 12:32 PM"

Ever hear of Gorbachev? We didn't so much win the Cold War as the Soviets lost.

Posted by Reality Man | January 6, 2008 1:17 PM

Despite all of that he wisely resisted war and chose a strategy that gave the Soveits time to rethink their position and to ultimately back down. Is there any doubt that Nixon or Johnson would have chosen war in the same circumstance?
Posted by UofazGrad

Khruschev would not have screwed with Nixon or LBJ - he said in his own memoirs that he decided to test Kennedy because Kennedy appeared weak, vacillating, and ill-informed in his Vienna meeting. Nikita said though that he got the two things he wanted from the crisis he set in motion - a gurantee the US would not invade Cuba and removal of nuclear rockets the US had deployed in Turkey.
Khuschev also said it was the Cuban Revolutionaries that were the nuts in the missile crisis - they wanted war.

****************************
JFK did not start space exploration. It was already well underway, with Eisenhower it's great behind the scenes champion because Ike wanted spy satellites that could tell him daily the threat the Soviets were, also communications satellites and exciting the public imagination post-Sputnik with man in space, scientific research, exploration, and syngergies with the ICBM program that gave NASA to missiles and reentry vehicle technology.
JFK gave a man on the moon speech. Nice speech. Even soaring, Obama-like. But the space center is named the Johnson Space Center for being the most important and influential booster of NASA.
********************************

THe most overrated character if the 60s may avtually be Saint Martin. More imprtantly, he got a flock of MLK venerators to spread the nyth.
A considerable part of his correspondance and all if his FBI file have been removed from public for 30 years.

Posted by Chris Ford | January 6, 2008 1:32 PM

dry_fish,

fortunately we have history to look at. and i think you need to do a cursory examination of the historical facts.
brown v board of education was passed in '54, in the middle of ike's first term.
what did ike do, in response to that monumentus supreme court decision, a decision rightfully recognized as one of the two or three most important court decisions in our history?
nothing. nada. in fact, he tried to ignore it as best he could.
he had an opportunity to really move the country forward, right after brown, and he did nothing. nothing. that is historical fact.
jim crow continued. the lynchings continued. the denial of voting rights continued.
yes, he passed civil rights legislation, but it was toothless and therefore useless, and everyone knew that at the time it was passed. and history has confirmed the fact that the legislation was useless and toothless.
does he deserve credit for little rock? sure, but history has also revealed that he could have done much, much more and in fact, did the absolute bare minimum, and put the lives of those black kids at risk as a result.
as i noted initially, civil rights had not been a priority for jfk. no question about that. but in response to historical events, he came forward and started history moving in the right direction. unlike ike, who basically hid and tried to minimize the issues, jfk stood up, recognized the issues, their importance and started to put the government behind attempts to enfranchise its black citizens.
without jfk, there is no 0's civil rights legacy.
the speech that kennedy gave in '63 was monumental. again, it was the very first time that a president had made such a speech. without it, we'd probably still be living in a south africa-like apartheid state.
one last note, the only appropriate response to racists like chris ford is to ignore them as best as possible. he has long revealed his true colors. no pun intended. hopefully, he is not in a position of authority where his racist ideas can impact negatively on the lives of black folks. god help us if he's a cop or a judge or a school principal.

Posted by frankie d | January 6, 2008 2:06 PM

Guys, Kennedy was in office for 3 months prior to the Bay of Pigs.....yes he ultimately approved it, but this was an CIA/Ike/Nixon operation that Kennedy inherited.

To me it's a lot like how Clinton gets blamed for the events in Somalia (Black Hawk Down). People forget that Bush 41 sent troops there in the last days of his Presidency, and Clinton's decisions were just a continuation of the policy/situation he inherited.

Also, blaming Kennedy for being overly Hawkish on Castro, while accurate, has to be viewed in context. I don't think people truly understand the climate of anti-communist hysteria that existed at the time. It's kind of like the attitude the country had toward dealing with terrorism after 9/11. Any move to temper (or correct) our response to the terrorist attacks was viewed as treason (and indeed still is viewed as treason by a large portion of the country). Substitute Communism for terrorism, and you have an idea of the environment JFK was dealing with, and a part of, when he came into office.

Imagine the scenario if Nixon beat Kennedy. Would there have been a Bay of Pigs if Nixon had won? You bet your ass there would have been, he was one of the operations biggest supporters as VP. Would it have succeeded? Probably not. Would those Jupiter Missiles have been deployed to Turkey? Hell yes. Would the Cubans have requested missiles from the Soviets? Yes. Could Nixon have dealt as effectively with the Cuban Missile Crisis as Kennedy? Very very doubtful.

Posted by Dan | January 6, 2008 2:15 PM

History will record that it was these two direct military confrontations won the Cold War.

Then history will be wrong.

Soviet infrastructure collapsed because centrally-planned communism is an inefficient system vs. decentralized free-market capitalism. Absent even an arms race, the Soviet Union would have eventually cannibalized itself (though the process might still be ongoing).

In short, the Soviet Union crumbled because communism doesn't work.

The problem (with the Great Society's failures) being the lack of follow-through from later administrations. Ever hear of Ronald Reagan? George W Bush? As for Medicare, whatever its financing problems it has absolutely done what it was supposed to: provide healthcare for the elderly (a population the private market does not want) keeping them out of poverty and out of early graves. The financing problems are trivial compared to that.

Yes, the "War on Poverty" would be won if only Reagan and Bush had cared enough about it.

And what does it matter if medicaire goes insolvent and no one knows how to fix it, since it's doing it's job right now?

What nonsense.

Posted by Shinyk | January 6, 2008 2:49 PM

The Civil Rights Act of 1964 may not be all Kennedy's but according to Robert Dallek (biographer of LBJ) Kennedy deserves a great deal of credit.

On June 11 1963, Kennedy made the decision to give a televised evening speech announcing his civil rights bill proposal.

In other words, for the first 2 1/2 years of his administration, JFK governed a bigoted, racist Administration that tapped MLK's phones and persecuted him as a subversive. Then, when MLK justifiably led a massive televised protest against Kennedy's hatred of blacks, he turned around and half-endorsed a bill that he did nothing to push through Congress and which was far weaker than the legislation that LBJ actually passed.

He was a white supremacist, through and through, and had a bad record on civil rights.

Posted by Dilan Esper | January 6, 2008 6:05 PM

No, you're wrong on JFK's Viet Nam policy. He was preparing to reduce troops in October, 1963.

BS. He ESCALATED the war, from 700 non-combat advisors to 16,000 or 25,000 troops involved in combat.

If he wanted to pull out of Vietnam, he had 2 3/4 years to do it. Instead, he escalated American involvement by FORTYFOLD, a huge increase in the American commitment and one that directly led to 58,000 deaths.

If he didn't believe in the Vietnam War, he could have pulled those advisors out on day 1. He did believe in the Vietnam War, which is why he kept digging a bigger and bigger hole.

Posted by Dilan Esper | January 6, 2008 6:10 PM

Dilan is probably right about this. Kennedy was a Cold War hawk through and through. There would never have been a Cuban Missile Crisis if there hadn't been a Bay of Pigs invasion. The Soviets didn't really care about the missiles in Cuba- it was Castro and especially Che Guevara who wanted them, and they wanted them so that they could avenge the US invasion that they feared was imminent.

There may have been a climate of anti-communist hysteria at the time, but Kennedy did much to feed that hysteria himself. 1960 would have been a decent time to try to tone down the Cold War- Stalin was dead, after all, and Khrushchev was in the process of liberalizing. Instead, Kennedy tried to run to the right of Nixon on foreign policy, and spent his three years in office trying desperately to get rid of Fidel.

Posted by Hector | January 6, 2008 6:20 PM

Re: Khrushchev got overthrown for his weakness two years later, and in large part as a result of the Cuban Missile Crisis. I don't see how that could possibly not come up as a pretty serious positive.

John,

How does getting Khruschev overthrown count as a positive? Khrushchev was relatively liberal by the standards of the Soviet rulers, and did his best to overcome the legacy of Stalin- remember the famous "Secret Speech"?

Posted by Hector | January 6, 2008 6:28 PM

Anti-American Dilan Esper on his God, MLK and MLK's persecutor:

In other words, for the first 2 1/2 years of his administration, JFK governed a bigoted, racist Administration that tapped MLK's phones and persecuted him as a subversive.

MLK was initially watched mainly because he was financed and many of his speeches ghost-written by a ring of Jewish Communists from NYC, led by Stanley Levinson. Levinson had a Soviet handler. Levinson was MLK's main advisor after his secretary, Bayard Ruskin, also a communist, was forced to resign. Eventually, Saint Martin was forced to shed his Jewish Communist ring. In the meantime though, the FBI wiretapping had discovered King was also engaged in diverting Southern Leadership Confirence funds to the purchase of alcohol, drugs, prostitutes of the white and black races for King, and payments for Saint Martin's mistresses in several cities. The wiretaps disclosed King was also routinely beating women as part of his sexual activities, including his wife. Later, after award of the Nobel, King was again flirting with the Russians via contacts on overseas visits, and that was stopped by LBJ, RFK and Hoover calling him in and reading him the riot act to knock it off or explain his pilfering of funds for drugs and prostitutes. King knocked it off. Conversations between LBJ and RFK and Hoover are on record at the LBJ library chortling about how King's pecadillos had allowed them to privately keep King in line in certain matters.

When King was assassinated, two prostitutes, both white, he had beaten and taken hours before, were quietly escorted out of King's bedroom.

Esper - Then, when MLK justifiably led a massive televised protest against Kennedy's hatred of blacks, he turned around and half-endorsed a bill that he did nothing to push through Congress and which was far weaker than the legislation that LBJ actually passed.

A majority of Republicans favored civil rights legislation, as did JFK. JFK's problem was lacking the clout to bull it through Southern and Midwest Democratic Congressman. Later, LBJ, who did have that clout, coerced enough Democrats to go with the legislation.

Esper - He (JFK) was a white supremacist, through and through, and had a bad record on civil rights.

I think JFK believed that it was unlikely that blacks in the balance would ever construct a high civilization on their own or that overall, they would ever equal other races intellectual achievements....but that certain blacks could excel, and deserved the shot at individual success. (Nixon, not JFK or LBJ is the one that invented affirmative action, which he lost control of soon as the Democrat Left and Courts tried to make it ubiquitous in college selection, goverment contract preferences, job offers, and job promotions.
His actions as President were to assist in that day coming, while limiting black crime and black alliances with America's openly hostile enemies at the time, particularly the Soviets.

Posted by Chris Ford | January 6, 2008 6:50 PM

kennedy and vietnam.
20,000 troops. lbj raised the stakes to over 500,000 troops.
what is it about those numbers that people cannot understand, or refuse to acknowledge?
the bs about whether kennedy would have escalated is nothing more than bs conjecture.
the fact is that he never had more than 20,000 troops/advisors in vietnam.
lbj put in over 500,000 troops. lbj was solely responsible for the escalation and the mess.
nixon merely exacerbated the problem that johnson created.
enough said about that issue.
also, chris ford is his usual racist self.
i dont bother to read it. i only skim the tripe.
fortunately, most folks here are smart enough to understand what a bottom feeder he is.

Posted by frankie d | January 6, 2008 9:04 PM

Clearly FDR is the progressive counter to Reagan -- even Reagan tried to steal his mojo.

JFK has been so simultaneously idolized and trashed that his real accomplishments, the most dramatic nuclear test ban treaty in that era and his willingness, however grudging, to confront the South's segregationist governors by 1963 in the heat of the escalating civil rights movement have been overshadowed by his living large.

Then there's Johnson. Nobody, not even Caro, has quite captured him yet. He plunged the country into a cataclysmic war and came undone. But before that, LBJ fought ferociously for and won the civil rights and voting rights acts, Medicare/Medicaid, Head Start, the first expansive enviro laws (in the days when it was called conservation) and placed the first black on the Supreme Court. His unraveling cost untold lives and handed the Republicans their Southern strategy (red states) for half a century. And still the Great Society does more good for more Americans, after countless assaults, here in the 21st Century. You got to rate the guy pretty high, with a bold asterisk.

Posted by richard schrader | January 6, 2008 9:28 PM

Dilan, you haven't read the book, have you? Read it.
Yes, JFK increased troops in the early 60's. Then, he began the process of reducing them by Sept/Oct 1963. Shortly afterwards, he was shot.

John Newman. JFK and Viet Nam.

Posted by Garuda | January 7, 2008 8:31 AM

Regarding JFK and Vietnam, it is astonishing to me that no one has mentioned his administration's sanction of and support for the November 1963 coup against South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem (who was thought by then-Sec'y of State Dean Rusk to be insufficiently anti-communist). No, I don't think JFK approved of the ARVN generals' assasination of Diem, but the latter's death was at least indirectly on Kennedy's hands.

Overall, JFK's Vietnam policy was decidedly mixed. Yes, it would seem that by the November 1063 he had soured on the whole situation, and was preparing to withdraw a number of the military advisers. But prior to that, he escalated U.S. military support for South Vietnam, with some 16,000 advisors and limited direct combat roles for Special Forces, and the coup against Diem made the situation in South Vietnam dramatically worse.

Posted by Claudius | January 7, 2008 12:23 PM

GK Chesterton is worth paraphrasing:
The War on Poverty has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult and left untried.

Posted by Zxcvbnm | January 7, 2008 1:33 PM

Diem was a nasty tyrant and recognizing when he no longer deserved support was probably one of the better things Kennedy did. No tears should be shed for Ngo Dinh Diem.

Posted by Hector | January 7, 2008 2:09 PM

Dilan, you haven't read the book, have you? Read it.
Yes, JFK increased troops in the early 60's. Then, he began the process of reducing them by Sept/Oct 1963. Shortly afterwards, he was shot.

That's BS. JFK was certainly still fighting the Vietnam War as of the beginning of November, 1963, when he sponsored a coup against Ngo Dinh Diem. And he wasn't pulling troops out, he was putting troops in.

Look, JFK had 2 3/4 years to pull our troops out of Vietnam. He could have done it on the first day he took office, when there were just 700 over there. Instead, he escalated. He doesn't get credit for what he allegedly would have done after November 22, 1963. He gets blamed for having so many troops there in the first place.

Posted by Dilan Esper | January 7, 2008 2:43 PM

In response to this post:

http://londonbridges.wordpress.com/2008/01/07/finally-hillary-begins-to-make-the-argument-that-she-should-have-been-making-all-along-you-may-be-jfk-but-im-lbj/

Posted by LondonBridges | January 7, 2008 5:21 PM

Why do all blog threads descend into long rants? Is it that only the crazoids have time to get hooked in, and normal people move on?

Spike, about the half dollar, I don't get it. If people treat it as a collectible why wouldn't the mint just make more? What better gig than minting coins that people sock away in a drawer?

Obama spooks me, as did Kennedy. Every once in a while a leader makes an emotional connection with the people and the nation loses its head. This is fine when the leader is good, as were Roosevelt &(bickering aside) Kennedy. Fortunately Obama also seems like a sane and intelligent guy.

But peoples also go for maniacs like Hitler, or mediocrities like the Perons, and all hell breaks loose. It can take a nation a long time to recover from those love affairs. Even the Kennedy and Reagan romances screwed us up for a couple decades.

Personally, I'll pass on the highs to avoid the lows. Give me an uninspiring and capable technocrat, but please God don't have her vote for Lieberman-Kyl (whoops).

Let's all just keep our love affairs private.

Posted by tomtom | January 8, 2008 1:50 AM

The Myth of JFK

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